It's great to be here.

So appreciate the opportunity to work with you, as Tim said, we worked together for a long time, number of different cities and situations, and this is really for me a great great privilege to be a part of.

You know, there's a great story in the book that you may have heard of or read called Extreme Ownership by two former Navy SEALs, uh Jocko Willink and Leif Baben.

And they were Navy SEALs, and then they became trainers of SEALs, and then after they retired, they developed a management consulting company that works for the private sector.

I'm really glad they work with the private sector, because if they work with the public sector, people like me would probably be put out of business.

But nevertheless, this is a great book.

And they tell this story about an experience when they were they were trainers of you know SEALs that are in progress, and they had this exercise where uh there were seven who had to carry this raft, it's weighed 200 pounds, so it's like a boat, up and down the the beach and then launch it into the water, take it to a certain point, and then dump it.

Everything comes out of it, including them.

And then they get back in it and have to take it go to the next place.

And so Jocko and Leaf are on dry ground observing, and as they tell the story, there was one boat, I think it was boat number two, that was like way out ahead of everybody else.

They were just a well-oiled machine, everything was working just right.

And there was another boat, boat number six, that was like way behind, and it was total chaos.

You could hear the crew squabbling with each other, the leaders yelling.

I mean, it kind of reminds you of the Dallas Cowboys, you know, to be honest.

So you get the picture.

That's why they said, let's do something.

Let's flip the leaders.

Let's take the leader from boat number two that's doing so well and put them in boat number six, and let's take the leader from six and put them in two.

And here's what happened.

Boat number two that had been good, stayed good.

So I don't know if it was just, you know, fake it until you make it, or it maybe the culture was just strong enough that it carried him.

Or maybe he learned some lessons and needed a new place to go.

But they stayed up there.

But what's more interesting is that boat number six that had been so bad, started getting better and better and better.

And the rest of the day, the the exercise was a race between boat number two and the six to see who's going to be the best.

And I love that story because it illustrates a truism, perhaps, that everything rises or falls with leadership.

Everything rises or falls with leadership.

Everything either gets better or worse, depending upon the quality of leadership that's brought to bear on that situation.

Now, it doesn't mean that good leaders never have hard problems, because we all know that's the case.

But it does mean that no matter what the rough waters that you go through, maybe even if a mistake causes them, or you inherit somebody's mistake, if you bring to bear good leadership practices, things will get better.

And that's really what keeps me charged up about working with cities and city councils, is that I know all of our cities across the country, they face big challenges.

And you know, that can't be, you know, swept under the rug, so to speak.

So you're to be commended just for being willing to chat take these challenges on because they're hard.

They really are.

But with good leadership, it's not going to be perfect.

Nothing's ever perfect, right?

But it can get better.

And that's the whole idea of today and tomorrow is how to how do you, as a as a good leadership team, coalesce around some key strategic priorities so that you can make things better for the city and the future of Davenport.

And we'll have a little bit of time where I'm talking, um, but a lot of the time will be spent with you talking to each other.

Often in small groups, I like to use triads and with counting the city administrator, we'll have a perfect number of 12.

So we'll have four groups, and we'll mix you up so that hopefully you get a chance to engage with really you will.

Everybody on the council, and so if if if Rick and Tim get cross with each other, we can just survive it for a little bit, Paul, and then we can move them on.

So that's that's kind of the idea.

And you know, I I got to drive around your city some today, and man, what beautiful weather you have.

I didn't know that this was February in Iowa, you know.

My son went to college in Chicago, and I don't remember winters being quite this nice, but I guess that makes a difference.

So we're gonna talk a little bit about what kind of leadership does it take.

What kind of leadership does it take?

And without going into too much detail, this was a model that our company developed about 15 years ago.

I had just started with SGR.

We we're a private company, but we just work with local governments and and um across the country, and our former, our our owner and former CEO, Ron Hollfield was a city manager.

And so our heart is how do we help local governments be more successful?

And this conversation where this model came from started where we were talking about how are we sure we've got the right number of classes and where do they go?

But boy, have you ever been in that situation where you go, wait, that's not really what this is about, is it?

That's what happened to us that day.

And we realized we're not talking about where classes should go, we're really talking about where leader how people lead.

And so I just want to go over this with you because it has a lot to say to us today.

I would say that the foundation for all legitimate leadership is healthy relationships.

All legitimate leadership is based on healthy relationships.

And at that level, no matter what your title, or whether you're an employee or an elected official, the mayor, or a brand new council member, people will follow you and cooperate with you based on how you treat them.

That all things being equal, we're more likely to cooperate with someone who treats us with what?

Honor and dignity and respect than if somebody just grunts at us on a good day.

And so that's that's the foundation.

And so, in that, if you think about it, that really supports this idea that leadership is not a title, it's a set of practices, it's a set of behavioral practices that we can all learn.

One time I was in an organization and we were interviewing them about you know what do we need to get better at, etc.

And somebody said, Well, the problem is we have too many leaders and not enough followers.

And I've thought about that through the years, and I've thought that's exactly opposite of what the problem was.

We need more leaders because leaders follow too.

Everybody has somebody they're following.

So that's the foundation.

And that applies not only to how we treat residents, but how we treat each other and how we treat staff and how how we relate.

The next level, though, is what we call operational leadership.

And at that level, people will follow you because they perceive that you know more about it than they do.

You know, maybe in the in the in the job, you become a supervisor or uh or a crew leader, and people look up to you and say, oh, well, they know how to do this.

Or if you have been on council for more than one term, you you've been through budget seasons like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna take my cues from them.

This is how you do it, or you've been through appointing boards or whatever it is.

We look up to them, so okay, I see that.

What's important to remember is that just because you're at a level of operational leadership, whether that's as an elected official or staff, doesn't mean you can abandon relational leadership, right?

Because we've all known people who knew everything there was to know about the job, but they failed kindergarten when it came to knowing how to get along with people.

And uh I remember I was doing a council retreat for a suburb down in the Austin area, Jay, wasn't San Antonio, but it was close.

And in the advanced interviews, there was one person that I really got, I really connected with him because he was somebody that did strategic planning as a vocation.

Well, he honestly knew a whole lot more than me.

He had read some of the books that I've read, and he had read a lot that I hadn't read.

So I was really excited to meet with him.

He's oh yeah, I'm gonna bring you these books.

Okay, great.

We get to the day of the retreat, and it's it's like this.

We have staff in the back, and the council is up front, and and we're about I don't know, 20 minutes into the planning part, and I'm thinking, what is wrong with this guy?

Because he would just turn around and you would yell something at staff, or or staff would be talking because they were given a report, and he would talk them down.

And I was like, I think I know why nothing's getting done in the city, you know.

It was horrible to watch, and and and I I grabbed him later and said, Hey, you know, you seem a little unhappy with the staff.

No, no, I'm not.

Well, they think you are, and I do too, you know.

So you gotta you gotta make sure that as an operational level leader, you're still treating people with dignity and honor and respect, or else things won't really get done.

But then the next level of leadership is what we call systems leadership, and at that level, people will follow you because they trust that you have put into place systems that work for the good of a whole, even if you're not there to make them work, and that is a higher level of leadership.

That's not to put down responsibilities of supervision supervisors, we know that's really important.

But when you can create systems that work for the good of a whole, even if you're not there to make them work, that's a higher level of leadership.

And honestly, most of you in this room, well, all of you on the council and most of the staff that's here, probably, you need to be spending most of your time and energy for the city of Davenport at systems and up.

It's easy to get down into operational leadership as an elected official.

I mean, every one of you are good managers.

You had to be a good manager to get elected in a city like Davenport.

But you gotta always remember, right, that in this seat, you're not managers, you're a board of directors.

And you've got managers, now you have a permanent manager, I guess as permanent as anybody is, right?

So congratulations on that, Tim.

And you but but you're not the people that are doing the operational work.

You're the people that are sitting at that board level saying, this is the direction we want to go, and these are the systems we need to put into place.

So the guy that wrote the book that's really the best book on board governance, John Carver, he he says there's three questions that a board like you need to answer.

And we'll come back to him again and again.

The first question is, what good are we going to accomplish?

What's the good thing that collectively we're going to do for whose benefit and at what price point?

What's the good that we're going to accomplish?

Who's the beneficiary of it?

Because in local government, we need to make decisions that impact the widest possible swath of our population.

Anyone can make decisions that only help one segment.

But but the part of the reason local government is so hard and it takes longer is because you have to think about it from many different angles, right?

In business, I work a little bit for as a subperson for a guy that does work with just businesses.

And I'm I mean, I'm sorry, but I'm always taken away, taken back by how simple it is.

I mean, they have one thing to think about, you know.

Well, maybe two people and profit.

But in local government, it's a lot more complicated than that, isn't it?

But you have to decide who's gonna benefit from this.

And you have to decide what's the price point that we can absorb.

So then the next level, the highest level, and we'll kind of close this part off, is what we call strategic leadership.

And at that level, people will follow you because they trust that you know where the organization needs to go, you know where the city needs to go, and they can see themselves in that future.

That's an important part.

People trust you because you're not you're not thinking about now, you're thinking about where's the city need to go, and you're right about it, and they they res it it resonates with it.

And there's there's two big differences in strategic leadership in every other uh form of every other level, and that is one strategic leadership is about the future, it's where we're going.

But number two, strategic leadership is all about the culture.

Because while you grow leaders from the ground up, and you know, that's that's a really an a whole incredible skill set, you instill culture from the top down, and you 11 are at the top, and the culture will never be better in Davenport than the culture that exists between the 11 of you and how that affects staff as well.

And and you know, uh culture is a fascinating thing.

I don't know if anybody's read the book by Daniel Coyle, the The Culture Code, but what an incredible set of stories that man tells in that book.

It's amazing.

But but what's so important is that you are always building culture, and the decisions you make and the way you treat people and the vulnerability and transparency you display is what really it takes to get that culture where it where you want it to be.

