Despite Jet-Lag, Great Day 2!

Jet Lag – I have to admit that the three-hour time difference from my home state of Washington is getting to me a bit today.  However, the quality of the conference easily overwhelmed my fatigue and kept me engaged.

Rashad’s Address – Rashad Young’s Assistants’ Lunch address was well-done, both inspiring and highly informative.  If you missed it, you missed a good one.  I’m proud to call him a Leadership ICMA colleague.

Networking – One of the best aspects of this conference is the opportunity to network with our colleagues from around the world.  Day 2 provided me with opportunities to reunite, reconnect, and develop some new linkages that will benefit my community and me personally.  I gain great energy from these connections.  They are truly one of the best things about our profession!

HPO in Action – As a Administrator of a small community (Prosser, WA – pop. 5,075), I got a lot out of the presentation by the City Manager of Montgomery, OH.  Montgomery has done great things in the area of applying the High Performance Organization (HPO) model, particularly in the area of human resources management.  Amongst the items shared with the session crowd included Montgomery’s 360 employee evaluation process (that includes Council members), its pay for performance system, and how it revised employee job descriptions around management, task, leadership, and team skills.  Montgomery presented in the Leading Practices for Small Communities session this morning.

Well Done Cokie – I enjoyed Cokie Roberts candor and stories this morning in her keynote address.  She did a great job of holding the crowd’s attention and conveyed some thought provoking points about the upcoming presidential election.

Blog or Be Blogged – Today’s session on blogging was also excellent.  I picked up some great tips and suggestions.  In our small town, the Mayor and I will each be launching blogs with the launch of our new website in the next few months.  This was a timely and informative session!

Off to Tonight’s Reception – It’s time for me to go have some more fun!

Early Career Sessions, Day 2

Below is a roundup of the three sessions I attended today. Each were intended for early career professionals and some sound advice came from each one.

1.  Evaluating Career Decisions
-Nobody cares that much what your degree is, just as long as you have one.
-Budgeting and Human Resources experience is key at the beginning of your career.
-Network contacts are invaluable.
“You can do it all – just not all at the same time.”
-Cynthia Seelhammer, Deputy City Manager, Phoenix, AZ

2. Early Professional Luncheon
-3 Ps most important: Preparation, planning, and patience.
-Education and professional development is a marathon and takes life-long commitment.
-Be flexible with your life plan.
-Patience is about timing. Good opportunities are not always the right opportunities.
“The world is meant to be wooed and won by youth.”
-Winston Churchill

3. Assistants Relationships
-Never upstage your manager.
-Always allow your manager to take the credit.
-Never do anything to embarrass yourself, the manager, or the organization.
-Never compromise your morals or ethics.
-Always demonstrate loyalty. This includes telling the manager what he/she might not want to hear.

So far I’m having a great day 2! I’ve managed to obtain a couple of business cards and contacts and am hopeful that NIU’s networking dinner tonight will bring many more.

–Katie Starkey, NIU MPA

Fun fact of the day: Public sector workers are more educated – 50% of us have degrees, while only 25% have degrees in the private sector.

Interesting First Day

Being a first time ICMA attendee I was very interested to see how things would shake out.  The anticipation was almost like a kid waiting for Santa Claus to come down the chimney on Christmas Eve.  I have learned a great number of things that I will take back with me.  One great session was Public Safety Services for Small Communities.  Working in a smaller community it is very difficult to handle issues that relate to public safety.  There were many great topics discussed such as what does our organization truly face in terms of public safety.  

The dealing with the manager, the council, and the organization session raised a number of great scenarios that assistants face on a daily basis.  The panel was very informative and gave an insight into situation that I may face later on in my career.  I am very excited about the rest of my sessions and are intrigued by what Day Two (for me at least) has to offer.

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!

Pictures from the ICMA Golf Tournament

Here are some pictures from yesterday’s golf tournament… Enjoy!

ICMA Golf Results

 First Place:

Anthony Marryatt

Brian Johnson

Ray Hodges

Seth Lawless

 

Second Place:

John Hughes

Mike Davey

Tim Davey

Will Davis

 

3^rd Place

Bruce Channing

Regan Parsons

Tom Spengler

William Kohbarger

 Contest Hole Winners 

1. Closest to the Pin – Matt McQuillen
2. Closest to the Pin – Jerry Walker
3. Longest Drive – Bill Kohbarger
4. Straightest Drive – Brad Hammer; who graciously gave his gift to Doretha Wiggins – Golf Coordinator

Quick notes on Rashad

Quickly, between sessions!

I was lucky enough to attend the Early Career Professionals Luncheon…I made sure to keep it quiet that I wasn’t yet an early career professional.  Along with lunch I was presented with wonderful networking opportunities.  I talked to Shawn and Robert from Pulaski, VA as well as Jon from Allen, TX and Marc from Beaumont, Alberta.  I learned about their career tracks, how much Marc hates snow, and how the current economy is affecting the job market for young professionals.  It was exactly what I was hoping for when I signed up for the lunch.  After lunch and networking, Rashad talked to us about the three P’s of a career in public service: preparation, planning, and patience.

Rashad’s message resonated extremely well with me.  As a student, I am always seeking as much information as possible about how to manage this nebulous concept of a career when I am done with school.  Not only did Rashad provide concrete advice, but inspiration.  As a young administrator, he is climbed the ladder quickly and has been met with success seemingly at every rung.  He provided great advice, perhaps some of the best I have ever received, which was to make sure that the opportunities that are available to you are the right opportunities.

Thank you Rashad for taking time to share your advice and story with us.

Interviews with city managers

I am looking forward to the first full day of the conference, as there are a few sessions that look helpful and engaging.  I traveled to Richmond with all of my 12 classmates from the KU MPA program.  One of our activities includes interviewing people who have significant experience in the city management field.  This is a wonderful opportunity, as it gives us face-to-face sit down time with city managers who are working in various geographical areas.  I’ve noticed a common thread among the two practitioners I have spoken with.  Both of them said that they strongly value the human service aspect of city management.  They both emphasized the importance of forming and maintaining connections with not only staff and council members but citizens as well.  The human services aspect is one of the main reasons I first became interested in a career in city management, so I was happy to hear that this value can remain strong after years working in the field.  City management ensures that people from all walks of life receive essential and enriching services and it would be difficult to find a line of work that improves so many lives on a day to day basis.

Now off to see Cokie Roberts speak!  I hope everybody is enjoying the conference!

Megan Dodge

Thinking of You

I can only imagine what you would have had to say this morning about this crazy election season.  You are missed Mr. Russert…..

My first day…

After a fun drive from Chapel Hill (we only got lost once) some members of my cohort and I finally arrived at the conference just in time to miss registration.  We made our way into the opening reception and found the UNC table.  Our wonderful program director Carl provide us some tips and pointers and we set off to network (and find food.)  We checked in with our classmate Bo who was able to tell us about the ICMA Performance Measurement Dashboard.  Unfortunately, time ran thin and we headed off to the Marriot for the Generations Mixer.

We checked in for the event and were each handed a puzzle piece.  We headed in and met with some UNC MPA alum who are current management fellows.  After mixing with students from other programs, we were encouraged to put together our puzzles pieces.  With varying degrees of success, we tried different methods of getting our groups together.  My group didn’t quite get our puzzle together in time to win, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.  We met the ICMA fellows, interns, and scholarship recipients and had the opportunity to spend more time networking.

My cohort and I left the conference center excited for tomorrow!

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!