Patrick Adams  00:00

Welcome to the Lean solutions podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders by helping you improve performance using process improvement solutions with bottom line results. My name is Patrick Adams, and this season, I’ll be joined by three other amazing hosts, including Catherine McDonald from Ireland, Andy Ulrich from Australia and Shane Dauphin from the United States. Join us as we bring you guests and experiences of Lean practitioners from all over the world.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  00:32

Hello and welcome to this episode of the lean solutions podcast led by your host, Catherine and myself. Shane, Catherine, how are you today? I’m

Catherine McDonald  00:41

good, Shane, I’m good, I’m good, and it’s good to see you. I haven’t seen you in a few weeks since the conference. So how was everything?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  00:47

It was great. We had a fantastic conference. Not not to rub it in, but Andy and I had a really good time together. Not jealous at all for those of you in our listening audience, Andy and I made sure that we sent pictures of us just looking bored to Catherine, just so she wouldn’t feel like she was missing out on anything.

Catherine McDonald  01:08

It was, yeah, that’s

Shayne Daughenbaugh  01:10

right, that’s right. Hey, I have two questions for you this morning or today. Okay, so Catherine, which job do you think is harder managing local government or leading in the public sector?

Catherine McDonald  01:26

That’s not an easy question to answer, and I’ll give you an example of I don’t know. Have you ever watched the show billions?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  01:34

No heard of it, but no, yeah,

Catherine McDonald  01:37

so it’s actually a show that I’ve been watching lately, and that that question is actually so relevant, what’s happening that show? You’ve got two main characters. One is a district attorney, so he’s in head, you know, government. You’ve got another guy who owns a hedge fund called Bobby Axelrod, so he runs AX capital. And when the show first opens, it makes it look like the two guys are really, really different in terms of what they have to do, their leadership skills. So obviously, in the public sector, Chuck has to be, you know, he’s in the public eye. He has to manage low budgets, low resources, um, catch all the criminals, tough gig, all the rest. And then you’ve got Bobby Axelrod, who’s kind of the opposite, who it’s all about profit making. He can do what he wants behind closed doors, privately owned. So you’ve got two guys who look like totally different lives, but as the show goes on, it becomes more and more obvious that their leadership abilities actually are so similar, and it really makes the point. I think that leadership, it’s not difficult. Let’s say, or you couldn’t say, one is more difficult than the other in terms of the two sectors, it comes down to values. I think so leadership is difficult if it doesn’t align with your own internal values. So Chuck couldn’t do Bobby’s job, and Bobby couldn’t do Chuck’s job, but they each love their own job, and they do it really, really well. So I couldn’t I couldn’t make a differentiation. He couldn’t answer that question of which is more difficult, but there’s definitely similarities between leading in no matter what sector. And I think the show really points that out really well. And I know we’re going to get into some of that today as well. Kind of really, really interesting. We would think it’s so different, you know. And I’ve worked in non profit sector, in not exactly government, but in, I suppose, the public sector, and I’ve also worked in private sector and and it’s not as I think different as what people think. Sometimes, that’s my perception.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  03:46

I’m very excited to to hear our guest talk about those differences, you know, and what the commonalities are, what, what transfers from one to the other. Tell, tell our listening audience, what who our guest is today? Who do we got today? Okay,

Catherine McDonald  04:04

so today, our guest is Shane Silsby. Shane has 25 years of experience in strategic planning, public policy, organizational development and major infrastructure projects. His career includes executive leadership roles in the private sector and government, with his last public role as director of Orange County Public Works, as CEO salespeople, strategic advisors. He helps public agencies solve complex challenges, including federal funding strategies. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Michigan State University. He is a member of the American Public Works Association National Government Affairs Committee, and he is the author of a fabulous book called Managing for meteors. So hopefully we have Shane about to enter. I hope, uh, there he is. Hi. Welcome to the show.

Shane Silsby  04:55

Hello, Shane and Catherine. Catherine, your name is great, but I gotta give the advantage to Shane for. Some reason.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  05:03

No, I need all the advantage I can get.

Shane Silsby  05:06

I enjoyed your chat on the billions, and I was thinking, if there was a show like that based on local government, it would be called hundreds.

Catherine McDonald  05:15

Pretty much, I

Shayne Daughenbaugh  05:17

love it. I love it. Hey, Shane, to start off with. I can you help our audience understand why you made this shift from leadership in government to the private sector?

