I’ve been blessed throughout the course of my career to have opportunities to work with so many amazing leaders – CEOs of Fortune 500 companies; elected officials at virtually every level of government; regional chamber of commerce and economic development executives dedicated to building stronger, more vibrant places to live, work, run a business or raise a family; the heads of large charitable organizations and small nonprofits born out of one caring soul’s need to lift up those in need; and even a few household names from the world of professional sports.

I’ve been in position day after day to see how great leaders lead – how they keep moving toward the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel even as so many others … and so many obstacles … threaten to knock them off course.  And I’ve been there to see some not-so-great leaders fail – people who were born with the drive to lead but believed they could succeed on potential alone.  And now I’m looking to share with others the lessons I’ve learned over more than 15 years in the company of these women and men of distinction.

I’m excited about opportunities that are on the horizon and the chances I’ll have through Bannon Leadership Consulting to help good people achieve great things in their businesses or the communities that they call home.  I’ve been asked to come and share a lot of these lessons with business and community organizations in the past – to help them organize, plan and execute for greater success.  And this new organizational structure will help me to do that in more formal, more effective way for both consulting clients and audiences who are interested in my message.

So please take some time to poke around the site, www.BannonLeadership.com.  Take a minute to sign up for the RSS feed on the left to be notified of future updates, follow @BannonLdrshp on Twitter, and leave a comment if you’ve got something to share or send me an e-mail to let me know how I can help you realize your vision.

At the same time, I’ve given my fair share of speeches and presentations over the years. And those are always fun. Most recently, I spoke in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where I delivered a keynote address on community and economic development to the good folks of the Northwest Chamber Leaders Conference.  It was a great time, and I probably learned twice as much from the wonderful community and business leaders who came to the conference from all across the Pacific Northwest and western Canada as they learned from me.  When it was over, I was asked by a handful attendees about whether I’d be available to come and speak in their communities, and so it goes for somebody who writes and gives speeches professionally.

A week later, though, I was blessed with a real treat — an opportunity to sit in the audience and watch my father deliver his first public speech in decades.  My dad, George, is an amazing guy. I’ll spare you the million and one reasons I’ve got the best dad in the world, but I’d urge you to take my word for it.  He was forced to retire early with a severe knee injury in 2001, and after he adjusted to the realities of his life without work, he threw himself into the pursuit of one of his lifelong dreams.  He wanted to write and publish a novel.

So, on March 23, he took to the front of the room at a “Meet The Authors” night at a local library to deliver his first book talk.

Like all public speakers, he was nervous. I’d talked with him about it a month or so ago — even offered to help him organize his thoughts. I worried for him and wanted him to do a great job, and I kind of felt a pang of role-reversal, thinking back to the times when I was a kid and he’d offer to help me study or when he’d talk to me about my batting swing. As much as he ever wanted me to succeed on the baseball field, I wanted him to hit a home run when he delivered his remarks at this event.

But he didn’t ask me to help him put together his speaker’s notes. So I was a bit more anxious for him than I let on when I met up with him a little while before the event was scheduled to begin.  There were three other authors who would be speaking, and they’d all done these things before. But Dad looked ready. So I gave him a quick pre-game speech about how everybody in the room wanted him to succeed and how he’d be great just by being himself.  Then I took my seat and waited.

The first couple of authors who spoke were very good — both having published multiple titles and done years worth of speaking engagements and media interviews.  Then it was Dad’s turn.  And he killed it.  Seriously, a grand slam.  He got his first laugh from the audience after about 12 seconds and another within half a minute of that. He made connections with the crowd, told personal stories, wove in details of the story in his book and brought it all home with a personal message about chasing one’s dreams even when you think time may have passed you by.  I was in the back of the room, and about halfway through his remarks a teenage girl in the seat in front of me leaned over to her mother and said, “I like him.” And I couldn’t have been more happy for my dad or more proud as a son.

