Item C: City Manager Evaluation - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Considerable time and effort was devoted to team building activities within our Executive Management team and across the City organization this last year. In order to become a more effective leadership team, we have focused on strategic issues identification, developing executive values and norms and making our team leadership more visible throughout the City organization. We used the action planning efforts in support of the council's eight strategic priority issues as an opportunity for inter-department teams to work on important City Council assignments to good results. My charge to the City organization this last year was to focus on superior customer service, increase productivity by working smarter, increase team work and team building throughout the organization, improve our capacity to engage in strategic planning and improved work planning, focus on employee development and to help make "One city. One team. One Voice." more than just a slogan. We have made progress on all fronts. I continue to meet with all of the Executive Directors monthly and hold citywide, all-staff meetings three or four times a year. I give a presentation to new employees at each new employee orientation session. I make it a point to talk about our shared values, City Council priority issues, customer service and teamwork at every city employee meeting and in my frequent presentations to neighborhood and civic organizations. We are committed to being a high performance organization that values employees and measures our performance. We have placed special emphasis on employee development and leadership training this last year. Our newly adopted employee development philosophy seeks to gain a more optimistic, highly satisfied and effective workforce through developing the talents and potentials of employees. In an era of increased competition for talent, we believe that a City that encourages employees to look for connections between their own career goals and the City's service delivery needs and one that works toward developing required skills and experience will be most successful recruiting and retaining the talent we need to provide the highest quality services in the coming years. We seek to create a climate for learning throughout the City organization through risk-taking and innovation. I am especially pleased with the Leadership Academy that we successfully launched this last year to assist with the leadership development of our most promising supervisors and managers so that we can better meet the leadership challenges of our changing community and develop the potential of our most promising rising leaders within the City organization. As a function of my regular management style, I seek opportunities each month to get out of my office and meet face-to-face with City employee work groups and individual employees throughout the year and across the organization. In these interactions, I am able to learn first hand about the important work we do, the conditions under which many of us work, and in the voice of real people. These experiences not only inform me--they also energize and inspire me to do the rest of the work of leadership. ! am also reminded that everyone in the City organization at every level must do his or her part of the work of leadership. If our organization is to be successful, it truly will take a citywide shared responsibility team to get the job done right. Our work as a shared responsibility team must be larger than any single individual and needs a network of talented individuals working together to accomplish it.