Shane Silsby  05:30

Yeah, I get asked that question a lot because I had a really awesome position in local government and have had multiple leadership positions across the country. But I like challenges the way my mind works. I’m always looking to find out what the next thing is we can work on and improve. And in my last role, I felt like we had accomplished many things. We built all of the legacy projects that were on the shelf, basically. And when I look forward, I was there six and a half years, when I look forward to the next six and a half, I didn’t see it as being as as maybe interesting or as fruitful as my last six and a half, not that there weren’t going to be challenges, always challenges in local government. So that was part of it. But the other piece of it was, I wanted to try to help more agencies. And when you work for local government, you have a duty to serve those constituents in your area and your jurisdiction, and you really can’t go outside of that. I mean, you can go out and get training and talk to people, but you really can’t help effectively other organizations. And so my goal is to try to help cities and counties across the country,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  06:30

excellent for those that just to spin off of that riff off that just a little bit for those that aren’t in, you know, the local government side of things. Can you give a little bit of a snapshot, let’s say, of the challenges that you were able to overcome? What are some of the things that people might be able to relate to, but also are unique to local governments? If you can?

Shane Silsby  06:56

Yeah, I’ll throw a couple things out there and happy to get your feedback as well. I mean, you’re talking about the show billions, and the different between the difference between the public and private sectors. In the public sector, other than what people think, you can’t print your own money, right? You’re given a limited amount of resources at the local level, and you have to do everything within your functional responsibilities, and all of the infrastructure you need to maintain and all the people you need to serve. You need to do all that within a confined budget. And you can’t say, well, it’s not effective really, to say, my costs have gone up because the cost of materials has gone up, the cost of labor has gone up. So I’m going to just increase my revenues. You can’t do that instantly in the public sector. You can sometimes do that in the private sector, depending on your market and what your customers will be subjected to, but in the public sector, I mean, nobody wants to raise taxes, nobody wants to do additional fees, all those things. And so that’s one of the difficulties. You have limited resources, right? And I think part that’s partly why today we’re going to talk about doing more with less, if you will, or being being lean in those things. Two other things I would think about as a difference. One is, I was told a number of times by elected officials that government is not meant to be efficient, right? There’s a reason why it’s kind of clunky, right? You have, you know, rules, laws, regulations, oversight, audits, which, by the way, audits add more steps in, right? That’s why important. It’s important to lean those things out. And then you have the public right? So you have all of these sources that are not maybe in line with what your project or initiative is trying to do, but you have to account for those things in the local government setting. And then the final piece, I would say, is talent retention and attraction is very different in the two sectors, right? And so private sector, you can sometimes leverage salary or other benefits or interesting projects, but in the public sector, you kind of have what you have in front of you. You have a set salary scale. And so you need people that kind of want to be public servants, or want to learn and work on things that the project itself might not be that challenging, but getting the project done might be challenging, right? The process, the the environment, it’s in the funding side of it. So couple of differences just off the top of my head between those two sectors.

Catherine McDonald  09:18

Yeah, I see that as well. Just I mentioned earlier Shane, so I worked in nonprofits, which is not the same as government, but at the same time, there’s a lot of similarities there. We really have to manage every penny, every cent we had. I get what you’re saying about the efficiency piece. However, I think I see things as changing in, let’s say the nonprofit piece. I think nonprofits now have to be so efficient, because there’s an expectation that this is public money, and you cannot be seen as leaders to be wasting that money in any way. So I mean, is it this? Is there any kind of similar trends there in in government? Is there are things changing? In that way. Do you think? Yeah,

Shane Silsby  10:02

I think those leaders that are shown to be more efficient and effective with the funding they’re given are regarded more highly. I think they’re more sought after. I think they’re more respected in the communities. But people forget that you have kind of a weight, you know, around your neck when you’re trying to do that, because you have to account for all of the processes, procedures, public input, elected official input, public meetings, all of those things that really pull away from what you would do if you just had a full focus on efficiency. So it’s not a right or wrong issue, it’s just that that’s what, in my mind, makes it more difficult. So to your to answer your question. Kevin, yes, you need to focus on that, or you should focus on that local governments. But it’s even more difficult. And that’s why I think the wins are even more interesting and spectacular when you do achieve some of those things, because it’s kind of, it’s against those headwinds, not not negative headwinds, necessarily, but just, you know, a realization of what happens in the public realm. You know, one other thing I would say is that you can could make it, maybe make an argument in the private sector to a board or to a CEO or to financers about why an initiative is good and why it should be funded, or why people should be compensated more, whatever the case. You can make that logical argument, back it up with facts and data and potentially get an outcome that you’re looking for in the public sector, that doesn’t always work right, because you’re dealing with community members, you’re dealing with maybe federal, federal agencies out of state, whatever it is that it’s We want your issue to conform to our world, right, our community, our laws and rules, and so the best ideas sometimes cannot be implemented as effectively in Local Governments because of all those things that affect it, but that’s why they have to try her.

Catherine McDonald  11:47

So from your perspective, having worked in both Shane, I mean, which do you think is the question that Shane asked me at the start was, which is harder for as a leader? What do you think which is actually more challenging or harder. Or do you have a perspective on that? Are they both the same?

