LEADING THROUGH DISRUPTION The Challenges of 2020
The disruption experienced in 2020 has been relentless, compound, and farreaching. It has been exhausting at times for local government leaders to manage the manic cadence of decision making with life and livelihood consequences for the communities we serve while balancing day-to-day operations, fiscal distress, issues of inequity along race and socioeconomic lines, and planning for a post-pandemic future.
Adapting in 2021
We spent the vast majority of 2020 responding to multiple crises for which we were not and could not have been prepared. We are heading into a new year with the benefit of retrospection and foresight to inform our efforts going forward. Even with an imminent COVID-19 vaccine, the three W’s (wear a mask, watch your distance, and wash your hands frequently) will likely be with us through 2021 and we must prepare our organizations and communities for
this reality. We must also foster hope for the future, focus on and be responsive to the needs of the community, and look for leveraging opportunities so that we may emerge from all of this better prepared and more resilient.
Opportunity
With partisan extremism continuing at the state and federal levels of government, our communities are relying on local government to provide strong leadership on the critical issues that have been laid bare in 2020. This year required local government leaders to learn new skills and use existing skills in new ways. However, one of the most disruptive lessons of 2020 was a reckoning with the fact that we can’t “skill build” or plan our way out of the crises our communities face. We have to commit ourselves to the work in novel ways and use our newly developed ability to better tolerate ambiguity to explore the root causes of the problems we face with the communities we serve to create collective solutions that will be more equitable and effective.
Key Takeaway
The disruption we faced in 2020 fostered extraordinary levels of ingenuity and innovation in our organizations and our communities that have positively transformed local government service delivery. In our eagerness to return to “normal” we should be careful not to dismiss real improvements as short-term responses and find ways to preserve and advance those new practices that have proven to be successful.
“It has been exhausting to manage the manic cadence of decision-making with life and livelihood consequences for the communities we serve while balancing day-to-day operations, fiscal distress, and issues of inequity.”
TANISHA R. BRILEY is city manager of Gaithersburg, Maryland. Her career in the public sector spans nearly two decades, with 14 years in city management. She most recently served as city manager of Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
4 | PUBLIC MANAGEMENT | JANUARY 2021 SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
