HomeMy WebLinkAbout2011-08-30 Packet - WorkshopCITY OF UKIAH CITY COUNCIL
Special Meeting
Ukiah Civic Center
Conference Room #3
300 Seminary Avenue
Ukiah, CA 95482
August 30, 2011
5:30 p.m.
WORKSHOP NOTES
ROLL CALL
Ukiah City Council met at a Special Workshop Meeting on August 30, 2011, the
notice for which being legally noticed on August 29, 2011. Mayor Rodin called
the meeting to order at 5:35 pm. Roll was taken with the following
Councilmembers present: Landis, Crane, Baldwin, and Mayor Rodin.
Councilmembers absent: Thomas. Staff present: City Manager Chambers,
Assistant City Manager Sangiacomo, Director of Planning and Community
Development Stump, Airport Manager Owen, Community Services Administrator
Marsolan, Electric Utility Director Grandi, Assistant Director of Finance Roth,
Controller Newell, Director of Public Works and City Engineer Eriksen, and City
Clerk Currie.
2. UNFINISHED BUSINESS
3. WORK STUDY SESSION
a. Strategic Service Planning Process Discussion
b. Other Strategic Discussion as Desired by Council
No Action Taken.
4. PUBLIC COMMENT
5. ADJOURNMENT
There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 7:30 pm
Anne M. Currie, City Clerk
CITY OF UKIAi i
CITY COUNCIL AGENDA
Special Meeting
Ukiah Civic Center
Conference Room #3
300 Seminary Avenue
Ukiah, CA 95482
August 30, 2011
5:30 a.m.
WORKSHOP
ROLL CALL
2. UNFINISHED BUSINESS
3. WORK STUDY SESSION
a. Strategic Service Planning Process Discussion
b. Other Strategic Discussion as Desired by Council
4. PUBLIC COMMENT
5. ADJOURNMENT
Please be advised that the City needs to be notified 24 hours in advance of a meeting if any specific accommodations or
interpreter services are needed in order for you to attend. The City complies with ADA requirements and will attempt to
reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities upon request.
Materials related to an item on this Agenda submitted to the City Council after distribution of the agenda packet are available for
public inspection at the front counter at the Ukiah Civic Center, 300 Seminary Avenue, Ukiah, CA 95482, during normal business
hours, Monday through Friday, 7:30 am to 5:00 pm
I hereby certify under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing agenda was posted on the
bulletin board at the main entrance of the City of Ukiah City Hall, located at 300 Seminary Avenue, Ukiah, California, not less than
24 hours prior to the meeting set forth on this agenda.
Dated this 29th day of August, 2011
JoAnne M. Currie, City Clerk
Community
"The essence of community, its very heart and soul, is the nonmonetary exchange
of value; things we do and share because we care for others, and for the good of the
place. Community is composed of that which we don't attempt to measure, for which we
keep no record and ask no recompense.
Most are things we cannot measure no matter how hard we try. Since they can't
be measured, they can't be denominated in dollars, or barrels of oil, or bushels of corn—
such things as respect, tolerance, love, trust, beauty—the supply of which is unbounded
and unlimited.
The nonmonetary exchange of value does not arise solely from altruistic motives.
It arises from deep, intuitive, often subconscious understanding that self-interest is
inseparably connected with community interest; that individual good is inseparable from
the good of the whole; that in some way, often beyond our understanding, all things are at
one and the same time, independent, interdependent and intradependent—that the
singular "one" is simultaneously the plural "one."
In a true community, unity of the singular "one" and the plural "one" extends
beyond people and things. It applies as well to beliefs, purpose, and principles. Some we
hold in common with all others in the community. Others we may hold in common with
only some members of the community. Still others we may hold alone.
In a true community, the values others hold that we do not share we nonetheless
respect and tolerate, either because we realize that our beliefs will require respect and
tolerance in return, or because we know those who hold different beliefs well enough to
understand and respect the common humanity that underlies all difference.
Without an abundance of nonmonetary values and an equal abundance of
nonmonetary exchange of material value, no true community ever existed or ever will.
Community is not about profit. It is about benefit. We confuse them at our peril. When
we attempt to monetize all value, we methodically disconnect people and destroy
community.
