Craig’s Friday Countdown - ELDP Prep

The ICMA informs me I’ve been matched with an Emerging Leaders Development Program participant and will soon receive an e-mail introducing my mentee.  This gets me to laying in a supply of helpful, mentor-type things to say:

28.  My outbox = your inbox.  There are other systems.  There is no better system.

27.  Please and thank you.  Not underrated. 

26.  Don’t accept false choices.  There exists more than one cheese to put on a burger.

25.  Do way more than necessary.  Way more. 

24.  Every time you use a Powerpoint template, a little kitten in your soul dies.

23.  Be on the record.  (Larry said it, Larry was right)

22.  Fail with gusto.

21.  Keep going to school.  I don’t mean this “lifelong learning” bs, I mean a real school, at night, that ends up with a degree. 

20.  Bring donuts on your first day, birthday and employment anniversary dates.

19.  Pro tip.  Start on your birthday.

18.  Swing for the fences.

17.  Please, I beseech you, get your mitt down.  Sorry, that was advice for the Emerging Little Leaguer Development Program.

16.  It doesn’t cost anything extra to be nice (Larry, again).

15.  Solve problems that haven’t arrived yet.  By now, you’ve noticed police, fire and public works?  They’re solving today’s problems.

14.   2 + 2 does not always equal 4 in policy discussions (John Nalbandian).  People have different values.  Don’t assume yours are superior, and don’t make up ill-intended reasons for why / how someone else’s are different from yours.

13.  I buy, you fly is the basic premise holding civilization together. 

12.  We’re not here for technical solutions.  We’re here for adaptive challenges (beg, borrow or steal your way into any Kennedy School program featuring Marty Linsky).  

11.  Speak up!  (we are hard of hearing)

10.  Put your game face on (says Jennifer, Jennifer is right).  Don’t take this stuff personally.

9.  Donutius, Coffius, Gossipius – Beware the watercooler Olympians. 

8.  The perfect memo does not exist.  Don’t try so hard.

7.  Go to the problem.  Do not allow someone else to explain it to you.  Go there.  See it yourself.

6.  Do stuff that frightens you (Eleanor Roosevelt, I think).

5.  Make your office / cubicle yours.  Add color.  Government beige is a known carcinogen.

4.  Copying me on an e-mail is not leadership.

3.  (tie)  Be the change you wish to see in the world (Gandi, attributed).  Enjoy every sandwich (Zevon, witnessed).

2.  Don’t take advice from us oldsters.  If we were so smart and so sincere, the world wouldn’t be so messed up. 

1.  Go get em’.