And I've kind of come to the point, and as I'm getting pretty old, that I think I try not to make any decisions without thinking, what's the impact on the culture of this decision?

Now that doesn't mean we can't make hard decisions.

Sometimes we have to, and you say, well, it's yeah, it's not it's not gonna be popular, but it's what we have to do.

But I want to always take into account am I doing it in a way that can build the culture I want rather than tear down the culture that I want.

Because um, you know, Peter Drucker gets uh credited with this, though he didn't say it.

There's no place where we know that he said it.

But the saying is still true.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

What he's saying is you can have a great strategy, but if you have a toxic culture, that strategy is not gonna help you any.

And on the other hand, I've seen some places where maybe the the strategic plan wasn't as good or fresh as it need to be, but the culture was strong enough they were still being successful.

Ideally, I think if a good you have a good culture, you're gonna want a good strategic plan.

But if you have it to choose between the two, start with culture.

All right, that's enough for that.

What I want you to do is true to form, let's get in triads, and then we'll just put there, Tim, we'll put you with these guys, we'll put the three of you together, we'll put the three of you together, and good luck, Jasmine.

But you got him, okay?

And what I want you to do is this I I want you to talk about in your little triad, which one of these do you feel like you personally are the strongest at?

So what's your strongest?

And which one's your growth edge?

So which the one you say, personally, I need to get better in this one.

Okay?

Now, we're not saying that, I mean, if you come back and say I'm good at all of them, we might have a long day.

No, okay, so talk it up.

We'll share, we'll share back in just a minute, but share with each other.

What's your strength?

What's the one you need to get better at?

We'll start with this group.

What was the the most common?

Was were you all the same?

Strengths, strength-wise.

Read it different, yeah.

Okay.

What were they?

So Tim was strategic.

All right.

Um was his was his strength, and then I was uh operational and systems.

Okay.

And then was more operational with the weakness and strategic.

Okay, all right.

Very good.

And uh what about weaknesses for for Kyle and Tim?

I I uh said strategic.

Strategic.

Okay.

Okay.

Tim, do you have any weaknesses?

I've never seen a weakness.

Assistance.

Okay, I've never seen that.

All right, how about this group?

Uh so a couple of us identified as pretty strong, obviously relational.

Uh we had uh we have uh a member identified pretty strongly in systems, uh and I think we all three thought strategic is there.

We should be stronger as that.

Sorry, don't you say that?

We'll we'll stretch those uh strategic muscles a little bit these next couple of days.

And uh a friend of mine that he's a really good city, by the way, I know that you have city administrator and your alderman, but forgive me because more of the cities we work with have city managers and council, and so I will sometimes say council or council members or manager.

I know that's not the case, but I'm an old guy, and so I make mistakes, but for forgive me for that if I say that.

But one of in the city I live in Grapevine, our city manager is is uh Bruno Rumbelo is a great leader, and and he has a statement that I've I you know I've stolen.

He he says, we'll do it, we'll do it well this time and we'll do it better next time.

And and I love that because it's kind of like anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first, right?

Because if you only do things that you can do well at first, you don't do much in life.

But if it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly at first, and then getting better.

So if you feel like, hey, you know, these muscles aren't working too good on that strategic level.

Let's just keep at it.

They'll get better, they'll get better, I promise you.

I've seen it in lots and lots of cities.

All right, how about this group, the corner pocket over here?

What do you got?

Well, I think my weakness is probably relationship relational.

Uh not that I think I have that weakness, but I think sometimes I give off on aura that people don't want to approach me.

Especially in my day job.

I actually think on the top part I'm actually fairly strong at because in my day job, I'm required to look ahead and to have a game plan for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now.

So I think probably the bottom side of the triangle is where I probably could use some help.

I think I actually get along with a lot of people, but I just some people don't see me that way, so that's something that my perception or their perception of me I need to work on.

Yeah.

Thanks for that vulnerability.

Rick.

I'd like to say I'm not good at any of them.

It's still learning.

I you know, strategic, that's tough, right?

Yeah.

It's a weakness.

Relationships and operational.

Fairly strong, man, but strategic.

You know, you always sit and think moving things in a different direction, but it's it's hard when your direction is not the direction of others.

That's you know, yeah.

I said on many councils were in my direction.

My thoughts you gotta get six votes if you want to get something done.

And it hasn't always been that way, so yeah, maybe strategically, not very strong.

I tend to think some of my thoughts and some of the things I I see I would like to see get done.

I think maybe others are seeing that now.

Maybe we'll see.

We'll see how this goes.

All right, all right, good.

Thank you.

Jade.

I think I'm strong in the relational um the systems, the operational and the strategic are weaknesses, and definitely I mean, I have visions and big ideas.

Yeah, getting those, and again, it it's it's a team.

It's it's all of us or a majority has to agree.

Yeah.

Um so yeah, those would be weaknesses that it's going to take more than just myself to get there.

Oh, takes a team, for sure.

Okay, thanks.

How about this last group?

Y'all bring us home on this.

I with me, you'll go okay, believe it.

With me, I think it's culture respect.

I think they're connected all together.

Uh I guess the strategic would be my weakness because that's how culture and respect work.

Yeah.

But from what you said to me, I see a breakdown in any one of them stops them all.

Yes, yeah, that's that's a good point.

Maybe we we're not perfect, but once one stops, they're all gonna suffer.

Well, I have weaknesses.

I I think uh what we have to do is make sure those weaknesses don't become fatal flaws.

Right.

And and that's when that's when it's a problem.

Well, I think if you if you do the respect in the culture, you have to understand everybody, what you do affects everybody.

Yeah.

So if you make the right choice, everybody benefits, but if you stumble, you're gonna hurt somebody.

It's not quite click.

But to me, again, everything is connected.

Failure anywhere stops all of it.

Yeah.

And too, you know, this is like all models, it's imperfect because it's really not like you you you're moving in and out of all of those in different ways, you know, but you probably focus a particular on one time.

Tim or Jasmine, anything you want to add to this?

All right, I'll say operational.

Um we need to do here in the city is get it together.

And my weakness would be relations.

Okay.

I'm unapproachable.

Because who I used to live with.

That's why Rick said he's not good at anything, right?

Well, there you go.

Oh, yeah.

Jasmine, how about you?

I think it might come as a shocker to the council, but strategic.

Yeah.

Anyone discussing weaknesses.

Probably for the same reason that Alderman leading says relational.

I mean, people families, and I have no idea why.

Okay.

Well, well, thanks everybody for sharing that.

I want to something somebody said reminded me of a uh um assessment we used to use, and they stopped using it.

And I I tried like crazy to find a way we could still do this, but I I can draw it up here, and you'll probably kind of be able to identify where you're at.

This was a part of a disk.

If anybody's done disk, this was a part of a disk assessment that they quit doing this report.

But and I can't remember right now off the top of my head what it was called, but maybe it's team dimensions, but it's all about a Z, and I'll show you what I'm talking about here in a second.

And it was really helpful.

What they said in this assessment, you would be as you would kind of end up being one of several things.

Some people are creators, they think of things outside the box.

Steve Jobs kind of person, right?

Think about that.

They they think like that.

But creators usually need somebody to make that idea palatable to others, and that's what's called an advancer.

So they're ones that they can kind of get what the creator is talking about, and they know how to interpret it.

They know how to communicate it.

And so in a council, there's some people think of this idea, I got this great idea, but don't know how to communicate it.

But there's somebody else on the team that says, I know how to communicate that.

And so, in a perfect world, creators' ideas go to the advancer, and the advancer need it, they know it's good, but they don't know all the stuff about it, and so it needs to go to a refiner.

We're gonna say, that won't work.

But if we do this, it can.

They refine it.

What this assessment said is where ideas die is when they go from creator right to the refiner, right?

Because the revisor's like, no, and the creator's like, well, nobody ever wants to do what I want.

So that advancer is really crucial.

But that doesn't get the job done.

You need somebody who can execute.

And I'm gonna call it just execute, not executor, because that seems a little harsh, right?

But the person that can actually get it done.

And and I've seen on almost every council I've worked with, there's somebody that's a creator.

They can think outside the box, they think outside the building.

And usually there's some advancers.

There's almost always a refiner, and there's usually some folks that know how to get there, they're they're they are hit the streets kind of people.

And the one in the middle is what this is called a flexor.

So they can move this way, this way.

They kind of they're they're they're very uh capable of doing different things with ideas.

And so I'm just thought about that.

As we're working in the next couple of days, you might start thinking like, oh, I think Kyle is a he's a he's a flexor.

Or you know, uh, maybe Matt, he's the he's the advancer, who whoever it is, right?

Just think it through because I think that can be really helpful as an idea to think about where you go.

Any thoughts on that?

Yes, Matt.

Four new councilman and new mayor.

I think we're still discovering those rules.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm trying not to step on people's toes, trying to know my favorite, you know, and I don't know where I'll land on that.

I don't think probably any of you guys do.

That's a good point.

Yeah, and and by the way, staff's probably trying to figure all that out too, right?

Like, yeah.

So um, but that that's okay.

That's that's all right.

All right, let me um, we're gonna be getting our our dinner here in just a little bit.

Well, we've got a little bit of time.

Let me go on to this last one that's really much of me talking.

Um we created this model many years ago now, because you know we use, you know, in our society, we use the term strategic vision and strategic plan interchangeably.

But if you think about it, there's a unique difference between a strategic vision and a strategic plan.

A strategic vision is all about direction and priorities.

And that is largely the responsibility of the elected officials in local government.

Your job is to collectively decide this is what we need to become.

This is where we need to go, these should be our priorities.

That's not the city administrator's job or the staff's job.

Um, but a strategic plan is about how, not what or where, but how, and about timelines and budgets and personnel and granular nitty-gritty stuff.

And so if you think about it, you need a strategic vision before a strategic plan makes sense.

