The Last Word

Arguments in meetings. Most meetings are mundane, but when there is a dispute about a policy, often the argument is between two people trying to get in the last word. I explain how to move from an unsatisfactory ending for both parties to one that will assist you in the next meeting about the policy.

What You can do about Corruption

Dec 9 was Anti-Corruption Day. What I find fascinating is one little group, the Fifth Pillar, that tackles corruption from the perspective of a civil society.  If citizens stop giving bribes to corrupt officials, officials will stop asking.  If you were in a situation where you needed to get your housing, your water, your electricity, would you give the bribe?  Fifth Pillar provides people with zero rupee notes in India to give to official who are expecting a bribe.  (It has similar notes for other countries.)

There are, of course, major organizations such as Transparency International, an advocate for greater transparency , that is visibility, as a means to reduce corruption in the public sector and throughout society.  This idea caught on with the UN, the sponsor of Anti-Corruption Day. We feel that we don't have much corruption in the United States.  Ours is perhaps more subtle.  You might check your website and see what is visible to the public from your meeting minutes to electronic processing of bills.

Listen to the Rocks

Did you listen to the rocks rolling? That's what it is like when you reorganize a government agency or a large nonprofit. Your employees come in with the tide and go out with tide, often griping and complaining.  Eventually, the rough edges smooth out.
In the public sector, it frequently happens after an election. A new administration wants to show that it is serious about change.  That change is top-down and with it, it brings complaints and griping that you can avoid.

The three most common reasons for a reorganization or even a merger of small nonprofits are.

1) Improve program or policy effectiveness.  We place together programs that have similar purposes.  Effectiveness is in the eye of the beholder unless you have a way to measure change.  That's what occurred after 9/11 when President Bush reorganized agencies into the Department of Homeland Security.  

2) Ideological or tactical ends. We restructure to symbolically convey the importance or loss of importance of a program.  Layoffs or hiring might occur.  Fundraising becomes a competition for nonprofits with similar goals, so we might even merge similar minded nonprofits.  Some might say that this is not reason for reorganizing.  That criticism may occur from within as well as from the public.  It may be time to change the mission if this is important to get a buy-in.

3) Improve efficiency. It’s the most common reason but the most difficult.  Costs occur from the very process of reorganizing.  Cost savings may be one-time savings. Administrative costs are not necessarily achieved by reducing redundancy such as closing offices.  Are the data available to measure performance before and after?  If you are working with publicly funded programs, the purpose of the programs can’t be changed.  

To be successful “listen to the rocks; ” get the input of employees at the front end as the waves of change are grabbing up the rocks.  You’ll grab even more as the waves roll out as the plans evolve with employee input.  Over time the rocks smooth out.

Power Tools and Databases

My power tool of choice is a sander.  Whenever I paint, it’s time to choose the right sander. This time I was removing old oil paint from a window sill.
That’s a job for a sheet sander

For small nonprofits and for individual use in any government agency, your power tool of choice is a spread sheet.  You use as a database.  It does the trick but if you’ve got a lot of data it gets easy to lose data, hopelessly mix up data when you sort (even though the spreadsheet asks if you are sure), get harder to use the larger the spreadsheet. \

1)   Use a spreadsheet if you have a small amount of data, perhaps up to row Column AA and 200 or 300 Rows.  Yes, you can use it for much more but…

Turn to an alternative, the rotary sander.  I’ve used this on large porch railings.  It helps you work on larger surfaces without creating lines.  The equivalent is Access or an open source cloud-based program.  These are true databases.  I’ve seen many employees fail to take the leap from a spreadsheet to a true database because the learning curve is high or you need to pay for a host website.  They move to a shared spreadsheet such as google sheets, but that isn’t the rotary sander equivalent. It just allows you to share more easily.  Databases are great for donor or member data because it is easier to handle large amounts of data and you’ll never sort it and have to start over.  I’m familiar with an open source data bases for housing museum and library digital collections and another for GIS data  

2)   Use a database to easily sort and filter data y, create queries, and routine reports but…

Sometimes you’ve grown enough and need to get out the belt sander.  It only goes one way and is designed for the big job.  The problem is it can get out of control.  I once used my belt sander on a cottage porch.  Don’t take your hand off or away it goes.  That is,  if you decided to ask a vendor to build a database for you, you will need to be hands-on in the development, ensure that you have follow-up, and routine updates.   You are probably familiar with infamous builds of state health and human service agencies.  They often have to be dumped because they fail to do what is needed. 