So I wonder … is it in the genes?  I understand how I can craft a pretty decent speech with so many years of experience. And I understand how I can give a pretty good speech with so many years studying, teaching and practicing speechmaking. But how does my dad, who hasn’t delivered public remarks in nearly 20 years, win the room like he did?

I like to think he gets it from me.

Please take a little time to watch the video of my dad’s remarks at the Northland Public Library Meet the Authors event. If you like what you hear, visit his Web site, www.GeorgeBannon.com, to order a copy of his novel, The Final Crusade. It’s available from Amazon and all the other usual suspects, but if you order from Dad’s site you get it for $5 off the cover price, free shipping, and he’ll personally sign it for you.

Update: This op-ed has been picked up by the Sacramento Business Journal and is available online to non-subscribers now by clicking here.

Chamber Executive Magazine -- Summer 2010 -- featuring a cover story by Bannon Communications President and CEO Shawn Bannon

Thanks to the good folks at the American Chamber of Commerce Executives, who gave me the opportunity to write the cover story for the summer edition of Chamber Executive magazine. 

The article takes a look at how communities across the country are working to brand and promote themselves for economic development, talent attraction and tourism in difficult economic times and a period of fierce competition.

Let me know what you think after you’ve read the piece, especially if your community is doing something unique or creative to spread the word about what makes it a great place to live, work, run a business or raise a family.  Leave a comment below or e-mail me.  And don’t forget to sign up to follow Bannon Communications on Twitter.

The oil spill is causing tremendous damage to beaches, wildlife, wetlands and the economy across the Gulf coast.

As oil continues to pour from BP’s ruptured pipeline into the Gulf of Mexico, beaches, wetlands and wildlife are under siege.  Industry – from tourism to commercial fishing – is taking a beating.  The anger and frustration this crisis has caused are understandable; the pain is real. 

But suggestions that this catastrophe underscores a need to turn away from traditional energy sources must be resisted by Gulf region leaders.  In fact, even as some politicians and environmental activists demonize the industry and look for political gain in the crisis, this is the time to put oil and gas at the heart of a new regional plan for sustainable economic prosperity.

A few months before the spill, I traveled from western Louisiana to the Florida panhandle, surveying the recovery efforts still underway nearly five years after Hurricane Katrina and examining the potential to build a stronger, more resilient regional economy.  What I found was an alarming sense among residents that the jobs created since Katrina will only last so long as there are recovery projects and federal funds to sustain them. 

Even as New Orleans celebrated a Super Bowl win and national magazines published feel-good stories about new economic vitality, people who live in the region shared with me their concerns that only the hospitality industry had truly begun to make a comeback that might last.  It was disheartening, but what gave me hope as I drove through Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Orleans and on to Gulfport, Mobile and Pensacola was the realization that the assets and expertise needed to breathe new, lasting life into the Gulf region are already largely in place. 

Existing infrastructure and oil and gas industry expertise throughout the Gulf Region are both reminders of our reliance on fossil fuels and a source of hope for new economic prosperity. (Photo: al.com)

I was reminded of communities across the “Rust Belt” – cities like Indianapolis and my hometown, Pittsburgh – that faced a less-literal sort of rebuilding after the collapse of the steel trade in the 1980s.  In order to reinvent ourselves we invested in education, IT and life sciences.  We didn’t abandon our industrial heritage, but manufacturers did have to restructure and worked to become more sophisticated and more efficient.  And ultimately, their efforts to regain a competitive footing supported local growth in other industries.  By building on core strengths and investing in a well-imagined vision for the future even during a time of crisis, these communities created foundations for new prosperity.

Today, there is real potential for leaders in the Gulf region to seize a brighter future from the bleakness of the moment.  But they must have the vision and the courage to stand up to a presidential administration that appears more interested in advancing its alternative energy agenda than in providing for the people of the Gulf region whose livelihoods hang in the balance.

