“ICMA membership has provided me with the rare opportunity to make connections with senior management local government professionals to learn from and network with. . . . Sessions that focused on shared services this past conference have been beneficial to my capstone research that deals with improving government efficiency through city-county consolidation.”

Where people can maintain trust in a system that shares information and shows a concern for employees during the worst of economic times there is hope – An Interview with Randall H. Reid, County Manager of Alachua County, Florida on building a culture of innovation.

To help fashion the vital new future for a downsized and restructured local government, executives
must understand that the psychological impacts of downsizing seriously exacerbate the actual reductions in resources. Employees typically feel victimized, pessimistic, overwhelmed, and resistant to any change or opportunities. An executive cannot manage an organization’s way to a new, more vital future.

Rather, an executive must spend a lot of “face time” with employees, exerting visible, confident, and optimistic leadership and then engaging employees in envisioning a new story and fulfilling

We like to believe that we can plan for a desired future, but the reality is that we live in a complex world where many things are out of our control. I do not believe in traditional strategic planning as the means to overcome that uncertainty. I instead believe that scenario planning is the best way to realistically develop contingencies for likely futures. We have to be adaptive and organic and this mind set is in part necessary to be innovative.