Because if we don't agree on where we're going, then we'll never agree on the how we get there.

And one of the things I've noticed about councils, and I think your council is um, you know, in my conversations, I know many of you are new, but there's a lot of there's a lot of agreement on this council.

Um, and I deal with a lot of councils where there's not agreement on where we need to go.

There's a lot of agreement here.

Where there's sometimes not agreement on council, especially is the how.

And often I find that it's because they're maybe sinking a little bit too low, and they're getting too much in the weeds, and they need to let the how rest more with the administrator.

But you got to start with a vision.

So let's just talk about how this goes around here.

I'm gonna see.

I think that's I'm not sure where the oh, there it is.

Yeah, I'm sure it'll kill.

All right, so this could really start at any cycle, any place.

In fact, there's a couple of flaws with this, at least, and I'll point them out.

But one of them is this one, we're we're here tonight with city council envisioning, but in some ways you could argue the first thing ought to be citizen input.

And and we but we put it like this because we just start working with cities wherever they want us to work with.

Um, and I'll come back to the citizen input in just a minute.

But our job the next couple of days is to figure out collectively where do we think this city needs to go over the next three to five years or so.

And then once that's established, you guys say, these are our priorities, here's the objectives under those priorities.

Then Tim and the staff will begin to create a strategic plan that's in alignment with that strategic vision.

That's really important.

You can't have a plan that's out of alignment with the vision, or else you're just gonna have stress all the time.

And so the vision has to come first, the plan lines up under it, and then council needs to affirm that to say, yeah, you got it.

So for example, you know, there's a lot of give and take between the time that a vision is created, the plan is affirmed.

So, for example, we'll make this up.

You might say, we want our city to be the um live oak capital of the world.

We want live oak trees.

And we were down, Jay says, I was down in San Antonio, and they've got these beautiful oak trees, which this is true, and that's what we need in our city.

And so, and she convinces you.

Okay, and so that's the vision.

And you we want oak trees everywhere.

So Tim comes back and says, okay, I've got a plan.

We're gonna plant live oak trees in the outfields of all the softball and baseball fields, because that's that's why I said, and you're like, what?

Wait, no, that's not what we wanted.

We meant in the medians, you know, like, oh, okay.

Well, that's a little silly, but we do get those kind of problems.

Council says that's the direction we want to go, but if you don't give clarity to it, staff can be out of alignment.

So we get alignment, and there's a lot of give and take.

I would say it's not bad governance, it's good governance because we're getting good communication.

But you affirm it, and then at some point, as Tim was saying, the staff then begins to execute on what the council wanted.

I I we've done these for years.

I've been doing this for 15 years, and about I don't know how many.

But inevitably, when there's a great city that's really doing well and they're they're making progress, at some point I'll hear the council say, uh, we're the ones that get credit for it.

But really, it's the staff that's doing all the work.

And then staff will almost always say, Well, yeah, we're doing it, but we couldn't do our part if council didn't do their part.

It's all it's just almost inevitable you hear it.

By the way, the opposite is true too.

When I find cities that just seem to they can't get out of their own way and they just keep causing trouble after, there's a lot of finger pointing, right?

On both sides of that.

And what you got to come to realize is hey, it's one team.

We're one team, we have different responsibilities, but we're one team.

And and so staff executes, but then, like anything, you gotta have some evaluation and say, well, how is it going?

What progress have we made?

Have there been game changers?

And there's a lot of game changers happening in this world right now, huh?

I mean, have you any of you heard of chat GPT?

Right?

I mean, talk about a game changer.

It's been huge.

We don't even know what all the ramifications are going to be.

Um, there's some others, some good, some bad.

But there's game changers that happen, and we have to say, wait, the dynamics have changed here.

And maybe this this vision needs to adjust a little bit.

So one of the cities I've worked with for a long time is the city of Frisco, Texas, which is a suburb of Dallas Fort Worth.

It's in Collin County, it's growing very fast.

And um, you know, they they've been being successful for a long time, but but one year uh we got to, they always do their their session in January, like y'all tried to do, sorry.

And and um we walked into the council retreat for that, they call it the winter work session, and the mayor says, okay, I I need to tell you something.

Jerry Jones came to us two weeks ago.

They want to put the cowboys headquarters in Frisco.

That was a game changer.

You know, it kind of just fell in their lap.

It fell in their lap because the city of Dallas, which you would think the Dallas Cowboys would want the Dallas Cowboys there, right?

It didn't, you know, it didn't.

So, but that was a game changer.

That was a game changer, right?

And so you have game changers, you say, whoa, what we were planning to do, we we got to do that different.

And you can have negative game changers too.

There's a little city I work with close to Lubbock, Texas, and that's close to where I grew up.

My wife and I grew up in the Texas panhandle.

And this city, rightly named, is called Plainview.

Get it?

Plain view.

It's just flat and there is nothing to see.

And uh little city about 25,000 people.

First time I did a work with them was 2014, and two weeks before that council retreat, the largest employer in the city, Conagra, closed up and moved away.

Talk about a game changer, not a good one.

I'll tell you this though, because that council, which was kind of like you, is that there was not is not on that council, and it was about half of them that have been there, and about half of them were new, but they pulled together, they created a good strategic vision and a great manager, Jeffrey Snyder that helped him execute it, and when we went back two years later, they said, you know what?

We we thought the city was gonna really go through a recession, so to speak, and we have not missed a beat because they had pulled together.

It was a really great story, and they carried that out.

So then this group would evaluate.

What did they do?

What did they do?

They diversified their and put more emphasis on small businesses and uh sort of um ag entrepreneurism, and they made it.

They didn't cut any staff for the city, but they had some hiring freezes for a couple of years, but they brought in new business and they they made it work.

Yeah, I think there was a little bit of Conagro, like controlled so much that other things didn't get a chance because Conagra was a no.

And so, anyway, that's how it worked, though.

All right, but then staff's got to adjust.

And then, you know, you're coming back around to the top of the cycle again, and you gotta connect back in with your citizens.

And here's one of the big problems with this.

This seems to show that like we should just get citizen input at one point, and then the rest of it we're not listening to them, and that's not so at all.

But to put it really, citizen input should be going on all the time, right?

And it is, it is.

They're emailing you, you're talking to them, you're seeing them at the Starbucks or the Dairy Queen or wherever it is.

Um, and you need both.

You need that informal time, but I'm a big proponent that every couple of years, you never you need to have a formal mechanism where you are drawing input from your from your residents, whether that's through a survey or community engagement meetings or uh various ways, but you need input all the time, and you need a set time where you're getting it.

But also you want to get input from your staff because they're professionals that have put in a lot of time into this in their career, and they care about your city, and and all of that feeds into here's where our vision is.

So I know that you have gotten input, I'm not trying to imply that you haven't, but the more times you go around this cycle, the more times the better you get at getting input from citizens, residents, input from staff, and that plan gets tighter and tighter and better and better.

But it doesn't matter how good the plan is when the pizza's here, it's time to take a break.

Do you have any questions or comments about the the cycle of strategic visioning, anything like that you want to point out or push back on?

No.

Sorry, I missed that.

No, sorry, just asking if that resonates with you, and you know, I I the thing I would say is that you you have to you have an ideal, but you have to kind of get to that ideal.

Nobody and if you overreact, sometimes that causes trouble too.

So I think citizen input is very, very important all the way around.

Yeah, it is.

But you've got to try to get by these input.

Yes.

When you're dealing with a select group, then you get their view.

Yeah.

That's the that's the key.

Yeah.

Keep it in, you know, keep it coming.

What one of the ways that we've been successful at helping cities with this is to get it out of the hands of the city.

And what I mean by that is if you create um, and and you, I know something not everybody loves the word committees, but I I'm a baby boomer and I love committees, so there you go.

But if you form a steering committee that's made up of a cross-section of leaders and different parts of your population, with some council members, but not dominated by the council, and you you train them and work with them to drive the community engagement events, they become the champions for it because they can get people to come that you can't get to come.

They have relationships with people you don't have close relationships with.

And so we've we've been successful at doing that, and then you have these those those meetings, but also the structure of those meetings is important because uh in too many cases people imagine community engagement events as no offense, but either the council is telling the people what they're gonna do, or which there's a place for that, but that's not the best use of it, or you have people that kind of grab the mic and they're very unhappy and they you know tell us all unhappy there, and we're like, well, what are we supposed to do with that?

But what we found is, and Peter Block has written a lot about this.

If you've ever read any of his work, it's very good.

If you will develop strategic questions for them to wrestle with the very questions you're wrestling with, and let them talk about it in small groups and report out, you'll get really good input.

And good ideas will keep coming to the surface, and when you take that, then as you start to develop your strategic vision, you've got really good useful input from a whole range of people, which is what you want, not just one segment.

Anyway, that's that's probably more than you wanted to know.

But uh we we love doing it because it makes a difference, and you know, it's it's not new with us, but we always say people support what they had a hand in creating.

That's really true.

Like if they had a hand in creating it, they'll support it a lot more.

I think we have something like that similar.

We only a few years back had to be big tables, um, and a lot of people really um excited about that.

I think is important.

I think the lesson I learned from that is to really be really refined on what it is you're asking for input on.

I think we we almost got a little bit too broad things.

Yeah, um, really have a strategic goal that we're trying to accomplish and ask the community how to best implement that.

Yeah, it works, it works when you ask them, it really does.

And and you know, I I've noticed too that it attracts people that want to solve problems, and uh when we do it that way.

So okay, let's change gears just a little bit.

One of the things you'll figure out if you haven't already about me is that I am a sports nut.

Uh if you run with it, kick it, throw it, shoot it, hit it, I love it.

And that's largely because the the first and uh most influential mentor of my life was my uncle, who was a teacher and a coach, and he grew up in the same town that I did, um, came back and started teaching and coaching in that school district when I was three years old.