We all want cleaner, greener energy, but no alternative we’ve identified heretofore is near capable of significantly reducing our demand for oil and gas.  While the president and others suggest that we were blind before this spill and that now we can see the pressing need to rush toward new energy solutions, the reality is that the nation has long appreciated the limits of our natural resources and supported the investigation of alternative energy options.  But absent a practical, deployable replacement, what this crisis actually highlights is the need for improved handling of fossil fuels.  What it demands is development of better technologies for exploration, extraction, transmission and refinement of oil and gas, as well as better procedures to safeguard against spills, contain them quickly when they occur, and mitigate their environmental and economic impact. 

Instead of racing to throw tax dollars at unproven alternative energy schemes, this is the time to invest in a multi-state economic development strategy to make the Gulf region an international hub of new energy solutions emphasizing safety and environmental stewardship within the oil and gas industry.

There is vast opportunity for growth in the industry where intellectual and physical assets already exist – for investment in R&D and production of new tools to better manage drilling, flow systems and transportation.  But there also is broad-based economic growth potential as this activity leads to an influx of research capital and students at local universities, as well as creation of jobs in advanced manufacturing, chemicals, construction, distribution, engineering, environmental reclamation, finance, law and other related fields. 

For decades, oil and gas companies have been in the Gulf region because of the proximity to massive reserves of fossil fuels.  Those reserves will last for years but not forever.  So, while the attention of the nation is focused on these issues and while leaders at every level of government are looking for ways to help, this is the chance to sow the seeds for the region’s economic future. 

Specifically, local and state leaders from Texas to Florida should be lobbying the federal government for unspent stimulus funds to support the establishment or expansion of energy companies in the region, under the condition that businesses apply those funds to research and development of safer, more reliable technologies applicable to the oil and gas industry or in the pursuit of alternative energy solutions.  A few months ago, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said he was unhappy that more than 80 percent of the $36 billion in stimulus money that the Department of Energy received last year had yet to be spent.  Now more than ever, leaders throughout the Gulf region need to call for that money to be invested in their communities.

Second is the need to create a federally supported Gulf Region Energy Investment Opportunity Zone – an interstate region in which energy companies are given significant tax incentives to locate major R&D and new technology fabrication facilities in communities that already have a critical mass of energy industry infrastructure and intellectual capital.  After Hurricane Katrina, Congress passed the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, establishing incentives for investment in hard-hit areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.  Now is the time to create a much broader program to encourage investment that will not only fuel the Gulf region’s economic prosperity for the foreseeable future, but which also will work to find much-needed solutions to our national energy concerns.

Under the right circumstances, the Gulf Region could become an indispensible source of energy industry knowledge and innovation. (Photo: U.S. Dept. of Energy)

Thirdly, local and state leaders need to push energy industry leaders – including, but certainly not limited to BP – to make substantial and frequent investments to support independent energy research and the development of energy-related talent at universities throughout the region.  Companies in the oil and gas industry should be partnering more actively with universities in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to ensure that their engineering, chemistry, physics, computer and nanotechnology programs are among the best in the world.  They should be working together to create an environment that fosters new thinking in energy-related fields and that attracts the best young minds to be educated and to collaborate on projects that will shape our energy future for generations to come.

There may never be a better time to establish the Gulf region as an indispensable base of knowledge within the international oil and gas industry – not only as a source of dwindling natural resources but also as an originator of technologies and procedures that can ultimately be licensed and exported to wherever drilling is done around the world.

Managed well, the silver lining of this dark time will be new business investment, job growth, population recovery and wealth creation that will benefit residents throughout the region from Corpus Christi to Panama City.  But if it’s to be, local and state leaders will need to strike the right balance between calls for federal support of the cleanup effort, requests for funding to encourage new investment, and suggestions that Washington do a better job to not get in the way with any more rash regulatory moves or politically motivated posturing.

Want to share your thoughts on this interesting issue?  Think I’ve got it all wrong?  Have other ideas about how the Gulf region can work to not only recover from this crisis but also to create a brighter economic future?  Leave a comment below or e-mail me.  And don’t forget to sign up to follow Bannon Communictions on Twitter.