Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
Upcoming Event

Best Places to Work in Virginia

Hamburger Menu Hamburger Menu

byline: Bernie Niemeier

Magical thinking

Listening can be difficult; that’s often an early lesson learned and hopefully one paid better attention to as life goes on. I’ll admit that’s been the case for me.

Listening is especially important in business. Customers, co-workers, suppliers and vendors all have points of view that are worthy of consideration. Listening is probably the most cost-effective form of research. Listening to family members is always helpful, too. That said, it’s surprising what you can hear.

Not long ago, a family member told me that COVID was like the flu — never mind that it has killed more than 4.6 million people globally in less than two years. The flu doesn’t even come close to that. Others will say they don’t want to get vaccinated because they don’t know what’s in the vaccine. Really? Do you know what’s in your fast food diet? Has everyone suddenly become a scientist or epidemiologist? More likely, they’re grasping for excuses to justify their behavior.

Beyond the vaccination problem, the magical thinking that what one chooses to believe makes it so can become even more extreme. Secret space lasers are causing wildfires? Bill Gates is using vaccines to implant the world’s population with computer chips? Who believes this stuff?

It seems as if there is now a global conspiracy theory for anyone willing to believe such things despite an overwhelming lack of any proof. Just because something can be found on the internet doesn’t make it true.

On Sept. 9, the Capital Region Business Forum, a joint effort of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce and the Prince George’s Chamber of Commerce, featured a panel discussion with Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser. When asked what the business community could do to help the economy get back to normal, these leaders were in broad agreement that vaccinations are a top priority. As Northam put it, “We are engaged in biological warfare and the enemy is COVID.”

The same day, President Joe Biden issued a new mandate for all companies with 100 or more employees to require vaccinations or proof of recent negative COVID tests.

Why is that a big deal? Some would say such mandates infringe upon individual liberties or that businesses should decide such matters for themselves.

Frankly, it is a relief for the business community to have the government taking a more proactive role in solving what has become a pandemic among the unvaccinated. Why should the business community have to take on the role of government? We already have our hands full trying to keep companies running under unusually difficult circumstances.

The individual liberties argument also falls flat. If you want to drive, the government requires a driver’s license. For safety reasons, there are posted speed limits. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), under which the vaccine mandate falls, has always set standards for workplace safety. Helmets, sturdy work gloves and steel-toed shoes have long been required for certain types of jobs. This is nothing new.

The U.S. just marked the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Since that time, the Transportation Security Administration has required everyone entering the concourse of a U.S. airport to be ticketed, show proof of identity, pass through a metal detector and subject their baggage to searches.

Battling the virus is about the safety of our health. In that regard, the vaccine mandate is no different from any other workplace or transportation safety policy. It is a legitimate role for government to play. Public safety should not be an individual or business choice. It is just the right thing to do.

It is time to move beyond magical thinking. Private industry should not usurp the role of government. That’s the only way we will ever get back to business.  

Political Kool-Aid

Depending on who’s in charge in Dee Cee, plans alternate on what is best for the U.S. economy. The choices are seemingly reduced to tax cuts versus government spending, but things are rarely as they seem. More accurately, these choices are two different sides of the same dollar — or trillions of dollars to be more exact.

Government dollars have one vexing thing in common: They are deficit dollars. Despite being politically savvy in a populist kind of way, tax cuts have never paid for themselves through economic growth, nor have they been offset by reduced spending. Similarly, higher spending is rarely accompanied by taxes to cover new costs.

Fiscal responsibility? For the most part, that’s just the sound of political lips flapping.

The backbone to balance budgets has always been lacking. The result is an increasing federal deficit. Still, it is a mistake to consider both tax cuts and increased spending as no more than two different flavors of the same political Kool-Aid.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) passed under President Donald Trump was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to come in at a cost of roughly $2 trillion over 10 years. Republicans were all for it.

Similarly, the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) negotiated by President Joe Biden’s administration and passed by the Senate last month will likely be increased by an additional $2 trillion or more in “human infrastructure” spending. In fairness, not all of this is new spending. Some of it may be covered through higher taxes and some probably not. Democrats are all for it.