Shane Silsby  12:06

Yeah, they’re they’re different. I think local government, especially, I work for larger agencies, City of Phoenix, county of Orange, that, in my mind, is more difficult because you are in a world where you cannot control a lot of the Levers you might want to move to make your project successful, to hire somebody to do an initiative in the private sector, the difficulty comes from your pipeline, making sure your revenues are intact, looking at your expenses, things that you can somewhat control. Now, you don’t control the market or inflation, obviously, but, but you can pull those Levers as a leader in local government. That doesn’t mean it’s it’s easy to do that right as a leader. It’s always more difficult, but, but between the two, I’m just explaining in local government, you don’t control all the levers that you would want to pull as a leader to make your job more efficient, or whatever it is. So, so that’s kind of how I differentiate the two. In local government, you have a whole community you’re serving as a public servant. They have input. They are shareholders in that whether or not they pay in or believe in what you’re trying to accomplish, you still have to serve that constituency.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  13:15

Right, right, right, right. So, so if you have these differences, what are some I don’t want to I don’t know if lesser known. I’m not sure what, what the better word is. What are some commonalities that that people may not see between these two worlds?

Shane Silsby  13:33

Well, there’s a symbiotic relationship, to be sure, and it’s becoming more and more apparent as we talk about workforce development, or the need for for leaders in local government, and just a labor shortage in the US, when you look at the unemployment statistics being so low, government agencies cannot react as fast as the private sector. When you get funding for a project or a permit gets approved, you can move something forward. You get an environmental clearance, you get community support on something. You can’t automatically add 10 people to do that job right in the local government setting, but that’s where the private sector comes in to supplement that. And if you have a good partnership with the private sector agents, sorry, companies in your area, then you can rely on them to fill in those gaps dealing with the peaks and valleys of your workload needs. And so it’s very symbiotic. I always looked at it that way. One can’t function without the other necessarily, right? The government agencies are where a lot of the funding comes to do these types of projects or initiatives or services, and then the private sector is asked to pick up that load, to actually deliver that and then it goes back to the public sector to do a final review, permit or approval or delivery, but without that private sector component, you’d have to do your government workload balancing like this, and you cannot hire and fire people like that in governments as efficiently.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  14:51

That’s a great explanation. I worked at the Nebraska Department of Transportation for many years. And, you know, when I first started, I always had the question of, why do we have so many consultants? You know, why? And the answer was very much what you were saying, you know, there we can’t manage that workload. We can’t manage the up ramp of suddenly, all these employees that we need to do this work that when the project is done, we don’t know if it’s going to be maintained the same. I mean, each project is a little bit different, so it goes up and down. So that’s, that’s a great I hope our listening audience is able to catch that. That’s a great explanation for why government agencies use that. That just happens to be, I don’t know if you mentioned partner. I also think of it as a lever that they’re able to pull to use those partnerships in consulting and whatnot. So

Shane Silsby  15:45

and there’s two other pieces of that, just to dive in a little bit. One is that people always want to, in my opinion or my experience, want to have the first part of the discussion like, let’s staff up our local government workforce, or our D O T workforce, let’s staff them up to do those projects. Everybody makes a solid argument about that, but they don’t finish to the discussion about when that project is done, what happens to those, those positions? Nobody, nobody wants to have that discussion. Right? When it’s pulling a public sector or, sorry, a private sector level, as you said, Shane, you know what’s going to happen, right? The contract ends. You’re not paying for those services anymore, until the next one. But on the public side, you know, more difficult. Now, what I would say is an area where we can be more efficient in governments is in that procurement process, in that contract, right, looking at trying to find the right procurement tool for the right project or the right service, and that’s something I think all local governments can do a better job at. So when they go to to pull those levers, you know, the time is used more productively. We have more cost predictability, we reduce risks. And you can affect that by the way that you engage those those private services,

16:49

right? Yeah, yeah,

Catherine McDonald  16:53

good point. So do you think Shane then in terms of back to leadership in both of these sectors? Do you think that qualities need to be different in these leaders? So if we’re looking for a public government, let’s say government sector, and then we have the private sector, and we’re looking for leaders for both, would we be looking for different qualities and competencies in the people who take on these roles? Do you think or No,

Shane Silsby  17:22

potentially. But you know, leadership qualities, I think, are somewhat translatable. And I know when I made the move for as a government executive into the private sector for a global engineering firm, as an executive, when they talked to me about it, I had those same concerns. I was like, I’ve been in government for 20 years. And they said, but what you’ve done in government is translatable. You focused on finances. You focused on efficiency. You work on people, you dealt with projects. You worked on procurements, you know, you dealt with big permitting, mitigation issues, whatever it is. You know how to work with elected officials. And so they said, all of that is going to be translatable, in their opinion. But they made the stretch, I think, made the jump also on potential that if you can do those hard things in government, you’ll be able to do hard things in the private sector. So I think you need Catherine to answer your question more specifically, you need to have some specific characteristics, I think, determination, flexibility, creativity, the ability to take feedback and create action plans for that align your resources in a direction for success. I think all of those things are translatable. What I would say is that folks that come from the private sector to the public sector have to likely learn a little bit more about patience, empathy, process things like that, which might not come as easily if you’ve never done that before. Yeah, yeah.

