Author Archives: Anthony Minghine

A little shameless self promotion…

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As readers of this Blog know, I put food on the table working for the Michigan Municipal League, and am very proud to be a part of the League team. As we always are this time of year, we are gearing up for our Annual Convention  on Mackinac Island this year. The theme of this years event is the Tools of Placemaking, and while place will be a big part of the convention, so too will be the nuts and bolts of running a city.

We will once again be conducting our Community Excellence Awards. This is a fantastic opportunity to hear first hand what is working from your peers around Michigan as they present their best ideas to try and garner your support. While a lot of fun, this is always a great way to hear from some true innovators in local government.

We will also be hosting a number of breakout sessions targeting a number of topics.  Some of them include: Your Infrastructure, Your Buildings — For Today and Tomorrow;
Living with Health Care Reform and a Look into the Future of Health Care Plans; and
Office 365 and the Power of the Microsoft Cloud. We have added sessions about new state and federal cell tower laws, on local operation challenges and strategies ( I hear the speaker is really, really good and writes a blog on these types of issues), there will be a session on financial reporting for local governments that targets what elected and appointed officials need to know, paperless government, and a session featuring practical tips to to manage the rising cost of benefits.

We will also be hosting an informational session about our new Natural Gas Purchasing Program which I have the pleasure of moderating.  This session will be very informative and help those who are unclear about how third party providers work or that are on the fence about joining our program.

I guess what I am saying is, don’t let the title fool you.  While placemaking may be the show pony of our convention, there is a ton of great stuff here for the operations folks too.

You really don’t want to miss this!

Can you afford to cut training from your budget?

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An all too frequent casualty of tightening budgets are the dollars spent on training.  It seems painless.  There is no immediate manifestation of a service cut, or elimination of a position so it on a relative basis it seems like a good cut to make.  But what is the cost of what you don’t know?  What is the impact of not being aware of innovations that would provide more efficient operations and lessen the budget constraints?  I would suggest that these costs far outweigh the cost of the training.

We are all being asked to do more with less, or as I have heard some folks express recently, to do something with nothing.  How does anyone expect to succeed in this environment without providing themselves the opportunity to train and network with their peers? Elected and appointed officials are tasked with running very complex, multifaceted corporations.  In the case of  elected officials, most begin office with a love for their community but little to no training or experience about the role they are accepting.  That is not a formula for efficiency and innovation, it’s a formula for disaster.

Every successful business understands the fundamental need to train their employees,   but we somehow diminish that same value when it comes to our local operations.  Training and networking are not perks , they are a necessary part of any successful business.  Don’t short change your community by taking a short term solution to a long term problem.  You have a duty to take the necessary steps to be certain you are in a position to succeed. A big part of that is sowing the seeds of innovation and efficiency with appropriate educational and networking opportunities.

Imagine if your community never learned about computers, the internet, or email.  Think about the cost it would take to deliver services without the benefit of these innovations.  Are you up to speed on grants? Economic development laws and practices?  Service delivery models?  Laws pertaining to setting rates and charges?

What’s the future cost of what you don’t know about today?  It might shock you!

Is your General Fund going down the drain?

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As you ponder how to balance your community’s finances and make tough choices about what you can afford, have you stopped and asked if you are exacerbating an already tough situation?  If your rates and charges for your utility systems are not set properly you just may be doing just that.

When elected officials sit down to plan out their year, it is highly unlikely that their most anticipated activity is adjusting water and sewer charges.  Adjusting utility rates is certainly not the most desirable endeavor an elected body can engage in, but it is one of the most important.  If your community doesn’t perform an annual review and adjustment of your water and sewer rates that fully captures the costs of the system, you are negatively impacting the rest of the community’s operations.  At this point you are probably asking: why?  The answer is really quite simple.  If the rates and charges your community charges don’t fully cover the costs of the service, where do you suppose the revenue comes from to make up the difference?

There is also a real equity problem.  A taxpayer’s SEV has nothing to do with the amount of water utilized.  Residents and businesses alike that are high users of water benefit immensely from inadequately set water and sewer rates.  Conversely, low users carry an unfair burden.  Would you offer to pay your neighbors electric bill when he has 4 kids, 8 TV’s, and lights on 24/7 when you live alone and manage your electric usage?  Of course not, but that is effectively what happens when rates are improperly set.

No one wants to raise utility rates, but if they don’t capture all your costs you are adding to the already difficult circumstance of managing your community’s finances and delivering services.  Make sure everyone pays their fair share.  No more,but certainly no less.

Municipal Budgets and Placemaking: Peanut Butter and Jelly, or Oil and Water?

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As a member of the League’s staff with expertise in municipal finance, I find myself in the rather unique position of speaking to large groups of people about both the importance of place, as well as municipal finance and budgeting. Obviously these two topics have nothing in common, or do they? While it seems to some that these are divergent topics, I would suggest that they should be uncompromisingly intertwined.  Preparing a budget without the proper vision is like making a sandwich without bread.  It will meet the basic requirement, but it isn’t very appealing.