True community requires proximity; continual, direct contact and interaction
between the people, place, and things of which it is composed. Throughout history, the
fundamental building block, the quintessential community, has always been the family.
It is there that the greatest nonmonetary exchange of value takes place. It is there that the
most powerful nonmaterial values are created and exchanged. It is from that community,
for better or worse, that all others are formed. The nonmonetary exchange of value is the
very heart and soul of community and community is the inescapable, essential element of
civil society."
Dee Hock
Excerpted from Birth of the Chaordic Age
Harvard Business Review
www.hbr.orCj
When the economy recovers,
things won't return to Leadership' In a
normal—and a different
mode of leadership will be (Permanent)Crisis
required.
by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow,
and Marty Linsky
Included with this full -text Harvard Business Review article:
1 Article Summary
The Idea in Brief—the core idea
2 Leadership in a (Perrnanent) Crisis
Reprint R0907F
L.eade ship in Q it err lallent) C11s1s
The Idea *n Br*ef
• Are you waiting for things to return to
normal in your organization? Sorry. Lead-
ership will require new skills tailored to
an environment of urgency, high stakes,
and uncertainty—even after the current
economic crisis is over.
You'll have to
Foster adaptation, helping people de-
velop the"next practices"that will enable
the organization to thrive in a new world,
even as they continue with the best
practices necessary for current success.
Embrace disequilibrium, keeping peo-
ple in a state that creates enough dis-
comfort to induce change but not so
much that they fight, flee, or freeze.
Generate leadership, giving people at all
levels of the organization the opportu-
nity to lead experiments that will help it
adapt to changing times.
• You won't achieve your leadership aims if
you sacrifice yourself by neglecting your
needs.
PAGE 1
When the economy recovers, things won't return to normal—and a
different mode of leadership will be required.
Leadershipin a
(Permanent) Crisis
by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow,
and Marty Linsky
It would be profoundly reassuring to view the
current economic crisis as simply another
rough spell that we need to get through. Un-
fortunately, though, today's mix of urgency,
high stakes, and uncertainty will continue as
the norm even after the recession ends. Econo-
mies cannot erect a firewall against intensify-
ing global competition, energy constraints, cli-
mate change, and political instability. The
immediate crisis—which we will get through,
with the help of policy makers' expert techni-
cal adjustments—merely sets the stage for a
sustained or even permanent crisis of serious
and unfamiliar challenges.
Consider the heart attack that strikes in the
middle of the night. EMTs rush the victim to the
hospital, where expert trauma and surgical
teams—executing established procedures be-
cause there is little time for creative improvisa-
tion—stabilize the patient and then provide
new vessels for the heart. The emergency has
passed, but a high-stakes, if somewhat less ur-
gent, set of challenges remains. Having recov-
ered from the surgery, how does the patient pre-
vent another attack? Having survived, how does
he adapt to the uncertainties of a new reality in
order to thrive? The crisis is far from over.
The task of leading during a sustained crisis—
whether you are the CEO of a major corpora-
tion or a manager heading up an impromptu
company initiative—is treacherous. Crisis lead-
ership has two distinct phases. First is that emer-
gency phase, when your task is to stabilize the
situation and buy time. Second is the adaptive
phase, when you tackle the underlying causes of
the crisis and build the capacity to thrive in a
new reality. The adaptive phase is especially
tricky: People put enormous pressure on you to
respond to their anxieties with authoritative
certainty, even if doing so means overselling
what you know and discounting what you don't.
As you ask them to make necessary but uncom-
fortable adaptive changes in their behavior or
work, they may try to bring you down. People
clamor for direction, while you are faced with
a way forward that isn't at all obvious. Twists
and turns are the only certainty.
Yet you still have to lead.
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW • JULY -AUGUST 2009 PAGE 2
Ronald Heifetz (heifetz@cambridge,
leaders_hiL_corn), Alexander Grashow
(ac�rashow@cambridgge_leadership
.com), and Marty Linsky (magy(
cambridgedeadership.com) are partners
of Cambridge Leadership Associates and
the coauthors of The Practice ofAdaptive
Leadership (Harvard Business Press, 2009).