Fiscal responsibility? Maybe that starts with understanding that government plays a legitimate role; spending for the common good is what government should be doing. To think otherwise is to be absorbed by individual self-interest. U.S. spending for highways, bridges, airports, the power grid, broadband and even education and mental health has been well short of what’s needed for decades. It’s time for the U.S. to catch up.

The culture of American exceptionalism looks backward more than half a century to the boom following World War II. If the proposed new spending looks anything like the cost of that war, it will be well worth it and much needed, especially coming on the heels of a pandemic that took an even greater toll on American lives.

While both tax cuts and spending programs have fueled federal deficits, they are not equivalent in terms of economic outcomes. Tax cuts have led to significant inequities in income distribution. The wealthy have never been better off. It’s a telling anecdote that the richest men in the world are now spending their money on space flights, something that only the richest nations used to be able to afford.

Alternatively, government spending builds roads, bridges and other projects for the common good. The jobs created put money in the hands of working-class families who spend it on local goods and services. They pay taxes and support a growing economy, as compared with billionaires who pay little or no income taxes while spending more on personal investments and unparalleled luxuries like space flights.

When it comes to federal contracting, Virginia benefits more from federal spending than any other state in the nation. The commonwealth has the second-largest federal payroll of any state. On a per capita basis for total federal spending, including contracts, grants, payroll, retirement and nonretirement benefits, Virginia places first in the nation.

Tax cuts have been tilted toward the ultra-wealthy and have failed to trickle down money into either the common good or the hands of families needing it the most. Federal spending, on the other hand, is good for infrastructure and jobs, good for families and good for Virginia. It’s just good business.

Hot time, summer in Virginia

Thus far, we’ve been spared from the heat wave that gripped Oregon, as well as the drought hitting California, not to mention western wildfires. But summer is still always a hot time here in Virginia.

Looking back, it wasn’t until 1968 that the commonwealth passed liquor-by-the-drink legislation. In addition to slaking thirst during the hot months, this moved many business and political dealings out of bottle-lockered private membership clubs and into the public eye.

Two years later, the University of Virginia admitted its first female undergraduates. That same year, the U.Va. School of Nursing graduated its first Black woman.

The pendulum that swings left also swings right.

In 1971, Lewis F. Powell Jr. penned for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce what has become known to history as the Powell Memorandum (see Page 20). In it, he outlined steps that the national business community should undertake to protect the free enterprise system against various forces of societal change.

That same year, Powell, a senior law partner at Richmond-based Hunton, Williams, Gay, Powell & Gibson (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) and an active leader in the American Bar Association, was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon.

Fifty years later, the pendulum that went from left to right is going left again. Another wave of change is sweeping across Virginia.

Not only have most Confederate monuments come down (Virginia had, by far, the most of any state), but the General Assembly has loosened restrictions on access to voting. The commonwealth’s constitution has been amended to provide for a bipartisan redistricting process. On July 1, the state also skipped right past decriminalization of marijuana and went straight to legalization, despite ongoing federal prohibition.

In electoral politics, hubris supports maxims such as, “As goes Virginia, so goes the nation.” This has proven wrong as often as it has proven right. Still, Dee Cee has undoubtedly gone from left to right and back to left again. If anything, this often happens more quickly on the national front than it does in the commonwealth.

While anything that might eventually come out of the current circular firing squad among national politicians in both parties remains undecided, what’s going on in Dee Cee remains important.

Take infrastructure as an example.

Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Fund (CTF) receives almost $1 of every $5 of its funding from federal sources. Regardless of whether new federal infrastructure spending winds up at $1 trillion, $4 trillion or somewhere in between, this is real money that translates into important projects and jobs for Virginians. The CTF funds maintenance and construction for Virginia’s highways, ports, railways and public transportation. Federal funding enables much-needed projects in all these areas to move forward.

Moving forward — what a novel idea!

With COVID in the rearview mirror, business events are beginning to start back up, in-person board meetings are resuming and schools are reopening.

There’s no doubt that some trends accelerated by the pandemic are here to stay. Much like FedEx in the 1980s, Zoom has forever become both a noun and a verb. The shift from storefront retail to digital ordering and home delivery, as well as the impact of remote work on downtown and suburban office space, remain open questions. In economic development, will the scale of corporate headquarters locations decline? Can manufacturing come back to primacy?

