“Seventy-five percent of this job is half mental.”
I think it was that great American thinker Yogi Berra who came up with that line, in all seriousness, when asked a question by a reporter. This from a man who said when you come to a fork in the road, you should take it.
It’s why, maybe, we shouldn’t hang our hats on philosophy laid down by tobacco-chewing baseball players, although Berra himself was more of a cigarette and cigar kind of guy.
Yogi is my inspiration today, although I’m not sure his utterance is a true fit for my commentary, but honestly, any time you have the opportunity to quote such a sage person as he, you go for it, whether it fits or not.
The Town of Renfrew, at least the administrative side of it, is in the middle of a journey, as all corporations are, along with other institutional entities, like schools, hospitals, prisons, etc.
Entities cannot remain static, that much is true. They are living beasts that need to keep abreast of, or remain relevant to the ever-present requirement for change and nimbleness against a backdrop of near universal and enduring uncertainty. In English, that means that things are constantly changing, and to remain relevant in the face of that fact, corporations like our town need to respond and adapt.
So standing still is not an option.
Newly-minted Renfrew Chief Administrative Officer Gloria Raybone has hit the ground running by employing a tool used by senior administrators since forever to take a snapshot of where the departments under her supervision currently are in their journey, and even better, fully articulate where they’re journeying to and the steps they plan to take to get there.
In education, we more or less referred to them as long-range plans, although the higher-ups would always wrap them up in prettier language than that, as if putting them in a different box made them essentially something new.
And unless you were somebody hell-bent on becoming a principal (and there are drugs for that) they were generally not well-received. It’s like they were requiring us to devote significant amounts of time talking about what we were going to do, how we were going to do it, and a timeline to keep it all together and accountable. We’d spend a significant amount of time talking about what we intended to do, and less time in actually doing it, all to satisfy the administrator’s need to show that they were, well, administering. Senior management types love this kind of thing, it’s one of their raison d’êtres, to keep everyone below them accountable to something.
And then the hamsters hit the wheel, chasing God knows what, but hell-bent in the effort, despite not gaining an inch in territorial forward movement. Once again, in English, working like hell to show that you’re working like hell, but actually not really making much in the way of forward progress.
And then the senior administrator is made an even more senior administrator, or retires, or gets fired, or just jumps in a lake, and then the new person slides in with their version of See Spot Run.
As I said, Renfrew is on a journey. It’s called the Road To 2035, a road I think we’re all kind of on, and I think it was the child of the former CAO, who then sprinted out of town at the invitation of Council from what I understand.
This is the town’s vision statement, or mission statement. And noble it is considering that nobody in their right mind doesn’t feel that getting to 2035 is a big deal. I know at my age it certainly is, although I don’t have a strategic plan to guide me along the way other than to simply wake up every morning and remember my name.
In the ideal, long range planning is a completely legitimate exercise if done in good faith, and by that I mean done in such a way that it doesn’t present as mere window dressing. But digging a whole just to dig a whole doesn’t mean anything’s advanced one iota, and sometimes we can get blinded by the details and miss the meaning of the full story.
And yes, a new CAO could come in in a year and do exactly the same thing, just under a different name, wrapped in a prettier bow, and relegating all that earnest work you did on the other plan to history.
I suppose this is what could be expected in the aftermath of Ma-Te-Way and potentially other things where town administration has come up suspect, where accountability was one of the main things that appears to have been missing. So the easy fix to that? More accountability. And even better, transparent accountability, where your planning, or maybe even the dearth of your planning, is there for everyone, including the public, to see. Sort of like those reading pictographs from the old days where stars would indicate a student’s progress in reading, showing Jimmy reading like a son of a bitch with his 130 blue stars while Little Stevie sat in the corner over there with his two, flies buzzing around his head.
So, Renfrew’s on the Road To 2035, and by God, they have a plan to get there. And they have plans to back up those plans, and roadmaps mapping the way, timelines and check points for verification, and all the administrative bells and whistles to accompany it. And, depending on the administrator, maybe a Lindor chocolate in the staff mailbox as encouragement and validation.
It’s the age-old problem, though. The U.S. military call it “The Bus To Abilene.” It’s where everybody’s on a bus and, at some point, it pulls into Abilene. Everyone gets off and wonders “How the hell did we get here?” And “Who the hell’s idea was this?”
As a former teacher, I have a similar anecdote, my own attempt at paying homage to the great Yogi Berra. It goes like this:
In November, a group of teachers got together to talk about the idea of a class trip to Toronto for the end of the year. The possibilities were endless, there were fantastic fundraising ideas, possible government grants available, and plenty of venues to explore. They began to plan.
The day in June came, and the kids and teachers and supervisors all board the bus one bright early morning, maybe missing some sleep the night before, but still in the highest of spirits about the trip. This was going to be awesome. This is our Road To 2035.
The bus rumbles through the heartland of the Ottawa Valley, humming along the blacktop, nervous and excited chatter up and down the aisles. Everyone is in such a great mood.
Finally, the bus stops, the door opens, and the occupants clamber out, because, well, we’re here!!
They look up and see a sign.
Welcome to Sudbury.
What? Like, what the hell? Like, how the hell did this happen??
Well, you see, back in November, a group of teachers got together to talk about a class trip to Toronto.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 