Heifetz, the founder of the Center for
Public Leadership at Harvard University's
John F. Kennedy School of Government,
and Linsky, a member of the Kennedy
School faculty, are the coauthors of'A
Survival Guide for Leaders"(HBR June
2002).
Hunker Down—or Dress "beset"
The danger in the current economic situation
is that people in positions of authority will
hunker down. They will try to solve the prob-
lem with short-term fixes: tightened controls,
across-the-board cuts, restructuring plans.
They'll default to what they know how to do in
order to reduce frustration and quell their
own and others' fears. Their primary mode
will be drawing on familiar expertise to help
their organizations weather the storm.
That is understandable. It's natural for au-
thority figures to try to protect their people
from external threats so that everyone can
quickly return to business as usual. But in these
times, even the most competent authority will
be unable to offer this protection. The organi-
zational adaptability required to meet a relent-
less
elentless succession of challenges is beyond anyone's
current expertise. No one in a position of au-
thority—none of us, in fact—has been here be-
fore. (The expertise we relied on in the past got
us to this point, after all.) An organization that
depends solely on its senior managers to deal
with the challenges risks failure.
That risk increases if we draw the wrong con-
clusions from our likely recovery from the cur-
rent economic downturn. Many people survive
heart attacks, but most cardiac surgery patients
soon resume their old ways: Only about 20%
give up smoking, change their diet, or get more
exercise. In fact, by reducing the sense of ur-
gency, the very success of the initial treatment
creates the illusion of a return to normalcy. The
medical experts' technical prowess, which
solves the immediate problem of survival, inad-
vertently lets patients off the hook for chang-
ing their lives to thrive in the long term. High
stakes and uncertainty remain, but the dimin-
ished sense of urgency keeps most patients
from focusing on the need for adaptation.
People who practice what we call adaptive
leadership do not make this mistake. Instead of
hunkering down, they seize the opportunity of
moments like the current one to hit the organi-
zation's reset button. They use the turbulence
of the present to build on and bring closure to
the past. In the process, they change key rules
of the game, reshape parts of the organization,
and redefine the work people do.
We are not talking here about shaking up an
organization so that nothing makes sense any-
more. The process of adaptation is at least as
much a process of conservation as it is of rein-
Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis
vention. Targeted modifications in specific
strands of the organizational DNA will make
the critical difference. (Consider that human
beings share more than 9o% of their DNA
with chimpanzees.)
Still, people will experience loss. Some parts
of the organization will have to die, and some
jobs and familiar ways of working will be elim-
inated. As people try to develop new compe-
tencies, they'll often feel ashamed of their in-
competence. Many will need to renegotiate
loyalties with the mentors and colleagues
whose teachings no longer apply.
Your empathy will be as essential for success
as the strategic decisions you make about what
elements of the organizational DNA to dis-
card. That is because you will need people's
help—not their blind loyalty as they follow
you on a path to the future but their enthusias-
tic help in discovering that path. And if they
are to assist you, you must equip them with
the ability to perform in an environment of
continuing uncertainty and uncontrollable
change.
Today's Leadership Tasks
In this context, leadership is an improvisa-
tional and experimental art. The skills that en-
abled most executives to reach their positions
of command—analytical problem solving,
crisp decision making, the articulation of clear
direction—can get in the way of success. Al-
though these skills will at times still be appro-
priate, the adaptive phase of a crisis requires
some new leadership practices.
Foster adaptation. Executives today face
two competing demands. They must execute
in order to meet today's challenges. And they
must adapt what and how things get done in
order to thrive in tomorrow's world. They
must develop "next practices" while excelling
at today's best practices.
Julie Gilbert is evidence that these dual tasks
can—indeed, should—be practiced by people
who do not happen to be at the very top of an
organization. As a vice president and then se-
nior VP at retailer Best Buy from 2000 to early
2009, she saw a looming crisis in the com-
pany's failure to profit from the greater in-
volvement of women in the male -oriented
world of consumer electronics. Women were
becoming more influential in purchasing deci-
sions, directly and indirectly. But capitalizing
on this trend would require something beyond
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW • JULY—AUGUST 2009 PAGE 3
Adaptive Leadership
in Practice
Best Buy I A senior vice president
helped the company adapt to the
reality that women increasingly
make consumer electronics
purchasing decisions.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center I The new CEO helped a
dysfunctional organization created
through the hasty merger of two
Harvard teaching hospitals adapt
to modern health care challenges.
