At 10:30 a.m. in the city hall of Mesa Crossing, a fictional but familiar small rural town, the day is dense with responsibility. A utility customer stopped by the front desk with a billing question needing explanation. A vendor is waiting on a call-back to confirm next steps for a water project. The code compliance officer diligently reviews policy to simplify processes. Meanwhile, an email from the state flags a compliance report that needs one more attachment before close of business.

None of this is dysfunction; it is simply a normal Tuesday. In small and rural communities like Mesa Crossing, work rarely arrives in neat packages. Staffing shortages and lean budgets mean roles overlap by necessity. An assistant CAO may be functioning as the finance director, stepping in as the interim public works director, and filling HR gaps while the position is vacant. A city secretary is covering the front-desk operations while coordinating essential HR functions. Analysts draft council packets in the morning, coordinate grants after lunch, and prepare public messages before heading home.

Wearing five hats is not a sign of inefficiency: it’s the operational reality of governments at this scale. Yet many management narratives and literature assume deep benches, specialization, and formal project offices. Those assumptions fail to translate cleanly to communities where the organization chart is short, the margin for error is thin, and the same few hands touch nearly every issue. In this environment, the management challenge is less about building structure, and more about making progress amid overlap and constraint.

If everyone wears five hats, how does anything get done well? Answering that question requires centering coordination as a management skill. In small and rural communities, coordination is the glue that allows limited structures to function as a coherent whole. Coordination is not an informal workaround; it is stewardship that uses scarce resources responsibly, innovatively, and ethically in a setting where misalignment is visible and personal.

Why Coordination Matters More Than Structure

In large organizations, problems are often solved by new layers, new division, formal authority, or specialized staff. In small and rural governments, those options are usually unavailable or counterproductive. Budget cannot support redundancy, staffing levels do not support deep specialization, and many decisions rely on speed as much as precision.

When coordination is weak, predictable stress points emerge:

• Decisions are made informally, without shared understanding of ownership.
• Projects stall between departments because responsibility is assumed, not assigned.
• Staff burnout accelerates as priorities shift without explanation.
• Councils lose confidence when execution lags behind direction.

These are not merely operational inconveniences. They are ethical risks.

In small communities, misalignment wastes public resources, delays services residents rely on, and erodes trust in governance. Residents know staff by name. Councilmembers hear about delays at the grocery store. When coordination fails, the consequences are immediate, visible, and human. When staff execution is inconsistent, councilmembers receive uneven information, invite informal workarounds, and may step into operational gaps, eroding the professional boundary the council-manager form of government depends on. Poor coordination is a real threat to organizational legitimacy.

Coordination is a force multiplier that acts as a supplement to scale. It aligns limited staff around shared goals, clarifying expectations, and reducing friction without requiring additional authority. Importantly, coordination reinforces accountability. When decision points, timelines, and responsibilities are visible, it is easier for councils, managers, and staff to understand why change is necessary, how decisions are implemented, and where adjustments are needed.

This is why coordination is no mere efficiency tool, but an expression of stewardship. Connected to the ICMA Code of Ethics, coordination upholds stewardship of public resources, professional competence, and respect for democratic governance. For lean organizations, coordination is a major mechanism by which those values are operationalized. Without coordination, even well-intentioned decisions risk waste, confusion, and inequity.

The CAO’s Office as the Coordination Hub

In small and rural governments, the CAO’s office occupies a unique position. Whether staffed by the CAO alone or supported by assistants and analysts, it is often the only vantage point where the entire organization is visible at once. That visibility creates responsibility, even when formal authority is limited.

For those in or alongside the CAO office, influence comes less from command and more from connection. Coordination is embodied through synthesis, translation, and follow-through. Council’s intent is translated into operational clarity, departmental efforts are sequenced to not delay one another, and risks are surfaced while there is still time to adjust.

In Mesa Crossing, as in many small and rural governments, this coordination role takes several recurring forms:

• Translating council direction into clear next steps, boundaries, and timelines.
• Aligning departments around shared calendars and expectations.
• Identifying cross-department dependencies before they become bottlenecks.
• Ensuring follow-through without supplanting departmental expertise.

Frequently, this work is misunderstood as micromanagement. In practice, it does the opposite. By reducing ambiguities, coordination frees departments to focus on execution rather than interpretation; it replaces guesswork with clarity and reactivity with rhythm.

Ethically, the approach reflects respect for professional roles and democratic governance. The ICMA Code of Ethics emphasizes integrity, competence, and respect for elected officials and staff responsibilities. Coordination upholds these principles by ensuring decisions are implemented faithfully and transparently, without burdening small or rural governments to build structures they cannot sustain.

Practical Coordination Tools That Work in Lean Organizations

Coordination does not require new software or additional staff. In small organizations, simple, repeatable practices often outperform complex systems. The following tools are effective in lean environments and can be implemented without new purchases.

