The Difference Maker

Tom Mobley’s focused vision has injected new life into many convention centers

For someone who didn’t make the turnaround decades ago to return to his hometown of Houston after attending Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Tom Mobley has since made a career of leading the turnaround of a number of convention centers — both large and small — in the United States.

Since January, Mobley has taken on a role that looms as yet another great but welcomed challenge, that of serving in a new capacity as senior vice president of convention centers for Global Spectrum, as the Philadelphia-based private management firm looks to build its convention center portfolio.

Just know that the man they selected to lead the effort is someone whose career is highlighted by a very thick and accomplished portfolio, one that actually started in pre-med and isn’t ready to end any time soon.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” Mobley says of his first few months on the job at Global Spectrum. “Within two weeks we were awarded a contract in Cincinnati, so it was nice to start off with a win. This is a change, going from the public sector to the private sector and not having hands-on management of a building but having a much broader role in business development.”

Why shouldn’t it be fun? When you’ve reached leadership status within the exhibitions and meetings industry by becoming “focused on the vision” — a favorite phrase of Mobley’s — and that status has included helping turn around images and perceptions of buildings in Jacksonville, Denver, Chicago and Washington, D.C., then you’re ready to test the sky’s limits.

Industry in Good Health
Tom Mobley comes across as confident and nonplussed, which doesn’t surprise, considering his standing and accomplishments within the public assembly facility industry. As Mobley speaks about the relevance of meetings, conventions and trade shows, it becomes obvious that the quickest way to raise his ire is to suggest the conventions and exhibitions industry is either dying a slow death or is already dead, as a Brookings Institute report suggested in January 2005.

“It’s not true,” Mobley says in an even, matter-of-fact tone about the predicted demise of the industry. “That report made the front page of USA Today, and when it gets to that type of popular press the perception is, ‘What’s going on?’

“We’re an important industry. We’re bringing commerce face-to-face, buyers and sellers in a huge marketplace. That’s not seen by many people. People see a football stadium full of lots of people and they understand that. They don’t understand that bringing 80 million pounds of machine tools into an exhibit hall with 120,000 buyers and 20,000 sellers stimulates the economy all over the world.”

Mobley switches gears to offer a bit of trivia that one would expect coming from someone who started as a premed major before switching to liberal arts.

“The first remote surgery ever conducted took place in the late 1990s from a trade show booth at the College of Surgeons convention in Chicago,” he says. “A surgeon used the Internet to operate on a man at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. He severed a nerve in this gentleman by remote surgery technology. That was first demonstrated in an exhibition, although today there are places like USC that have whole departments for remote surgery.

“What I laugh about now is that the nerve was in the groin. You’re in Baltimore on an operating table about to go under, and you know they’re about to sever a nerve in your groin and you say, ‘Where’s my surgeon?’ They say, ‘He’s at a convention in Chicago. Now go to sleep!’

“But if that doesn’t tell you about one of the roles of this industry and why it’s important …”

Movin’ On Up
From Baltimore to Jacksonville to Denver to Chicago to Washington, D.C., and finally on to Global Spectrum, is Mobley finally there? If he is true to his leadership mantra, Mobley might be there at a physical location, but he is never truly there when it comes to wanting to accomplish more.

“I believe a key element of a leader is to say, ‘We’re never there,’ ” he says. “You’re never, ever, there, but you can continue in that path. How do we get from good to great? What distinguishes us from our competition? Great is what assures us that meetings and exhibitions will always be successful and therefore our buildings will be full and our community will get the tax dollars.”

There is much irony in Mobley’s latest career move, given that he and Global Spectrum president/CEO Mich Sauers have in the past presented point/counterpoint discussions on the issues of private versus public management. It was during the 2005 IAAM Annual Conference in (interestingly) Washington, D.C., that Sauers and Mobley began further discussions on Global Spectrum’s desire to expand their portfolio of convention centers.

“We talked about it and I liked the idea,” says Mobley. “It gave me an opportunity to expand my passion for meetings and exhibitions and bring it to a whole different level than I’ve been involved with. My role is to develop business with more buildings and to develop the quality of our convention center portfolio.”

Making an Early Impact
Having started in pre-med, Mobley expected to work in an industry where some colleagues might bear the title of director of operations. As it turned out, he landed in an industry where some people carry the title of, well, director of operations. It took a little time to get to his eventual profession, but the steps along the way have served Mobley well in his career in public assembly facility management.

