Cheese

The City Manager’s role could be defined as Medium Cheddar which is the area between new and aged cheddar cheese. Mild and Sharp cheeses have completely different tastes, Councils and staffs have completely different roles and views. City Managers are involved in facilitating vision, building community, developing policy concepts, championing ethics and being a social reformer with the council. The City Manager then becomes involved in translating the “policy message” from the Council level into clear, actionable and passionate implementation strategies that align with the staff’s culture, performance targets, output capacity and real-life challenges that staff runs into every day.  You have to be the one that can turn their “I can’t” into “I know how.”  To be translator, advocate, driver, caring mentor, performance monitor, communication specialist, planner, and the thousand other roles necessary to keep two very diverse team elements functioning.