Catherine McDonald  18:42

And then also the other way around, coming from the government sector into the more private sector, that can actually, I’m sure you know a lot about this, but that, I’m sure there’s such benefits in that, because you’ve then got developed all these skills to having gone through, having to have the patience to deal with what you’ve dealt with in, you know, in in the public sector. So I imagine that would make you a very effective leader also going into the private sector. So, yeah, that’s that’s interesting, yeah, the

Shane Silsby  19:14

my the mindset is a little bit different, right? So in the private sector, you can do a great job delivering the project. The community can be happy. You can have improved the infrastructure in this area or provided a service. Everything could be great, but if that effort wasn’t profitable to your company, then that could be considered a failure on the private side. So that that’s what’s a little bit difficult in kind of wearing different hats. So that’s why now, in moving to the private sector, I like to work back and help public agencies. So I can kind of get that that rush and that feeling I like for helping communities, but then trying to, you know, work in the private side and help others as well. So, yeah, there’s some different perspectives there. Yeah.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  19:59

So you. You mentioned infrastructure, just from your point of view coming, you know, looking from kind of the outside in, how well are local governments, from your experience doing it, accessing, you know, the federal funding for this infrastructure, and, you know, taking advantage of some of the things that are out there, you know, the different, they don’t have a lot of leverage people, but that definitely is one of them that might be available. How well is that happening?

Shane Silsby  20:26

Yeah, that’s a great question. Shane, and I think I would give all of our local governments across the country a d minus in that effort snap. And it’s not because they are not effective, right? It’s because of the process involved in receiving federal dollars. So if you think about what’s happened since 2020 the local government agencies had to deal with the pandemic elements for two years. You know, people out of the office, funding rearranged, and so they had a two year I would consider it a two year gap where they needed to catch up just on their local issues, get their workforce back together, get projects out that were maybe delayed during the panic, so they had like this two year catch up period. So that takes you almost to 2024 and the federal funding right that got authorized in 2021 the bipartisan infrastructure law, is what I’m referring to there. There are also four total federal funding acts. 60% of that was formulaic. Most of that went to the States. 40% was grants. But to access a federal grant at a local agency, you have to have a sophistication of that process. You have to have people that can be dedicated to that you need to meet deadlines. You need to have projects that align with those elements. And so that’s part of what I do is help agencies look at their capital improvement program, cross reference that with 120 different grants and the bipartisan infrastructure law, develop a strategy so they can get ahead, get ready for all of that to increase their their chances of success for those grants. Because it’s not free to apply for a grant, right? You’ve got to do some preliminary studies. You’ve got to look at a public engagement plan, you’ve got to do the whole write up. There’s a benefit cost analysis generally. So it’s not free, so it’s like playing the lotto for them, and many agencies don’t have the time or even those resources, even if it meant getting 80% right, it’s usually an 8020 split, 80% of their project funded with federal dollars. They can’t risk the time and the money to play the lottery, if you will, with a discretionary grant program. So when I responded to you with my d minus Shane, it wasn’t that they’re ineffective in what they’re doing, necessarily. It’s the process is not set up to help. You know, most of the agencies in the country are mid or small size. You know, communities, cities and counties, the big ones they do well, right? They have a sophisticated team. They lobby. They know what to do. They’re the ones winning the majority of the grants that you would see all the headline, the splash headlines on things, those are very sophisticated agencies that already received, probably federal funding before these processes even went in place. So there’s a lot of work to be done. The formulaic dollars, which were 60% of that funding, is not getting to the local agencies, which is unfortunate, because if it did get to them, that wouldn’t be playing the lottery, that would be here’s your allocation. Now you just need to meet federal requirements to access those dollars, so we can have some lean efficiency improvements even at the federal level, I think,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  23:21

