Sustainability as Legacy

Bob O’Neil and Felicial Logan, “Sustainability as Legacy: Leaving a Legacy of Public Service” (March 1, 2007)

A main quote from this session is “Public Service is a Calling, not a job”. That hit home with me.

Also, part of the session dealt with “Building Capacity” of yourself (or other people) in the areas of mental, physical, Social/emotional, Spiritual, family and financial. Information was distributed on this on working building capacity of yourself. I need to try this myself before going over it with City personnel, so I will report on that later.

This session dealt with building “Sustainability” of the Organization also. Sustainability involves Organization/Instutional spheres, a Economic sphere, Environmental Sphere and a Social sphere. The emphasis of this workshop is on the Organizational/Institutional aspect.

Major “competencies” and how I utilized what I learned are:

1. “Get the right people on the bus”. (Right personnel) (I read the book “Now Discover Your Strengths” in the past and try to implement parts of it.)

-Early selection process is critical (City Manager participate in all personnel hiring, including entry level. I do this already. I make a point of carefully selecting entry level personnel.

-Stop trying to “fix” people-Build on strengths, don’t try to “fix” weaknesses (I already try to use this on a continual basis. I need the reminder!)

-Instill the Culture of the organization early on. I need to emphasize this more. It is so easy to hire someone and than not follow up. We are relatively small, but we still need to develop a formal orientation process.

-Hiring-Use Job ads as a “sales pitch”. Try to sell community (it was mentioned that the ability for City personnel to “make a difference” and change the community for the better was a key. I tried this and found it was true. After this conference, I substantially changed our job ads to emphasize the “Lakeland Quality” emphasis and that it is not “just a job” regardless of the job.

Other thoughts on this are:

-Change recruiting process to recruit needed skills

-Emphasize the advantages of the Public Sector: Meaningful work (visible and with meaning):

-Create passion and meaning for positon

-Ability to leave a legacy

We changed our recruitment procedures to emphasize the these factors, as well as unique aspects of Lakeland. In at least one case, I credit the new procedures with attracting qualified applicants in an area where we have difficulty recruiting qualified personnel.

2. Evidence Based Management

-What does success look like?

-Intersection of (1) Evidence Based and (2) Story—Story overrides evidence—Story connects emotional aspects, makes it stronger

-Try to connect facts and story-Translate facts to story

“…it’s clear that good storytelling often carries the day.”

-Determining what ARE the facts is the problem with Evidence Based Management –to be successful use all sources of data.

-“Dueling experts” is a problem

-Can’t “defend your position”, no other validation.

Bottom line-need to deal with it.

3. The Hedgehog Principle

Three aspects of this are:

-Passion-Understanding the core values of your organization and why it exists (mission)

-What is the Organization actually best at? (Cities want to be best at serving residents)

-What determines your resource capacity? (City IS different than business-Includes both financial and non-monetary factors).

4. Flywheel Concept

(Basically this conceives a dynamic process where focus on the Hedgehog concept and realize is it ever changing. You can never sit on your successes.)

-Build “Brand” (emotion and reputation)

-Attract Believers (ones you can count on for time and money)

-Build strength

-Demonstrate results (Success etc.)

Start over

5. Leadership Lessons:

-Hire Well

-Build strong relationships

-Develop strengths (focus on strengths, not weaknesses)

-Expect, encourage and recognize leadership at all levels

Create Culture of shared responsibility

Recognize contributions.

6. Build a Culture of Adaptability

7. Measurement (develop statistical measurements for aspirations)

8. Vision

-What are we trying to accomplish?

-What is our mission?

-What is our desired future?

9. Values

-What is out ultimate reason for being?

10: Understanding our Environment

-Who are customers and stakeholders?

-What to they value?

-What are conflicting values among stakeholders?

-Does the organization have procedures for setting prioities?

-What are the politics of the environment?

-What other environmental changes/conditions are important for us?

Accomplishing our goal:

-What values/means guide our decisions, actions and behaviors?

-What do we need to do to improve our work culture?

-Do our day to day actions support our culture?

(Comments): This is one of those sessions that I need to go back to and review on a continual basis. Frequently I will try smaller aspects (such as the change of the recruitment ad) and then when that is implemented, go back and try something else.