I N T H E N E W S

Taking a pulse
Bay Business Journal April/May 2008
Nancy Barthel Text Mike Roemer Photography

Information is power.
And the better the information, the better the
decision-making.

It’s easy to get economic and business statistics and

trends on a national, even international, scale. It’s
everywhere; just turn on CNN, Fox News or pick up
USA Today, Business Weekly or the Wall Street Journal.

Though there are times when what’s happening in New

York, Detroit and Chicago or perhaps London, Tokyo
and Beijing is relevant to business on Main Street
Green Bay, there are also plenty of times when it isn’t.

And that’s why business in Northeast Wisconsin is

fortunate to have local information available right here
with the click of a mouse.
The Business Pulse: The NE Wisconsin viewpoint
The most visible survey of exactly what CEOs are
thinking in the region can be found in the quarterly
Nicolet National Bank Business Pulse. Now in its 25th
quarter of measuring the “pulse” of the 11-county
region, that longevity is one of the reasons it’s so
valuable to the business community, notes Scot
Madson, president of the Navigator Planning Group,
Green Bay. He views The Business Pulse as a business
tool. “I’m pleased that they’ve kept doing it,” he says.
The Business Pulse was developed for Nicolet
National Bank by Michael Bina and David Wegge,
Ph.D., of IntellectualMarketing, Green Bay. Their
mission is seemingly simple: find out what’s going on
in business in Northeast Wisconsin. That’s where
Wegge comes in. He’s spent an entire career talking
statistics and putting them into perspective. He’s
currently a professor at St. Norbert College in De Pere
and is also founder of the college’s Survey Center. The
Business Pulse debuted as a value-added service of
Nicolet National Bank in 2001. Participation is offered
Mark Murphy, new president and CEO of the Green Bay Packers, addresses attendees at
the Business Pulse breakfast hosted on Feb. 27 at the F.K. Bemis Center on the St. Norbert
College campus.
free of charge to any CEO or representatives of a
business – currently there are about 600 participants
quarterly. Participants don’t have to be customers of the
bank, come from the counties of Brown, Calumet, Door,
Kewaunee, Manitowoc, Marinette, Oconto, Outagamie,
Shawano, Winnebago and Menominee, Mich., and
include representatives of manufacturing, services, retail
trade, wholesale trade, finance, real estate, insurance,
transportation, communications, utilities, construction
and other industries. The businesses have anywhere
from fewer than six employees to 1,000 or more – and
Nicolet National Bank invites other business leaders to
join The Business Pulse as participants.
Why Nicolet National Bank offers such a service is
summed up on its Web site:
“It’s critical for us to understand what’s happening in
our market: to gauge how the economy and businesses
are performing right now. It is also important to
attempt to measure how businesses think they will be

