How Rahm
Emanuel Made Chicago Thrive
The best big-city mayor in the country shocked the
Windy City by announcing that he won't run for a third term. The business
community is losing a gamechanger.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
Last week Chicago lost
a great mayor as well as the most aggressive spokesman ever for
the city's tech and entrepreneurial community when Rahm Emanuel-- the best
big city mayor in the country, bar none--announced that he would not run for a
third term. Good news for him and his family and really hard news for the
city. Family first. Period.
In his brief
announcement, and in the comments and interviews that followed, he offered some
important lessons for us, and especially for the pack of losers who
had already lined up to run against him. If it wasn't so sad for Chicago,
it would be comical watching these one-issue, nichy little nobodies gripe,
posture and position themselves as hopefuls and aspirants to a position many
miles beyond their abilities. Imagine seeing a group of 10thgrade Pony league pitchers trying to throw shade at one of the
MLB pros. If you want to beat Babe Ruth, play him in golf, not baseball.
How painfully easy it
is for the challengers to complain and criticize from the sidelines. I
call these people solution-less soreheads. And considering that most of them
are presently gainfully unemployed, I'm reminded of the old
crew expression that the only one in the boat who has the time to complain is
the one who isn't rowing hard enough. I'd feel sorry for most of them because
of how sadly deluded they are, but their rank arrogance in thinking that even
for a moment any one of them is up to the task makes it hard to sympathize with
their stupidity.
The media mavens and
the other scriveners realized (grudgingly admitted, is a better way to put it)
that a tremendous amount of important work got done in the last seven years and
that most of it wouldn't have been accomplished without the pushing, prodding,
pleading and insistence of the mayor. Substantial improvements in affordable
housing, expanded access to public transportation, and the conversion of the
Chicago river from a sewer to the spectacular Riverwalk are just a few of the
initiatives that will serve the city well long after his departure.
Sometimes a song says
it all and no one ever summed up this sad situation better than Joni Mitchell
in "Big Yellow Taxi" with the line: Don't it always seem to
go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone. People who are
even a little bit in the know know exactly how devastating a blow Rahm's
departure is to the progress of any number of ongoing projects and business
opportunities. This announcement may be the end of any number of new
prospective investments in the city unless someone with real credentials and
serious skills steps quickly into the breach and offers some serious prospect
of stability and continuity. No one likes uncertainty and change less than
long-term investors and institutions.
But, one of the
succession difficulties is likely to be that the most qualified new potential
entrants have, at best, a complex relationship and a mixed history with
Emanuel. His own entry into office was aided immeasurably by a warm handoff
from the departing Mayor Richard M. Daley. Of course, that hearty handshake was
accompanied by a bucket full of hot messes which Rahm spent years trying to
straighten out, with substantial success. No other mayor ever endeavored--much
less succeeded, in large measure-- in cleaning up Chicago's decades of
mismanaged and underfunded pension plans for police, firefighters and teachers.
No other mayor grew the city's tech sector by tens of thousands of jobs year
after year and made Chicago the nation's leader-- five years running-- for
corporate headquarters relocations. And no other mayor expanded the
public-school day and school year so that by graduation, Chicago public school
students will have spent more than two additional years in class than when
Emanuel arrived on the scene.
No one expects a
similar amount of support from the 5th floor of City Hall this time around for
virtually any of the major undeclared candidates, at least at this point. Of
course, politics makes for strange bed-fellows, so I guess we will just see
what happens. But, apart from the politics and the befuddled state of the city
at the moment, there's a very important lesson for prospective entrepreneurs as
well in Rahm's parting comments.
Being the boss means
doing it ALL. Every day. All day. You don't get to pick and choose the fun
parts. You don't get to delegate the hard conversations or the ultimate
responsibility. And you don't have to shoulder the disappointments when people
let you down or the hurt you feel when you suffer alongside the families and
the kids who you wish you could have only helped a little bit more.
Only a few special
people are up to jobs like this - be it mayor or CEO. A lot of folks kid
themselves into believing that this is what they want to do with their lives,
but they have no idea of how all-consuming and enervating a task it is. And
what it costs in terms of your personal life and health and the lives of your
family.
My advice to every
aspiring entrepreneur is to be very careful what you wish for and do your
homework before you take the leap. Seven scars are just the beginning. The occasional highs
are okay, but the inevitable and continual lows are brutal.
My advice to the
clowns so far who are seeking to succeed Mayor Emanuel is to do yourself and
our city a favor and keep whatever day job you may have.
