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.