We all know too well that we have been dealing with some of the most challenging financial circumstances in memory.  Too often the budget process becomes an agonizing contest with the singular focus of balancing revenues and expenditures without remaining grounded to a fundamental placemaking strategy.  Some of the first targets of the local budget process can frequently be community assets that help define our community. Somehow these facilities and programs lose out to other more “critical” operations.  We must remember however, that a community’s unique sense of place is its greatest asset. Therefore it must be the foundation of any budget, and the balancing decisions should reflect that fact.  To put it another way, why do people choose to live in your community?  Why did you choose to live there?  If the budgets you adopt don’t reflect the answer to that question, then aren’t you destroying the “sense of place” that brought you and other residents to your community? Isn’t this further diminishing your community’s value?

Clearly you all have difficult decisions to make, but in doing so you should resist the temptation to uncouple place from budget.  To do so is not in your community’s best interests, and that strategy will actually work to exacerbate an already challenging situation. Place isn’t just a buzz word that we talk about to make ourselves feel better; it is at the core of who we are and why we exist.  Money spent supporting our own unique places are dollars well spent.

Budget accordingly.

Communication Breakdown

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I was reading a great post about communication the other day that really resonated with me.  The focus of it centered around the importance of intimacy. No, not that intimacy, that’s a different blog.  It was on the importance of intimacy as it relates to communication.  In short, the greater the distance between leaders and workers, the less likely you are to be aware of new ideas or problems on the front line.  It’s too easy to pull together a big group and declare victory as it relates to your internal communications.  If you are viewed as the person in the ivory tower,with the possible exception of your inner circle,  you can’t expect anyone to give it to you straight.  To be effective, communications need to be more personal and sincere.

They describe four techniques to help have more meaningful conversations:

1. To learn more, listen better.

2. To have a big impact, meet in a small group.

3. To build trust, show trust.

4. To be a better communicator, be who you are.

These are simple but effective ideas to help any leader get closer to their employee group, and improve the intimacy of their communication.   Check out the full Blog post for more information.

Is Failure an Option?

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I was reading a great Blog Post by Jeffrey Baumgartner, on the cost of not implementing new innovations.  While the motivations are different for business, the idea is as true for local government as it is for business.  The cost of the status quo can be profound, and no one keeps track of the innovations we chose not to implement.  We all need to assess our ability to innovate, and much of that “ability” hinges on communication, empowerment, and a willingness to fail.

That’s right willingness to fail.  The biggest impediment to innovation is the fear of failure.  Unlike a business, we all live in a world where a bad day can be on the front page.  Local leadership has to ensure that our staffs believe that they will be supported for trying new things, and that we recognize that not all ideas are good ideas.

Thomas Edison was quoted as saying, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”  We need to create that type of environment if we want to spur innovation.   Sticky notes were created by trying to invent a new type of super glue, so you never fully know where the next great idea may come from.

What does your internal communication look like?  Does your staff feel that they have the real ability to influence change and bring forth ideas?  Do you have a good system, formal or informal, to get ideas from the trenches to the people with the ability to make it happen?  These are all key questions that you need to ask yourself.  Too often when looking to identify new opportunities we fail to look in the most obvious places.  The people that we rely on to perform the day to day functions will quite often have the greatest insight on where the opportunities lie.  We need to tap that resource and maximize the benefits.  Our ability to do more with less has never been more important.  We need to be certain that we have done our part to identify and implement that next great idea.

Power and Creativity: Can they play together?

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Do you remember the childrens story about the emperor with no clothes?  Because of the atmosphere he had created, no one felt that they could be honest and tell him that he was sans pants.  His lack of humility was his ultimate undoing.  Have you ever paused to ask yourself if you have created such an environment, and considered the impact that has on innovation?

Research conducted by USC Marshall professor Nathanael Fast the Marshall School of Business suggests that power can have a negative impact on innovation if the environment doesn’t allow for an honest critique of the boss.  “The overall sense of control that comes with power tends to make people feel overconfident in their ability to make good decisions,” Fast said.  In other words, you start to believe your own hype.

As leaders in an organization I believe the goal is to strike an appropriate balance of confidence and humility.  Ego can be a good thing in that it helps give you the confidence to make decisions and move forward.  Too much can be your downfall as you cut off the creative process and limit thinking.  Don’t surround yourself with people that feed your ego, surround yourself with people that will push you and the process with honest feedback.

Now please, go put on some pants!

 

Can I borrow some please?

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Many topics aren’t directly on point, but part of the challenge we face is how to apply lessons from other fields and disciplines and make them relevant in a municipal context. I came across this blog post in the Harvard Business Review, and frankly the headline resonated: When You Can’t Innovate, Copy.