Egon Zehnder International
The founder fostered a leadership
style that helped the executive search
firm adapt to the rise of online
recruiting and competitors' IPOs.
a smart marketing plan. It would demand a
change in the company's orientation.
Getting an organization to adapt to changes
in the environment is not easy. You need to
confront loyalty to legacy practices and under-
stand that your desire to change them makes
you a target of attack. Gilbert believed that in-
stead of simply selling technology products to
mostly male customers, Best Buy needed to ap-
peal to women by reflecting the increasing in-
tegration of consumer electronics into family
life. So Gilbert headed up an initiative to estab-
lish in-store boutiques that sold home theater
systems along with coordinated furniture and
accessories. Stores set up living -room displays
to showcase not just the electronics but also
the entertainment environment. Salespeople
were trained to interact with the previously ig-
nored female customers who came in with
men to look at systems.
Gilbert says that championing this approach
subjected her to some nasty criticism from
managers who viewed Best Buy as a retailer of
technology products, not experiences. But fo-
cusing on the female purchaser when a man
and a woman walked into the store—making
eye contact and greeting her, asking about her
favorite movies and demonstrating them on
the systems—often resulted in the couple's
purchasing a higher -end product than they
had originally considered. According to Gil-
bert, returns and exchanges of purchases made
by couples were 60% lower than those made
by men. With the rethinking of traditional
practices, Best Buy's home theater business
flourished, growing from two pilot in-store
boutiques in mid -2004 to more than 350 five
years later.
As you consider eliminating practices that
seem ill suited to a changing environment, you
must distinguish the essential from the expend-
able. What is so precious and central to an or-
ganization's identity and capacity that it must
be preserved? What, even if valued by many,
must be left behind in order to move forward?
Gilbert wanted to preserve Best Buy's strong
culture of responding to customers' needs. But
the company's almost exclusively male cul-
ture—"guys selling to guys"—seemed to her a
barrier to success. For example, the phrase "the
jets are up" meant that the top male execu-
tives were aboard corporate aircraft on a tour
of Best Buy stores. The flights gave them a
chance to huddle on important issues and
Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis
bond with one another. Big decisions were
often announced following one of these trips.
After getting a call with a question about fe-
male customers from one such group visiting a
Best Buy home theater boutique, Gilbert per-
suaded senior executives never to let the jets
go up without at least one woman on board.
Because you don't know quite where you are
headed as you build an organization's adapt-
ability,
daptability, it's prudent to avoid grand and detailed
strategic plans. Instead, run numerous experi-
ments. Many will fail, of course, and the way
forward will be characterized by constant mid-
course corrections. But that zigzagging path
will be emblematic of your company's ability
to discover better products and processes. Take
a page out of the technology industry's play -
book: Version 2.0 is an explicit acknowledg-
ment that products coming to market are ex-
periments, prototypes to be improved in the
next iteration.
Best Buy's home theater business was one
experiment. A much broader one at the com-
pany grew out of Gilbert's belief that in order
to adapt to an increasingly female customer
base, Best Buy would need to change the role
of women within the organization. The com-
pany had traditionally looked to senior execu-
tives for direction and innovation. But, as Gil-
bert explained to us, a definition of consumer
electronics retailing that included women
would ultimately have to come from the bot-
tom
ottom up. Appealing to female customers re-
quired empowering female employees at all
levels of the company.
This led to the creation of "WoLF (Women's
Leadership Forum) packs," in which women,
from store cashiers to corporate executives,
came together to support one another and to
generate innovative projects by drawing on
their collective experience. In an unorthodox
attempt to neutralize the threat to Best Buy's
traditionally male culture, two men paired up
with two women to lead each group.
More than 30,00o employees joined WoLF
packs. The company says the initiative
strengthened its pipeline of high -potential
leaders, led to a surge in the number of female
job applicants, and improved the bottom line
by reducing turnover among female employ-
ees. Gilbert, who recently left Best Buy to help
other companies establish similar programs,
was able to realize the dual goal of adaptive
leadership: tackling the current challenge and
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW • JULY—AUGUST 2009 PAGE 4
Keep your hand on the
thermostat. If the heat's
too low, people won't
make difficult decisions.