right, I would say definitely at the from, from the little bit that I saw, you know, behind that curtain, and something interesting that comes to mind when you when you were talking about this, that sometimes the general public, I don’t know if they think in this way, but if I take a whole bunch of money from you, be able to implement Something, Do I have the funds after that money runs out to continue to maintain that, and I think that’s part of you, know, your cost benefit analysis that you were mentioning, and the studies that that need to be there. It’s not as simple, from my perspective. It’s not as simple as just, oh, just sign on the dotted line. Okay, we’ll just take this check. Thank you very much. You know, there’s, there’s so much more to be involved. And the process from the little, again, the little bit that I’ve seen is horrible. It is not set up for success. It sounds like it, but we just do a great job in government to take the simple and try to make it as complex as we can, to kind of like cover all the bases and make sure that, you know, again, we’re trying to manage the people’s money as best we can, the citizens money as best we can. So there’s all these things that can put into place that end up, from my perspective, again, but I’m a very simple man, but then end up like handcuffing in a bit, or, you know, kind of like limiting what local governments and how easily they can can get into this. So many hoops to jump through and jump over and all this so crazy. The

Catherine McDonald  24:49

million dollar question is, how do we bring lean into these organizations? So where do we even start with companies and local. Government agencies that are really struggling in the ways that you pointed out. Shane, how do we help them?

Shane Silsby  25:08

Yeah, great question. I have something I’ve been advocating in DC for for years on this issue of federal funding, and we can move Catherine to other elements for Lean, but to inject some empathy into the discussion about the federal government. Federal agencies real quick, to be fair, they are experiencing the federal agencies so Congress and the president, they approved the funding, but the federal agencies are the ones that have to administer those dollars and make sure it’s compliant all those things, right? Sure, we talked about all the headwinds you have in governments. They didn’t get a bunch of extra people either, right? So they receive funding to administer, actually four different acts with no extra people, and actually losing people through the pandemic, like most government agencies did. And then we, you know, somebody like me, sits back and go, Why isn’t that money getting out? Well, because it’s hitting a bottleneck, right? It’s hitting a funnel. Money there, but not out, right? So how do we help that, from a lean perspective, doing literally doing more with less? Well, one of the things I’ve been advocating for for years in DC is that there are some federal programs that go directly from the federal government agency, the funding agency. So the money comes from Congress to the agency. Some some programs go directly from the federal agency to the local government. Beyond grants, grants are are that way. But again, we said, that’s playing the lotto. There are some dollars that go directly to local governments, but we have huge monetary allocations to certain federal agencies that go through a pass through process. And you’re probably familiar with the shame at the D, o, t, right? Money goes to the states, then it goes through regional entities, and then hopefully it gets down. And in many cases, they’re taking those dollars once they get down to the to the regional agency, and they’re creating discretionary grant programs there, so you have to compete locally. So in that case, all of the money’s discretion, you got to play the money to get $1 but what people forget, is that the revenues that are used for these federal funding elements are coming in a formulaic sense, or population based, coming from your local communities. That’s where the money and the calculation comes from. Is your population, okay? So that’s what’s coming to the state. And if you’re not getting that money all the way to you, then you’re really missing out. So a direct allocation, to answer the question Catherine, the direct allocation of the federal dollars from the agency in a ministerial fashion to pass through to the local governments based on their population for formulaic allocation, is the way to cut out all of the process that takes people’s time and effort and money, and every day, project costs go up. It shortcuts, all of that. And you’ll have people that you know, like D O T Shane and others will say, well, local agencies, they don’t know how to do that, and so, you know, that’s why we have all these processes. But the argument fails because in grants, the money goes directly to local agencies, and whenever you do a federalized project, you have to comply with federal requirements anyway. So all those other arguments fail, and it’s just not wanting to change the legacy systems where it’s just where I think lean processing comes in, is being willing to look at those legacy systems or processes and saying, How can we do this differently, and unfortunately for the federal government, they have examples that they could point to if they really wanted to, but it’s going to force a change. And I know you want to talk maybe more locally. I just wanted to finish the point on that sure not not beating up on federal agencies. Just bring your words. Hello, everyone. I am sorry to interrupt this episode of the lean solutions podcast, but I wanted to take a moment to invite you to pick up a copy of my Shingo award winning book, avoiding the continuous appearance track in the book, I contrast the cultures of two companies I work for, and though each started with similar lean models, one was mechanistic and only gave the appearance of lean, while the other developed a true culture of continuous improvement. The contrast provides a vivid example of the difference between fake lean and true lean. You can find the book on Amazon. Simply search my name or the title of the book. You aren’t a reader. No worries. The audio book is also available on Audible. Now back to the show.

Catherine McDonald  29:21

It’s not to be fair. It’s not just in local government. We’re seeing these issues. It’s in lots of other different types of organizations as well, where you’ve got fixed mindsets, and you’ve got people you know, not changing, saying we’ve always done it this way, and continuing it on. And look, that’s hard to change, and we know that. And so your book, Shane, and we can talk about more at the end, but I imagine you’ve got plenty of examples in there and that you might like to share with our listeners today, in terms of solutions and what you can do at local government level to be more efficient and effective. Would you like to share any more of those from your book?

