Travis County Commissioners Court
November 23, 2004
Item 23
And our final item would be our executive session. Number 23, conduct follow-up
discussion of strategy for strategic planning initiative for fy '05.
>> this one is out there for me whether we talked about whether
we do or don't want to have some kind of retreat. And if we do start talking
around some dates for that to occur. If we don't, then... [ inaudible ].
>> they have chosen not to appear.
>> except mr. Gieselman.
>> so this has nothing to do with a strategic planning session.
I think we would use -- during which we will use a video.
>> yes, sir.
>> my idea is for us to ask each manager what is the most
important, projects or challenges for his or her department for '02. Two,
in priority order. Three, the reasons why they are that important. Four, briefly
what you need to do to address or accomplish them. And when we have a discussion,
will we try to take on all 10 or one or two or three or four? This is an exercise
I think that will give benefits no matter how the strategic planning session
goes. This is somewhat akin to a recommendation that we got from the facilitator.
I think we ought to do three. Our managers ought to be a lot more challenged
than that. Rather than three, six or nine, I chose a round number of 10. In
the summary that we got from her last year --
>> patty? Yeah.
>> if each manager had 10, it's a little more specific information
I thought and in doing a session we can look at that list and decide whether
we want to take on -- what we ought to take it, whether it's one or five or
whether it's 10. A lot of things are what's on that list, but that would give
the manager an opportunity to go through this exercise, and most of them --
joe has probably done it already anyway. But also give us an opportunity to
do it right. I tacked on priority order, reasons why they're on the list,
and what needs to be done to address or accomplish it. And I have -- I tried
to be comprehensive. Projects, programs, services or challenges.
>> just a quick question there. I can see already a question
coming up. Priority according to whom? Priority according to the department
in terms of what their viewpoint is or priority hoping to, let's say, think
their bosses, the Travis County Commissioners court, might see as priorities,
in which case I would take your 10 figure and go, hmm, five of us, we each
get two and i'll try to think of two things that Gerald is interested in,
two things that I think are critical to Margaret, two things for Karen, two
for the judge...
>> that's the reason for the third bullet. Reasons why. And
the fifth exercise, which is us interacting with it. Do you see what I知 saying?
My guess is on some of these we have spoken so -- I want to say much, but
eloquently may be better, that the managers may know exactly where the court's
coming from and how important it is to us. So some of the others it may not
be so clear. So I知 thinking that if we do facilitate it, it may well be after
January anyway. This is the kind of exercise I think that managers can probably
go through in two weeks and we can interact with them before the end of the
year. It may well give us more to think about specifically in our planning
session with a facilitator. And I have brought my late night reading, and
it occurred to me to do this from the county judge's office anyway. And I
would suggest that another commission should do it, but I do suggest that
the managers who work for the Commissioners court should.
>> are we being asked to put in the priorities that we think
that the county judge ought to do? [ laughter ]
>> one thing that came up during the community action network
is that there's amazing, wonderful, new conference rooms, large and small
over at work source. And it's very convenient location there right over there
by highland mall --
>> in our building?
>> no, it's not in our building. The building we didn't buy.
>> that's why it's ours. [ laughter ]
>> but in terms of what we need to do over there, I don't
think there's any charge for it, but it's an amazing facility.
>> i've seen it.
>> it's very nice.
>> let me make sure I understand what we're doing here. This
is actually going -- there are going to be two things. We're going to ask
the managers to come up with their list and then we're going to have a separate
meeting at some point in time without a facilitator. So they share with us
their list, and the fa silltative meeting in January is going to be where
the Commissioners, two, three subject matters get thrown out on the table
where we do -- where we do ours, the emergency rooms are there because they
will certainly be our main resource as well as -- I don't know if you want
to hear all of us talk out loud, I suppose.
>> I do not presume to speak to the court for the strategic
plan with the facilitator. What you've just described would be one we would
do with the managers hopefully between now and christmas.
>> yes. I知 with you on that. But the January one is it.