If it's too high, they might
panic.
building adaptability. She had an immediate
positive impact on the company's financial
performance while positioning the organiza-
tion to deploy more of its people to reach
wider markets.
Embrace disequilibrium. Without urgency,
difficult change becomes far less likely. But if
people feel too much distress, they will fight,
flee, or freeze. The art of leadership in today's
world involves orchestrating the inevitable
conflict, chaos, and confusion of change so
that the disturbance is productive rather than
destructive.
Health care is in some ways a microcosm of
the turbulence and uncertainty facing the en-
tire economy. Paul Levy, the CEO of Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, is trying
to help his organization adapt to the industry's
constant changes.
When Levy took over, in 2002, Beth Israel
Deaconess was a dysfunctional organization in
serious financial trouble. Created several years
previously through the hasty merger of two
Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals, it
had struggled to integrate their very different
cultures. Now it was bleeding red ink and
faced the likelihood of being acquired by a for-
profit company, relinquishing its status as a
prestigious research institution. Levy quickly
made changes that put the hospital on a stron-
ger financial footing and eased the cultural
tensions.
To rescue the medical center, Levy had to
create discomfort. He forced people to con-
front the potentially disastrous consequences
of maintaining the status quo—continued fi-
nancial losses, massive layoffs, an outright
sale—stating in a memo to all employees that
"this is our last chance" to save the institu-
tion. He publicly challenged powerful medi-
cal factions within the hospital and made
clear he'd no longer tolerate clashes between
the two cultures.
But a successful turnaround was no guaran-
tee of long-term success in an environment
clouded by uncertainty. In fact, the stability
that resulted from Levy's initial achievements
threatened the hospital's ability to adapt to the
succession of challenges that lay ahead.
Keeping an organization in a productive
zone of disequilibrium is a delicate task; in the
practice of leadership, you must keep your
hand on the thermostat. If the heat is consis-
tently too low, people won't feel the need to
Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis
ask uncomfortable questions or make difficult
decisions. If it's consistently too high, the orga-
nization risks a meltdown: People are likely to
panic and hunker down.
Levy kept the heat up after the financial
emergency passed. In a move virtually unprec-
edented for a hospital, he released public quar-
terly reports on medical errors and set a goal of
eliminating those errors within four years. Al-
though the disclosures generated embarrassing
publicity, Levy believed that acknowledging
and learning from serious mistakes would lead
to improved patient care, greater trust in the
institution, and long-term viability.
Maintaining the right level of disequilibrium
requires that you depersonalize conflict, which
naturally arises as people experiment and shift
course in an environment of uncertainty and
turbulence. The aim is to focus the disagree-
ment on issues, including some of your own
perspectives, rather than on the interested par-
ties. But the issues themselves are more than
disembodied facts and analysis. People's com-
petencies, loyalties, and direct stakes lie behind
them. So you need to act politically as well as
analytically. In a period of turmoil, you must
look beyond the merits of an issue to under-
stand the interests, fears, aspirations, and loyal-
ties of the factions that have formed around it.
Orchestrating conflicts and losses and negotiat-
ing
egotiating among various interests are the name of
the game.
That game requires you to create a culture of
courageous conversations. In a period of sus-
tained uncertainty, the most difficult topics
must be discussed. Dissenters who can provide
crucial insights need to be protected from the
organizational pressure to remain silent. Exec-
utives need to listen to unfamiliar voices and
set the tone for candor and risk taking.
Early in 2009, with Beth Israel Deaconess
facing a projected $20 million annual loss after
several years of profitability, Paul Levy held an
employee meeting to discuss layoffs. He ex-
pressed concern about how cutbacks would af-
fect low-wage employees, such as housekeep-
ers, and somewhat cautiously floated what
seemed likely to be an unpopular idea: protect-
ing
rotecting some of those low-paying jobs by reducing
the salary and benefits of higher -paid employ-
ees—including many sitting in the auditorium.
To his surprise, the room erupted in applause.
His candid request for help led to countless
suggestions for cost savings, including an offer
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW • JULY—AUGUST 2009 PAGE 5
An executive team on its
own can't find the best
solutions. But leadership
can generate more
leadership deep in the
organization.
by the 13 medical department heads to save 10
jobs through personal donations totaling
$350,000. These efforts ultimately reduced the
number of planned layoffs by 75%.
