President’s Message
While waiting to give testimony before the City Council in February, a comment by Commissioner Fish caught my attention. At the end of a little back–and–forth discussion among Council members regarding some testimony just given, he offered an aside about how nice it was to have this type of interaction between the mayor and commissioners. For a brief second I was puzzled by this until “a light went off” in my head and the awareness of the vast difference between public and private organizational dynamics became apparent in a way I had never really considered in the past.
Let me explain. When I was working, a key element of any group or team within the particular organization was forming “working relationships” with your peers and colleagues. This was fostered in numerous and diverse ways: informal lunch meetings, after–work “attitude adjustment” hours, the classic golf outing and such. When working at a small, medical device manufacturer, I know more decisions and progress were made during the informal lunch meetings the president held a couple times a month with the Directors than anywhere else (typically at a local Cracker Barrel; he liked the fried okra). While I’m far from an expert of Oregon’s public meetings laws, I can speculate that it is far more difficult for our City Commissioners to have opportunities to form these “working relationships” and nearly impossible to hold any informal meetings where the public’s business is even remotely touched upon. I assume—always a risk—that the real informal discussions between Commissioners happens de facto through their office staffs.
Being in production management, my professional life was always linked to team dynamics and culture. Early in my career I attended a week–long, internal company training session that, among others things, demonstrated the ability of a good team to always outperform its individual highest achiever. Without fail, over the week, when given tough, complex issues and asked to choose the “best answer” (very few absolutes), teams always outperformed the best individual score. In addition, the best teams were made up of members with a wide mix of character traits. Books written on these team traits could fill a small library and are given a variety of names by the numerous authors. A few of the common identified traits are: Organizer—keeps team on topic; Inquirer—keeps team objective and reduces emotions; Analyst—obviously the “numbers” guy/gal; Peacekeeper—brings different views together and helps bridge the gaps. Usually there are seven or eight traits identified; you don’t necessarily need that many on every team, as often an individual can fill more than one trait. The point is: when a team has broad representation of these traits within its members, it has higher potential to achieve success.
Whether it is a highly accountable and challenged group such as the City Council of a major metropolitan area or a more humble neighborhood association board it is true that “it takes all kinds” to be most effective!
So if you had been cautious about getting involved and questioning your contribution to any organization, don’t. Who knows, maybe you’d bring that missing trait to a team and help in more ways than you’ll ever know.