On the homefront, we’re now having dinner parties and catching up with friends without using Zoom. Cocktails to go are no longer just a fixture in New Orleans; they will be legal in Virginia for at least another year.

Virginia also has retained its prestigious ranking from CNBC as the No. 1 state for business.

Business is back! Billionaires are engaged in a space race! Cocktails, anyone? ν

Making history (belatedly)

Virginia, sometimes better known for its history than anything else, is poised to make more of it this November.

There will be two female candidates on this year’s ballot for lieutenant governor. It has been nearly three decades since Mary Sue Terry served as Virginia’s attorney general from 1986 to 1993. Heretofore, Terry has been the only woman to hold statewide elective office in Virginia.

On the face of it, that’s a pretty imbalanced record. While the numbers in other places also remain unequal, there are numerous states where women have served as governors or held other statewide elective offices. Thirty states have elected a woman as governor at some point in their history. Eight states currently have a woman serving a governor. Currently, the U.S. Senate includes 24 women among its 100 senators.

Here’s how history will be made in this November’s Virginia elections: Unlike Terry, who is white, both major party candidates for Virginia lieutenant governor in 2021 are women of color.

In May, the Republican Party of Virginia held an “unassembled convention” at 39 drive-thru locations across Virginia, selecting Glenn Youngkin as the GOP candidate for governor; former state Del. Winsome Sears for lieutenant governor; and Del. Jason Miyares, R-Virginia Beach, for attorney general.

In June, state Democrats held a more traditional primary, selecting Terry McAuliffe as their candidate for governor; Del. Hala Ayala, D-Prince William County, to run for lieutenant governor; and incumbent Mark Herring to stand for a third term as attorney general.

In fairness, this is probably the most diverse set of candidates the two major parties have ever assembled. In addition to Sears, who was the first Black Republican woman elected to the House of Delegates, and Ayala, who is of Afro-Latina, Irish and Lebanese descent, Miyares comes from a family who fled from Cuba in 1965.

Nevertheless, the top of the ticket continues to be a bastion for white males, the only previous exceptions being former Gov. Doug Wilder, who was elected as Virginia’s first (and the nation’s first) Black governor in 1989, and Terry, who ran unsuccessfully for governor against George Allen in 1993.

That’s not to say that female candidates didn’t show up for the 2020 convention and primary. State Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield County, competed unsuccess-fully for the Republican gubernatorial nomination against three men. And two women — state Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, and former Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy — were among the five candidates vying for governor in this year’s Democratic state primary.

Outside of politics, when it comes to business, progress on gender diversity has been slow but steady. Our nation has come a long way from the World War II days of Rosie the Riveter entering the workforce to replace men fighting overseas, but that was nearly 80 years ago.

As of Jan. 1, women today hold 30% of CEO positions in the S&P 500. According to a May report by The Associated Press and Equilar Inc., only 16 of the 342 top-paid CEOs last year were women. On the other hand, these women executives earned $13.6 million in median compensation for 2020 — about $1 million more than the median pay earned by their 326 male counterparts. While still clearly underrepresented in C-suite positions, women may be doing a better job than their male counterparts. Or at least their boards appear to think that.

In planning this month’s cover story, our inaugural Virginia Business Women in Leadership Awards (see Page 20), we celebrate many examples of women who are guiding their organizations to success, setting the pace for growth and mentoring new leaders within the ranks of some of Virginia’s most admired companies.

As for the 2021 lieutenant governor’s race, Virginia’s poor, 400-plus-year record on diversity, equity and inclusion can only benefit from increased racial and gender diversity. May the best woman win.

Are big tech firms more like nations?

Roughly two years ago, Facebook announced plans to lead a consortium of companies creating a new digital token currency called Libra. The partners were to include major payment processors Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Stripe, among others. However, strong opposition from financial regulators around the world led to its shelving.

Fast-forward to 2021, as global acceptance of cryptocurrencies has become more wide- spread. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revived the Libra plan, rebranding the currency as Diem.

