Our Myopic City Staff: BENN
Based on decades of interacting with the city personally, staff narrow in on a solution early, and exclude any new-to-them input.
While this allows them to focus their time and resources on digging deeper, sooner, it sometimes results in less than optimal outcomes.
As councillors Wilson Lo and David Hill say, there are other solutions available. They cite the acquisition and renovation of existing, under-utilized buildings, or the installation of new, more robust structures. Both of which could be accomplished in less time.
The challenge for councillors, who have the statutory obligation of oversight of city management, is to get sufficient information from staff to make an informed decision. The concept of sharing anything other than a cursory ‘that doesn’t meet our criteria’ (stressing the term our) is foreign to staff. Challenging them to think outside the box that they constructed is now considered aggressive.
Of course, it doesn’t help when council routinely delegates the authority to staff to make a decision.
Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.
For You:
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– The Bulldog – News Feed Enter 
In my years as a manager I have found that when people are presented with a problem requiring a solution they usually take a trial and error approach. This approach takes a lot of time and costs (wastes) a lot of money. Problem solving is a difficult task but as a manager I oftentimes have to delegate tasks to staff to in order to prevent myself from becoming a bottleneck. If I present a problem requiring a solution to staff, I ask 2 questions when the the solution is presented to me, 1) What other solutions did you consider, and 2) why did you decide to not to implement one of them. If I don’t like the responses I send the person(s) away for a rethink. My concerns with city hall is everyone tries to be polite and not step on toes. Better to toughen up a bit in order get the job done properly.
sisco, your approach to problem solving is similar to the one I used. Present a report that lays out the decision criteria, the alternatives that were considered and the reasons why you are recommending the solution.
As it relates to senior and elected officials at city hall being too polite – YES. Aside from most lacking meaningful experience outside the ivory tower (i.e. they really don’t know what they don’t know), there is a general concern that challenging staff in a public setting may be perceived to be, in the parlance of the day, a ‘micro aggression’ – or not so micro. Rather than being called out on this by an overly sensitive staff, they default to accepting staff recommendations without critical thought. As a result they are, again in the parlance of the day, ‘enabling’ performance that would be considered unsatisfactory outside of the ivory tower.
That is part of the culture that needs to change.