Page 1 of 4 Taking a pulse | BBJ April/May 2008

performing in the future: Will you be adding
employees? Are your revenues up? What is the biggest
problem you currently face? What would make
business better?”
The process is simple. CEOs are invited each quarter to
take 10 minutes to respond to The Business Pulse
survey online. The goal is to index, track and provide
“the most accurate picture of business in Northeastern
Wisconsin.”
In addition, focus topics and special issues are
addressed each quarter. Some of these have included
business fraud, Wisconsin “brain drain,” sports and
entertainment in business development, trust in
business, health insurance costs, future of
manufacturing, cost of energy, the Wisconsin business
climate, The New North, succession planning,
recruiting and retaining employees, medical tourism
and Northeast Wisconsin as a place to do business.
The results are then shared with the members of The
Business Pulse and are available to the public on The
Business Pulse Web site at http://pulse.nicoletbank.com.
That’s also where new participants can enroll.
Relaying the results
Information from The Business Pulse is also regularly
featured in The Business News, the biweekly newspaper
covering Northeastern Wisconsin business. Editor
Larry Desch says they run 12 to 15 Business Pulse
stories each year.
“Every good business publication needs to have a
constant feel for how the area’s economy is doing and
what the trends are. The Business Pulse provides that,
and it’s a good sounding board for area business
leaders,” says Desch. “I’m sure that area businesses
look closely at The Pulse findings when planning their
strategies. Our goal is to provide our readers with
information that can help them operate their
businesses and be successful, and I believe The Pulse
does that. “
Page 2 of 4
The Business Pulse measures current economic
conditions compared to three months ago as well as
expectations of CEOs over the next three months. The
Current Economic Index and The Future Expectations
Index are then combined into the overall Business
Pulse Index.
They’ve learned a lot in 25 quarters and had a few
surprises, as well, like the fact that Green Bay business
owners and CEOs are leading the nation in the
adoption of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), and
Health Risk Assessments (HRAs) and scoring better
than the national average with their own health asses
ments. Twenty-five percent use HSAs as part of the
employee benefit package – nationally it’s 20 percent.
Twenty-three percent use HRAs – nationally it’s 18 percent.
Green Bay employees are also “early adaptors,” reports
IntellectualMarketing. “More than one-third of the
companies with HSAs report 75 percent employee
participation – 16 percent of the companies report
50 to 74 percent employee participation; another one-
third report 25 to 49 percent.” And in all the companies
with HSAs, 77 percent of the CEOs selected the HSAs
for their own plan.
Last year Nicolet National Bank even offered free
health risk assessments to the 600 participants of The
Business Pulse as part of its annual “Health and
Employee Benefits Study.”
Mike Daniels, COO and president of Nicolet National
Bank, says they decided to offer the assessments
because “healthcare is important to our customers and
we take it personally.” And according to Phil Hagen,
M.D., medical director of Mayo Clinic Health
Management Resources, “All in all, Green Bay scored
well.”
A Nicolet National Bank differentiator
Establishing The Business Pulse was a wise business
decision, says Daniels. “It just felt like a good idea.”
Taking a pulse | BBJ April/May 2008
Nicolet National Bank itself was established in 2000.
“We were brand new,” Daniels recalls. “We had to find
some way to position our brand.” He estimates that 70
to 80 percent of the company’s customer base is
commercial. After some informal discussions, Bina
says he and Wegge knew that Nicolet National Bank
and IntellectualMarketing were on to something
special with The Business Pulse.
“They weren’t inside their box,”says Bina. “They wanted
to make their bank a different bank.”
Responding to The Business Pulse quarterly is time
well spent, notes Madson. Marking his 30th year in
financial planning, he describes the survey as asking
really practical questions.
“It surprises me sometimes that my thoughts are
consistent with what other people are thinking,” he
says, adding that it’s comforting to learn he’s not
“off-pace.”
A valuable part of The Business Pulse experience are
the breakfast meetings held three times a year –
February, May and October – during which
participants and community and civic leaders have the
opportunity to meet. “It’s becomes a very nice
networking tool for us, too,” says Madson.
The last Business Pulse breakfast was held Feb. 27 at St.
Norbert College. What business leaders learned about
the previous quarter was summarized by Wegge this
way in his online Executive Summary:
“CEO confidence has become something of an
oxymoron as it has continued to drop over the last four
quarters. CEOs in Northeast Wisconsin are obviously
concerned about the condition of the U.S. economy,
but continue to be more upbeat about how their own
company can perform. CEOs across the U.S. are faced
with a plethora of issues creating an environment that
is, to say the least, challenging: healthcare, energy, the
downturn in the housing market, the decline in the job