Belt Sander Source: Home Depot

I recently entered travel reimbursement using a proprietary web-based software for my university-based work.  I had to have a staff member specifically assigned to assist employees set up employees in the database.  I had to have that same staff member help me go through the database process to enter my miles, receipts, conference fees, etc.   It was clearly a product set up for a wide variety of customers.  It had lots of cities in the database to use for your start and stop destinations, but when I couldn’t find mine, I had to put in cities close by.  I couldn’t add in a new location.  Then I had to put in mileage to and from locations. The database didn’t use the cities I had already entered to determine my mileage automatically. Nor did it attach the hotel fees paid by a university credit card.  It had an unwieldy interface to put in cost centers.

1)   Use new builds to do multiple tasks for multiple departments that has continuous support from the vendor.

2)   Use an interface appropriate for your organization but…

Sometimes you just need a simple form.  Don’t automate what doesn’t need to be automated.  Travel reimbursement might well be one of these jobs.  I’m sure it was created to move to the paperless office, but is someone analyzing the costs of attendance at conferences, travel?  I doubt it; that is the true use of a database, to query and report.

The paper travel reimbursement form I filled out for my nonprofit volunteer work took a matter of minutes.  No employee had to guide me through.  It’s the equivalent of the washable sanding block. It works great for little jobs and to touch up those big jobs.

Do you have a misguided use of a database at your work? Let me know.

9/11, Emergency Management, and Gander Newfoundland

I was fortunate to meet Jake Turner, Town Manager of Gander, Newfoundland when planes coming into US east coast airspace were diverted to Gander, NL.  The Broadway hit,  Come From Away, tells the story of what happened when thousands of people descended on a town of 11,000. It takes a little license by making the mayor the center of attention when the town manager was the responsible party.  Like many small towns, the town manager is responsible for the budget, day to day functions, and recommendations to the town council. The town manager also is involved in emergency management.

As a well-functioning community, Gander had an emergency plan and had information about coordinating with the Gander Airport but, of course, not for this kind of event.  Gander NL is a little different from most of our small communities in that it has a federally managed airport with an extremely long run way, built for Canadian, English and American forces to go back and forth during WWII.  It was the closest point to Europe.  That was why all the planes were diverted to Gander. Gander hosted about 38 diverted planes.  The community and surrounding communities housed and fed about 6800 people. Today, many of those people return to Gander to visit. The airport is also a tourist location in that it has retained much of its mid-century décor.

Jake Turner was the Chief Administrative Officer of Gander Newfoundland serving for 22 years from 1991 to 2013.  Listen to what Mr. Turner had to say about that day and how the town coordinated with the many other agencies that became involved over the coming days.  

Your town’s emergency plan probably started as relatively small document coordinated by the fire department.  The fire department had to be able to handle fires, including the huge wild fires in western United States but also fires caused by trucks tipping over with unknown carcinogens.  A good emergency management plan has responsibilities listed for town officials from the town manager to the fire chief; emergency communication plans; coordination plans with county, state and federal officials, hospital and airport officials; and considers a variety of emergencies from active shooters to meth labs.  Officials may have participated in table-top exercises to run through a scenario and work out what problems they may face.  Just as hospitals have emergency exercises, some towns  actively run through a mock-up scenario with volunteers from the community participating.

Town of Gander Newfoundland
Gander Airport

Fire and Emergency Services Newfoundland and Labrador https://www.gov.nl.ca/fes/

Maine Emergency Management

Locally Grown Organic Firewood Mission

Many a time we agonize over a mission statement. We have retreats to establish our mission, vision, and values.  I think the best are to the point.  Locally grown organic firewood. It’s funny isn’t it. That was the sign on the side of the road I passed by.  It could make a pretty good mission statement.  It’s easy to turn it into a mission statement.  TO provide locally grown organic firewood. Sometimes you need to narrow it down to a particular audience and can add the preposition FOR.  To provide locally grown organic firewood for Salem or for tourists.  Add BY and you are done.  To provide locally grown organic firewood for Salem tourists by using sustainable harvesting. 

