I don’t know about all of you but I am so tired today!! Yesterday was a big day. I hit the ground running and felt that I had to do everything. No one said anything to me about pacing. I was so “on it” yesterday that I burnt out. My energy level, today, isn’t nearly what is should be or what it was yesterday.
Because of that, today was a day of listening. It was also a day that I let myself be a little lazy and spend most of my time talking to Managers and UNC alums that I already knew, rather than introducing myself to new people.
Advice for next year: Pace yourselves. ICMA conferences are a marathon, not a sprint!!!
What I did today
I attended part of the Right-Brained educational session, where the concepts of Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind were discussed in the context of local government management.
I had the opportunity to read A Whole New Mind this summer, and I have completely bought into the concepts in the book. You can read here and here, blog posts on my site, where I talk about the concepts in the book. I am a huge fan of A Whole New Mind!
I also attended part of the Blog or be Blogged session.This was a session to help non-bloggers and other technology-challenged folks understand the importance of messaging and how blogging can be beneficial to getting your jurisdiction’s message out.
The main takeaway from the session is that, as a City/County Manager, you are in a critical position to manage the message of your jursidiction. As new stories develop, and as citizens ask more questions, You can get in front of potential probelms by going ahead and sharing key information with the citizenry.
One of the speakers called blog posts propaganda, but I don’t like that term. Blogs are meant to be a way to communicate, they shoud engage citizens, and citizens should be encouraged to be a part of the discussion online. Blogs are a way to meet and greet a section of the population that don’t come to Board meetings, but often are opinionated, creative, and important to the jurisdiction.
This isn’t to say that all citizens that comment on blogs are constructive and profanity-free. There are crazies out in cyber space. Managers with blogs must have a thick skin to deal with online personalities. You cannot take it personally when someone attacks you (and not your policies)– and for goodness sakes, don’t talk back to them when they goad you.
There are some really good free hosting sites for the new blogger. My faves are wordpress and blogger. I also refer to Men with Pens when I need some help or inspiration with my writing.
My theme during this conference, of course, has been one of networking, in hopes of making connections that will lead to jobs. In the spirit of that theme, I attended the Assistants/Early Career Professionals Luncheon today, where the City Manager of Dayton talked about his career trajectory. This gentleman has accumulated an tremendous resume in only a short time. I was impressed.
His speech mirrored a lot of what I heard yesterday during the Speed Coaching and Women’s Luncheon, and he summed it up in three bullets.
*Preparation- Being educated and competitive. He said that as a newbie, you must learn as much as you can about everything, but especially about those things that are important to the organization that you want to work with. It is important to know what you have to offer an organization- and be able to tell them.
*Planning- Plan your career. Don’t go about your career willy-nilly. He said to make strategic and purposeful job moves with the end in mind. (whatever the end is for you) Know what you hope to gain from each job move.
*Patience-This refers to knowing when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. He said that of course, it is up to you to know what you need at each step in your career. Do you want to live in an urban area or a rural area? Do you want to work for a small organization or a larger one? Does each job fit your family or life situation? Are you ready to make the next step up the job ladder? Have you stayed too long in a particular job?
These must be pretty good pieces of advice because I’ve heard it from managers all over this conference!