And in those days, the way you entertained yourselves was you went and visited people and just showed up kind of unannounced, and my uncle and my aunt would come over and visit his brother, my dad, and my uncle would nurture this this love for sports and the love for the people in those sports uh long before we ever called it in mentoring, and so I I owe a lot to him.

So this illustration comes from that background.

So every year in the month of now it used to be March, but it's getting a little bit earlier now, February, the best baseball players on the planet go to either Arizona or Florida, and they spend a month working on the basics of the game.

They they work on the basics of what we teach 10-year-olds when we're teaching them to play softball or baseball, how to fill the ground ball, how to steal a base, how to hit the cutoff person.

These are the best baseball players on the planet, but they go and they spend time on the basics.

Why?

Because the rigors of the Major League Baseball state uh season are so severe that they don't have time to call time out during the season.

We're not gonna play five games this week, we're just gonna work on the basics because then they're they'd lose them, they'd forfeit them.

And and so they gotta it's gotta be second nature to them.

So for me, that's become a metaphor for good board governance in local government.

Because Major League Baseball, you know, those of you that have been on for a while, you know, and those of you that just got on, you're learning.

Things come quickly, don't they?

And rapidly.

I heard Paul talk a little bit about that when we first got in.

And so the fundamentals of how boards govern have got to be second nature to you.

So I want to spend a few minutes just kind of reviewing those, or for some of you maybe first chance to really think about it, of how things are supposed to work in local government.

And we're just gonna talk about major governance roles of the mayor, council, administrator, and staff.

So some of these are uh overlap, but largely these are the responsibilities of the mayor.

He's the chief, the mayor's the chief facilitator of the meetings.

He convenes the meetings, it's his responsibility when someone's talking too much to gently or not so gently get them to stop to make sure that everybody is weighing in.

He is the facilitator of the meetings, and he or she should be a team builder and a consensus builder.

So mayors want to try to find the compromise.

Uh they don't want to create split votes all the time.

Sometimes we have split votes, but a mayor's job is to get from the council where the collective will is.

And that's not saying if you have you know split votes or something wrong.

But as much as you want, you're trying to build consensus.

And the mayor is the primary external communicator for the city.

There's a city I'm working with, I won't say who it is, that the couple of new council members are very bit out of shape at the mayor because the mayor speaks at these big events, right?

And these council members want to speak too and like but the the procedures are it's the mayor that speaks and they're like yeah but we want to speak too and you know they don't really know how to say look the people love you guys but people don't want to hear seven of you talk at at events unless that's not the case but boy they're a bit out of shape about it.

And so I don't know what's gonna happen there but that's how that goes.

But he's the primary external communicator.

Now it's really important that that mayor not get so far out ahead of the council that the council's not aware of stuff.

And I've I know sometimes we're in some cities the mayor has held a press conference and spoke and council members start getting called is like what I didn't even know about that.

That's a problem.

So external communicator doesn't mean ignore internal communications the the mayor is the primary liaison between the council and the city administrator that's not to say that all of you don't have access to to Tim but you know he's gonna work the mayor's gonna work more closely with the administrator than anybody and so sometimes you're gonna be in the mayor's ear and saying look this is really making me mad and mayor's like hey city administrator I think we got to think about this.

So he's that layers on layers on for that number five they're in charge of ceremonial leadership so love it or hate it that's part of that what the the mayor does all right let's talk about the council alderman first responsibility is the biggest one strategic vision you're the ones that have to say this is where we're going and you know there's just been a couple of times in my career where I've seen staff sort of usurp that and you know they were they were driving the vision and they were driving the vision because that particular council in this city's got so wrapped around the axe about other stuff they're like we got to do something.

It worked until it didn't but new people got elected they were like hey that's our job and then you know that's some stress they were right this is your job not the staff's job to say where we need to go staff needs to line up under that second you're a policy developer.

You your primary one of your primary tasks is to develop policies that advance the mission of the city and the priorities of this council and so you do that by you know developing policies and ordinances that accomplish that you are a fiduciary overseer now that doesn't mean that you are going to want to give you know be given an account for every check that was written it means you're creating systems that are in alignment with state and federal regulations you are seeing to it that money is accounted for and spent where it says it's going to be spent and and that's that's your responsibility not to go over it line by line but to make sure that you have systems in place that honor it your job is to give oversight along with the mayor to the city administrator next week I'll be in a city in Kansas City I've been doing this for them for several years where I facilitate the annual evaluation of the of the city administrator and we have a they use our system where you fill out evaluations and then I can synthesize them and then we have a meeting with the council to say yes is this is all you all see yes then we have a conversation with the the um administrator where we go over it all and that's that's part of it it's an important part and then number five your ambassadors for the city you're the ones that are saying to the people that feel like the city's going too far you're helping them understand it or the ones that think you're not going too far far enough or you're too fast or you're too slow.

And you have to have that delicate balance of you know you have things that you believe in, and you need to argue for those things.

I always say that that you know, nothing that we we don't, we we we never want to tamper down robust dialogue.

We need to hear from you and you and you and you and everything.

But you got to rally behind the vote of the majority.

And and what you want to do is guard the integrity of the process, even if you don't agree with the outcome of the vote.

So that if you can say this process had integrity, you can say to your constituents, I might not have agreed with how the council voted, but I can support the process that we went through.

And and I I will say, as important as the issues facing Davenport are, and I know they're important, there's not a single issue that you will face in your career as an elected official that is worth compromising the integrity of the process in order to get your way.

Because when you do that, all you really do is teach people on the other side of that issue how to go about it the next time and undermine that process.

And then we just evolve into you know things we don't want.

So you gotta yes, argue for what you believe in, speak up for it, but guard the integrity of the process.

All right, what about the administrator?

He's got some jobs.

One of them is executive execution.

Once you, as just what Tim was saying, once you decide, hey, this is where we want to go, then he leads this staff to create a plan and they execute it.

In always in conjunction with you, and so that you're uh evolved of it.

The the administrator is a advisor, a policy advisor and strategist to you.

So that he should be knowing about, and this is largely through the staff, what the ramifications are of what you're talking about, and make sure you are informed about it.

And and you have the right to take some none or all of what they say, but he has the responsibility to make sure you're informed.

And um again, that comes largely through the staff, and um, you know, there's always a little tension there in a good city.

There's always a little tension because council wants to know are these all the alternatives?

Well, it can never be all the alternatives because they've already vetted out a lot of alternatives that wouldn't ever work and would waste your time to go over them.

But they're gonna give you some alternatives and the ramifications of all of that.

But if you ask them to give all the alternatives there are, that's counterproductive.

There was a city that got a couple of people elected on their council, and they were kind of really driven by um too much waste in city hall, spending money they don't need to, um things aren't accounted for, so you know that's what got them elected.

And then when they got on council, then they started asking staff, will you go research this out?

Because you know, we think this well, staff would come back.

This happened several times.

Staff would come back with a report and you know, an answer, but they didn't like that answer.

So they would send them back to the research more.

And so what happened was they actually were counterproductive because of the extra overtime that it was taking to research all of the answers that they didn't like.

They ended up spending more money than they were before.

Once they figured that out, they were like, okay, we got to find another way.

And to their credit, they did.

So that's how that is.

All right, number three, operational planning.

Um he's gonna take administrators gonna take your strategic vision, create an operational plan for it.

Um they've got to be responsible for information and data management and making sure that you have good data because you can't make good decisions without data.

And then finally, it's it's the job of the administrator to manage personnel.

I was doing a council retreat one time for a smaller city in the in North Carolina in in the Charlottesville area, Charlotte area, I mean, and so there was a there was a council member that from the very beginning that they just had it out for the parks and rec director.

And the parks director, parks and rec director wasn't in the room.

And so uh boy, they're sitting about where Paul is, and it's starting, and he goes, hey, the problem is the parks and rec director, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I was like, well, wait a minute.

You don't supervise the parks and rec director, do you?

That's that's a city manager's responsibility, right?

Yeah, but the problem is, well, okay, well, what that's his problem.

So we go on, and but that happened two or three times during the day.

Well, the problem is the parks and records.

Well, remember, that's that's his problem.

So we get the end of the day, you know, we got a pretty good strategic vision done, and and you have the objectives, and I would go around and say, What's your takeaways?

Which are oh well, we have a lot of identity, we have this, blah, blah, blah.

We get the this guy sitting with policies, and he goes, Well, my takeaway is the city manager has a lot of problems.

Okay, whatever.

But that's his problem.

So, you know, um, now you give input, you have good relationship, you share what you see, but at the end of the day, you gotta say, that's that's the administrator's job to manage a staff, not y'all.

Not directing it.

And you you can understand why, right?

Right.

I mean, everybody understands this when you think about it.

It if you go in to let's say the the fire chief's office, just make that up, and and you say, What I think you ought to be doing is this and this and this, you've put him in a really bad position, right?

Because who does he answer to?

City administrator.

But you're giving him direction that's different.

But then, next thing, next day, here comes Ben.

And he's gonna let me know what you need to do, blah, blah, blah.

Now what he's supposed to do, right?

So, you meet with the administrator, you give your opinions, that's right, but you you gotta let this administrator manage the staff.

Anytime it doesn't go that way, sooner or later we get off the the edges there.

Anything you want to add to that?

Let's talk about staff.

He's a wise man, isn't he?

Yeah.

Their job is to deliver services, service delivery.

Local government is a service delivery business.

That's what we do.

We don't make widgets, we deliver service to residents.

They need to have technical and professional competence.

And I know that's the case here too.

They are people who implement policy.

So, you know, they may not think it was a good idea.

Um, you might have second thoughts when it's a good idea.

But if it's that's the policy, that's their job to implement it.

And uh to do so in a timely fashion.

They also have to be that feedback loop adjustment group, because sometimes you have a plan, you have a policy, game changers happen, or there were unintended consequences, and you come back and say, wait a minute, we got to change that.

That's not right.

That's their job then to shift with you.

