We spend great amounts of time evaluating and developing plans and projects centered around community infrastructure and other local resources, but too often we ignore the most important ingredient to economic growth. The most important and essential ingredient is not really measurable and can change from time to time. That ingredient so necessary is communitywide leadership.

Leadership takes a willingness to get and stay informed and then be willing to step up and take risks and step up toward decisions and positions for the greater good. It is very easy to sit back and be uninformed and yet take positions on all kinds of issues, but that is not true leadership. It’s easy to be critical, but it is harder to actually participate and actually have some setbacks, but yet keep going for the greater good of all citizens. Successful people will always have some failure because without it there will never be the opportunity for success. True leadership is having the determination to keep participating when others may tell it is a lost cause or it’s not worth it.

You don’t have to be an elected leader. You just have to truly care and decide to contribute by being involved and work with others toward common goals. All credit belongs to those local people who choose to put their time and effort towards improving their and their neighbor’s community. That is what truly separates successful from less successful communities in my belief.

Opportunities like this are part of the core mission of the Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance. Opportunities are here for those of you that are willing to exercise leadership and are willing to commit to making our area a better place to live and work. The more people that are willing to step up will clearly differentiate our future successes.

It is that leadership growth in Webster County that has been the driver in the last decade of economic and community development success. Thank you for the past decade and I hope even more of you will step and make the next decade even better than the last decade.

Dennis Plautz is the chief executive officer of the Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance.