You could be saying, “I heard it from my mentor!” Connie Hartline Publications Manager American Public Works Association Kansas City, Missouri
erhaps you’ve wondered why APWA is putting considerable effort into assembling a group of 200 mentors for the APWA Donald C. Stone Center for Leadership Excellence in Public Works (DCS) program. The answer can be found in something Albert Einstein said: “Learning is experience. Everything else is just information.” In recognition of that truth, APWA has made access to mentoring a key component of the program so that participants get one-on-one time with some of the most successful public works professionals in North America. At press time, 170 Public Works Leadership Fellows (PWLFs) had been approved and are ready to assume their roles as mentors. One of the early tasks they’ve been assigned is to provide “stories of experience” from their careers, which have been assembled into a supplemental book for DCS program participants. The stories are arranged around leadership and management core competencies, which include: plans for the future; leads an organization; communicates; builds relationships and partnerships; and the multiple categories of managing staff, information, infrastructure, municipal services, and money and resources. To give you a taste of the added dimensions mentors will bring to the DCS experience, I’ve chosen stories from five of the mentors. 16 APWA Reporter
June 2012
The stories use a situation/action/ result format, hence the S/A/R designations that follow.
cost. We make at least six complete passes through the entire city in a six-week period each fall.
Michael Waldron, Director of Public Works for Moline, Illinois, chose not to wait for a leaf burn ban and found a creative plan to use a baler to bail out Moline’s curbside leaf service.
Carl Dawson, Public Works Director for Raleigh, North Carolina, found that taking time to communicate with employees paid off when news about health care benefits threatened to be a bitter pill for them to swallow.
S: We vacuum/rake leaves curbside for every street in the city. The city council was contemplating a leaf burn ban, which would add additional tonnage to be collected. At the same time, public works budgets were under severe cuts and reductions in personnel and related expenditures. A: We watched the council struggle with the decision for 2-3 years prior to adoption. In that period we didn’t wait for the ban to just happen and then adapt. We began an intensive review throughout the Midwest of what our peers were doing and how we could become more efficient, keep our standard of service, and implement any efficiencies as soon as possible rather than waiting for the ban to be put into place. R: Through peer reviews and networking, we were able to partner with an area farmer to use his bailer equipment (square bails) to collect leaves. The bailer was in addition to our vacuum/rake operations. The burn ban was implemented, and we have completed leaf collection each of these last three years at lower
S: Recently, it became apparent that the City’s health care plans were not sustainable without some significant changes that would affect staff’s benefits. If was also apparent that the reductions in benefits and the increased employee costs would have an effect on employee morale in the department. A: I served on the City’s management team charged with recommending benefit changes that would offer employees two plans so that they could choose the plan that best met their needs. I met with all of the 400 employees in the department to explain the advantages and disadvantages of each plan and to answer questions about the need for the changes. R: The changes were made with minimal disruption and drop in employee morale. This happened because staff felt that they were given all of the information necessary to understand the need for the changes and to choose the plan that provided the most benefit to their individual situations.