And and that's the way government works.

And then finally, you know, they they have to have ethical stewardship.

Really, we all have to have ethical stewardship.

But we can't ever be putting staff in a position where they're doing that which is illegal or immoral or or or unethical.

All right, any questions about any of that?

It's a quick review there.

All right.

So I want to kind of end up this this part of the thing that we'll take a quick break because people like to usually need to go to the restroom and get another drink of water.

I'm sorry, John.

I don't know if it makes sense.

You're talking about your love of sports.

I was thinking the mayor is the conference commissioner.

I can go with that.

The city administrator is the athletic director.

The city staff or the team captains.

We are coaches of Pete Wards.

Hmm.

All right.

Yeah.

I like that metaphor.

I love metaphors.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's good.

There you go.

Kyle's gonna write it down.

He likes sports as much as me, I know.

All right.

So um one of the best writers of leadership stuff, you know, I'm really just a nerd.

I go around, I read, and when I read something I like, then I go talk, I find a place to go talk about it.

So, but one of the great leadership writers is Liz Wiseman.

She teaches at Wharton School of Business.

She wrote a book a few years ago called Multipliers.

It's an awesome book.

And she followed it up, I think it was in 21, uh, with the book Impact Players.

And it is just as good.

And I like this because I like this because it applies to us in any organization, no matter what level of the organization we're in.

Elected officials or board directors, the CEO or staff, no matter what where you are in staff.

And there's there's several things she talks about that people that make an impact.

What are their character traits?

And so one is these are people who wear opportunity goggles, she says.

What up what does this make possible?

What does this make possible?

Because there's always some possibility, and you've got to be the one that sees them and says, What if this?

And that's some of you are those creators, some flexors, some of you are the advancers, like you didn't think of it, but you're like, okay, I can help push this along.

So opportunity, we're opportunity goggles.

That's a big one.

They react differently to uncertainty.

Um of us freeze up with uncertainty.

But leaders have to open up with uncertainty and have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

They make an impact when that's the case.

Um remember, was it 2010 when the miners in Chile had that collapse of that, and is it 33 trapped underground, 2,000 feet underground for almost 80 days.

Yeah.

That is a phenomenal story to me of courage of both above ground and below ground.

Uh with all the uncertainty, but how they they had a drive to live and to find them.

And most of us, thankfully, won't ever be in that poignant of a situation.

But that sense of being able to live with uncertainty and thrive in it is really huge for people that make an impact.

Number three, impact players are not the people who say, that's not my job.

They they step up to the job that needs to be done.

Now, we all have to be mindful of not getting out of our lane.

I know that.

And so I'm not don't like kill me on this, Tim.

But but you gotta look and say, what's gotta be done?

Not like that's not my job.

Because in local government, things come up, right?

And we gotta we gotta be there for it.

So they they the people that make an impact are people that don't just say, that's not in my job description.

They're people that rise to that occasion.

And and similar to that, um they what she says is so beautiful.

She says, impact players step up when when it's their point where their expertise is needed, they aren't invisible.

They aren't sulking because they had their feelings hurt at two council meetings ago, and they're just like, yeah, I know that, but I'm not I don't care, you know.

They are like, no, I'm there.

They step up because we need your expertise.

But they don't use that as a power grab to gain more power.

They step up and then they step back.

They recognize when this is their moment, and when others need to be in the spotlight too.

Like, you know, um, we we sometimes quote from the Flintstones, Barney Fife, uh, who said, it takes a smart person to know what he doesn't know.

That's that's right.

You gotta know, you know, you're not just because you're good at this thing, doesn't mean you're good at everything.

And so you step up and then you step back.

And you're it's it's what it's been called in other situations, um roving leadership.

So for some Barney Rubble, right?

Barney Rubble, that's right.

Barney Fife was Andy Griffith, who knew quite a bit about leadership too, I guess, deep down.

I'm not sure, but yeah, Barney Rumble, that's right.

My bad.

All right.

And then they tend to be completion freaks.

They're not people that start things and then get over on other stuff.

One of the things that I will say to you, success is a long walk in the same direction.

So I'm I'm working with the city of Portland next week, and they've got huge budget issues, huge budget issues.

And one by one, their counsel has said to me, we have to figure out how to weather five years of budget cuts.

That's tough.

That's in a best case scenario.

Now, but the thing is if they do it, your number six, seven, eight starts getting better.

But it's going to take a long walk in the same direction.

That's that's part of it.

And then they ask and adjust.

They're not so bent on their favorite project that they can't adjust to it.

I I think you may have heard of the book, Don't Fall in Love with the Solution, fall in love with the problem.

Which sounds like, oh, what a negative mindset.

But he's what they're saying is if you fall in love with the solution, that's all you can think about is your solution.

And problems keep evolving and changing.

So fall in love with the problem, and then you'll keep finding the right solution.

But if you follow in love with a solution, you're always looking for a problem that it fits.

And that's that's you got to ask and adjust.

Alright?

And then this is the last one, and I think the most important.

Impact players make work light.

They make work light.

It's hard.

What you gotta do, it's hard.

It's hard, I know.

It's not fun.

But you know, if you'll stop picking on your brother, it'll be easier, Tim.

That's really what we came to say.

He says, no.

No, I mean, if if we can come at it with a good attitude and a sense of camaraderie, I'm not saying you gotta be best friends, but you can make work light by having a good attitude, which it also is better for you, too, by the way.

Um I know in the fire service, I'm I'm I'm one of the chaplains in the fire department in my city, and and you know, this isn't unique to them, but a common phrase is embrace the suck, embrace the suck.

It's hard, we're wet, we're tired, it's odd, or sometimes it takes it's hot, and you gotta lean into it.

You gotta lean into it.

Say, that's what we do here.

We eat problems for breakfast.

That's what impact players do.

They they make work light.

So, all right, let's take a break.

It's um 6.03.

Let's come back in um just take 12 minutes or come back at 6.15.

That's now 11 minutes, and uh we'll start again moving into strategic visioning.

All right, well, we're gonna we'll we'll pull Rick in when he gets back.

Okay, so I want to move into this part now.

We're gonna kind of get ourselves thinking about strategic visioning.

We'll we'll get done this evening.

We'll come back tomorrow.

We'll kind of uh get a lot of a lot of the heavy lifting is tomorrow, but we'll get going with it some of today.

So my dad was one of 13 children.

Uh he grew up, my grandfather was a uh a sharecropper in the um Texas and Oklahoma panhandle, and my dad was born in the 20s and was a World War II vet, and um by the time I came along in the 60s, early 60s, my dad was not a farmer, but I had uncles and cousins who were farmers and had land, and so like a lot of kids, probably like some of your families, I was on a tractor early in my life during the summers.

And it was a great life.

I mean, it was a wonderful life, and I learned so many things and and cherish it.

But the way they taught you to plow in those days was very different from the way we teach kids how to drive.

When we teach kids how to drive, we say the most important thing is stay in your lane.

That's right.

That's the most important part.

Even if you're going a little too fast or a little too slow, if you're in your lane, chances are things aren't gonna go wrong.

But if you try to plow like that, and you think, oh, I'm following along with my rows, yeah.

I think I'm pretty good, it's pretty, oh yeah, it's pretty good.

Then when you get to the end of the field, what you discover is though you thought you were going straight, your rows will just be all over the place.

Because you need straight rows to plow, to plant.

So in those days, the way they taught you to plow was that when you get on the edge of a field, you get your eye fixed on some stationary object.

Could be a fence post, could be a broken down pickup, could be a diesel filling tank.

Didn't matter.

It just has to be something that's stationary, and then you just you just plow to it.

You just put your eyes on it, and you don't worry about if you think you're going too far this way or adjusting this or you just plow to it.

And if you do that, when you turn your offset around, you'll see your rows are just as straight as they can be.

And for me, that's become sort of my metaphor for what we ask councils to do when it comes to strategic visioning.

Because you got elected almost every time when I asked people what motivated you to want to run, it's because you wanted to be responsive.

You want to serve the public, and those are honorable and noble means, uh, ideas.

But what happens to some people is they're so focused on the now that every time somebody calls you or emails you, you have this tendency to like, oh, I need to adjust to that, you know, and then you're just to that.

And then somebody else emails you're just to that, right?

And you do it all out of a good heart.

But the problem for that is it makes it really hard for staff to follow because they can't really know what to what's really a priority here.

And I love council members, but sometimes y'all struggle with math.

Because if one person comes to tell you something, you come to the city administrator and you say, some people have been upset about this.

One person can't talk to you.

If two people come to you to talk to about something, then you come to him and you say, There's a lot of people upset about this.

It's a math problem.

And if three people come, then it's a movement, you know.

So, hey, I'm not saying we shouldn't be responsive people, but but we have to have a system that it fits into, and that's why that strategic visioning, that cycle is so important.

Because collectively, you've got to decide where are we going?

And when someone comes up and says, hey, my ox got gored, we need to do something about that.

Yes, we got to be responsive to it, but we need to we need to interpret that in light of other things and other issues, et cetera, versus just you know saying immediately, well, we'll go do that, because that's not fair to the other people who've been waiting, right?

So you gotta have a thing.

So, what we're gonna talk about for the rest of tonight, and really the rest of the time together, is what do we collectively think is on that fence post?

Where does Davenport need to be going?

Because it won't work if we just say, okay, let's find out what's your two priorities, Rick.

Okay, got those down.

What's your two priorities, Jade?

Okay, got that.

All right, Jasmine got that.

Then pretty soon, now we've got nine priorities or more, and they're conflicting or competing, and we don't have enough resources for that.

So you've got to be more strategic than that, and think, what are the catalytic priorities that will move this community forward together?

And um, you know, it's hard, it's hard, it's hard.

For one thing, while we have to make decisions that that fit for the all, we can't forget about you know those that are the most vulnerable.

We can't.

Um Robert Greenleaf, who coined this phrase, uh servant leadership has so many great things that he wrote about.