Generate leadership. Corporate adaptabil-
ity usually comes not from some sweeping
new initiative dreamed up at headquarters
but from the accumulation of microadapta-
tions originating throughout the company in
response to its many microenvironments.
Even the successful big play is typically a prod-
uct of many experiments, one of which finally
proves pathbreaking.
To foster such experiments, you have to ac-
knowledge the interdependence of people
throughout the organization, just as compa-
nies increasingly acknowledge the interdepen-
dence of players—suppliers, customers, even
rivals—beyond their boundaries. It is an illu-
sion to expect that an executive team on its
own will find the best way into the future. So
you must use leadership to generate more
leadership deep in the organization.
At a worldwide partners' meeting in June
2000, Egon Zehnder, the founder of the execu-
tive search firm bearing his name, announced
his retirement. Instead of reflecting on the 36 -
year -old firm's steady growth under his leader-
ship, he issued a warning: Stability "is a liabil-
ity, not an asset, in today's world," he said.
"Each new view of the horizon is a glance
through a different turn of the kaleidoscope"
(a symbol of disequilibrium, if there ever was
one). "The future of this firm;' Zehnder contin-
ued, "is totally in the hands of the men and
women here in this room."
From someone else, the statement might
have come across as obligatory pap. But Egon
Zehnder built his firm on the conviction that
changes in internal and external environments
require a new kind of leadership. He saw early
on that his startup could not realize its full po-
tential if he made himself solely responsible
for its success.
Individual executives just don't have the per-
sonal capacity to sense and make sense of all
the change swirling around them. They need
to distribute leadership responsibility, replacing
hierarchy and formal authority with organiza-
tional bandwidth, which draws on collective
intelligence. Executives need to relax their
sense of obligation to be all and do all and in-
stead become comfortable sharing their bur-
den with people operating in diverse functions
Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis
and locations throughout the organization. By
pushing responsibility for adaptive work down
into the organization, you clear space for your-
self to think, probe, and identify the next chal-
lenge on the horizon.
To distribute leadership responsibility more
broadly, you need to mobilize everyone to gener-
ate solutions by increasing the information flow
that allows people across the organization to
make independent decisions and share the les-
sons they learn from innovative efforts.
To generate new leadership and innovative
ideas, you need to leverage diversity—which, of
course, is easier said than done. We all tend to
spend time with people who are similar to us.
Listening and learning across divides is taxing
work. But if you do not engage the widest pos-
sible range of life experiences and views—in-
cluding those of younger employees—you risk
operating without a nuanced picture of the
shifting realities facing the business internally
and externally.
Creating this kind of environment involves
giving up some authority usually associated
with leadership and even some ownership,
whether legal or psychological, in the organi-
zation. The aim, of course, is for everyone to
"act like they own the place" and thus be moti-
vated to come up with innovations or take the
lead in creating value for their company from
wherever they sit.
Zehnder did in fact convert the firm into a
corporation in which every partner, including
himself, held an equal share of equity and had
an equal vote at partners' meetings. Everyone's
compensation rose or fell with the firm's overall
performance. The aim was to make all the part-
ners
artners "intertwined in substance and purpose:'
Zehnder's collaborative and distributed lead-
ership model informed a strategic review that
the firm undertook just after his retirement. In
the short term, the partners faced a dramatic
collapse in the executive search market; their
long-term challenge was a shifting competitive
landscape, including the rise of online recruit-
ing
ecruiting and the initial public offerings of several
major competitors. As the firm tried to figure
out how to adapt and thrive in this environ-
ment, Zehnder's words hung in the air: "How
we deal with change differentiates the top per-
formers from the laggards. But first we must
know what should never change. We must
grasp the difference between timeless princi-
ples and daily practices." Again, most sustain -
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW • JULY -AUGUST 2009 PAGE 6
able change is not about change at all but
about discerning and conserving what is pre-
cious and essential.
