case studies
Leadership Consulting
Effective leadership requires much less than people often think. It is simply a matter of recognizing the priority tasks that must get done and how best to ensure proper completion. No matter how talented, skilled and prepared you feel, some tasks require delegation to be most effective.
The performance of certain tasks, like conducting a performance audit, cannot be done by any person internal to the organization without jeopardizing the credibility and legitimacy of the assessment. Employing external resources and delegating such tasks may cost more than what your capable performance of the same task would entail.
However, in spite of the nominal dollar savings you achieved, you cannot reproduce the validity and credibility that an outside observer will be able to deliver for the same work.
Partnering for Performance Management
By Benjamin Marchant
Solutions simplified!
Effective leadership often requires less work than most people think. When leadership recognizes what tasks take priority and forms effective teams to ensure their completion then the entire organization benefits. Let’s look at the example of a city we worked with a few years ago.
The City Which Shall Not Be Named (to protect the guilty) was running out of money. They raised property taxes and increased city revenue without notice to residents. The homeowners revolted and initiated a performance audit of the city to figure out just what was going on. The major question was how could the city be so mismanaged that the only solution was to raise rates on every. Single. Service. Voters replaced the City Council with a new one that promised constituents they would hire a consultant to analyze the city from top to bottom and fix problems.
During the performance audit, long-time city workers shared their stories and revealed how bad things got as their department budgets were cut over the years. Pulling resources from one department had adversely affected others and infighting undermined the entire process for finding solutions. Utilizing a consultant to conduct a performance audit paved the way for a successful solution. The consultant has no ties to any department. Suggestions benefit the City without regard to watercooler disagreements. Stakeholders respect consultants for their expertise and lack of internal bias toward any one department or person.
Working with a variety of stakeholders with differing strong opinions exhausts everyone. Delegate your headache to GovGurus. Our experienced consultants figure out what your organization needs in order to succeed and presents you with specific action items to fix.
team building
Even the most dysfunctional, recalcitrant and adverse people within an old and tired organization will change when prevailed upon by compelling invitations to participate in leadership. Not all will remain with the organization through this change, however overcoming opposition through leadership and power-sharing techniques transcends contenders and champions compatriots for the betterment of all.
“Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
From Anarchy to Solidarity
By Benjamin Marchant
When hired to serve the City of Highway to Hell, the Council warned me, the Interim Administrator warned me, and staff all warned me that nothing but huge problems and tremendous challenges supported by good intentions awaited me. The organization I received appeared bereft of any management structure or leadership passed on from traditions of turnover and political squabbling over two decades.
To describe staff as distrustful, hostile, and ambivalent to management grossly understates the cultural norms and expectations reinforcing a siloed and fragmented organization. Conditions precedent notwithstanding, my calm, respectful and positive demeanor deflected most hostilities through genuine interest, compassion and support for the members of the staff. Directors, who for years learned to fend for themselves without attention or support from the manager, expected to continue as if nothing had changed.
In spite of these adverse conditions, I brought the Directors together and built a vision with them of the ideal organization, enabling them to perform their responsibilities under ideal conditions. For some of them, this came as quite a shock, for never had they experienced validation and acknowledgement for the efforts they made struggling to provide a modicum of service with what limited resources they were capable of mustering for themselves.
Their support and loyalty was secured through the combined effort of building a strategic, capital and budget plan of action for achieving a more effective level of service. Much of the accomplishment came from the reallocation of existing and underutilized resources already on hand. The combined effort to recognize and value the contributions of each member and each department built an esprit-de-corps that began permeating the morale of the staff throughout the organization.
Positive changes made certain people on staff uncomfortable inducing them to leave the organization voluntarily, which further accelerated positive changes through the selection and hire of individuals sharing the new positive values and attitudes of the leadership team. As resistance intensified by certain intransigent members on staff, the stakes increased as more people abandoned them in favor of the positive changes.
The organization ultimately achieved a powerful state of leadership solidarity and saw many fruitful successes from this transition.
Project Management
Consider the vibrant municipality of Springettsbury Township in York County. Since the 1970s, the township’s comprehensive planning document and master transportation plan outlined a section of missing road that needed to cross a railroad track. The residents, businesses and township rallied for many years to make it happen. However, the Norfolk Southern Railroad blocked all efforts to cross their track.