The Weekly Alignment Brief

A one-page summary distributed weekly can drastically improve coordination and reduce surprises. An effective brief highlights key priorities, upcoming deadlines, recent council actions, and decision points that require follow-up. When paired with a short newsletter that includes departmental updates, emerging issues, and recent successes, this coordination enhances the situational awareness of the organization. For department heads and the CAO’s office, the report clarifies ownership and sequencing, helping staff be proactive with issue points before they arise as conflicts.

What makes the brief particularly valuable is not the information itself, but the discipline it creates. Preparing the brief requires leadership to answer the fundamental question: What matters this week? This prioritization provided direction to coordination. With time, staff begin to understand the intent of the organization and adjust their work accordingly, raising concerns proactively. The benefits are cumulative: fewer last-minute scrambles, less missed work, more predictable council packets, and an organization that shares a vision of its work.

Decision Clarification Memos

After council meetings or leadership decisions, a short, written summary that answers the questions, “What was decided? Who owns it? What comes next?” can create a durable reference point. These memos can be informal and answered in incomplete sentences. Their value lies in creating a shared reference point for action. When decisions involve multiple departments in implementation, the memo can be a core part of the organization that helps reduce reinterpretation and decision drift.

For analysts and ACAOs, the memos serve to forge institutional memory. For any organization with role overlap, decisions are often revisited weeks later, and sometimes after transitions and shifting priorities. A simple memo protects against drift and provides staff with direction in the whiplash of changing narratives. For managers, it serves to say, “Here is what was decided; here is how we are executing it.” Both internally and with council, these memos reinforce trust.

A Single Point of Contact Norm

Every cross-departmental project can benefit from a designated coordinator, irrespective of rank. The role carries the responsibility for communication rather than authority. It is especially effective for capital projects, grants, and regulatory requirements that involve frequent handoffs. Establishing this norm prevents responsibility diffusion and helps keep the project moving, even when staff are stretched thin.

For CAOs and ACAOs, the single-point-of-contact norm reduces the need for constant escalation. Instead of fielding updates from across departments, leadership has a strong conduit for information. For staff, the role creates clarity without adding hierarchy. The result is fewer stalled projects, clear timelines, and a culture where coordination is expected rather than a last-minute meeting. When everyone owns it, no one does; when one person coordinates it, everyone benefits.

Calendar-Based Execution

In organizations, calendars are not just personal schedules but management tools. Making milestones, reporting deadlines, and council actions visible across departments reinforces an organization’s shared accountability. When everyone sees when decisions are expected and reports are due, coordination is not only easier, but more proactive.

For staff, organizational calendars reduce cognitive load. Staff no longer must actively remember when a report is due and when a decision must be ready; the organization remembers for them. This also creates visibility that supports ethical administration by making timelines and expectations explicit. When everyone can see when decisions are expected and reports are due, missed deadlines are less about blame and more about course correction.

Together, these practices reinforce transparency, professional competence, and intentional management. The work feels simple but the practices require discipline. They bolster a coordination system that has respect for limited capacity while enhancing execution.

Coordination in Mesa Crossing

Mesa Crossing, our fictional example city, faced a familiar convergence of priorities: a waterline replacement, new reporting tied to a grant, and a council initiative to streamline code compliance. Staff capacity is thin, with employees covering multiple departments and functions.

Initially, progress stalled. Public works assumed finance was tracking the grant timeline. Finance assumed public works was coordinating contractor reporting. Code enforcement waited for direction that never arrived. Deadlines crept; frustration grew.

The response was not reorganization; it was coordination. The CAO’s office responds, not by resolving all the issues, nor by restructuring the organization, but by coordinating. A point of contact is designated for the grant. A weekly alignment brief highlights project milestones. Decision memos clarify the council’s expectations. Key dates are shared on the office calendar.

The change? Subtle, but immediate. Roles become clear, departments communicate easier, the projects gain momentum without adding new staff or contracting out. Staff reports less last-minute stress; the dreaded phrase, “I didn’t know that,” quietly disappears; and council’s confidence improves as progress becomes regular.

The outcome is not perfection but predictability. Fewer crises come forth, morale stabilize, and public resources are used more effectively. In small and rural communities, those wins matter. They reflect ethical stewardship of resources entrusted.

Why Coordination Matters Beyond Small Towns

The coordination skills developed in small and rural communities are highly transferable. Wearing five hats forces practitioners to make connections, anticipate impacts, and prioritize execution. Far from being a liability, experience in these communities is a professional asset.

Reframing coordination from a workaround to a discipline elevates it to an essential competency. It can be learned, practiced, and modeled across organizational size. For CAOs and their teams, investing in coordination strengthens governance, builds trust, and supports ethical administration.

The work will not become simpler. Council packets will still be due, residents will still call with questions, and regulatory requirements will continue to expand. But with intentional coordination, the work becomes sustainable.

For small and rural communities, this sustainability is not optional. It is the foundation on which professional local government builds. Coordination holds up the quiet work that allows governments to meet their obligations with integrity and competence, no matter how many hats you’re wearing.

MAX FISHER is assistant to the city manager of Levelland, Texas.