After 19 years, Ralston says farewell to ABI

By Michael Crumb

Mike Ralston grew up in Grundy Center, where he delivered newspapers and mowed lawns to buy a bicycle. He later managed a local grocery store to put himself through college. At the age of 18, Ralston was elected mayor of the small Grundy County town.

After later serving as the director of the Iowa Department of Revenue, he became the president of the Iowa Association of Business and Industry in November 2005. Growing up, his father worked as an electrician for the rural cooperative before becoming a mailman. His mom was a secretary at the local office of the Iowa Department of Human Services.

Now, at 65, Ralston, a married father with three sons and two grandchildren, said he will retire at the end of 2024, closing this chapter and opening the next phase of his life.

The Business Record sat down with Ralston for a conversation about changes he’s seen in Iowa’s business environment and its future, and what his plans are after retirement.

Here is what he had to say. 

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

How has the state’s manufacturing sector and business climate overall changed during your tenure at ABI?

The first words that pop into my head are globalization and sophistication. Iowa is a  manufacturing state. Yes, it’s an ag state, but the biggest part of our economy is manufacturing. I don’t know an Iowa manufacturer that doesn’t do business all over the world. Because of that, they’ve had to be hyper competitive. They have had to be sure their products are innovative and efficient. And maybe as a function of that, they have become more sophisticated. When I started, there were a lot of folks that had already made the move to being a pretty sophisticated, innovative, precise manufacturer. But there were still a lot of folks that were the dirty-machine shop type of place. There aren’t any of those left. They’ve all become very innovative, with lots of technology, bright places to work. They may still be a machine shop but they’re not a traditional machine shop with a greasy floor and dirty production space.

What are you hearing about Iowa’s economy and the effect it’s having on manufacturers?

We survey members all the time. We talk to members all the time. Things may be a little off from where they were but where they were were records. So being off a little has allowed some folks to catch up. It allowed them to not have workforce issues be so tough and dominating all the time. Sales are robust. Revenues are good. Not records. Our members confirm business is off a little, but in our last survey, two-thirds of them said they were going to make a capital expenditure this quarter. They don’t do that unless they’re optimistic. So yes, things are off a little bit, but they’re still good and the key is to be ready to take advantage when that upcycle hits.

What are your thoughts about recent layoffs?

What I’d say, especially in the case of Deere, the good part of what they’ve done is to make sure people knew it was coming. They were ahead of it. All those folks I know got at least a 90-day package and many preemptively looked for other jobs. I think about Tyson in Perry. Nobody wanted that plant to close, but a lot of those folks have already found jobs elsewhere. It’s hard for me to tell somebody who just got laid off and doesn’t have a job to be optimistic, but there are jobs out there, especially at smaller manufacturers. It’s a cyclical business and it will come back. I think there’s a reason to say things aren’t as bad as they look, and we can ride this out.

What challenges face Iowa’s business community?

I should start with the workforce. I remember one of the first meetings I was in. People started to say they weren’t having the same applicant pool. It was very casual. Not a big deal. Well, that was a precursor to today. We just don’t have enough people in the state. We need more people. That will always be the No. 1 issue. The thing that might be the most different between now and 20 years ago, if somebody would have told me back then that housing, child care, health care, transportation, would be considered business issues, I would have said that’s crazy. They’re not business issues. But they are now. It all stems from the workforce issue. All employers want to take care of their employees so they can keep them. They want them to be healthy so they can be working. They want them not to have to worry about taking care of their children at home so they can be working. So it all stems from that workforce issue.

What did you learn from your parents that has stuck with you and inspired you in your career?

Work hard. Show up. Do your job. Don’t take shortcuts and treat everybody the way you want to be treated. They also pushed us toward education.

Did you always want to pursue a career in business?

No. I thought I was going to have a political career. I was a freshman at Iowa and the incumbent mayor was running again and he wasn’t the most popular guy, so I thought I would run against him. I thought it would be a great experience, but I won’t win. I worked hard. Went door-to-door. Had stuff in the newspaper. I knew everybody from carrying their groceries out to the car and everyone knew my parents, so lo and behold, I won. So that got me started. And I thought, I’m the mayor of this little town at the age of 18, and I’m going to end up in the White House. What I always say is I served three terms as mayor of Grundy Center, and it cured me of any desire to run for any political office ever again.

What are your thoughts on DEI and why some companies are pulling back from those initiatives?

Your parents, my parents, most Iowa parents, raised their children to understand that we’re all equal. I think that’s the way with most Iowa businesses. We had an interesting conversation about DEI in one of our board meetings several years ago. The publicly traded companies were heavy into DEI and they were spending a lot of money on DEI. The privately held companies, the smaller manufacturers, didn’t have the money to spend on DEI and would hire anybody and train them. They were desperate for people. They wanted everyone. They were hiring people of color, all cultures, so we had this dichotomy. Everybody wanted to hire them but this group was spending money on DEI and this group wasn’t. I don’t know if everybody would agree with that. The George Floyd incident was so egregious that all of us were just sickened by what we saw. I’m sure people have seen those comments from people online that say a company is spending all this money on DEI and prioritizing the wrong things and there’s been a lot of that for all businesses, I think. And then there are conflicting sets of data. One set says DEI programs help, while another set says you spend all the money and it doesn’t do what you think it’s going to do. So just to guess but those may be part of the reason why companies are pulling back. The key is companies continuing to make sure their company is a hospitable place for all people. If they’re doing that, that’s what all of us want.

How has ABI changed during your tenure?

It’s a different organization than it was when I came. It was sort of a political organization. We had a ton of trouble and I maybe didn’t know what I had stepped into. I wasn’t sure if we could keep the doors open. So I came up with this plan. It was as simple as ABC. “A” was for accountability. People were doing stuff but there wasn’t any accountability to the organization. “B” was for the balance sheet. Our balance sheet was a mess. We were spending way more than we were bringing in. We had terrible vendor relationships. It was awful. And “C” was for communication. There was no communication. So we worked hard on those things. We have a terrific board of directors who are great leaders in their companies and their communities, and that helped us turn things around. Now, the public policy stuff is one thing we do. We do a lot more events and training. We do about 100 events all over the state a year. Our goal is to add value wherever we can. For a period of time, ABI wasn’t sure what it was, and it is a trade association. We don’t do economic development, but we can sure connect you to groups that do that. We don’t do product development, but we can connect you to somebody. If it’s capital, there’s a way to do that. If it’s a new vendor, we can find those for you. We’re doing a better job of serving our customers now than we did 19 years ago.

What are your plans after retirement?

My plan was to retire but I’ve been kind of surprised there have been quite a few calls from people asking if I can help them do this or that. So, I don’t know yet. I know I’m going to give it four or five or six months and decide what I want to do. I know I feel so strongly about ABI, if there’s anything I can do on a voluntary basis here, I will. But I’ll look at a bunch of different things, and I may not do anything.