Merriam-Webster’s definition of networking is: “The exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions; specifically: the cultivation of productive relationships for employment or business.”1 An important part of the mission of the Alliance for Innovation is to further develop networking among local governments and their staff members for the purpose of accelerating innovative practices.
Most organizations, public and private, recognize the benefits of well-networked members. Longstanding civic organizations, for example, were formed to do good work in their communities and to provide a platform for networking community leaders with one another.
While networking can take place in informal settings, increasingly local governments intentionally create opportunities for employees to learn from others in their field or their region. This article highlights two exchange programs that intensified the networking experience. Benefits realized through these activities include:
- Learning how others accomplish similar work or tasks.
- Sharing ideas on how to do tasks and projects better.
- Building stronger bonds with other staff and organizations.
- Providing staff development for participants.
- Providing an attractive workplace in order to recruit and retain talent.
Cities Unlimited
The Cities Unlimited program between Coon Rapids and Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, allows them to share internal expertise and resources purposely but without contracts. With increasing demand for service and limited capacity, the goal of the program was for the cities to focus on developing and strengthening their natural talent to maximize the effectiveness of internal resources deployment.
A program developed by Brooklyn Park Assistant City Manager Michael Sable and Coon Rapids Assistant City Manager Matt Stemwedel, which is under the guidance of Matt Fulton, city manager of West Saint Paul, and Jamie Verbrugge, city manager of Brooklyn Park, allows a city to identify its natural talent and develop it into strengths for each organization.
When a problem arises where one organization needs the expertise it lacks, instead of outsourcing to a consultant, the city can share (i.e., trade) its own internal experts with each other, saving financial resources to be reinvested in internal talent.
When Coon Rapids wanted to create an innovation team, for example, and recognized it needed facilitation services, the city contacted Brooklyn Park where trained internal facilitators were able to help with the initiative Coon Rapids was undertaking. Brooklyn Park offered to facilitate the Coon Rapids meetings and in return, Coon Rapids offered performance measurement expertise to help Brooklyn Park coach its staff on improving that performance measurement program.
The two organizations have gone on to collaborate on a number of other training programs, saving both time and money. While not all problems can be solved by borrowing talent, it creates a powerful tool for managers to cost-effectively address challenges.
Some cities have collaborated this way informally for years but usually only where established relationships already existed. By formalizing this process, Coon Rapids and Brooklyn Park have created new opportunities to share costs, train more staff, and build connections that didn’t exist previously.
Both organizations have been able to network more, promoting greater collaborative opportunities and idea generation. Building on the initial success, Coon Rapids and Brooklyn Park envision a document or website that could identify experts in the communities so that participants know what is available to them.
Recently, Coon Rapids created the Wizard Program to catalog staff expertise that will better enable it to use and deploy resources internally and externally in the future. The city is currently encouraging as many “wizards” to come forward as possible. The next phase will include recruiting people who can be identified as having such specific skills as Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.
Management Talent Exchange
In 2003, two Silicon Valley city managers at the time (Frank Benest, Palo Alto, and Ed Everett, Redwood City) were discussing the upcoming retirement of baby-boomer managers and the lack of interest in public service from younger generations.
As they developed the litany of shortcomings their organizations faced in offering high-quality training and opportunities for advancement in small organizations, they also outlined a potential solution that came to be known as the Management Talent Exchange Program (MTEP), which is now entering its 10th year.
MTEP provides high-potential employees a three-month opportunity to work in a nearby Silicon Valley community to develop new skills, relationships, and context for their future careers. It currently consists of 20 local governments (cities, counties, special districts) that nominate an employee and generally receive an employee from another agency in return.
The “hosting” agency agrees to provide a supervisor who also acts as a coach and mentor. Learning forums also allow all exchange employees to hear speakers on such topics as leadership and career development.
In order to supercharge the development of the high-potential employees, they are not only placed in a different organizational culture but in a different discipline and work on projects with which they are not familiar. Thus, the participants develop new competencies, experiences, and relationships.
The program is sponsored by the City/County Management Associations of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. It is administered by the Human Resources Department of San Mateo County. Participating jurisdictions pay $1,000 to cover administration costs.
Participants and local government leaders are unanimous in their praise of the program. They say that MTEP exposes high-potential employees to professional development beyond what any single organization could provide, as well as experience in different work cultures that will assist them in future career choices.
Lessons Learned
These two programs highlight the vast potential of networking exchange programs:
- There is tremendous underused talent within most organizations. Identify it and leverage it!
- Organizations can seek out expertise within the organization and use it to train their own staffs. This is inexpensive and helps connect your own employees to one another and highlights skill areas that aren’t included in traditional trainings.
- Talent can be traded with other organizations. Which communities nearby do you admire? What could you trade them for access to their expertise?
- A broader exchange program can leverage mid-level staff who would benefit from more challenging work opportunities, which aren’t offered in their home organization. This creates a chance for an up-and-comer to get exposure to a new organizational culture and new ways of operating.
- “Fire bullets, then cannonballs” (Collins and Hansen, 2011, p. 69)2 allows ideas to be shared from experts in other communities before an organization develops something new. Narrow some of your options by getting ideas from others who have addressed the problem you are trying to address.
- Grow the organizational talent capacity by teaching each other. The opportunities are unlimited.
Networking takes time and intentionality. For low costs, organizations can support their own employees, increase their skill set, help position mid-level employees to prepare for leadership roles, and build regional relationships that will bear fruit through new collaborations and enhanced expertise.
1 Networking [Def. 1]. (n.d.). Merriam-Webster.com. In Merriam-Webster. Retrieved February 6, 2014, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/networking.
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