Norfolk Southern Railroad asserted that an at-grade-crossing over their tracks poses inherent risk for any person or vehicle crossing as they could collide with a moving train. The National Transportation Safety Board supports their position and opposes the creation of new at-grade crossings. Railroad companies enjoy a unique and special status under the national railroad act which exempts them from most State and local government regulations. And the stand off between the township and the railroad continued for decades.
Ultimately, an extraordinary effort by then Township Manager Marchant to bring all stakeholders to the table resulted in the the at-grade crossing being approved. The Railroad learned that whether they liked it or not, people crossed their tracks at the site of the proposed road. Making an official crossing to increase the ease and likelihood that people will cross at the designated place increased safety. The Township desired the ability to link the north and south sides of the tracks. Businesses and citizens living on the north needed more efficient access to services like fire and medical to the south. By convening a broad group of stakeholders and compiling data and evidence to support the Township’s position that a crossing would increase public safety, the NSRR agreed to allow the township to proceed with the plan to build and pay for an at-grade crossing and enter it in with the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission.
Stakeholders brought together:
North side of the tracks: various residential communities, a long-term care nursing and hospice residential facility, an affordable housing apartment complex, as well as the County Jail, the County Emergency Operations Center, County Health Clinic, the U.S. Postal Service, and numerous industrial and commercial businesses all in a business park adjacent to the tracks.
South side of the tracks: York Area United Fire and Rescue station, Police Chief, Fire Chief, Township Engineer, Superintendent of Streets, and Township, County, State and US elected representatives
Municipal Consulting
Every city, town and village has a few big aspirations that they have been yearning to see realized for years and even decades. Between the strong consensus and desire of the community for a particular project and the successful completion of that project is a gap that GovGurus turns into action.
Let us help you spark the initiative, manage the process and bring the project to completion!
The Strategic Plan: From Ambivalence to Order
By Benjamin Marchant
The “City of Almost Utopia” operated in a stable and consistent manner for many years. Even though strong revenues, low taxes and robust services demonstrated the success of the community, notable deficiencies in the performance of the organization raised valid concerns.
Ten years of recurring budget deficits in excess of $1,000,000 and the diminishing of operating reserves (from $6,000,000 down to below $3,000,000) challenged the governing body to think critically about how to improve the city’s performance.
The City hired Manager Marchant to bring a competitive edge to the municipal organization with a strong strategic plan. In under three years, the organization flourished under the strategic planning model which built vision, unity and success from the in-put and buy-in of community members, employees, directors and the leadership team.
In that time, strategic planning outcomes produced balanced budgets and healthy surpluses to replenish operating reserves to prior levels!
Charter Reform: The Rogue Commission
By Benjamin Marchant
Following the third successive failure to get a budget passed and approved by the electorate in one year (required by municipal charter) the Council decided it was time to look at amending the charter to improve the budget approval process. Without a budget a city cannot operate, and disruptions more frequently occur in the provision of basic services.
A lack of applicants impeded the Council’s efforts to form a charter review commission in a timely manner. Beyond a cursory interview to fill the quota of members, no vetting candidates’ motives or qualifications occurred. Although clear and specific goals and expectations for the work was set by Council with a scheduled time-frame, the commission pursued other agendas heedlessly.
A highly skewed process, exceeding the time allotted, brought forth many unvetted, unexplained and unsought for changes to the composition, terms of office, and organizational structure of two elected governing bodies (the city and the school) and a very complicated alternative to the existing budget approval process. Personal and special interest agendas heavily politicized and diverted the commission from its Council instruction and mandate which was also at variance with the city’s chief legal counsel.
With only days to deliberate and adopt ballot questions, the haste of the Council to rewrite and move items forward left many constituents upset and dissatisfied with the whole process. Even after the election in which certain of the proposed changes were approved by the voters, the lack of process adherence to formally accept and codify the voter approved provisions leaves much unresolved with great uncertainty.
This true and cautionary tale demonstrates how rushed and heedless experiments in governmental changes can produce poor outcomes at great expense.