To the Editor:

A past president of General Motors liked to tell his staff that if something had been done in a particular way for 15 to 20 years, it’s a pretty good sign, in these changing times, that it is being done the wrong way.

I’ve thought of those words often over the past few months as I’ve listened and learned about the most diverse department in state government — the one I’ve been charged by Gov. Matt Blunt to run. With this constantly changing business world, driven by new markets, new technologies and an ever fluctuating economy, it has be-come obvious to me that your Missouri De-partment of Economic Development needs to change to keep up with the competition.

While I have only been department director since February, it only took me a few days to realize what a remarkably talented staff we have in our department.

But coming from the business world, I also recognized in a very short time how much the program-driven, bureaucratic and compartmentalized structure of our department was hindering the staff’s potential.

To create business in Missouri, I believe we need to run our department like a business. Therefore, I have taken steps to implement a fresh vision — a plan of action that will do a much better job of focusing on our administration’s priorities-creating quality jobs and improving the entrepreneurial spirit of our state. We will be using a business model for our department to create a more sales driven environment, committed to producing positive, accountable results. Our mission with this major internal reorganization will be to focus on progress, not process.

Under this reorganization, our divisions of Business Development and Trade and Community Development have merged into one operation to take advantage of the combined expertise of these divisions and make the delivery of their services more efficient. Within this new Business and Community Services Division, we are building teams in the areas of sales, marketing, development finance, financial management and compliance to work together to create high quality jobs, attract major employers and strengthen the economic growth of communities. Our No. 1 goal will be to sell Missouri.

I want to emphasize that this reorganization is not being undertaken to cut costs or reduce staff. This is a top-to-bottom change that will even add staff in some areas. We are in the process of assessing with our existing staff where their expertise can best serve our teams. We know this will involve some realignments and job reclassifications.

But as I have told our staff, these changes will be good for them, offering many of them new opportunities for advancement.

These are exciting times for our department. We are moving away from simply administrating and implementing programs. We are launching an aggressive plan of action to create jobs and stimulate economic growth. Our restructuring will deliver our services more efficiently, consolidate expertise, put more staff in the field and reduce duplication of services. And we are going to be moving to make these changes as rapidly as possible so our state can begin to reap the benefits.

If you aim at nothing, you’re going to hit it. We are setting our aim high. We are focused at the target and I can assure you we intend to hit it. We battle every day with other states and other countries for jobs and business. So far, we haven’t been fighting those battles very well. But that’s going to change. Our new plan of action sends the message loud and clear: Missouri is not just open for business. We mean business.

Greg Steinhoff

Missouri Department of Economic Development.