City of Santa Barbara, CA Succession Program
    Recognizing that there will be a major turnover in management in the next five to ten years, the City's Executive Management Team explored several strategies to plan for the continuation of a high performance organization through a commitment to sustained initiatives that engage outside the box thinking to attract, develop, and retain needed talent in the City of Santa Barbara.

    In the end, the team produced six strategies which form the City’s “Succession Program.”

17 Low-Cost Talent Development Strategies for Local Governments

Talent is the key ingredient to survive tough times and position our organizations for the future, according to Frank Benest. Smart corporate leaders invest in research and development as well as leadership development in downturns so their organizations are ready for better times. Local government also must invest in physical and human capital so they can survive and thrive as times improve.

Most talent development strategies do not require massive outlays of financial resources, but they do require leadership intent and will. Low-cost approaches that can be used by cash-strapped organizations include:

  • Cross-training within or across units
  • Making job classes and job descriptions more flexible to expand and enrich jobs
  • Using internal trainers or “training the trainers” to minimize the cost of external training programs
  • Integrating learning into everyday work through the use of run-through practice presentations, debriefings, learning reports, and critiques of real-life case studies
  • Conducting brown bag lunches for emerging leaders to share career journeys and development strategies as well as the organizational resources available
  • Using buddy systems so buddies cover for each other, thereby allowing everyone to participate in training at one time or another
  • Teaching supervisors simple coaching skills
  • Placing emerging leaders into interim management or special project leadership positions
  • Incorporating an experiential project into classroom training, such as a leadership academy
  • Structuring new assignments to include interaction with governing boards, commissions, and community advisory groups
  • Modifying annual work plans so they include a learning or development plan
  • Incorporating development conversations into annual performance reviews
  • Collaborating with an area manager group or state association to establish cost-effective talent development programs available to all local governments, such as a coaching program, talent exchange, or regional training consortium
  • Conducting talent readiness assessment sessions with department directors
  • Including the assistant to the city/county manager on the executive team, rotating management analysts through the executive team, or encouraging department directors to bring a division chief to executive team meetings
  • Establishing a formal succession plan for the organization, utilizing the talent and leadership development opportunities above
  • Exchanging a management assistant or other aspiring manager with a neighboring local government.

This article is excerpted from the ICMA IQ Report, Creating a Multidimensional Talent Strategy to Avert Brain Drain and Other Future Disasters. Click here to see another excerpt.

Frank Benest, former city manager of Palo Alto, California, co-chairs the CAL-ICMA Coaching Program and serves as the senior advisor to ICMA on Next Generation Initiatives.