In separate news last year, Facebook announced the creation of an oversight board to review the company’s content decisions. Based in London and funded by Facebook with a $130 million trust, this board has been referred to as “Facebook’s Supreme Court,” which in May issued a ruling temporarily upholding the social media network’s ban on former President Donald Trump from using the service.

Consider another tech titan, Elon Musk of Tesla Motors. He scored big in the early internet boom with a few early ventures, most notably PayPal, acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock in 2002. Musk owned only 11% of PayPal stock, but it was a pretty big payday. Today, the Tesla co-founder’s net worth is estimated to be $150 billion, including his holdings in Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity Corp. That’s more than three times the gross domestic product of Jordan and nearly as much as Qatar’s GDP.

What is less widely known is that Musk’s companies have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support. As reported by The Los Angeles Times in 2015, this includes incentives, grants, tax breaks, discounted loans and environmental credits that Tesla has since sold to other companies.

In the third quarter of 2020, Tesla reported a profit of $331 million. The company said that it had sold $397 million in energy credits that same quarter.

Also noteworthy is that SpaceX counts the Pentagon and NASA among its largest customers, with multiple contracts worth hundreds of millions.

Yet another tech titan, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com Inc., at times the richest man in the world and owner of The Washington Post, also has an interest in space. The Bezos-founded commercial spaceflight company Blue Origin, which envisions millions of people living in low-orbit space stations, also has benefited from NASA contracts.

Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing subsidiary, counts the U.S. government among its largest customers, notably the Central Intelligence Agency, which awarded AWS an initial $600 million contract in 2013.

Apple and Alphabet (Google) are other examples of corporate giants benefiting from government funding.

Besides topping every list of the world’s richest people, the CEOs of these companies have a lot in common. Their companies are all frequent targets of regulatory action around the world. They have interests in creating their own currencies, courts and space programs, too, which makes them more like sovereign nations than any traditional business structure.

Not only are they unpinned to any specific geography or national interest, they have proven resistant to many taxation, antitrust and even labor law norms. Businesses ought to be moored for the good of society. There are higher purposes than just the creation of personal wealth.

Virginia has a vibrant and long-standing tech sector. It, too, has largely relied on Dee Cee as a top customer. But compared with these global behemoths, our so-called “beltway bandits” are small-change pikers.

The role of government goes beyond facilitating the creation of immense private wealth. Government exists to serve the common good. Regulation has failed to keep up with technology. It is time for that to change. 

A supersized lesson

In late March, the shipping industry almost went sideways.

In darkness and buffeted by sandstorm winds, the supersized 1,312-foot Ever Given container ship’s bow snagged a sandbar on a bank of the Suez Canal. Its stern drifted toward the other bank, leaving the ship diagonally blocking one of the world’s busiest waterways.

For days, it was unclear how long it would take for the Ever Given to be freed. More than 400 other ships were effectively stranded in the canal. To some, this may have seemed minor news. To anyone associated with the maritime industry, though, it was a disaster with far-reaching and long-lasting implications for the global supply chain.

Virginia plays an outsized role in the world’s maritime economy. With the Suez blocked, we watched, wondering how it would impact us. Would Suez-bound ships be rerouted to Pacific ports or through the Panama Canal? How would that impact the Port of Virginia? What about perishable cargo? As much as 80% of global trade volume is transported by sea.

Fortunately, the Ever Given was unstuck after just six days; normal traffic resumed a few days later. Disaster may have been averted, but the warning should remain well noted.

Infrastructure investment has been a key factor in Virginia’s maritime success story. As container ships have grown in size, the industry has changed. There has been significant consolidation within the shipping industry. Larger ships have made the industry more efficient and dramatically reduced its carbon footprint, but accommodating these behemoths is a challenge for even the largest ports and an impossibility for others. Compared with other East Coast ports, Virginia has long enjoyed the natural advantage of a deepwater channel. Recent investments in dredging deeper, going wider and ultimately becoming safer have been important to maintaining that competitive advantage.

With investments in renewable energy picking up, offshore wind turbines promise an exciting new element for Virginia’s mix of maritime businesses. The growth of the commonwealth across the entire spectrum of onshore and offshore logistics, ship construction and repair, storage and distribution centers, and railways and trucking are all enhanced by the maritime industry’s success. In many instances, maritime-related companies are some of Virginia’s largest employers.

