One thing about change it is constant.
That variant on an old saying will be addressed in a special CEO panel at Directions 2005 on Feb.
4 at the Reno Hilton.
Co-facilitated by the Reno-Sparks Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada the panel will explore the impact of change on business with a group of top CEOs who face it daily.
Consider an industry where labor costs, material availability, government contracts, insurance, weather, regulations and many other factors force management to re-evaluate their competitive situation virtually every day.William Dorey is president, chief executive officer and a director of Granite Construction.
He started with Granite as a laborer at age 16 and was in the middle of Granite's evolution, a struggle for survival that fundamentally changed the structure of this omnipresent company in the western United States and northern Nevada.
Dorey has probably seen it all but would likely tell you that there is more to be discovered and that he and his team work to position Granite for success in a rapidly changing business world.
Gaming, part of the tourism industry that has been a mainstay for northern Nevada for decades, has gone through a series of challenges and changes that could have seriously rocked the foundations of our region's economy.
Once a virtually non-competitive industry unique to Nevada and then New Jersey, gaming is in some form in every state except Utah and Hawaii.
No longer unique to the Silver State, the competition has moved very close with highly competitive facilities dotting the landscape in northern California, a key feeder market for our region's casinos.
On top of that, the traditional customer base is aging, new regulations arise, technology changes and customers increasingly want new and different choices.
Ferenc Szony, president and CEO of The Sands Regent, has taken novel and innovative approaches to meeting many of those challenges.
He and his hotel-casino colleagues find themselves adapting quickly to marketplace demands and new opportunities.
Competition may have shifted forever among local casinos to newer, more daunting out-of-market competitors that require us and our gaming properties to continue to work to diversify the region's economy and expand into entertainment, retail and adventure marketing.
As a former broadcast executive for 31 years, I can remember when there were only three or four local stations, carrying "the three networks." There was no Fox or WB or Hispanic station.
Cable TV, where it existed, was limited to about 3 percent of the population and there were only a dozen channels.
The "weather" channel might have been a motorized camera panning weather instruments.
Now, cable TV offers hundreds of channels, Internet services and special services like video on demand.
In my day there were no VCRs or DVDs or home computers or video games or satellite TV or any of the many things that compete for customers' eyeballs.
As technology becomes increasingly more central in business, comes the demands of a changing customer base used to more, better and faster in higher definition with better sound quality.
From the cable television operators' point of view there are constant challenges in terms of regulation, ranging from local government franchise agreements to rulings from the Federal Communications Commission.
Then the technology changes, capital investment and customer service system demands can be piled on top of that.
Eric Brown, senior vice president of Charter Communications, Inc., rounds out a panel of industry executives who must deal with constant change yet keep their companies competitive and profitable.
Times have changed from an era when you started a business and could stay consistent, adapting to change over years rather than days.Whether you are an entrepreneur, owner, executive, manager, supervisor, line worker or customer you find it more and more difficult to keep up with all the change.
About the time you learn the fundamentals of one technology fax machines, personal computers or cell phones the basics change.
Those shifts are more than challenging because they directly impact the productivity and opportunity you and your business face.An investment in a piece of equipment or machinery becomes vital when the effective and accounting life of that equipment may suddenly shrink from years to months.
If your business is customer interactive and competitive you simply cannot afford to fall behind or you will not survive.
The lessons that these three executives from Granite Construction, The Sands Regent and Charter Communications continue to learn can be invaluable to you as you face all of those proverbial forks in the road ahead.
Whether you are an executive faced with the decisions or a line employee left with those decisions - you are impacted by today's rapidly changing business environment.
Directions 2005 is the region's largest economic forum presenting these three CEOs on an informative and surely thoughtprovoking panel, along with three keynote speakers focusing on the future of education, the economy and the power we need and hold in our hands.
Other features of the conference include:
* A new, annual "Northern Nevada Business Outlook Survey" report from the Rose/Glenn Group and InfoSearch International.
* A "2005 Market Trends and Insights" presented by the Reno Gazette-Journal.
In addition to the normal program, which runs from 7 a.m.
until noon, for a small additional cost you can attend a buffet luncheon and question-and-answer session with many of the speakers featured above.
The theme of this year's program is choosing a "Fork in the Road."As a region, working together, we will face unseen challenges that must be turned into opportunities.
As we strive to maintain our quality of life,many of those forks represent a balance between the resources and demands that will convert challenges into opportunities.
Open spaces and economic vitality must work in harmony to preserve what we have and create what we want for ourselves and our future generations.
For more information on Directions 2005, call 337-3044 or visit: www.renosparkschamber.
org.
or www.edawn.org.
Chuck Alvey is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.