After earning a bachelor of arts degree in 1968, Mobley taught science in junior high school for a couple of years and then returned to grad school at Maryland. While he didn’t finish that degree (“My wife and I married and had our first child on the way; grad school and a child on the way don’t work too well.”), Mobley landed a job in Baltimore with the city administration and personnel department. He had taken graduate work in child psychology and educational psychology and statistics, subjects that translated very easily into personnel.

When Baltimore opened its convention center in 1979, Mobley was wrapping up an 11-year stint working for the city and was serving as assistant labor commissioner. It was a time of renaissance for the city’s downtown, and Baltimore and visionary Mayor Don Schafer were overseeing a major urban renewal program that included the development of the city’s Inner Harbor.

There was only one problem: No one wanted to come downtown.

“You can build the infrastructure but you had an issue of the attitude about the people who lived in Baltimore and the visitors,” says Mobley. “You had to convince people literally that you could come downtown and not get murdered. Baltimore was a major urban issue at that time.”

Mobley says that a battalion of volunteers worked vigorously to bring a number of events to the Inner Harbor. While construction was going on in the area, a concert might be taking place. “We may have had only 30 people there, but we had something going on,” says Mobley. “Its purpose was real simple: Get people to feel comfortable coming downtown, whether it was day or night.”

Slowly but surely the entrée into the public assembly facility industry was taking form. When the city canceled its management contract with a Hyatt operation, Mobley was sent over to the new convention center — along with the director of parks and recreation and another individual from the auditor’s office — to take over management on an interim basis.

“After we got over there, the mayor and director of parks and recreation said, ‘You can do this. Why don’t you take over the management of the building?’ ” says Mobley. “So I guess I was another of those city bureaucrats who was appointed to start in the business.”

“I’d been involved in events, but I never would’ve thought about this. I think back and remember living in Houston when they landed the Home Builders convention. It was a big-to-do, but I had no idea what that was. I didn’t know what a trade show was. All of a sudden, I was in the middle of that business.”

While Mobley admits that the convention industry might’ve been a new one to him, it’s just as ambiguous to most of the general public. “It’s an invisible industry,” he says. “Arenas, stadiums and theaters are highly public. But the convention industry is very invisible to the community in which they’re located and to most of the world.”

But the turnaround in Baltimore was happening, and in addition to local events, consumer shows and Friday night concerts at the civic center, there were city fairs, flea markets and ethnic festivals.

“It took a long time because you’re changing attitudes about the culture in Baltimore,” says Mobley. “Now the city no longer had an inferiority complex. The convention center was very successful. It was fun to be part of that turnaround in that city. Here I taught at a school that was two blocks from the Inner Harbor in a derelict neighborhood and 15
years later was in the middle of one of the most exciting Inner Harbor renaissances you’d ever see. It was an exciting time to be there, working with a leader with the vision of a Don Schafer.

Tom Mobley’s Steps to Success

Despite a busy schedule securing business for Global Spectrum, Tom Mobley stays plenty active in a number of other professional endeavors. Here, he offers his opinions on those efforts, as well as some key facets of leadership he has displayed during his career.

On the definition of leadership: “Leader automatically implies leading people. Whether it was scouting or playing high school football, I was always in a leadership role. I didn’t think of myself as a leader, but somehow I was in those roles. You have to lead people to accomplish anything. One person cannot manage everything.”

On his involvement in professional groups: “I’ve been heavily involved in the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) and serve as chair of the Convention Industry Council (CIC). CEIR promotes the health and documents the value of the exhibition industry through good solid research. CIC is more like the League of Nations for the meetings and events business.

“There are 32 organizations involved — from ASAE to IAAM to everybody involved in travel, meetings and the events business — who have a delegate sitting on the 32- person board. We are trying to make our industry more professional, using more standard practices and taking things to another level.”

On career influences: “Peggy Daidakis trained me very early on what to do and what not to do in Baltimore, which is how I started in this business. I’ve been fortunate to work with mayors in every career stop who were very inspirational. “There are so many people through the years … Jimmie Fore, Dan Graveline, Tom Liegler, Doug Ducate, Carol Wallace, Reba Pittman Walker, Rodney Smith. What I found early on in this business is that people are very open and very quick to share information.”

On the role of convention centers in the exhibition industry mix: “Of all the groups in the exhibition industry the ones who have the highest capital investment are probably the convention centers. We’re totally dependent on the meetings and exhibition industry, whereas hotels have a whole other market out there that they can do very well with without a convention center. Convention centers live and die by the success of meetings and exhibitions.”