We hope that you will enjoy the 2021 Virginia Maritime Guide and use it to learn more about the industries, companies and associations that are the major players in our economy.

To compile this guide, we worked closely with the Virginia Maritime Association and the Port of Virginia. We thank them for their assistance and look forward to their ongoing success.

— Bernie Niemeier
President & Publisher
Virginia Business

The future is now

One of the biggest and yet to be fully felt impacts of the global pandemic is the way it has accelerated trends, many of which were less apparent before the COVID crisis than they are today. Even as public health concerns might begin to subside, the impact of many business trends will remain. Much of this has to do with how office space is used and how ideas are exchanged.

When it comes to office space, traditional thinking has always been that the only place one wants to see empty desks is the sales department. After all, a company’s revenue — also known as its customers’ money — is outside the building. The sales department’s job is to be out there chasing the money.

But does this apply elsewhere?

Heretofore, the business world operated in a very office-centric environment. Pandemic conditions have tested some assumptions and stood others on their heads. The need for office space may be chief among these. We’ve proven we can survive, but can we thrive?

More than 30 years ago, what we now call working remotely was called telecommuting. Here, this movement was rooted in an attempt to reduce Northern Virginia traffic congestion along the I-95 corridor from Fredericksburg to Dee Cee. The loss of productivity and quality of life was obvious. Too many folks were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours each day.

Another popular solution back then was flex time. Workers were given scheduling choices to arrive earlier and leave earlier as a way of reducing congestion by spreading drive times over longer periods of the day.

Both teleworking and flex time have remained in place, especially among Virginia’s high proportion of state and federal employees. But these ideas never really caught on in the private sector until forced by the need to quarantine for public health reasons.

Among business leaders, keeping top talent is always a major concern. Better use of technology is another top concern. The best way to approach such problems is to see them as complementary rather than competing solutions. We’ve all made big investments in technology, so getting a better return through higher utilization of talent only makes sense.

Remote working may be great for introverts, but what about the extroverts among us? In reality, this is more than just a binary choice. It is probably fair to say that work-from-home arrangements tend to be more popular with the rank-and-file than among managers. Unlike commute time, which is easy to define, collaboration is a bit more — if not impossibly — abstract. Still, it is exactly the more abstract things that separate an organization that is competent or reasonably good from one that is great.

Over the past 12 months, we’ve gone down various little rabbit holes and done whatever was needed to survive. How’s that working for you now? Looking forward, it is time to do more than survive. It’s time to thrive.

During each previous economic recession, the phenomenon of “see-through buildings” has been apparent.  These are commercial spaces, often built on speculation, that one drives past, seeing light through the glass from one side to the other — no workers, no furniture, just empty unleased space. This is not anyone’s desired future. Empty business districts also mean empty restaurants, empty museums and empty arts and cultural venues. In other words, no shared civic life.

It’s time to get back to work. This can’t be done by mandate and it cannot be done overnight. Let’s make good use of the technology that we’ve come to depend on. Let’s make good use of the talent within our organizations. Show respect for people and how we use their time. Let’s return to the joy of organizations working well and collaborating together, not just surviving apart.

In almost all ways a successful future depends on the business community. That future is now.

Better times ahead

Back in the early 1980s, a co-worker of mine and his wife became first-time homeowners. They felt pretty good about getting their new house and signing a mortgage note at a whopping 18% interest rate! By today’s standards, that’s pretty unthinkable. While much time has passed since those days, we’ve had only six new presidents since Ronald Reagan: three Republicans and three Democrats.

The average annual 30-year U.S. mortgage rate in 1981 was 16.6%. Since then, there has been a fairly continuous decline. Last year, the rate for a 30-year mortgage averaged 3.05%.

Similarly, the U.S. inflation rate in 1980 was 13.55% and the federal funds rate peaked at 20%. Last year’s projected inflation rate was just 0.62% and the fed funds rate was just a quarter point above zero. For economic hawks who fear inflation, suffice it to say that money has rarely been cheaper. In recent times, only during the 2008 Great Recession were these numbers anything like what they are today.

