20060306 Richard Haddad named new leader of Carroll Co. Chamber

Richard Haddad named new leader of Carroll County Chamber of Commerce

March 6th, 2006

It was recently just announced that Richard Haddad has been named President – or is it Executive Director of the

Carroll County Chamber of Commerce.

I had the pleasure of working with Mr. Haddad when I was the mayor of Westminster and many of us are expecting great things from him taking over the reins of this venerable organizations of business and community leaders.

For a bit of history on the Chamber – go here.

For more posts on the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce on “Soundtrack,” click here.

Carrie Knauer, who has won numerous journalism awards, (here and here,) has written a “Question and Answer” piece with Mr. Haddad. Her article appeared in the Carroll County Times on March 6th, 2006.

The Carroll County Times unfortunately does not use hyperlinks, so the entire piece, which belongs to Ms. Knauer and the Carroll County Times, is pasted below.

For more work from Ms. Knauer, click here. Or enter “Carrie Ann Knauer” in your favorite search engine.

By Carrie Ann Knauer,
Times Staff Writer Monday,
March 06, 2006

Q&A
Name: Richard Haddad

Age: 64

Residence: Westminster

Title: Carroll County Chamber of Commerce President

Last book read: "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

Richard Haddad started his position as president of the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce Feb. 27. Haddad was a member of the Carroll chamber for a number of years, and as a volunteer, he chaired the chamber's business and education committee and also served briefly on the organization's board of directors. Haddad said he is excited to take this position toward the end of his career so he will be able to apply much of the management skills he has learned at other positions to help his local community.

Q: Where are you from and how did you come to Carroll County?

A: Brooklyn, N.Y., born and raised. I had been pretty well on in my career, I was maybe 30 and working at Citibank in New York, and I was doing EEO program development [Equal Employment Opportunity] for Citibank at the time. I was their first EEO officer, and this was like in 1969.

There was a utility down here in the Washington, D.C.-area that had a lot of EEO problems and was looking for an EEO officer. I was interested in leaving New York, and I wound up taking that job. That's how I came down to Maryland, and that was in 1971 when I finally moved down here.

I lived in Howard County for about 25 years and then moved to Carroll County about 10 years ago.

Q: How do you see your role at the Chamber of Commerce?

A: I think that there's what you might call "back at the ranch" roles and then just the public roles. The back at the ranch roles basically include the management of the office and the operations and just making sure that everything moves smoothly and that sort of thing. Also very importantly, working with the staff, supervising staff, helping them develop potential, encouraging them to talk about issues, so that we can work together and congeal as a team. And that is the stuff that the public very rarely sees, that businesses just take for granted that somebody takes care of those sorts of things.

The out-in-the-public-eye roles are basically acting as a spokesperson for the chamber, and maybe most importantly for the chamber's long- term health, is working with the board to develop a vision for the chamber and then developing planning for that vision, that we have a step-by-step process for achieving where we want to go and that sort of thing.

And that's one of the things that really interested me in the chamber job because I have background in strategic planning, and so I was really excited about that. I did consulting here in Carroll County for a few years and did strategic planning, some of the board members knew about that, so they were anxious to bring that expertise here.

Q: What do you see as the chamber's role in the community?

A: Carroll is not like a county that's filled with Fortune 500 companies that recruit people from all around the world, and they put in their five or 10 years and then move on to somewhere else where they get another opportunity, where you have a lot of turnover and flow and no one's really invested in the community.

We're overwhelmingly small business owners; men and women who not only live in our community but send their kids to our schools, they attend our churches, they belong to our service organizations like Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions and that sort of stuff. These people have an important stake in the health of the community. There's not going to be the clash between what's good for the business climate and what's good for the community because they are such a part of the community that they're the same. So, they will work to create a strong business climate, and that in turn makes for a stronger and healthier county. I mean that's the way that I see things, no conflict at all, everything blends very well.

Q: What have you learned from your experience at other chambers?

A: First and foremost that a good staff is very important, but that a lot of involved volunteers is critical. A chamber is as good, is as active, is as effective as its volunteer members want it to be. And I firmly believe that we can be anything that we want to be. We can be the finest chamber in the country if we want to be. We've got the talent, the skills, the energy - it's all here. The question is how can we project ourselves to the community to get those people to bring all that stuff to us, so we can bring it all together.

That's something that I get excited thinking about, bringing that all together, and I've seen a little bit of that. I've chaired committees, with this chamber and other committees. You throw a new idea on the table, people go "we never thought of that before," and suddenly you're pulling people in who have never been involved with the chamber before because they like that particular idea.

The job shadow program started that way. It was existing all around the country but we had not done it in Carroll, the schools were doing it, and we started a job shadow program to see if we could match businesses with students who were interested in doing that kind of stuff. And it turned out to be one of the chamber's biggest events. We have a couple of hundred kids involved. It's a feel-good event also for the business community, doing something for the kids.

Q: There's been a lot of turnover with the staff and the board of directors at the chamber. Why do you think that has happened and how do you think this can be improved?

A; I'm not aware of unusual turnover on the board. I know there's been an isolated case here and there of somebody dropping off and that sort of thing.

I am aware that there's been a big issue with the staff. When I was in New York, I did a turnover analysis program for Citibank, that's what one of my responsibilities was as employee relations manager. And I learned there that there are lots of reasons why you can have [turnover] - you don't make assumptions about turnover.

The assumptions that most people make is that you're paying too little, and that's usually the wrong assumption - it's not what drives people in and out of organizations. Distribution of work, particularly in a small organization, is extremely important, and working conditions that you create, the kind of rapport with all the staff involved and that sort of thing.

We are now 100 percent staffed with newly restructured positions, and what I really want to do is keep my employee relations eye on the situation. I've already had conversations with the staff members. It's extremely important to me that they share problems, frustrations, that we work together as a team. But it's basically good communication, working together and being very open and honest with each other. I'm just going to try to see if we can do that and take it from there.

Q: What are some goals you would like to accomplish here at the Carroll chamber?

A: I love this community. I'm happy first of all to be here and I want to help to do something for this community. I'm very anxious to use all of my skills that I've picked up in my management career to basically try to apply them to specific situations here in Carroll to see what I can do to help improve things.

There's the routine ones, like grow membership, increase revenue, that sort of stuff, and obviously we need to do that to be a healthy chamber and to continue to growing. We've got a tight budget right now, and one way to relieve that budget is to bring in more money. So I've got to figure out ways to bring in more money and loosen that up a bit.

But that's an example of a situation in which I've faced a lot of problems like that in previous jobs. So I go back into my data bank, and I go "what would apply in this situation?" I just want to have an impact, and I think I can.

Q: What will be the next opportunity for the general membership of the chamber to meet you?

A: We have networking breakfasts, we have member luncheons where we have speakers, and there's a business fair that's coming up in March. The ones where I get the most interaction with the membership are the breakfasts and the luncheons and the mixers. And those are on the chamber Web site. I make it a point to get there and just introduce myself to as many people as I can.

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