Shane Silsby  29:59

Yeah, I’d love to, yeah. My book’s called Managing for meteors, right? It’s preparing local government leaders before the impact of the Meteor. It’s a metaphoric Meteor, right? It could be federal funding issue. It could be a pandemic, whatever the case may be. And they and those disruptors, those meters, can also be positive. That’s what I remind people, too. I mean, in Southern California, we’re getting ready for the LA 28 Olympics. Lot of infrastructure is necessary there. That’s a positive thing, but it is a meteor of some sorts and disruptors, so you have to get prepared do those things. One of the chapters in the book talks about trying to enhance agencies capital improvement programs. So that is building infrastructure, right? But many agencies just have a list of projects like this is what we want to do at some point when we get money, when we get people to do it, all those things. And what I talk about in there is trying to do put some fiscal constraint around that, to do a multi year program. And the fiscal constraint is projecting your revenues, to figure out what you can actually afford in any given year, and then doing a resource balancing on that, to figure out with your resources that you have internally, and maybe leveraging extra resources, how many projects can you actually do successfully? And so having a fiscally constrained resource balance capital improvement program, in my experience, I had an agency I implemented this at they were failing grades on delivery of the projects, if you looked at you were allocated a budgetary amount in a certain year and that didn’t get done in that year, I would say that’s not successful. There are always mitigating factors. So putting this plan together, in the strategy, we moved up into B plus or a grades, just by getting everybody on the same page, aligning the resources, making sure we knew what we could afford and knew what we could actually deliver. That’s an important question. I find most local governments don’t ask themselves, how many projects we actually get done in a year, and have that be your plan and your commitment to your elected officials and your local agency. So that’s one that’s a big one that covers a lot of elements. Seems simple,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  31:58

real, real quick. Shane on that one, how long of a process did that take? Because, you know, time doesn’t stop just because you’re planning and you’re wanting to strategize about out there. I mean, time is still growing, so or still, you know, moving forward. So how about how long in that case? Yeah,

Shane Silsby  32:17

in real time, I’d say it was about six months Shane to get through that. Obviously, we weren’t working on it every day, but we had to get different groups together, you know, the financial teams, the programming teams to figure out the dollar side, and then we had to work with all the delivery groups to figure out the capacity and what they could deliver. But, but once you set that up, initially, right for five, seven or 10 years, then every year you’re just updating it, right? And that takes much life, right?

Catherine McDonald  32:44

I think that’s a really important one, because I’m of this mindset that the job of a leader isn’t to, and I think I’ve said before, isn’t to motivate people, because you can’t really motivate people. People motivate themselves. So the job of a leader is, is simply not to demotivate people, because people come into a job with motivation and for a purpose and feel purpose and passion. So I think what can often get in people’s way, and what can maybe bug them down and make them feel disengaged is this whole, I suppose, issue with their ideas not being heard, or promises or false promises, and having this kind of a wish list where everybody says, oh, yeah, we’ll get to that. We’re definitely going to do that. But having no structure around that and seeing no progress, that’s one of the things that can really affect employee engagement and cause people to leave their roles. So I think, you know, doing that, even that one, I suppose activity would have, I think it’s a really important starting one to do before you go into anything else, to get clear on the projects and the initiatives and the timelines and what’s realistic, like you said, having everybody on this, on a shared page. And I think, I think that’s a really important one chain, yeah,

Shane Silsby  33:55

leaders, role in local government, for sure, is to align resources, right? I was just speaking to a group yesterday about this, when you go into a building, a city hall or government agency building, everybody’s working right? Everybody’s doing something heads down, everybody’s quote, working. But what are they working on, and are those hours being productively aligned with the goals, the missions, the objectives of the agency, or what that group is supposed to be working on, and that’s where something like, you know, strategic capital improvement program, or any strategic initiative, aligns people in a direction, brings accountability to it, which is a plus or minus for some employees, but it does create a sense of engagement, because every people, there’s a there’s a term called collective effervescence, which I’ve been talking about recently, which is when you get a group of people aligned towards something that creates an energy that even those that might not be as excited about it, because it’s a group element, a bit like tribalism, they’re headed in the same direction. You can get more productivity. And I think Emile Durkheim. Was the one that talked about this. But the point is, in local governments, very it’s very hard to get people started and moving in a direction because of all the things they have to do. But once you do that, that momentum can carry through. And then you can see, actually, I think, obviously performance increase because you have accountability, check and balances all those things, but I saw a morale or culture improvement, because you’re getting wins, right? You’re meeting roles. And I think everybody likes a win. Everybody likes to be successful. And as a leader, you can put them in a position to be successful and celebrate those wins rather than, you know, we didn’t get this done again. They’re getting beat up by their community. They’re getting beat up by elected officials. So giving people something to champion your agency for, I think is a good thing as a leader. Now, when you when you do that the implementation, let’s take the capital improvement program, for example, all the different work groups that have their pieces of the puzzle to perfect and bring together. You need to look at lean processing for all of those elements as well, because there are likely reasons why those things weren’t getting done in time and things like that. So so it’s a larger initiative, but then you’re going down into each of those silos trying to break those down, look at those processes. Because what ends up happening is, you know, group A says, Well, I was going to meet my goal, but Group B didn’t get this done, right? And so we got to look at those processes and try to be refined in some of those areas. Procurements, a big one, the budgeting process is another one, accessing external services, another one, all areas where you can try to be more efficient.

