1.19.16

Anonymous doesn’t work.  It was early on in the Davenport experiment and there was a "team-building" meeting facilitated by the guy who did the strategic planning song and dance each year.  We were all supposed to write down something we would say to someone on staff as an anonymous observation.  The observations got distributed and the distrust knob spun to eleven.  We wouldn’t use that guy again.  Trust is everything.

I’ve long remembered one of the anonymous scraps of paper I was handed in an envelope.  It read “Appears confident, but I have no idea why.”

Here’s why.  That’s the job. 

Someone has to have faith, take risk, and advance the team.  If that someone isn’t the chief executive / administrative official in an organization, the organization will not succeed for long.  Some other competing organization will have more faith, take more risk and advance against your interests, and you are done for.  Early on, there were people in Davenport who didn’t want to hear that, particularly from someone who was twenty years younger than they were. 

But the team would have faith, take risk and advance.  Davenport succeeded at the staff level like few other cities.  Crime down, population up, accredited services across the entire front line … a Midwest manufacturing city rose again.  Great fun, and only constrained by a too myopic (two year terms), too balkanized (eight wards) governing structure that kept too many elected officials looking over their shoulder rather than over the horizon.

I’ve worked for four cities and here’s what I know for sure.  There’s a direct correlation between having faith and taking risk and moving the organization and community forward.  There’s quite a few moving parts to that equation, but that’s the essence of it.  I’ll be with the Seaside department head team for the first time this morning, and we’ll all begin our journey as a team together.  My introductory expectations are attached (here).

I’m often wrong but I know this for sure; anonymity is timidity.  And neither of those work.

(photo note:  Chicago native Corey Ray executes a walk-off straight steal of home for Louisville.  It's the rare ballplayer who can run that fast, with testicles that large.)