Kevin

By City Manager Dominick Casey

Though we had just closed the first quarter of our new fiscal year, our City Council and department heads spent two days in October to set the long-term vision for our city and our top priorities for the next fiscal year (2020-21) and beyond.

This is the kickoff to our annual budget-planning process, and we spent additional time and focus this year on the effort. It’s different from years past since we know at this point we can incorporate Measure B revenues. We’re continuing to focus on community priorities identified through EngageRoseville, and being aware of the shifting circumstances that affect our operations on a daily basis.

At the public workshop, the Council reviewed key accomplishments, important issues we face, best practices for the strategic-planning process, and the capacity and timelines to tackle these priorities.

The Council also set priorities for the next several years and affirmed our mission, vision, and values. The workshop kicked off with a lookback to celebrate what we’ve done together.

Key Accomplishments:

In individual interviews with the Council in preparation for the workshop, the Council identified the following key accomplishments from the past several years and thanked staff for our dedication in getting this important work done.

• Measure B passage
• EngageRoseville
• Public safety services (Police staffing, fire station)
• Labor agreements
• City’s financial strength (reserves, recession planning)
• Downtown improvements (garage, housing, events, bridges)
• Improved infrastructure and services in general

In addition, several other accomplishments were highlighted:

• Three new councilmembers on board
• Citywide training program established
• Surplus property plan developed
• Social media policy adopted
• Amoruso Ranch Specific Plan approved
• Enterprise resource planning selection and implementation
• Electronic plan review
• Community solar projects
• Water reliability planning
• New electric substation
• Advanced metering project
• Financial policies updated
• New facility agreement for the SPCA facility construction
• Roller-compacted concrete pilot
• Treatment plan improvements
• New passport center 

The Council reviewed and refined the Mission, Vision, and Values. The discussion centered on a future-oriented focus to ensure our capacity to deliver high-quality services isn’t hurt in the future. Following are the draft statements that emerged that will be finalized at the December 18 City Council meeting.

Mission: To provide exceptional services in a fiscally responsible manner that enhance the quality of life today and into the future.

Vision: A city that delivers a high quality of life now and as we prosper into the future.

Many of the values already reflected the core competencies that were identified through our Organizational Culture & Leadership initiative. To solidify the alignment, the values and core competencies are one in the same.

Values:

• Focus on people
• Build trust
• Ensure accountability
• Communicate effectively
• Collaborate inclusively
• Make quality decisions
• Be adaptable/agile

Priorities:

The current set of City Council priorities was established in 2012 and has been expanded over the years. The list had grown to 11, without any items being removed or refined in that time. The Council focused on honing the list to provide a more concise policy direction with this draft set of priorities:

• Remain fiscally responsible in a changing world
• Expand community engagement and advocacy
• Maintain a safe and healthy community
• Enhance economic vitality
• Deliver exceptional City services
• Invest in well-planned infrastructure and growth

Aligning operations and priorities, establishing clear expectations, and developing consensus on policy direction were some of the goals achieved at the workshop.

Department Head Retreat

At the end of October, the department head team discussed these priorities at our annual retreat. We reviewed and added to a draft Implementation Action Plan (IAP) that outlines strategies and tactics we’ll use to deliver on the Council Priorities. The IAP will be a working document that we use in the budget process and present to Council after getting input from staff and the community.

Leadership Challenge

As part of the OC&L focus on professional development, the City is considering offering a Leadership Challenge Workshop, which the department head team will preview in December. We’re expecting it to be an intensive, highly interactive experience that will serve as a catalyst for profound leadership transformation in our organization. In preparation, we read the book “Great Leadership Creates Great Workplaces” and did some exercises centered on topics in the book.

We discussed ways to challenge the process, enable others to act, model the way, inspire shared vision, enable others to act, and encourage the heart.

Following are some of the ideas that emerged from our brainstorming:

Challenge the Process:

• Ask / understand the “why”
• It’s beneficial to model the process
• Put some ownership on those who challenge the process
• Make it “safe” and comfortable to learn from failure
• Risk aware, but not to a point of limiting positive change
• The more handoffs in a process, the less efficient/accurate
• Manage expectations / keep realistic

Enable Others to Act:

• Cascade training outcomes throughout department/organization
• Establish clear expectations (who, what, when, where, why)
• Engrain the culture in new hires
• Clear direction
• Give people permission / include them in the conversation or roadmap discussion
• Empowerment / autonomy
• Build system to make decisions at the lowest level
• Institutionalize internal cooperation between departments
• Help staff problem solve by asking questions related to the process. What information or data did they use to help drive a decision? Reinforce the “right” pieces.
• Create a culture that aligns with staff understanding they can fail
• Put in the work / invest the time to build real trust

Model the Way:

• “Live” the organizational values
• Ensure department values are understood
• Walk the walk
• Core competencies should be understood, talked about, reinforced through many avenues (meetings, trainings, certain literature, etc.)
• Demonstrate / model the values you want staff to apply
• Ensure this cascades through the entire organization. All levels need to understand how that applies to them.
• Make connections with staff. This helps them listen better when speaking or discussing items of importance.
• Perhaps limit competencies between citywide and department to 10 or less
• Use data as a tool to help align with staff (collaboration)
• Employee level goal setting
• Provide space or forum to discuss problems or difficult organizational challenges
• Share the “why” in the ultimate decisions

Inspire a Shared Vision:

• Actions drive the vision
• Need to be available (communicate)
• Explore or show vulnerability when appropriate
• Need to listen and be consistent in approach / actions
• Hold people accountable (help them get better or help them move on)
• Increase training and development to enhance us as a high performing agency
• Hire and train the “right” people to maximize capacity
• Understand technical skills don’t necessarily translate to being great supervisor
• Recognize employees who do it the right way. Make sure the entire department sees/understands this recognition.
• Revamp Pride of Roseville to align with core competencies
• Ask employees what they want in an employee recognition program (survey)
• Need new Pride of Roseville to cascade through the entire city (all departments)
• Pride of Roseville needs to be timely and current to be the most effective
• Communicate constantly / consistently on shared vision

Encourage the Heart:

• Celebrate success
• Take calculated risks
• Fail forward / fail fast
• Build a new culture that helps facilitate an environment that promotes appropriate risk/creativity, without the fear of a penalty attached to a failure
• Avoid fear of failure paralysis
• Show people that we put them first and unequivocally value them
• Value professional redemption. Have to show the ability to let past mistakes go, if true improvement/learning has occurred.
• Value lessons learned and apply those moving forward
• Base support on performance, not if you are “in the popular group”

Clear Focus:

• Develop a true road map (make the time)
• Annual work plan should be present and we need to be able to correlate how it relates to staff roles/responsibilities
• Align with Council and internal goals – use tools such as GIM’s and CC’s to help drive this
• Recruit and hire through competencies

Clearly, our culture is the glue that connects us. We are committed to ensuring that all of us as leaders can understand and develop the skills to meet whatever leadership challenges lie ahead.

Knowing where our challenges lie is a critical first step in being able to address them. October was a reflective time to determine not only the challenges, but also the opportunities. It’s a dynamic time. There’s a resolve in our City Council, staff, and community to anticipate and adapt to changing circumstances. It’s one that is firmly rooted in reality with a healthy dose of optimism about our ability to navigate successfully.

With the dynamic staff we have throughout our city, I’m confident that Roseville will continue to be the community of choice to live, work, and play.