In Whitewater and communities far beyond, cities and public bodies are evaluating their administrators’ annual performance. That’s true for Whitewater’s municipal manager, and for the Innovation Center director, among others.
These evaluations are closed-session reviews, but (as I write) I have no particular interest in how they’re conducted or the substance of the evaluations, in any event. These respective supervisory bodies will (and should) evaluate however they wish.
Here are a few tips for the year ahead, unsolicited though they may be, that would benefit just about any official, regardless of any evaluation.
Pencil and paper. Start every plan, project, or initiative with one’s own calculations, and subject the calculations of others to rigorous examination. For goodness’ sake, don’t rely on others’ data without one’s own review.
Take a piece of paper, and make one’s own outline, with one’s own questions, asking about each point of the proposal.
Those institutional players. Whitewater’s a changing place. Yet, the town still pays too much attention to the lazy theories and flimsy claims of people from big organizations. The problem isn’t that leaders of those big players aren’t smart — they are.
The problem is that some – but certainly not all – of them are lazy, and produce junk for work. Relying on their shoddy efforts is a gamble: how soon until their schemes fall apart?
As for municipal officials from other towns, visiting hat in hand to this town, recognize the truth: they want what they want, and care nothing about anyone here. When it all falls apart, they’ll neither be there to buck locals up or able to do so (even if they did care).
The press. Feel good, back-patting stories are good for a scrapbook, but they’re no help in one’s position within the city. On the contrary, they make things worse for officials, because they’re so fawning, so flimsy, they’re laughable to sensible. One would be better with no copy than risible copy.
Bigger than you know. We may be a small town, but we’re not just one, monochrome place. We’re a diverse one. I know – and others know, too – that we’ve passed the point of being just one thing, a one-stop shop, and that we never really were just one thing. The tendency to overlook this, to pretend it’s not so, indeed to distort data and conceal a shifting landscape, will prove intoxicating.
I see this, but I see that it doesn’t matter: one makes one’s way more effectively on one’s own, and intentionally dodgy data and shoddy stats won’t change that.
Out and in, combined. Avoid a forest for the trees problem – Whitewater’s not just a small city, it’s a small city in a Midwestern state, in a beautiful, continental republic. Looking for solutions here means looking for solutions from across the state and country. Anything else sells residents short.
Diplomacy. Officials will have to be diplomatic about all this, in a way that bloggers don’t have to be. I’m sure that’s within their power.
In any event, within one’s power or not, these few tips still ring true and useful, I’d say.