Monday with Monica

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!

Back Home Wishin’

Today is a bummer for me because I am back home working.  I traded attending the annual conference to attend the Senior Executive Institute at Charlottsville, VA (UVA).  It was possibly the best conference I ever attended.  You need to check out the SEI booth before you come home.

I haven’t seen much on the educational sessions.  What is the one session folks are buzzing about this year?

have fun, I expect to see you all next fall in Montreal!

Larry Paine, Hillsboro, Kansas

Want to start blogging in your community?

 

In today’s “Blog or Be Blogged” session, a member recommended checking out Lee Aase’s site here for advice on how to get started.  It was also mentioned that you can use blogger.com or wordpress.com to get your own site!

Day 1 (Sunday with Monica)

This morning, I had plans to attend the Speed Coaching Session for those of us who are starting our careers. However, I did not take into account how long it would take me to get from my hotel (The Crown Plaza) to the convention center. It took about 20 minutes. Add this into your travel time!!

So, bottom line is—I was late to my first session. Great way to start out, right?

My lateness didn’t seem to be a problem (thank goodness) once I got to the Speed Coaching session. I was able to immediately strike up a conversation with a couple of “manager coaches” and when it was all over I had had conversations with 6 different managers. This was an excellent session to just talk about different career paths and tips for breaking into the business.

I made sure to ask the managers about their career paths, how they got to where they are, and how I should go about picking good organizations and managers to work for.

Here’s what I learned:

• I need to discover my values and look for organizations that reflect those values. In my case, that means finding an organization that is progressive, forward thinking, and creative. For others, that may mean finding an organization that values loyalty, “stick-to-it-ive-ness” or some other core personal value.

• Don’t get pigeoned-holed. I heard the word “generalist” at least 10 times. According to the manager coaches, it is hard to move from a departmental role to a Manager/Assistant role. I was told that if I want to be a Manager, I should be looking at “Assistant to” or Management Analyst jobs more so than jobs in departments.

• On the other hand, I was also told to be flexible. This relates to moving between organizations, relocating geographically, and the types of jobs that I take. In all of these, I need to be willing to learn as much as I can and gain a wide range of experiences as I advance up my career ladder.

• I need to have clear career goals. As I interview with different jurisdictions, I need to know how I can contribute to the organization, but I also need to know what I hope to learn; should it be budgeting, personnel, supervision, or just more about an issue.

• I need to build a network and have mentors. Several managers told me that they had help moving up the management ranks. Many of them had bosses who encouraged them to apply for jobs that would give them additional leadership experience or they had folks to tell them that it was time to more from one position to another.

• I need to decide what size organization works best for me. Several mangers said that there are basically two tracks: I could join a smaller organization where I could be in a higher position where I would have more responsibility or I could join a larger organization, where I would be probably be in a “lower” position, but would have more resources and more opportunity for growth. I also heard that is it hard to move from the small org. track to the large org track.
  

• Stand out from the crowd. Cultivate what makes you different. If your passions, (like mine) include housing policy, economic and downtown development, then you should work with that as a starting place. If you are a creative, out of the box thinker (also, like me) let it shine!

I also had the chance to attend the Luncheon for Women in Professional Local Government Management (that’s a mouthful), where there was a panel discussion that talked about challenges and opportunities that face female managers, and up and coming female managers. Surprisingly (or not) I heard an echo of the same things that I heard at the Speed Coaching event. Several panelists talked about being open to lots of opportunities, learn as much as you can, get mentors often and early, trust your intuition, etc.

Here’s some other things that I heard:

• Be fearless- Don’t be afraid to get promoted. And don’t doubt your abilities. Take risks!
  

• Be Confident- Do the thing that you think you can not do (because you can, indeed, do those things)

• Aim high- Don’t think that, because you are a woman, you can’t (or shouldn’t be) a City or County Manager.

• You can be kind and tough. And know that others shouldn’t mistake your kindness for weakness. It is important to be true to yourself, so if you are genuinely a gentle person, do that! But be prepared to stand up and make the hard decisions when they are called for. You are a leader, after all.

• Have soft skills! Anyone can learn budgeting, but everyone can’t lead people, everyone doesn’t communicate well, everyone can’t be empathetic.

I am so excited to be here, and I am having a great time meeting all of you. See you tomorrow!