If you know someone working in a hospital, he or she can probably recite the mission.  It’s on the back of the name tag.  It might read something similar to this: To provide the best health care in Salem Hospital by specializing in big toes.  Adding the BY helps us distinguish ourselves. 

You’ve seen, “To protect and serve” and “Community Policing on police cars.  It turns into a pretty good mission statement “To protect and serve (the for is implied) Salem by using community policing techniques.

That’s how to write a mission in a nutshell.  Start with to.  If you don’t need to add the prepositional statements beginning with for or by, all the better.  Don’t get bogged down in a long one.  No one will remember it and it becomes meaningless to your employees and your clients, participants or citizens.

The Harangue

Source: Freedictionary.com

Have you seen the Progressive Insurance commercial with Dads’ Support Group for people who are saying and doing things their dads did?  Are you now equivalent to dad in the office?  One way you’ve become dad, that is a senior staff member, is the harangue.  You tell the history of the program, the project, when most have already heard it.  It’s true some of the new staff may not know the history and history can be important.  Staff want to move on to new programs, projects or solutions.  It just takes up a lot of time when you could be problem solving.  Millenials and GenXers, what are you seeing in the work place, vowing you’ll never say or do?  Senior staff, what are you doing that you never thought you would be doing?  Tell me about the time you…  

Are there solutions when you have someone on the way to the harangue? Sure there are.

Tactics to Challenge the Harangue

The harangue occurs when one person dominates the committee meeting, the staff meeting or just a conversation.  You’ve probably seen the Progressive Insurance commercial with the Dads’ Support Group for people who are saying and doing things their dads did?  The harangue can be interesting and useful at first, but it often takes up time, and you’ve heard it many times before.  It fails to help you solve the current problem.  Here are some things you can do.

1.  Chairs of meetings. You know the drill. Start your meeting on time and end on time.

            This works most of the time although I’ve seen the haranguer hijack meetings.  It takes a strong chair.  I chaired a meeting one time in which I suddenly jumped up and said I had to leave. I had a bus to catch.  It’s true, I did.  You might not have that extreme a need to end the meeting, but you do need to investigate questions that arose in the meeting.

2.  Attendees.  If you are an attendee to a meeting, discretely leave when the meeting should be over.  Don’t leave before the meeting is scheduled to end.

Yes, you might not want to do this if your boss is the chair, but a team meeting might be just the place.  You have to judge how others will feel about this.  Will they resent this actions and accuse you of not being a team player?

3.  Telecommuters. If the harangue is a phone conversation, dust.

            I discovered that a colleague of mine also had this tactic.  I have cleaned places I would never imagine cleaning.  The harangue sometimes contains information you do need as well as the history you’ve heard.  If someone else is home, have that person call you loudly so you can end the conversation.  Don’t use the excuse of another call on the line.  It’s rude.

4. Hallway conversations.  Continue walking. Don’t stop.  

Are there solutions if you are the one who likes to harangue.  Sorry.  We'll need to have a support group for you at work for that.

You can see the Progressive Commercial that inspired me on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/XMaIFg-gMIk

Classics for modern public and nonprofit management

In Search of Excellence to Reinventing Government to Managing in the 21st Century

This month I introduce you to two classic management books that still have relevance to today's public and nonprofit managers.  The best companies put customer service in the forefront according to Peters and Waterman.   The way to be the best public service is to provide customer service according to Osborne and Gaebler.
Unfortunately, there is no comparable classic for the nonprofit sector.  Certainly, providing excellent service will make you a stand-out.   In Search for Excellence  has at least one other message that applies to modern nonprofits, "Stick to Your Knitting."  Many nonprofits while running for the grants are pulled away from their true missions.





Peters, Thomas and Robert Waterman (1982).  In Search of Excellence.  New York: Harper and Row.
Osborne, David and Ted Gaebler (1992). Reinventing Government. >Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.

Tips on Creating Performance Measures: Hard to track Clients

Sometimes it's hard to create perfomance measures because you have clients that need privacy. You have clients that are moving on with their lives and leave the area. You can still measure your work!