>> so far we have to decide what to do with that. [overlapping
speakers]
>> I do think that location is a perfect one if it's available,
and what we ought to do is go ahead and line up a facilitator and see if we
can match those availability dates for work source facilitating us and get
that ironed out, and then turn our attention to exactly what to do there.
>> do you see that being a day?
>> I would suggest a day and a half.
>> the January day and a half is -- and the reason why I知
saying a day and a half is because I think it gives you enough time to go
home and kind of detox, so to speak, because if you try to do seven, eight
hours, let's face it, the last hour or so when you're really trying to wrap
things up and bring things to focus, everybody is sort of like, okay, that
will be fine with me. Let's go. I mean, i've had some very effective planning
processes that have taken place -- it does take more time, but after all,
if you're going to try to spend 12, 15 hours getting something out of this,
I think -- and maybe if it's a Saturday, maybe it a Sunday afternoon from
two to five to wrap it up. That's just a suggestion. We'll play it -- it's
better than keeping somebody there for eight or nine hours.
>> if we do a day and a half, I would recommend Friday and
half a day Saturday.
>> after spending eight hours with you all, I知 not thinking
about detox, I知 thinking about intox. [ laughter ]
>> and interacting with the manager on the list here, I would
recommend like a work session where we spend an hour and a half, two hours
doing it. I would think that it needs to be posted for a work session, not
necessarily televised, but in open court here, and if somebody wants to come
watch us, then no problem. I would think both of them need to be posted.
>> on the retreat, do we need to think about the retreat
further?
>> I need more time to think about it.
>> a date.
>> Friday and a Saturday.
>> are you talking about January?
>> yeah, maybe mid January.
>> I think i'd like to put out there I would like the retreat
to be more of brainstorming and, you know, that kind of thing, and less of
the touchy feelly stuff. We need to really focus on talking, which is what
we're very good at as opposed to team building kind of tupperware party.
>> a little more name calling like we did last year?
>> I知 always up for name calling. [ laughter ] [overlapping
speakers]
>> those folks -- we need to come up with finding out what
kind of a theme somebody is going to want.
>> I actually have another name to give to you that actually
might be a very good name to throw up.
>> last week we made contributions to purchase the -- (indiscernible).
We'll have it back on next week. Try to figure out exactly what kind of planning
session we want, because I would think that the facilitator would ask questions
like that.
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> we'll have this one back.
>> you will have an opportunity, mr. Smith.
>> what I worry about is you're going to get a list of 60
or 70 things that are really wonderful things that are going to get done.
10 from each manager. And we're really pretty good at that. We're not so good
at grabbing ahold of a couple of big ideas that are going to drive us and
try to deal with some of the major community issues that face us. And those
are much harder. And you're not going to get the data that says, we need to
move from this direction and stop moving in that direction. And those are
a lot harder. So the exercise is a wonderful exercise and straightforward
and everybody can do it and everybody does it, and it's called work plan.
And it will be helpful in one sense, but I do think that we're not too good
at saying we need to focus some extraordinary amount of attention on certain
areas that are big ideas that drive us. And drive a lot of the elements that
the county is responsible for. And --
>> if we leave the work session with one item, it would be
fine with me. But we do say reasons why and how to address or accomplish.
That will -- that will be a kind of reality check for all of us. Some of these
do require sources, others require an infusion of energy that we may not have
right now. But I would think that each manager will probably go through something
like this in preparation for calendar '05 orifice kel '05 -- or fiscal '05
anyway. 10 is a number, but there's nothing magical about it. Two would be
fine on some areas. It depends on what's on the list. If we look at the different
departments and did we come up with roughly the same list for each department
or should we come up with a list that is dramatically different? Do you see
what I知 saying? If you were asking us to put things on a list of what are
the four most important things, you would think if I came up with two, three
or four, basically it should be on the list of 10 for the manager, but I知
not confident enough to bet on that. I may do that before that work session.
I'll just come up with me a list. [ laughter ] be back on, folks.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, October 26, 2005 3:00 PM