2008 Business Leader of the Year: Chip Morrison
Nonprofit Business Leader:
CHIP MORRISON
President, Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce
Chip Morrison has brought energy, innovation and big growth to the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce
By now, Charles "Chip" Morrison's performances at the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce's monthly breakfast meetings are legendary. While some of the several hundred early risers who regularly attend the events may still be rubbing sleep from their eyes, Morrison, president of the chamber, bounces onto the stage as a bundle of energy at 7:15 a.m., cracking jokes to welcome the crowd. "He gets on that podium and if anyone is thinking of falling asleep, it's not going to happen," says Donna Steckino, president and CEO of Community Credit Union in Lewiston. "Chip will wake them up."
Energy and enthusiasm for the job are two qualities successful chief executives often are required to possess, and ones Chip Morrison holds in spades. "Sometimes he makes us feel like we're running at a snail's pace," says Steckino, who was on the chamber's board in the late 1990s. "I don't know how he does it."
Morrison is five feet eight inches tall and moves with purpose. His mane of gray hair lends him a likeness to Albert Einstein, and his short staccato laugh and friendly smile are well known on the business networking circuit. He counts his kinetic personality as a distinct asset. "It's the defining quality," he says, sitting on a recent afternoon in the organization's newly renovated Lisbon Street office. "I'm the Energizer bunny."
It's these qualities, and his indefatigable and enthusiastic approach to his job, that have helped grow the nonprofit chamber's membership from the roughly 623 members when he took the helm of the organization in 1995 to 1,302 in 2007 — a 108% increase over his 13-year tenure. Last year, a record 174 new dues-paying members joined the chamber.
Morrison, 62, is quick to share credit for the chamber's successes with his staff, the chamber's board and its members. "That's what CEOs do. They create environments for positive things to happen," he says. "You don't do it all yourself."
But most people return the spotlight to Morrison. "Chip is the chamber," says Steckino. "His influence and leadership has probably been the most influential factor in the growth of the chamber, there's no question in my mind about that."
His energy is contagious, says Janet Barrett, owner of the Ware Street Inn in Lewiston and another former chair of the chamber board. "When you're with Chip, you feel like you could do anything," she says.
Indeed, the local community has benefitted from Morrison's leadership. In the past 10 years, the Lewiston-Auburn area has become a beacon of positivism in the state, and Morrison is a central figure in that movement. "The only thing he's missing are the pom-poms," says restaurateur Paul Landry, who owns Fish Bones American Grill in Lewiston and Mac's Grill in Auburn and plays in the community band with Morrison, who plays the trombone. "He's the area's biggest cheerleader."
And those positive vibes sent out by Morrison and the rest of the community aren't just for show: Between 2001 and 2005, the Lewiston-Auburn region's gross domestic product grew 10.7% to roughly $2.9 billion, a larger increase than in either Portland or Bangor during the same time period, according to a report released last September by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Ups and downs
Last year was a milestone in terms of membership, but 2007 also marked the chamber's move into a newly renovated headquarters, the Business Service Center at KeyBank Plaza on Lisbon Street, which also is home to the Lewiston Auburn Economic Growth Council, as well as the local offices for the Maine International Trade Center, Coastal Enterprises Inc. and SCORE. Morrison was one of the driving forces behind the $2.5 million renovation and transformation of this historic yet abandoned property into a one-stop shop for business services.
An Illinois native, Morrison says he inherited a commitment to community from his parents. His father, who owned a department store, was on the boards of the local chamber of commerce and a local hospital. His mother was on the local school board, and as a member of Community Chest, the forerunner to the United Way, would always encourage a young Chip to give a nickel whenever he could.
Morrison, a graduate of Carleton College in Minnesota, has been in the public sector for the majority of his professional career, beginning in 1969 with a job as assistant city manager of Des Moines, Iowa. In 1978, after a short stint in the private sector as a consultant on organizational efficiency, he became the city manager of Auburn, and then commissioner of the Maine departments of administration (which later became the department of administrative and financial services) and labor in 1987 under former Gov. John McKernan.
Morrison has no plans for retirement in the near future — "I wouldn't know what to do if I didn't work," he says — and in the meantime plans on doing what he's always done. "Every day, peddle as hard as you can," he says. "Then you can say, 'Boy, that was a hard day.' Yeah, but it was fun."
But while 2007 had its bright spots, it wasn't all fun. In August, Morrison weathered one of the most challenging experiences of his professional career when it was discovered that a long-time employee of the chamber, whom Morrison described as a "workhorse" and "a damn valuable employee," was writing unauthorized checks to herself. Over the course of eight months, the woman siphoned roughly $17,000 from the chamber's bank account. While Morrison says the ordeal was extraordinarily difficult, he acted decisively, gathering the chamber's board to make two fast decisions: to issue an immediate full disclosure to the community and press, and to press charges. Morrison handled the whole affair with "finesse," says Barrett, who was board chair at the time.
Morrison says the full disclosure created goodwill within the community, but also brought out confessions from chamber members. "I know over 100 members who said they had the same thing happen to them. It is much more common than anyone would believe," Morrison says. "I had no idea."
Morrison is making sure the misfortune is turned into a learning opportunity. This fall, the chamber will convene a series of seminars on employee fraud, with panel discussions populated with local business folks who have experienced it. "The panel is going to have 100 people on it," Morrison jokes, bursting out with his signature laugh.
One thing he learned from the whole affair: "I still have to trust people. I can't run an organization if I don't trust people."
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