Baytown is not unique from other communities in that over the years plans have been created and they have sat on the shelf either due to staff turnover, a change in elected officials or because that hot new project seemed more important than following the plan.  In fact, eight years ago Baytown developed a set of community priorities.  Since then good things have happened in Baytown, but unfortunately, there is no measurement of our success to be found and no evidence that all the good things were even aligned to the developed priorities.  This isn’t an article where you will find answers from a city that has this area mastered.  What you will find are some strategies being tested by a city that is making a deliberate effort to not just plan, but execute on our plans.

There are three areas we are focusing on in Baytown to not just plan well, but execute on our plans and also give residents an opportunity to hold us accountable:

1) Build an organizational foundation/culture

What we know is that many of the principles that lead to an innovative culture also lead to a culture that can sustain long-term planning in the face of changing leadership in a city.  In Baytown, we are starting with the basics by focusing on four principles: inclusive leadership, extensive internal collaboration, results-focused and authentic community connections.  We’ve always provided training to employees and have even implemented a leadership development program.  Our challenge is that training was never focused on building a core culture for the organization.  In order to execute on our biggest goals, we knew that just developing leaders wasn’t good enough, we needed common leadership principles.  To start, we spent late 2015 and early 2016 showing staff what putting the four principals into action looks like.  We worked with City Council and City staff to not only develop city priorities but also an implementation plan, including key outcome metrics so the community can track our progress and hold us accountable.  We’ve also started a strategic planning effort called Imagine Baytown, where citizens have been empowered to develop priorities for the community.  A citizen-appointed advisory committee will develop the five-year strategic plan using feedback gathered from outreach meetings and a community survey.

2)  Treat people as people, not objects

Priority #1 for our new City Manager over the past year has been to make sure we have an organizational culture where people are treated as people and not objects.  At a retreat in late 2015, the City’s senior leaders discussed a book called Leadership and Self-Deception.  A key quote from the book says, “When we’re in the box (of self-deception), our view of reality is distorted – we see neither ourselves nor others clearly.  We are self-deceived.  And that creates all kinds of trouble for the people around us.”  In our organizations, people are what accomplish great things and execute on strategies.  The message here is that when we treat people as objects, results are much harder to come by.  Humans have to be treated as humans, and that starts with you . . . not the other person.

3)  Build a team that will add to the desired culture

The third method we are using to build an organization that executes on plans and strategies is to actually get the right people in key positions.  As director-level positions become vacant, the City has started to utilize a new method for conducting the interview process.  The method was taken from fellow Alliance for Innovation member, the City of Olathe, KS, and it has proven very effective in Baytown.  In the past, director interviews would involve our city managers and the human resources director.  Now, we have a six-step process when it gets to in-person interviews.  Finalists begin by all completing an assessment online to see how their natural instincts match what the City Manager is looking for from this director position.  Then they meet with three interview panels (City Manager’s Office, Director’s Panel and Department Employees), take a tour of the city with two other directors not on the panel and then they eat lunch together.  This process has not only given us a much better picture of a candidates strengths and weaknesses but has also empowered others in the organization when making this type of critical decision.  Feedback has been positive from both the candidates and our employees.

Executing on plans is tough.  So many factors can move city leaders away from the plan.  Our attempt in Baytown is to build a culture that can mitigate these factors.  With a focus on the four critical values of inclusive leadership, extensive internal collaboration, results-focused and authentic community connections, we believe our chances to execute will improve.