The timing around all of this could not be better, with Dee Cee passing a $1.9 trillion stimulus package in the Biden administration’s first 50 days. That legislation, of course, follows the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed under President Trump in March 2020.

As the COVID fog begins to lift, the economy is now awash with cash. And it’s not just cash from the federal government. We are poised to begin a sharp V-shaped recovery from a year of reduced consumer demand across nearly all business sectors. Cash has been quarantined on the sidelines.

The 1918 influenza pandemic was responsible for an estimated 50 million or more deaths worldwide. In the United States, about 675,000 people died from that flu pandemic. On its heels, however, came the Roaring Twenties, a decade of economic and cultural prosperity in both the United States and Europe.

As of mid-March 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic has been responsible for nearly 540,000 U.S. deaths, including more than 10,000 deaths here in Virginia. Looking back to the pandemic a century ago, it’s not hard to imagine that a Roaring 2020s will soon follow this 21st century global pandemic.

Managing a recovery is never easy.

Any tendency to lionize the “Reagan Revolution” generally skips right past the high interest rates, the high inflation and high government spending, as well as the high federal budget deficits that characterized the Reagan years.

During the Japanese economic bubble of the late 1980s, real estate and stock market prices became greatly inflated. By 1992, those asset prices were in a freefall. In hindsight, Japan’s response to this decline has largely been characterized as too little, too late. And as a result, the Japanese recovery took almost three decades.

Similarly, the Obama administration’s response to the Great Recession of 2008 has been characterized as overly cautious, leading to a longer and slower recovery period than anyone would have wanted.

In Virginia, our economy particularly benefits from federal spending. Let’s not forget that the Northern Virginia juggernaut rose from swampland during the New Deal-fueled spending recovery from the Great Depression in the 1930s. During the Bush-Cheney administration, the commonwealth particularly benefited from military spending on hot conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This time around, it is good to see Dee Cee pivoting from trickle-down to trickle-up economics, by putting money directly into the hands of consumers. It is also gratifying to see federal spending moving beyond just the military and technology and into health care and the environment. Virginia stands to gain from all of these new policies.

Let the good times roll!

35 years of storytelling

My favorite day every month comes when a new issue of Virginia Business lands on my desk. Each magazine tracks emerging economic trends and the ongoing evolution of business leadership in the commonwealth.

But for me, the impact is much more than just a good read about important business topics. Each issue of this magazine represents the hard work and professionalism of a team of dedicated employees and freelancers who write stories, edit copy, shoot photos, lay out pages and sell advertisers on the value of our readership and content.

Since Virginia Business launched its first issue 35 years ago, the magazine has published 419 regular issues. That’s one each month, with the exception of last spring, when pandemic-induced advertising cancellations forced the combination of May and June into a single issue. Fortunately, with your support, we quickly resumed our normal monthly schedule.

While daily newspapers have long been called the first rough draft of history, a monthly magazine at its best can provide a bit more opportunity for circumspection and analysis, telling more of a story and adding the context for why it matters.

Storytelling is the essence of all good writing; this rule applies to journalism as much as any other kind of writing. Furthermore, the ability to construct a good story is essential to leadership, especially in business. Your team at work wants to know what is expected, but they also need to believe that what is expected is possible.

A “just the facts” approach usually falls short of being persuasive. Facts are important, but simply being correct doesn’t go very far. Good leaders help those around them to see possibilities. Greatness happens when an organization believes in the possible. Failure is the most likely outcome when things seem impossible.

Similarly, business strategy is more than just a vision, a mission statement, values, goals, strengths and weaknesses or metrics. Strategic execution requires ongoing conversations. What’s the story of your strategy? Getting that story across to investors, co-workers, customers, new hires and prospects takes more than just the proverbial “elevator pitch.”

Sometimes leaders feel as if they are repeating themselves over and over, but repetition is what it takes to communicate values. Consistency drives belief and buy-in.

At Virginia Business, our values are Leadership, Integrity, Balance, Respect and Success.

“Leadership” refers to the fact that our readers are leaders. We also strive to occupy a leadership position in Virginia. We are a small business that strives to do big things by consistently punching above our weight.