The firm took a bottom-up approach to
sketching out its future, involving every part-
ner, from junior to senior, in the process. It
chose to remain a private partnership. Unlike
rivals that were ordering massive downsizing,
the firm decided there would be virtually no
layoffs: Preserving the social fabric of the orga-
nization, crucial to long-term success, was
deemed more important than short-term fi-
nancial results. In fact, the firm opted to con-
tinue hiring and electing partners even during
the down market.
Rooted in its culture of interdependence,
the firm adapted to a changing environment,
producing excellent results, even in the short
term, as it gained market share, maintained
healthy margins, and sustained morale—a
major source of ongoing success. Adaptive
work enabled the firm to take the best of its
history into the future.
Taking Care of Yourself
To keep yourself from being corralled by the
forces that generated the crisis in the first
place, you must be able to depart from the de-
fault habits of authoritative certainty. The
work of leadership demands that you manage
not only the critical adaptive responses within
and surrounding your business but also your
own thinking and emotions.
This will test your limits. Taking care of your-
self both physically and emotionally will be
crucial to your success. You can achieve none
of your leadership aims if you sacrifice yourself
to the cause.
First, give yourself permission to be both op-
timistic and realistic. This will create a healthy
tension that keeps optimism from turning into
denial and realism from devolving into cyni-
cism.
Second, find sanctuaries where you can re-
flect on events and regain perspective. A sanc-
tuary may be a place or an activity that allows
you to step away and recalibrate your internal
responses. For example, if you tend to demand
too much from your organization, you might
Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis
use the time to ask yourself, "Am I pushing too
hard? Am I at risk of grinding people into the
ground, including myself? Do I fully appreci-
ate the sacrifices I'm asking people to make?"
Third, reach out to confidants with whom you
can debrief your workdays and articulate your
reasons for taking certain actions. Ideally, a
confidant is not a current ally within your orga-
nization—who may someday end up on the
opposite side of an issue—but someone exter-
nal to it. The most important criterion is that
your confidant care more about you than
about the issues at stake.
Fourth, bring more of your emotional self to
the workplace. Appropriate displays of emo-
tion can be an effective tool for change, espe-
cially when balanced with poise. Maintaining
this balance lets people know that although
the situation is fraught with feelings, it is con-
tainable. This is a tricky tightrope to walk, es-
pecially for women, who may worry about
being dismissed as too emotional.
Finally, don't lose yourself in your role. Defin-
ing your life through a single endeavor, no
matter how important your work is to you and
to others, makes you vulnerable when the en-
vironment shifts. It also denies you other op-
portunities for fulfillment.
Achieving your highest and most noble aspi-
rations for your organization may take more
than a lifetime. Your efforts may only begin
this work. But you can accomplish something
worthwhile every day in the interactions you
have with the people at work, with your fam-
ily, and with those you encounter by chance.
Adaptive leadership is a daily opportunity to
mobilize the resources of people to thrive in a
changing and challenging world.
Note: Some of the information in this article was
drawn from "Paul Levy. Taking Charge of the
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center,"HBS case
no. 9-3o3-oo8 and "Strategic Review at Egon Ze-
hnder International,"HBS case no. 9-go4-o71.
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PAGE 8
City Of Ukiah Services
26 -Aug -11
Revenues Total Expenditure GF Expenditure
GF Cost
$
12,953,209
$
12,928,148
$
12,500
$
288,800
$
150,600
$
207,312
$
179,200
$
5,098,358
$
108,150
$
566,042
$
2,990,948
$
20,900
$
145,003
$
762,388
$
23,500
$
77,542
$
791,696
$
537,000
$
546,743
$
55,000
$
125,093
$
67,000 Private $ 150,662 Public
$
268,972
$
302,300
290,748
$
947,000
1,004,511
$
2,915,084
$
12,652,222
SERVICES
GENERAL GOVERNMENT
Planning
Building Inspection
PUBLIC SAFETY
Police
Animal Control
Fire/Ambulance
PUBLIC WORKS
Engineering & Administration
Street Maintenance
Traffic Signals
COMMUNITY SERVICES
Parks
Recreation
Aquatics
Sun House
CONFERENCE CENTER
GOLF COURSE
Steps to the City of Ukiah's Restructuring Process
PHASE 1 -DETERMINE PRIORITIES
1. Discuss and agree upon services to which we apply criteria.
2. Apply criteria services
3. Evaluate role of "incidental services" (e.g., code enforcement; staff support to commissions/ citizen committees; project
planning/information/technical assistance for citizens re: permits, planning process; volunteer projects); parking district; airport; and
utility billing.)