But one of my favorite things he said is that there's there's no one test to see if someone is a servant leader.

But the best is to look at those who are being served.

Are they becoming healthier, wiser, freer, and more autonomous?

And more likely to follow in your example.

That's how you really tell somebody's a servant leader.

Sort of like say asking if you're a team player.

You ever heard anybody say they're not a team player?

I mean, you know, like even Terrell Owen said he was a team player.

I mean, you're like, whatever.

People say that about me.

I'm a servant leader.

I'm like, the more you say that, the less likely it is that you are, but nevertheless.

But the other thing that the other thing that Greenleaf said about the test is this.

A servant leader has to ask themselves this question.

What is the impact of my leadership on the least of those among us?

Are they becoming more engaged?

Or at the very least, not more disengaged.

And see, so that's where it gets hard, right?

Because we've got to think about what's best for the whole, but we can't forget about the most vulnerable.

So what's the solution for that?

It's hard.

You've got to wrestle it out and compromise and decide and then keep moving and be and give a lot of benefit to the doubt to the other person.

Because they probably care just as much as you do, but they might be looking at it just a little bit different way.

And collectively, you come with what works.

So, as as city manager or city administrator said, you guys have what you call these operational pillars.

And it's not really our scope of work tonight, tomorrow, to question those, but probably to say, how do the priorities we establish fit under that?

Now there may come a time when you want to have a what a friend of mine calls a slow conversation on are those the right operational pillars.

But my guess is they're probably pretty active.

These are, in other words, you're saying, I think, that these are the things that we want to be most focused on.

So those of you that have been on the council a while, feed into this a little bit.

Talk to us, because for me these are new.

For others, probably it's they're new in some regard.

Those of you that have been on for a little bit, what's your how would you characterize these that are up in front of us right now?

These are the basic things that a city does.

Okay.

Yeah, these are the core services.

Okay.

But they should be doing in response, don't they?

They should be and are responsible to.

Okay?

Good.

Other comments on it?

So you made me think, you know.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs applies to cities just as much as it applies to to individuals.

So if you think about it, he said, you know, you don't think about things on the higher level until you take care of the things on the lower level.

The basics, you know, for the individual, food, clothing, shelter.

You don't think if you don't get in that, you don't think of anything else.

I spent uh two weeks last October in a refugee camp in Uganda.

Let me tell you, that's all they're thinking about.

They're subsistence farmers, that's all they're thinking about.

And for cities, it's infrastructure, and right?

And core services.

Then Maslow said the next one that you think about safety.

Which is why every year in every city, the biggest expenditure you have is public safety.

Because if your needs are being met, but you're not safe, and you can do something about it, you will.

So sometimes, you know, I always say about the, you know, Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath were about the poor people in Texas and Oklahoma that fled to California, but there were people who didn't even have the ability to do that.

That was my people.

Right?

You know, so they couldn't go.

Like you just stayed right where you were.

But that's why you've got to take care of people.

You've got to provide that.

Then what's the next one people think about?

Belonging.

Am I a part of this community?

Do I fit in?

Do I have friends?

Um, so a lot of times as cities are growing and all, they're they're thinking about how do we make new people feel welcome?

And then we think about an organization, think about it on a council.

Um, how do we make people feel like they belong?

Because one of the things I know in life is people start feeling like they belong long before they start feeling like they believe.

So we try to get them to buy into our mantras, our core values, our slogans.

We're just trying to sell ice to Eskimos.

If they don't feel like they belong, they're never going to feel like they believe.

So you've got to make people feel accepted.

And then the next one is self-esteem.

So, you know, like it's pride.

We live here.

We live in Davenport, not whatever else you want to say, I will say it.

I know in my area, the big challenges are between Frisco and Plano.

And so there was a long time where people that worked, they're just across the highway from each other.

And the people that worked at Plano, they said couldn't say the F-word for years.

So couldn't say Frisco.

So you have pride.

You have to have pride in where you live.

That's what you want.

And then the last one is self actualization.

That you are doing what you always thought you were meant to be.

So think about that.

Back to what you said, Rick.

These are what cities should be doing.

We're providing protection, sustainable, welcoming, belongs right there.

Fiscal vitality, that's the, I'm gonna call that the basics.

You gotta keep it on.

And high performing government.

You gotta have that in the basics to sustain it, right?

And then regional vibrancy.

That's that self-actualization and self-esteem.

So I'm guess guessing you're good.

Is anybody going to be asking this way?

Is anybody have a uh a strong feeling?

Like, no, these aren't the right ones.

These need to be rethought.

Not that again that we can necessarily do it tonight, but what what's your feelings on this, council?

Can I throw one out that I work at Costco, I've been there for the last seven years.

And one thing I like about the company, they want like our code of ethics was number one taking care of the members.

Usually a lot of businesses will call them customers, we call them members.

So I look at the city, they are our members.

Those are our customers.

Yeah.

So without that, taking care of them, these other things are gonna be a little tough to do.

Yeah, no, no doubt.

I I think most places would fit uh you know, customer service, internal and external, under the high performing government.

That it it becomes you know a subset of that, so to speak.

Yes, I'll say ultimately blank uh something that I thought, it's probably not for this session, but I thought the same thing.

We don't have something that stands above our pillows, and that's a mission statement.

And I see that that's where that possibly fits, and then everything falls underneath that.

But that's for a future date, but I've had similar thoughts.

Yeah, that makes sense for sure.

That's a good point.

Okay?

Well, let's let's jump into this then.

Um we like to talk, get you talking and thinking about what we call reputational drivers.

And and this is not meant to be an indictment or an evaluation of the past.

We're looking forward to say what do we want to be known for?

What what kind of reputation do we want to have?

And and and we mean this in you know, two or three different ways.

One as a council, two, as an organization, and three as a city.

So I'm gonna put you back into triads here, and um I want you to spend some time thinking of what's really important to you in terms of your reputation going forward.

Again, not we're not trying to go back and say what's your reputation is or what it was or anything like that.

We're like, this is a fresh start going forward.

What do we want to be known for?

What do we want people to say about us that is true?

Not just uh not just propaganda, but it's true.

Okay?

So in your group, maybe come up with three to five or so, something like that, and then um we'll ask you to report them out.

I'll write them on the um flip chart, and then I'll figure out how to synthesize them and um consolidate them here in a bit.

All right, let's start let's start in the corner here.

Give me two.

You may have more than that, but give me two, and then we'll get the others later.

So what were your two clearest?

So give me the two clear, but just give me two.

No, give me two right now, and then we'll come around.

What do you got?

Responsible.

Okay.

Reliable.

I know there's a third R coming.

I'll come back to you.

That's good.

Excellent.

Those are excellent.

All right, let's go here.

Give me two.

Okay.

Uh well, I just wrote one down that uh Brazilian.

We got a theme of R.

I was gonna say, you guys are on the we did touch on diversity, both the population, but also the interest and things like diversity across people and opportunity.

Yeah.

In every way.

Yeah.

It's a strength.

For sure.

Okay, that's that group.

Okay, let's come over here.

Give me two.

Okay.

Um we said safe.

Okay.

And then I think we'll I think we have rich for third Responsive.

Okay.

We got more.

All right, we'll come back.

All right, give me two.

I think Jasmine's talking.

Okay.

Proud and prosperous.

Ooh, okay.

Proud.

No more R's.

No.

Always say pride is like cholesterol.

Right?

I mean, there's bad cholesterol and there's good cholesterol.

And there's bad pride, we all know about that, but there's good pride, too.

Yeah, you're talking about good pride.

Yeah, right.

So here's it.

Here's a great, here's a great acrostic or acronym, I think, for pride.

Personal responsibility in delivering excellence.

That's the good pride.

You take personal responsibility in delivering excellence.

Alright, so that's that's it.

Alright, we're back to you, Jay.

Give us one that's not up there already.

Trustworthy.

Trustworthy.

Ooh, I love that.

Alright.

Mayor, do you all have another one that's not up here already?

Uh well, we're talking about approachable, approachability, approachable.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That's a good one.

Matt?

I mean, Kyle?

Forward thinking.

Oh.

Yes.

Okay.

I think ours are similar to that, but I like the word better.

Innovation.

Innovation.

Innovative.

So reputation.

All right.

What's not up here that you talked about already?

I say growing.

Growing.

Wow.

We need more people.

Destination city.

Destination city.

Now, so Jasmine, uh expound on that a little bit.

Do you mean like tourism?

Okay.

Yep.

We're bringing in other people's dollars to be spent here.

Comes with dual price, though, right?

It could be tourism perspective.

Could be like destination as a home.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Yeah.

That's why I was thinking.

I'm laughing at myself because a couple of nights ago I was working with the town, and I've I meant to write OPM, other people's money, and I wrote OTM.

And everybody was looking like, what is that?

Oh, I just got it wrong.

But yeah, you need other people.

I live in a city, it's like that.

So Grapevine, um, you know, we have the airport, but many years ago, the airport was open in 75, I think, 75 or 80.

Our council said this airport ain't gonna pay our bills forever.

So let's change before we have to.

So they developed long-term vision.

We want to become a tourist destination.

Now, the time we had the airport, a lake, which is not even a good fishing lake, and uh a mall, Grapevine Mills Mall.

That was all.

That's the only thing you say, tourism.

But they said that's what we do.

Well, now I've lived there 21 years.

Every year, the tax rate on my uh property tax, the rate goes down.

Now we pay more because the houses are appreciating, but the rate goes down, and 85% of the sales tax in any given year is paid by people who don't live in our city because they got a vision about how we can draw people in, use festivals, this, that, the other, and long walk in the same direction.

We got it.

So you can do it.

I mean, you got a couple of things you can build on, then you say that's the direction you want to go.

All right.

Anything else on there?

Yeah, okay.

Anything on here that another group that's like, wait, I don't agree with that.