On convention center personnel “getting it” about their important roles: “We have to get our people to understand that everything they do impacts the health and welfare of that community. Sometimes it’s a hard reach for people to see it, but the person working at the front desk can see it in a minute. San Antonio (where this interview took place) has captured that probably as well as any city in the country. They understand the value of an out-of-town visitor coming to this city and how important it is to this community as a whole.”

On getting into the industry in the 1970s: “It was a different route. Everybody in the business goes in a different route. Today there are more educational programs, but at that time no one took a direct route into this business. Sometimes you just happen to be at the right place — or the wrong place — at the right time.”

On effective management: “Management by walking around is absolutely critical within our buildings. We need to practice MWA: management by walking around. We have to go outside the building and understand what makes everything tick that takes place in our buildings.

“I want to understand what Freeman Decorating Company is looking for inside a convention center. What makes their business successful and how can I complement that? What is the objective of every show that comes into our building? How can I make them more successful? Is it attendance? Is it honoring somebody? Is it square footage? Is it revenue?”

On the importance of trade shows: “Trade shows are very serious business. They are an extremely effective way of bringing product to market. You’re having direct hands-on marketing of product business-to-business taking place. New products are being revealed, and new research is being tested and revealed.” buyers and 20,000 sellers stimulates the economy all over the world.”

“I enjoyed the process of starting here. There’s no greater rush than the process of a city pulling itself up by the boot straps and saying, ‘Wait a minute, we’re going to change some attitudes.’ That’s a fun process.”

Repeating the Process
Mobley went on to other stops in Jacksonville and Denver and helped restore the luster to venues whose business had fallen off. “Jacksonville was trying to bring back a downtown that had fallen off, although not to the extreme that Baltimore had,” he says. “Denver was building a convention center, upgrading the arts center and building an airport. A lot of money was poured into the infrastructure, and we had to change some attitudes because we knew there would be a great economic impact in the long term.”

From there it was on to Chicago and the mammoth McCormick Place Convention Complex with its two million square feet of exhibition space. The facility had a negative reputation amongst attendees, exhibitors and show organizers, and also had both perceived and real labor issues.

“Costs, unfriendly building, bad relationships with their customers, threats of losing business,” Mobley says in recalling the building’s ills. “It was the poster child for a bad building, although it was the center of the exhibition industry in this country, if not the world. Jimmie Fore was there right before me and he steered the beginning of the turnaround.”

Mobley is fond of saying that convention centers should be more than “four walls,” and this was never truer than in Chicago. Knowing that attitudes don’t change overnight, Mobley went about the business of forging closer partnerships with the events that came through the venue.

“It’s not just that we’re hosting an event, but we need to understand what makes that event successful,” he says. “We need to know the background behind those events and what we can do to enhance that. We don’t need exhibitors saying that they had rather buy advertising in a trade journal than participate in an exhibition. The minute they do that, we’ve got a problem and our community has a problem, because the exhibitors are not coming to our cities spending their dollars, which are helping support our educational, social services, fire, police and other programs. Buildings have to take a much more active role in assuring the success of those industries and those who bring tax revenues to our communities.”

After making such an image turnaround in Chicago, Mobley says that he wasn’t looking to leave McCormick Place, a facility he had faithfully served for 12 years. Mobley thrived on the excitement of McCormick Place and confessed to having become an “exhibition junkie.” But Washington called and wanted Mobley for its new convention center. A new set of challenges would await in a smaller facility.

“Washington was a great venue in a wonderful class- A market,” says Mobley. “It had fallen off the face of the earth in the meetings industry for a number of years. The building was small and had gotten out of the circuit. It was up to us to bring value to the meetings and exhibitions taking place there.”

Sizing the Challenges
Speaking with a wealth of experience and the knowledge gained from working at facilities of varying sizes, Mobley believes that the biggest challenge facing convention center managers today is simply one of time.

“Remember the circus and the guy who was spinning the plates? The challenge today is keeping all those plates spinning, because you don’t have the time to resolve a lot of issues or the luxury of focusing on one issue and getting it resolved. You’re constantly keeping those plates spinning so they don’t crash.

“I admire small buildings. You might be able to get more of the plates stacked and put away and not have to keep them spinning as you might have to in bigger buildings. The reward in Jacksonville was tremendous because you could see beginnings, middles and ends. At a place like McCormick Place, it’s constantly a process. We accomplished and completed some things, but as soon as you finish you start over again. Time is our biggest threat as managers. It’s about being able to deal with things and bring them to closure.”

Mobley has found closure at many of the stops in his storied career. But all that closure has really meant is a new challenge and a new opportunity to be the catalyst behind a rewarding turnaround.