Tip: Ask them to call you.

Going to Abilene?

Public and Nonprofit Management by the Book: Getting to Yes

 A citizen received a call from the town council chair.  After that call, he came to the town council meeting and demanded that the council chair stop bullying and intimidating him. Ever wondered how to handle such a situation.  You can get to yes.  Here's how

 



Reference:  Fisher, Roger and William Ury.  Getting to Yes. New York: Penguin Books. Any edition

A citizen received a call from the town council chair.  After that call, he came to the town council meeting and demanded that the council chair stop bullying and intimidating him. The chair had probably spoken to him about a major economic development report that the council had approved.  The chair response was that his call wasn’t intimidating. Then he “double downed” and told the citizen should to file an ethics complaint.  Can these two ever agree? 

You sigh and say there is not much that can be done.  Well Fisher and Ury who wrote Getting to Yes give us some ideas. 

It’s clear that personalities are interfering with a solution.  And we really need to know what the problem is rather than guessing.  Find out what might be helpful to both.  In small towns they will meet each other again. 

What are possible options. We need to have someone intervene that’s for a sure, in formal parlance, a facilitator, but in this situation, it could simply be another citizen.  it may be that the citizen simply needs an apology. Politicians aren’t very good at that. The political apology I’m sorry if you feel that way.  That may be enough.

 

Or it may be that the citizen needs to be heard.  He may not understand that the report is just that only a report. There will be plenty of public meetings before the citizens vote on any expenditure.  Once we narrow down possible solutions, do the two agree that the solution. is fair or beneficial or in the interests of the community. 

 

Let me give you another example, resolving a conflict in your staff meeting.  I’ve been in two staff meeting where the solution was asking, what do you need?   In a staff I worked with we often had disagreements about what kind of information to convey to the next level.  The minutes of the meeting weren’t enough.  I was chairing that day and asked what do you need to one peeved staff?  He wanted to write a memo.  Once stated I was fortunate enough to be able to say you got it.  Thanks for listening, I hope you can get to Yes.  I’m Carolyn Ball

Town Manager Neutrality Essential for the Well-Being of our Towns

The Maine Town City and County Managers Association has taken a strong stand against the beliefs of Jackman Town Manager who is not member of MTCMA.  Members adhere to a Code of Ethics to maintain the public confidence. Further, the history of the profession is one of neutrality, to serve all.  A town manager who espouses white nationalist beliefs, even in his private time, can not fulfill the job of town manager. It is a very difficult position.  The town has since terminated this person.  Jackman Maine Town Manager story
Here is the full statement of Larry Mead, Old Orchard Beach Town Manager, President of the MTCMA


Maine Town City and County Management Association Statement

Blizzards, Cyclone Bombs and Pay

Source: Carolyn Ball, Mount Desert Island Maine, 1/4/2018

Would you go to work if you had to pass this storm surge. Would you pay an employee who didn't come in because of the storm surge above. Almost anywhere in the US and in Canada, you have had to close, partially close your nonprofit or government for a day or part of the day. You may have had essential employees who had to work.  It used to be relatively simple how you were going to pay or not pay employees.  You often paid employees whether salaried or hourly if they worked for part of the day.  You might have paid only your salaried if you closed for the whole day.  In the past few years, employers have become much more concerned about the safety of employees. Last year, one our hospitals closed during a snowstorm!  Yes, the emergency room was open and nurses on the units had to come in, but most support personnel and clinics were closed.  Safety seems to trump the need to control the payroll.

Now you have one more wage consideration.  You have employees, both salaried and hourly, who work from home, all the time, some of the time, or when there is a blizzard.  Your salaried employees will continue to be paid, but how do you manage your hourly employees? Do you pay those hourly employees who can work from home their regular pay and not pay those hourlies who do their work on site?  You may have salaried employees who become hourly employees as they run snowplows.  Particularly for public employers, fairness is a concern but so too is using the taxpayers’ funds wisely.  How have you controlled your payroll during the snowstorms, blizzards, and extreme cold weather? I’d like to know what policies you have in place or did you make a specific decision related to a storm?