I mean, I'd probably not, but I want to give you a chance.

Anything missing from there when you think about what your reputation you want?

Integrity.

Okay, integrity.

It's probably close to trustworthy, but I'm gonna put it down.

What I'll try to do tonight so that when you come back in the morning, we have this, is to sort of synthesize this and um you know, bring you a list, and you can look at it and say, no, that you didn't quite write, we'll pick at it.

But I want to get want to get it to where it's tight, and the reason is because a year from now or two years from now, when you come back and you're evaluating where we're going, you want to look at this then and say, are we making progress in these?

And are the decisions we're making keeping with that?

Um so that that's really important.

All right, questions on this?

Okay, so the next question to wrestle with private what are the pressing problems that the city is facing that really hit you hard.

These are the things that make you weep, pound the kitchen table, and say, I don't care if we don't do anything else, we've got to do something about this.

I I don't want to hit here like, oh, we gotta keep the lights on.

I mean, come on, man.

I want to know what are the real problems in Davenport that when we're thinking about the future, we gotta solve these problems.

These are big hairy, audacious problems, and we gotta do something about it.

That's what I want to know about, okay?

So again, three to five, five to ten, you know, how many of you think of, but these are these are what you're saying.

These are problems now, and they're not gonna solve themselves as we think for forward, they're still gonna be there.

These are pressing problems we gotta solve.

Don't worry about if you have a solution.

We'll worry about that later.

All right, any questions for me?

Go.

Okay.

Jade give me two.

No more than two.

We'll get them all.

Let's just do two at a time.

What do you got?

Pressing problems.

Um, streets and infrastructure.

Okay.

Streets and infrastructure.

What's another one?

Um core services.

Okay.

Our first responder, solid waste, public works.

Oh, whoa, whoa.

All of those are core services.

You only need two.

Two services.

That's a bunch of things.

I know what core services are.

There's a bunch of them.

That's kind of everything we do.

Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah.

Okay, all right.

All right, let's get a couple from this group.

All right, we'll go with revenue.

Revenue.

Due to impending property tax cuts.

Okay.

And litigation.

Okay.

Let's go over here.

Uh I will for the group say uh we talked about housing slash affordability.

Okay.

Uh and uh the issue of final set.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

Very good.

Over here, give me two.

Well, we're gonna go, we're gonna go with the for your current theme of infrastructure.

Okay.

Image.

Okay.

Uh and uh the issue of time and complex okay just call it yeah all right very good over here give me two well we're gonna go we're gonna go with the for your current theme of infrastructure okay that's the number one an image image okay we worded this differently but smart yeah all right let's let's go back here what what else do you have that we don't have up there transparency okay how about how about y'all what's same with image we just called it like the general community okay so toxic right now a lot of places yeah it's toxic social media is not open books yeah you know I'll I'll bring this stat tomorrow because there's a guy that works for us he used to be the communications director for Round Rock Texas where Dell computers are at and now he retired there and works with us and and when he said this I was like Will that is so profound I want to know that you know the source for this because he said no no I've got it and and so I have it I'll bring I can't requote it but there's a company to the study and here's what they found seventy percent of the time seven out of ten times whatever the majority opinion on social media is 70% of the time it's the opposite of what the majority of residents believe any issue so you know a little louder for those yeah yeah um um algorithms algorithms are designed to make you mad and it illicit anger responses because it's about money it's about money and that and so when you if you are as a governing body trying to uh ascertain the public's will from social media you're fighting against an algorithm that is designed to elicit anger not opinion you know true opinions so another illustration of this this came out of Plano Texas they were having what was this it was a um uh a highway that was gonna need to be built and all of the all of the comments on Facebook social media 70% of it was in against it they had a meeting they used uh social I mean um audience response uh thing to to deal so 70% of the speakers that spoke to the council that night were against it and then when they let the audience vote 70% were in favor of it but if you had taken what was on Facebook social media plus people speaking to the council you would have thought people were against this but they weren't so I'm I hey I'm on social media I like social media but you gotta it's like policy policy has a place but it only goes so far right social media has a place but it can only go so far so so that's that's that's an important one to remember that um there are ways there are ways to connect people and and we need to do it we need to convene them social media is probably not it all right what else you got pressing problems I'm the only one that well I should say the only one I wrote this down because it was in my head was just growth like economic growth yeah yeah so you know we say it's a truism as goes the school so goes the city it's true but no more true than as goes economic growth so goes the city you can you just can't you can't sustain on rooftops you've got to have economic development that can't all be retail um I've got some cities I work with that when we think about economic development all they think is about is selling things well you gotta make something or produce something or you gotta have jobs so that's a big one all right all right any other groups something that you said that we don't have up there go along with infrastructure from our interstate okay I think sometimes people can have by that board and I know there's a thing down there okay yeah that's that's a good remark all right anything else smart growth not not just economic but smart growth if you're if your state is going to start capping your taxes with two percent when you start growing your city you're gonna lose because now you're stretching the resources and you're not gonna do everything smart growth.

All right.

Anything else?

Smart growth.

Not just economic, but smart growth.

State is gonna start capping your taxes.

Because now you're stretching the resources, and you're not gonna do everything.

Smart growth.

Yeah, yeah, no question about it.

I was in Abilene, Texas, which is uh opening up a ton of data centers.

It's really crazy what's all going there.

And that's the same issue they're facing.

Yes, we have growth, but we have to manage it so that we don't outstrip our infrastructure because then it would be outside our city limits.

People still be using our resources, our infrastructure, but no way to pay for it.

So you have, yeah, very good good comment.

Okay, anything else?

Okay, yeah.

Smart growth.

Yeah.

All right, I'll I'll do the same thing with that.

I'll I'll I'll kind of consolidate it, synthesize it.

All right, I want to keep you in the same groups you're in for now.

And we're going to talk about this question.

This is kind of a fun one.

So we've been this is I mean, this is why it's the hard stuff.

But we're gonna pull back that for a minute, the curtain back, and we're gonna think what does success look like?

What if we were more successful than we ever imagined?

What if um let's go forward 10 years and say about 10 years?

Say it's 2035.

What would it look like for Davenport to be wildly successful?

So this is what one of my colleagues says is blue sky thinking right now.

We've done some cloudy work.

Let's talk about, yeah, but but but what if we're successful?

Really successful.

What would that look like?

And so what I'm gonna ask you to do is to imagine that Time magazine names Davenport, Iowa, the 2035 City of the Year.

They're not even worried about man of the year, like that's done.

This is the city of the year, 10 years from now.

About so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bring around a little news sprint to each group, and I'm gonna ask you to think of what would the headline, the stories be about.

What would the headlines be?

What would the compelling reason be that your city would be named the city of the year?

So I want you to think like what why would that happen?

And in particular, I'll come back to this in just a minute.

In particular, think about the what I call areas of excellence for cities.

These are not quite the same as core services.

You're talking about Jade, but our core services make all of these things possible.

So infrastructure, transportation, economic vitality, diversity, not these are not in any order, so uh don't don't be upset that I put safety down to the end.

Innovation, housing, uh community involvement, sustainability, customer satisfaction, financial health, art, safety, redevelopment.

Those are the areas of excellence.

So now your your story or your headlines don't have to touch on all of those, but I just want you to keep them in mind, like right, like you couldn't really be the 2035 city of the year and not be excellent in a lot of those categories, right?

Like you're not just gonna get it because you cheated on the vote or something like that.

So what I want is for you to think of um you can use symbols, you can draw pictures, you can give me words, but don't give me paragraphs, okay?

I know I'm not looking for uh uh an essay.

I want you to think big and then capture it on the newsprint so that we can see it and dream about it.

And if you need more than one, I'll bring you another one.

That's no problem.

So I'm gonna change your groups up just a little bit.

We're gonna have three groups, and so Mark, you're going to this group, and Jade, you're going to that group.

Later.

You did it.

Oh, it's us four, no more.

Okay, y'all got it.

So so dream about it, talk about it, and then I'm not doing the work on this.

You're doing the work, Ben.

You're gonna have to make whatever it looks like, okay?

All right, any questions for me?

All right, I'm gonna pass them around.

We'll get started.

And I want you to think big, dream big.

Okay.

Let's um let's start with a group over here first.

I think they were done first.

So uh who's presenting?

Bring it, bring it up here, put it on here.

And um we'll let you present.

All right.

All right, so uh balanced prosperity.

That was uh well, that was all of ours, but Alderman Vasquez pointed that out, like you know, the entire city would be prosperous.

Uh I my head went to like in terms of a headline, Davenport's population tops 125, so we're growing.

Yeah.

Um I think we talked a little bit about you know flooding.

We're not even worried about it anymore.

We said ripfront tourism, but I I was thinking like towns that want to develop the river fronts, they come to see what Davenport's done because we're like the model.

Yeah, we have the best room front, so let's go see what they did so we can make ours like theirs.

Um we solved our housing problem.

We have plenty of housing for all price points.

Uh we're the leader in re-establishing or not re-establishing, we um investing in and and we developing our central core, our our central city, so people come and see and then our skyline grows west, so we've got bigger developments, bigger buildings in our you know, central corner downtown, but they're moving west.

Yeah.

All right, good job.

Give them a hand.

I I think Mark, it was you and I when we were talking on the phone a hundred years ago now, it seems like we talked about this this growth in the West, right?

You got a lot of opportunity there.

Yeah, we have that that's that's be kind of the economic engine that funds this and this for sure.

Oh, you know what we forgot to put up there is Devort needs to establish a new industrial park.

Well, it's local.

All right, all right.

Let's go to this group.

You're up.

Who's who's presenting?

I'll put it right here.

Put it on there.

We're good.

Most desirable city.

When I think of Davenport, I think of home.

Explore where you want when you want.

Pride, prosperous, and progressive.

What's the symbol down there?

So it's our logo, but it has a money signal.

It's a funny sign in it.

Oh, okay.

All right.