The integrity of our journalism is sacrosanct, but so is the integrity of all our dealings with customers, suppliers and other business associates.

“Balance” means telling both sides of a story, without falling into the trap of equal time, equal weight or false equivalencies. Balance also means work-life balance, something that we strive to encourage at the magazine as well as for our readers.

“Respect” means being careful about how we use your time, and it also characterizes our approach to reporting on the many diverse industries, companies and organizations in the commonwealth. We believe in the importance of treating our business associates, including sources, co-workers, suppliers and all other stakeholders, with respect.

As for “success,” there’s a reason why Virginia is consistently among the top states for doing business in the United States. Collectively, Virginians value success and we believe in getting the right results by doing things the right way.

For Virginia Business, we are taking this moment to celebrate 35 years of storytelling and 35 years of business success. It’s been a great run and one that’s far from over.

Many thanks to all of you for being a part of our continuing story. We look forward to telling the stories of your successes to come.

 

Subscribe to Virginia Business.

Get our daily e-newsletter.

Let’s make business cool again

Back in my high school days, I recall longing to be one of the “cool kids.” Guys with names like Matt or Jim. This was a time of jocks and cheerleaders. I wasn’t great at sports, but I liked cheerleaders. I tried following in my older brother’s footsteps by being a yearbook photographer. Maybe I wasn’t nerdy enough, but I wasn’t great at taking pictures either.

In 1964, Ford Motor Co. introduced a new concept car, the Mustang. Stewarded through the development process by then-General Manager Lee Iacocca, the Mustang was the epitome of cool. Iacocca’s roots were in sales and marketing. Imagine that — a top executive who didn’t come from accounting! Iacocca later went on to head the Chrysler Corp., turning the near-bankrupt company around with government-backed loans in 1979. By the way, Iacocca also made a blue shirt with white collar and cuffs a ubiquitous ’80s business fashion cornerstone.

These were the days when big business was all about making and selling products that Americans wanted to buy during the post-World War II economic boom. Working for a big company offered career development and it largely meant employment for life. It also paid off with the promise of a comfortable, pension-funded retirement.

Around this same time, a small but significant shift began — a rise in lobbying efforts to create a more friendly legislative environment for big business. Pension obligations, safety and environmental regulations, tax policy and numerous other legislative issues were ripe for change.

Thus began a transformation of the American economy from industrial production to professional services. Labor and production were offshored to low-cost countries. Business became a global affair. Professional services such as law, accounting, financial management, investing and consulting grew into some of the largest segments of the U.S. economy. Sectors such as agriculture became increasingly characterized by low-cost and often undocumented immigrant labor.

By the late 1980s, the “cool jobs” for U.S. college graduates were in global finance. First, get an MBA, then fall in line to interview for a post in consulting with McKinsey & Co. or Boston Consulting Group, or a spot in banking with Deutsche Bank or HSBC. The cool kids aspired to be like Michael Douglas in 1987’s “Wall Street” — remember walking on the beach and talking on a cell phone the size of a small shoebox? Financial engineering and hedge funds were in the initial stages of becoming the behemoths they are today.

Fast-forwarding to today, hindsight makes it easy to see some of the downsides to that economic transformation. Labor has been devalued in our economy. The stability of a company-guaranteed, defined contribution, pension-funded retirement has been traded off for the volatility of self-determined 401(k) plans. Overheated financial derivatives, namely mortgage-backed securities, crashed during the Great Recession. An entire generation saw the comfortable retirement hopes of their big company-employed parents crash onto the rocks of income disparity.

Today, cool jobs seem more like get-rich-quick schemes — develop an app and sell it to someone else and cash out quickly in the venture capital market. Is wealth all there is? Even big tech barons seem only passingly cool. Hoodies and T-shirts are more the products of basement-bred Xbox culture than anything close to the corporate cool of Lee Iacocca or Michael Douglas. Craft brewing, the celebrity culture of “Top Chef,” or being a social media influencer all pale in comparison with being a captain of industry.

It’s time for business to find its cool again. Just as 2020 offered an opportunity to slow down, retool and rethink, 2021 offers an opportunity to reboot and rebuild the kinds of businesses that serve everyone.