4. Evaluate role of general administration
5. Evaluate role of capital projects
6. Determine relative priorities for services
7. Journey Map (Sue Haun)
PHASE 2 -DEVELOP RESTRUCTURING SCENARIOS
1. Determine how current spending compares with city council service priorities
2. Council discusses broad tools for staff to use for cost saving (e.g. contracting, partnerships)
3. Council gives direction to staff vis-a-vis analyses to conduct for restructuring scenarios to align expenditures with priorities.
4. Continue iterative process between staff and council to develop final scenarios.
PHASE 3 -ENGAGE COMMUNITY REGARDING RESTRUCTURING SCENARIOS
PHASE 4 -DEVELOP 5 -YEAR PLAN
1. Provide staff with direction for development of FY 2012/12 general fund budget.
REVENUES AND SERVICE COSTS
CITY SERVICES
CRITERIA
Totals
Quality of Life
Finance & Investment
Consistency with Council Priorities
General
Total General Fund
Revenues Expenditure Fund Cost
Expenditure
How many
people benefit
from this
service re: to
city population?
(5)
How well does
it attract and
retain new
people and
promote
economic
development?
(7)
Does $1 How well does
invested now it achieve
represent revenue
increased enhancement
revenue or /economy of
saved dollars in scale/improve
the future? services?
(9) (10)
How important
is it to
achieving
annexation?
(5)
How important
is it to focus on
this service
given limited
staff resources?
(9)
12,953,209 12,928,148
2,067,296
GENERAL GOVT
14,127
City council
59,051
City clerk
20,110
Elections
113,598
City manager
281,591
Finance
94,119,
City Attorney
288,800
Planning
246,724
Human res./risk mgmt
63,267
Admin support
34,274
City treasurer
98,255
Comm.out/public info.
155,725
Information tech
390,343
Misc. gen. gov't
150,000 207,312
Bldg. inspection
8,197,456
PUBLIC SAFETY
4,795,157
Police
113,329
COPS grant
170,572
Major crimes tsk
19,300
Police reserve
108,150
Animal control
565,942 2,944,751
Fire
46,197
Fire reserves
Exercise Steps:
1. Review and agree that all city services up for discussion are listed.
2. Review and agree on criteria that need to be considered in evaluating each service.
3. Review and agree on numerical weighting value for each criteria on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being high and 1 being low.
4. For each service, assess how well the service meets or satisfies the criteria on a scale of 1-10, 10 being a complete fit.
5. Multiply the criteria weighting value determined in step 3 against your numerical assessment of how the service fits the criteria. This value is placed in the box corresponding to the
cross section between the strategy and the criterion being considered.
6. Total the values for each service and place that value in the last, "Totals", column.
7. At the conclusion of looking at each service against all the criteria, evaluate the options (go to Phase I, step 4).
930,891 PUBLIC WORKS
145,003
Engineering & admin
762,388
Street maintenance
23,500
Traffic signals
1,732,504 COMM. SERVICES
77,442
791,696
Parks
537,000
546,743
Recreation
125,093
Aquatics
110,000
268,972
Sun house
302,300 290,748
CONF. CENTER
( enterprise)
947,000 1,004,511
GOLF COURSE
(enterprise)
3,678,306 13,329,598
RDA (prior to
legislation)
Housing
Capital outlay
Program/projects
Housing bond projects
Redev. bond projects
Exercise Steps:
1. Review and agree that all city services up for discussion are listed.
2. Review and agree on criteria that need to be considered in evaluating each service.
3. Review and agree on numerical weighting value for each criteria on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being high and 1 being low.
4. For each service, assess how well the service meets or satisfies the criteria on a scale of 1-10, 10 being a complete fit.
5. Multiply the criteria weighting value determined in step 3 against your numerical assessment of how the service fits the criteria. This value is placed in the box corresponding to the
cross section between the strategy and the criterion being considered.
6. Total the values for each service and place that value in the last, "Totals", column.
7. At the conclusion of looking at each service against all the criteria, evaluate the options (go to Phase I, step 4).