Catherine McDonald  36:32

I was just going to quick question, is there any particular like framework? So for example, I don’t know when I go into an organization and do something like that, I might use simple teach, simple ones like DMAIC or Plan Do Check after we use some sort of framework to help people put structure on all of this. So is there anything that you have found that works really well when you’re introducing local government to this kind of structure that they may not be used to?

Shane Silsby  36:58

Yeah, I had used like Lean Six Sigma and the yellow belt training. And so I had different employees in different groups try to get that training, and then in the different departments, I’d say, Okay, now you’re the point person. You’re going to be the one that takes people through the process. They might not have always been the technical expert, but just understanding the process and needed then I would come in help, Q, a, Q, C, course correct, and things like that. But specifically, to answer your question, that’s, that’s what I use to try to train folks in the process. So I wasn’t, you know, in the county of Orange, for example, 1000 employees, roughly, that I worked with. I couldn’t work with each one, right, effectively, so trying to have those ambassadors out there that kind of understood the framework, right? And then I can touch base with them.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  37:44

My I was just going to ask, you know, we’re coming closer to the end here, what, what is one more like win, a lean win that, that you found you kind of told the story a little bit about the capital improvement. Is there other other lean wins that you can describe or explain. The one I was

Shane Silsby  38:06

just going to mention was, was technology initiatives, right, leveraging technology and software systems. And so that’s one of the things we did, is we said, let’s, let’s look at, you know, we had 10 different departments at the county, for example, and each one of those is there a technology solution that will work for you to improve your workflows, do performance dashboarding, look at key performance indicators, things like that. And then we rolled those up into a overarching platform that allowed me and we pushed this out to elected officials as well that were interested. Here’s where we’re here’s what we’re doing from a service, and here’s our dashboarding on this. And one of the areas where that really helped was services into the community that were affecting things that were requests on a real time basis. So I have a pothole in my street. I have a tree, the branch that fell down. I have debris in the area have flooding, whatever, being able to track those, putting metrics around when those you know, expectations for turnaround times, and then closing the loop. That was a big one, was closing the loop with the person that asked the question. So I think one of the things many local governments, governments might struggle with was a citizen puts in a request, and maybe the local government is working at it. I’m sure they are, but there’s not feedback to that person, and so they feel like they’re not being served, even if the local government is doing a good job. And so what we did, from a technology standpoint was, you know, once you had a service request initiated, you could see where that request is going through the process. And not only did we have to lean that process to make sure that was good and efficient, but we then added these feedback communication points, and that really drove down complaints, if you will, because people knew where their request was, and it actually increased our delivery of on time service completion. Right of work orders. So, to answer your question, Shane technology, leveraging technology was another big one we did. But technology itself right is only the tool you need to tell the technology right what the process is you’re trying to flow with, what the inputs what the outputs are, and so you still need to look at, you know, lean processing going into that.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  40:18

Yes, as I say this all the time with my teams, when we would improve a process, and then inevitably, technology would come in, oh, we can just automate this. And so I would just like, okay, hold on, month of breaks. Just a second. I understand that. But let’s pull all the bad stuff out, rather than just make the bad stuff move faster. You know, so, right? Let’s just not automate bad let’s make sure that we have a great process and understand what the process is supposed to do. Pull it, pull it clean of all the things that, as much as we can that keep it from accomplishing the goal in, you know, the way we want it to. And then we can, you know, incorporate technology,

Shane Silsby  41:01

right? Quick, quick follow up on that. I always recommended teams look at off the shelf solutions for those software solutions versus versus a customized approach, because if people didn’t quite understand the process or it wasn’t lean enough, a software developer will always build you whatever you want. But if you take an off the shelf solution that’s proven and you have to find that solution. I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s easy, but once you find that, right, potentially it’s pointing you towards how you should change your business process, right? So, Shane, to your point, you could just say, well, this is how you know most of the country is doing this process. The software is already set up to do that. So let’s look at ourselves. Should we go in that direction as well? And that makes the software more efficient, and it improves it improves your process at the same

Shayne Daughenbaugh  41:44

time, excellent. Yeah, excellent.

