Time to Decide

I just decided to rewrite my editor’s note. I was perfectly happy with the one I had prepared except that a last-minute development threatened to make my topic moot by print time. I’m thinking of it as a safe choice; I wish they were all that easy.

If I were to face a super challenging decision, I wouldn’t mind picking the brains of the seven CEOs we spoke with for our story “Deciding Moments.” We’re talking about choices that involve millions or billions of dollars and require steely resolve. For example, when Chick Heithaus served as a senior executive for a major commercial kitchenware manufacturer, Wal-Mart proposed to buy the products for the home market, which would have more than tripled the size of Heithaus’ company. A good fit? And then there was former Kmart CEO Joe Antonini, who weighed whether to expand internationally around the time the Berlin Wall fell. Was it the right moment to grow globally?

Such decisions can become defining moments in a company’s future, not to mention those of the CEOs. The ability to make a hard choice the correct way is a talent that successful business people must possess and use often. Find out how Heithaus and Antonini did, beginning on p. 21.

There’s another group of local business leaders who have made some bold choices that perhaps removed the executives from their comfort zones. They opted to expand into the complex world of foreign trade. In Southwest Florida, exports include computer and electronic products, transportation equipment and, of course, crops, all in impressive numbers.  The Naples-Marco Island metro area, for instance, ranks 12th in the state for exports.

As we report in our story “All Abroad,” the efforts are making a difference now—during the current economic downturn—and will in the future.

“If you look at Florida, trade is our destiny,” says Manny Mencia, head of export promotion for Enterprise Florida. The story begins on p. 28.