The first ICMA regional summit of 2013, the Southease summit, took place in Asheville, North Carolina, on March 7 and 8, and drew nearly 100 ICMA members and state officers from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

This year’s summit workshop, “ICMA – Great by Choice: The Decade of Local Government and the Twenty-Mile March,” is based on the work of Jim Collins, who spoke at ICMA’s 2012 conference in Phoenix, Arizona. ICMA Executive Director Bob O’Neill, joined by Tom Lundy (county manager, Catawba, North Carolina) ; Peggy Merriss (city manager, Decatur, Georgia); ICMA President-elect Simon Farbrother (city manager, Edmonton, AB, Canada); and ICMA director of Leadership Development Felicia Logan, led a discussion of Jim Collins’s Twelve Questions for Leadership Teams. The discussion explored how Collins’s concepts, including the twenty-mile march, bullets to cannonballs, productive paranoia, and increasing return on luck, apply to local government.

Below are the presentations* of Merriss and Lundy, who provided added meaning and value by sharing their stories of the application of Jim Collins’s concepts to local government.

*Premium content; members need to sign in to access the presentations.

Peggy Merriss, Decatur Georgia

Tom Lundy, Catawba County, North Carolina