All right, give them a hand.

Good job.

All right.

John, I think this is your baby.

Yeah, we'll see.

Oh, yeah.

Those are very, very good.

That was a that was a that was a left-handed compliment.

It's all in a name.

Yeah, important.

Wow.

This is the article.

Time magazine.

We'll get them, John.

City of the year.

Let's go.

Let's say that's a good thing.

All right, one board.

So we'll try to come up here.

What these letters stand for destination, arts, visionary, education, nice, trust.

Prosperity?

Open for business, resiliency, and transparency.

Wow.

All right, okay.

Okay.

I will say I've done this in a lot of places.

I've never seen somebody use their city's name as an acrostic.

So man, I was setting the pace again.

All right.

So let's just kind of look at these.

Um, maybe I'll put it here so we can kind of see it.

What do you see?

That's in common.

Whoops.

What?

What's common with all three of these?

Prosperity is in all of headlines.

Ah.

Not getting it.

There we go.

Alright, so you can't borrow your marker.

So what what are some of them?

Pride, you said?

Prosperity.

Prosperity.

We care about that.

And really, what's the you know the common language you use is what?

Economic development.

Right?

That's what's gonna drive that.

We talk about in the West, part of the country of the city.

What else is common?

Inviting people.

Yeah, it's it's it's inviting.

I think that's right.

You know, like we're open for business, our population's growing.

Um what else?

Somebody said pride, and and I mean that's kind of um it's kind of close to inviting, but but but that's an important thing.

That's that that self-esteem.

And you know, you gotta you we'll go back to talking about responsibilities of council as ambassadors of the city and believing in the city, and you know, you can't you can't go around.

I mean, I'm not saying you can't be honest, you gotta be honest.

First task of a leader is to you know be honest about the future, about about reality.

You have to define reality, but you also gotta poise that or partner that with, and we can, and we can.

All right, what else?

Yeah, there's some more commonalities you have some innovation, obviously for all these things, innovation, leadership.

Um, yes, yes, it's our home.

Okay.

So now let's let's ask a couple of questions here before we we kind of turn turn the corner.

What's necessary for these kind of kind of elaborate dreams to come about?

Even you know, even if you say, well, we can't reach all of that.

Okay, fine.

But but what do you gotta do to get closer to it?

What are some of the things you say?

Well, we have to do this.

Let's talk about that for a minute.

What what are the things that are necessary in order to achieve the vision that you want?

Teamwork.

Teamwork.

Jobs, education.

Hold on.

Oh, that's right.

Jobs, okay, education.

Expand on that a little bit.

You're talking about trade schools, college college.

We need to retain the people we have with jobs, and when we send our kids up to Iowa City or Ames or wherever, we have to have jobs and don't come back.

They're proper training.

So we gotta have good quality jobs that are fun.

You know, and uh and jobs and educational hand might be.

Yeah, well, and that's what I was gonna say.

You have to have, I'm not again, I'm don't take this as an indictment.

It's not, but you have to have a good partnership between your education institutions and your your job market.

Absolutely.

There have they they have to play, you know, for the the lack of a better term, complimentary football, right?

So so that's that's important.

Okay, what else?

What else have we got to do?

Communication.

Communication, yes.

We're open for business.

Gotta let people see how awesome it is to be here.

Yeah, you you know, I can't stress this enough.

The the most important thing that you have to remember as a leader is that you carry in your hands at all places at all times, two buckets, one bucket of water, and one bucket of gasoline.

One bucket of water and one bucket of gasoline.

And everywhere you go, you carry those buckets.

You take them to work, you take them to Little League, you take them to dance recital, you take them everywhere you go.

And wise leadership, successful leadership knows when to use which bucket.

So when you come upon people who are talking bad about the city, how we don't do this, and we can't fix that, and this isn't right, and all of that, that is not the place to use your gasoline.

And you poured gas on that fire.

That's not, you just added fuel to their fire.

That may make you popular for the moment.

That may make it easy, but that's not good leadership.

That's where you use your bucket of water.

And you say, wait, just a minute.

I was in that meeting, and I want to tell you what really the intended outcome of this is and where we're going.

Let me tell you these things.

And the mayor said this because blah, blah, blah, blah.

And when you come up on a meeting or a group of people that are all excited about Davenport and they just moved here or they want to start a business here, that is not the place to use your bucket of water.

And say, oh, well, let me, we never get anything done.

I bet it'll never come about.

I will stab us in the back.

The legislature can't make this work.

No.

That's not good leadership.

That's losing leadership.

That's when you use your bucket of gas.

And you say, that's right.

And it's you don't even know.

Let me tell you even more.

And I'm not saying lie.

I'm just saying, get excited about it and frame it right.

And not only do you here's the key.

Not only do you have to be that way, you have to teach people to be that way.

Leaders are teachers.

I mentioned, I mentioned Liz Wiseman, her book, Multipliers.

Among the many brilliant things she says, she talks about the fact that leaders don't always have the marker in their hand.

And she uses illustration.

She says, it's it's nothing in a in a class for the professor to be able to work out a math problem.

Like he, of course, he would.

He's the professor.

What matters is can he start the equation and then give the marker and say, okay, Matt, you finish it.

That's when you're teaching.

That's when you're leading, she says.

So you gotta do that as a leader.

You gotta be able to start the equation, right?

But you gotta, you know, you gotta give them the mark.

Okay, can you finish it?

Because that's the only way it grows.

And it's hard.

Because people want to drag you down.

They want to drag you back, and they want to say, yeah, but what if?

And you gotta say, oh no, no, you know, but let me go, let's go on.

It's really important to do that.

So, okay, communication.

What else?

What else is necessary for this to happen?

Compromise.

Okay, talk about that a little bit, Paul.

Well good word.

It's not a bad word.

There's a lot of things there, but a lot of them require interaction.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So compromise.

Compromise is very similar to teamwork, right?

Like.

Yeah, but compromise has to put the teamwork together.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So you can't you can't divide against each other.

And you know, you gotta say, look, I want to, I think we gotta put this much in this area, but I see where others feel like it's gotta be less so that we can do this.

I can live with it.

And you know, one of the questions, this is a mere question here, thing, is you know, you're asking these questions.

Number one, when somebody disagrees, um, what suggestions do you have?

Okay.

Second question, what would make it better?

What would make it better?

So it's similar to suggestions, but what would make it better?

And then the third one is can you live with it?

And if you go usually those three questions, you can usually get people to come along with it.

I'll probably have to use that tomorrow some when we get to the okay.

Can you live with it?

No, okay.

What would make it better?

I don't know.

Well, now we're stuck.

I mean, tell us what would make it better, you know.

But but you gotta work with that without demonizing them.

Because newsflash, just because they disagree with you doesn't mean that they're like cheering for the Las Vegas Raiders or something.

I mean, they're not evil.

I mean, like, you know what I'm saying?

That just because they disagree with you doesn't mean they're your enemy.

You know, um, I I've said this, I've probably already said it today.

The community, the Latin prefix com, do you know what it means?

Anybody remember their Latin?

It means with C O M.

With W I T H with?

Yes.

With from Texas, with unity.

That's what community is.

We we have to live in unity.

And and that happens at we Hannah and I were talking about this.

Happens at the city level, not really the state level, not a little the federal level.

Not against any of that, but it's got to happen in our cities.

So you got to compromise.

That's very good.

All right, what else does it take?

I think credibility.

Okay, talk about that, Mayor.

Um I guess a little bit, the former city mayor, and he tells us the way about being a city that's already challenged, open to the economy, losing out uh on a huge major united project that went to Indianapolis, and just being at the lowest of the low and then coming up with the the map's funding idea and being able to get that through uh a referendum, a one-cent sales tax to fill and and they and that transformed from that point on our city's been completely terrible.

But they had to have credibility as elected leaders and and certainly the staff to be able to move the needle in a very challenging time.

Yeah.

So I think having the credibility to get your community and your business community, your citizens, other folks that come along with you, gotta be credible.

You do, and it's such a such an important thing, you know.

You gotta project.

Yes, it's hard, but we're gonna do it.

We're gonna be the winners.

You know, if if if Luis Urzua did anything in that mine in Chile, he communicated to those miners, we're gonna live.

We're gonna live.

You've got to communicate that.

We're gonna, yeah, it's hard.

We got some stuff, litigation is amazing, but we're gonna win because that attracts winners.

That attracts people want to be with people that are winning and successful.

And and you gotta, that's a great, great point.

By the way, I don't know if you anybody been to the the uh memorial there in Oklahoma City.

Man, I if you ever get a chance to go, you should go.

You should go.

It's it's unbelievably moving.

I do some management team retreats at and we in Oklahoma City with other cities just so we can take them through the um the memorial.

It's an amazing story of resilience, amazing story of great police work.

Um, man, it's worth your time.

And you know, what they call Bricktown, that's the kind of their thing, just to your point, it's it's incredible.

So, yeah, thanks for sharing that, Mayor.

Okay, anything else?

Let's do this.

Let's take about a 10-minute break.

Let's come back in 10 minutes.

I got a short TED talk I want to show you.

It's not me, you'll like that.

It's really good, and then we'll kind of wrap it up for the evening as we move along.

All right, so um I want to show this this TED Talk.

This is by a storyteller named Donald Davis.

And if you are in the world of storytelling in the USA, really the world, Donald Davis is is on the Mount Rushmore of just about anybody's storytelling, and I wanted to show it because no, we don't, and I I resonate with the fact that you don't, it's the right thing.

You don't want to get dragged back in the past.

I think when I was doing interviews, some of you said, you know, previous council was maybe a little bit against each other and so forth.

That's not us.

We don't want to be taken back there, and and I salute that.

So I'm not trying to say, you know, go back to the past.

But I think what Donald Davis does in this story is remind us of the fact that the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves have a huge impact on our future.

And I share that with you because you know, so many times, sometimes in our interactions with each other.