3.0. SR 02-17-2004 - Laserfiche WebLink

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IThink and Act Strategically · A council's primary re- sponsibility is not just to make policy or to do its "Roman emperor" routine (thumbs down or thumbs up) on agenda items at public meetings. It is to determine and achieve the citizens' desires for the community's future. Councils and their administrative tearns must accept responsibility for shaping the future of their communi- ties by expanding their mental hori- zons to identifi/ and meet the chal- lenges that must be addressed through decisive leadership and through shared goals for the attainment of that future. A strategic leader always comes from the future and takes you ~back to the future" from the present. This leadership adventure starts with a vi- sion and evolves into a definition of the strategic issues that must be mas- tared to achieve the vision. The next ~ is the development of long-range goals that address these strategic is- sues and that provide a decision-mak- ing and budgetary basis for the suc- cessful implementation of these goals. Living from one annual budget to an- other and from one council meeting to the next condemns your commu- nity and its future to happenstance and to the type of thinking that often befuddles national governance and policy. For this reason, polls show that an overwhelming majority of citizens want important issues affecting their lives to be decided at the local, home town level. Here, they expect leader- ship, sound thinking, and decisive ac- tion. In spite of this citizen expecta- tion, a 1996 survey conducted by the International City/County Manage- ment Association (ICMA), "Survey of Current Practice in Council-Manager Governments," indicates that fewer than 40 percent of all councils set ~-term strategic goals to guide their - .aimonthly forays into decision making. Understand and Demonstrate the Elements of Teams and Teamwork By law, councils exist and have authority only when their members convene as bodies to do business. They also are components of corporate beings that must speak, act, and fulfill their commit- ments with one voice and in a mature, effective, and reliable manner. Councils are collections of diverse individuals who come together to constitute and act as an entity, and only when operating as an entity can they exercise authority and perform in fulfillment of their purpose. This is a classic definition of "team." Carl Larson and Frank LaFasto, two pre- eminent authorities on teams and team- work, define a team as an entity com- prising two or more people working together to accomplish a specific pur- pose that can be attained only through coordinated activity among the team members. In short, a team exists to ful- fill a specific function or purpose and is made up of disparate, interdependent people who collectively achieve a capac- ity that none of its members could demonstrate individually. Teams always have two components that we might call their S components: systemicness and synergy. All teams are systemic by definition, being made up of interdependent parts (people) who af- fect each other's performance and that of the team. Synergy is the ability to achieve an effect, when working to- gether as a team, that is more than the sum of the team members' individual ef- forts. While all teams are systemic, rela- tively few are genuinely synergistic un- less their members understand, master, and demonstrate the fundamentals of teamwork, which are: · A clear sense of purpose. · A dear definition of the roles and re- lationships that unite individual tal- ents and capacities to achieve team performance. Integration of members who have basic technical, interpersonal, and decision-making competence. · A commitment to team success and performance excellence. · A climate of trust, openness, and mu- tual respect. · Clear standards of success and per- formance excellence. · The support, resources, and recogni- tion to achieve success. · Principled and disciplined leader- ship. Highly effective councils spend time building their sense of being a team and enhancing their skills in productive teamwork. Master Small- Group Decision · Making Most councils are classic small groups, with fewer than a dozen people. Small groups demonstrate certain skills and behaviors that link their members to- gether. They also have knowledge of the processes they must follow to make de- cisions in fulfillment of their purpose. Figure 1 summarizes the skill sets essen- tial to small-group effectiveness. Clearly Define Roles and · Relationships Each team member, whether mayor or councilmember, makes a contribution to and has a relationship with the team. Contributions and relationships must be defined in terms of the role to be as- sumed and how that role is to be carried out through the behavior of the person in the role. A role has two elements: function, the specific responsibilities of that role, re- gardless of incumbency; and perfor- mance, the behavior of the person occu- pying the role in fulfilling his or her responsibilities. Councils, through char- ter, statute, or ordinance, have a clear definition of their function. The perfor- PUBLIC MANAGEMENT