market and in consumer confidence continue to fuel
uneasiness among CEOs.”
Page 3 of 4
Other business insights
Barb Fleisner, vice president of economic development
for the Green Area Chamber of Commerce, says
Advance, which is the economic development arm of
the Chamber, provides another good source of insights
into area business. An average of 10 in-depth business
interviews are conducted per month to identify issues
that the companies may face in an effort to assist in
their growth and development. Information and
aggregate data are gathered to help identify trends. Any
business can receive the information in the e-wire
newsletter, which is released the first Wednesday of
every month.
“They’re pretty candid,” Fleisner says about the
monthly Advance business surveys, which cover topics
such as sales, workforce retention and development,
growth of the company, suppliers, IT, research and
development and sales. She says she always
approaches the survey the same way: businesses are
invited to share as much or as little as their comfort
level allows. “But,” Fleisner says she always reminds
them, “there may be opportunities where we can help
you that you don’t know about.”
The role of Advance is to improve and diversify the
local economy while being the economic development
focal point and resource center for Brown County
businesses and municipalities. It’s well known for its
Advance Incubator, which allows for the flexible lease
of space for new and emerging growth-oriented
businesses at its Northeast Wisconsin Technical
College site. Entrepreneurial and existing business
assistance, as well as workforce initiatives and
community services, round out the busy public-
private partnership Advance has here.
Advance and local business have “a very, very good
working relationship,” says Fleisner.
During her work she says she’s come up with some
good news about business in Northeastern Wisconsin.
“It’s steady and we’re seeing growth,” she says. “We’re a
little more sheltered from the bust and boom that
other communities are experiencing.”
Taking a pulse | BBJ April/May 2008
Her economic development work is not based on
Chamber membership and includes the spectrum of
small- to large-size businesses, well-established
businesses to new entrepreneurs. “As long as they’re
within Brown County, they’re our territory,” she says.
Fleisner says she always ends her meetings with a
question about how the company perceives the
business climate: “How is doing business in Brown
County and what are some of the obstacles that
they encounter?”
Real-world application
The Business Pulse and Advance are two good sources
of local business and economic information. But the
key is putting that information to work for your
business. That’s where someone like Phillip Clampitt,
Ph.D., comes in. He’s the Hendrickson Professor of
Business at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay in
the information sciences program and also founder of
the consulting firm Metacomm, self-described as
“internal communications specialists.”
Whether a business is small and locally owned or a
major international player, the challenge for business
is usually the same: most organizations fail to optimize
their communication system, says Clampitt.
Clampitt and other Metacomm consultants develop
and implement communication strategies, conduct
communication assessments and provide
communication training and coaching. In particular,
Metacomm seeks to answer questions like the
following:
Internal communications has a lot to do with a
business’ successes and failures, says Clampitt, who
has worked with Pepsico, Nokia, American Medical
Security and The Boldt Company, just to name a few,
and is a returning guest speaker at the U.S. Army War
College where they use his book “Embracing
Uncertainty: The Essence of Leadership” in their
Strategic Leadership class.
Page 4 of 4
“Elevate your communication to a higher plane,” that’s
Clampitt’s recommendation.
All the research in the world is useless if it isn’t used
well. It’s not uncommon for a business to spend great
sums of money on researching a new corporate
direction with the result being that staff doesn’t
embrace it, says Clampitt.
Why?
The wrong strategy was used to communicate the
message, he says.
Preparation is everything in getting ready to present
that message and it’s something Clampitt says he
spends a lot of time getting a business prepared for
when he’s consulting on a corporate change. Identify
the core concept and prepare for the questions
everyone will have is his advice. “Audience analysis” is
what Clampitt calls it: together, he and his client strive
to anticipate how the audience is going to respond to
different messages. “If you don’t harvest the descent,
someone will,” he says.
The reality, says Clampitt, is that whenever a change is
implemented, productivity drops. “We know that those
numbers are true,” he says. The goal is to decrease the
drop and the length of that drop with good
preparation.
Only 50 percent of all organizational decisions are ever
fully implemented and only 26 percent of business
executives believe that their company’s business
strategy is well communicated and understood, says
Clampitt.
Information meets communication. “In the long run if
you can educate people … you can develop a lot more
robust strategy,” says Clampitt.
Taking a pulse | BBJ April/May 2008