Catherine McDonald  41:47

So I’m sure your book is just full of loads of tips like that. Jane, if people want to get a copy of your book, their vibe, where do they go?

Shane Silsby  41:56

Yeah, thank you for that, and I appreciate talking with both of you today. You have great experiences that was happy to learn about. So you can just go to managing for meteors.com, that’s the name of the book, and that’ll take you to a site tells you a little bit about the books and free downloads of information, and then it gets you a link to Amazon, where you can just also, if you go to Amazon, you can just type in, again, managing for meteors, and you can get a hard copy, paperback, a digital for about the cost of a cup of coffee for that digital, or you can get an audio version and just listen to it on your commute. So we have a narrator. It’s not me, but you can listen to it as well. So as as the author,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  42:36

Shane, what? What is the one or two things you want your readers to pull from the book, what? What was kind of the purpose, and as you were writing it, you were thinking, I hope they picked this up.

Shane Silsby  42:50

Yeah, thanks for the question. Shane, first of all, the book was generated out of my experiences across the country, dealing with local government agencies, mostly, and seeing that there was a gap in leadership experience, not in motivation or technical skills or intelligence, but 20 year ish gap in experience, which is probably no surprise to everybody in the workforce, Genome change over in the generational dynamics. So as I worked with people over and over, I thought, Man, there are some basics here. Maybe they’re not considered basics now, but things that you wouldn’t know necessarily just through your education or normally in the public sector, if people are promoting internally, they’re coming up through a certain chain, and that gives them specialization in that chain. But you know, when you’re a leader, you have to cover many of those, and so the book tries to take you through as a leader that’s new to government or new to leadership in government. We talked about also the shift from private to public. These are some basics, right? It’s like a toolkit, and it’s built that way. There’s a roadmap to readiness. Each chapter progresses to take you through that. So my hope, and Shane, answering your question, my hope is that you know, leaders in government will take a look at it, and depending on what skill set, what chain they came up through in their agency, they can help fill in the rest of their experience with the book, and it’s a higher level right element, because it tries to cover all of these areas. But I want leaders to be at least informed about things that are out there, efficiencies, lean processing, initiatives, structural elements for organizations. So at least they have the nomenclature down right, the kind of the definition and the terms down if they get approached with it, or it gives them an idea of what they could do with their agency. And then they’ll have to dig in a little bit deeper at that point. But that’s my my goal is to help those new leaders, or leaders new to government.

Catherine McDonald  44:43

The practical examples are brilliant. Even the practical examples you shared today are so great. Just if you’ve never been in that situation or that industry, you need to be looking at the practical elements of what you’re facing or what you’re going to face. So well done. Shane, sounds great. Yeah. Yeah,

45:00

thank you very much.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  45:02

Yeah. Thanks so much for coming and giving us kind of a behind the curtains look, but also very informative just hearing some of these things, the different perspectives, the levels that you brought from the Federal to the local to the private, to even the citizens, and that idea of closing the loop, you know, I mean, just I appreciated the fuller picture that you gave, and I’m hoping that our listening audience did as well. So are they able to find you, I’m assuming, on LinkedIn, right?

Shane Silsby  45:32

Yeah, you can just go to to find Shane. Sales be on LinkedIn. You can go to my website. Sales be hyphen, sa.com you can send me an email, Shane at Silsbee, hyphen sa.com or, I’m sure they could reach out to you all and say, Hey, I just want to talk to Catherine and Shane, but if you guys aren’t available, as

Catherine McDonald  45:54

Mr. Hasn’t happened me yet, don’t know about you.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  46:00

Well, Catherine, any any last thoughts or words that you have no just

Catherine McDonald  46:04

That was fantastic. It’s different to you’re different to guests we’ve had on before. I love the industry focused conversations. I think we learned so much from them because they’re so again, the examples are so practical. And brings me back to where I started as well. So I really enjoyed it, too. Shane, so thank you very good for me. Yeah, appreciate

Shane Silsby  46:22

chatting with both of you. And you know, the thing I would just remind our local government friends is there’s always a reason for more checks and balances, right? Audits, community oversight, all that stuff, and all of that adds time, extra actions, checkpoints to your process. And I’m not saying that’s bad. It’s a reality. So if you’re not focused on being lean, right and efficient. Your everything you do is pretty much going to get longer, cost more, be more complicated, so it’s this constant push pull on efficiency versus, you know, standardization and oversight.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  46:55

Great, appreciate that. Great, great words to leave us on. So thank you so much for that. Enjoy the rest of your day and listening audience. Thank you so much for joining us today. We’ll see you next time.

Patrick Adams  47:09

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lean solutions podcast. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe this way. You’ll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please give us a review. Thank you so much.