While innovations are vital, it is impractical to think that we can all be innovators. For many practitioners, being a jack of all trades is practically part of the job description. This approach, while often necessary leaves little time to be truly innovate and explore new ways of doing things.

So what are we to do with limited resources, and even less time available to research, test, and implement new ways of doing business? Why not copy from your peers that have figured it out? Unlike when you did it in Algebra class, this form of copying won’t get a note sent home to your mother. This is a way of leveraging proven approaches to maximize your limited resources and improve your community along the way.

There are a variety places to look for what your colleagues are doing well. The League’s Community Excellence Award program was started for just this purpose. It provides members a platform to tell others about their accomplishments, but perhaps more importantly it is a way for the rest of us to learn from their experiences. The National League of Cities and the International City/County Management Association can be excellent resources for innovative ideas as well.

A mentor of mine often said “there aren’t any new ideas, so steal everything.” While I don’t necessarily agree with the literal interpretation, the idea was clear and on point. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If you see something that works, make it your own. As Charles Caleb Colton once said, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

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Better, Faster, Cheaper

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Better, Faster, Cheaper.  It is the battle cry of any good government reformist.  How can you argue with the premise?  Shouldn’t we all strive to reach this lofty goal? I certainly think we should.   In reality though, it seems that the focus as of late is really only on cheaper & faster when we talk about government services.  Better never enters into the dialogue.  If something costs less, then that becomes the default answer.  We talk about, but our policies don’t back up the rhetoric.

I’ll be the first to admit that many of the processes that we have engaged in are not cheapest or fastest, but let’s not forget that part of this is by design.  So why would we intentionally have inefficient processes?  Well, another rallying cry of any good government reformist is transparency and accountability.  Everyone needs to know everything at all times.  Is this better, faster, cheaper?  Well it is certainly not faster or cheaper. The need/desire to be open and transparent leads to a slow, costly, cumbersome bureaucracy.  Is it open and transparent?  Yes it is.  Is it efficient?  No, it is not.

Now this does not absolve us of the need to be the best at what we do.  I would also suggest that the best is rarely if ever the cheapest.  The old adage that you get what you pay for is true in the private sector, your home, and in local government.  Ask any successful business person, what is the most important ingredient to a successful enterprise?  The answer will uniformly be talent.  Hire the best people you can and let them do their thing.  I would suggest to those who believe that the best way to save money is to impose further restrictions on locals consider this concept.  By employing a top down, control filled environment as a way of controlling costs: they are in reality making every government less efficient.  We need to attract the best and brightest people possible and let them lead.

We must remember good people always have options.  If we create an environment where the best and brightest choose not to serve locally because we have made it untenable, have we won because it’s cheaper? Are we better off if we have degraded the talent we can attract because of the environment we have created?  Would any business survive with this approach?  Clearly not.  Why then would we use this as our model of success for local government?  In the phrase better, faster, cheaper:  better comes first for a reason.  We should be striving to make Michigan’s communities the best, not the cheapest.

Is it as simple as cutting costs?

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So much is being made about the need for government to be more efficient. Consolidation and collaboration are the buzz words of the day, and are presented as the cure all for the financial challenges that all local governments are facing. So is it really that simple? Is it true that all we need to do is cut costs to some hypothetical number we can afford?

It occurs to me that the simplest challenge that locals face is matching costs to revenues. It’s something anyone with simple math skills can do. What I am bringing in must exceed or equal what goes out, simple stuff. Why then do so many locals have financial issues? The answer lies in the paradoxical nature of local government services. Every time you cut services you reduce the earning capacity of the city.

So why would service cuts diminish a cities earning capacity? While it is easy to understand that police cost money, in fact a lot of money. It’s harder to understand how cutting costs, a.k.a. services, reduce a cities ability to raise revenue. Think about it like this: what is the cities equivalent of a manufacturing company’s factory? Or to say it another way, how does a city generate revenue? It’s the properties located in that city, and taxes assessed against the “value” associated with those properties. So a simple query: would you pay more for a house in a community with “more” services or “less” services? Great parks or no parks? Good roads or poor roads? Adequate public safety or minimal public safety? I think the answers to all these questions are obvious. Better services equate to better property values, and increased revenue to provide critical services.

Turn around companies make a very handsome living by helping companies be more efficient, and shed themselves of losing components of their business. I am quite certain that as part of that quest for efficiency they would not eliminate the fundamental earning capacity of the company. If the books were balanced by eliminating the manufacturing capacity of the company, then there is no company. The same holds true for cities. Any effort to restructure and reduce costs must preserve the earning capacity of the city. In other words, if our cost cutting only approach leaves a place where people don’t want to live, then we have failed. Herein lays the challenge before us. Increase efficiencies to be sure, but retain the character and fiber of our communities. If not, we have only exacerbated the very problem we set out to solve.