In this tactical episode, Shane Silsby, CEO and Founder at Silsby Strategic Advisors, shares how he has enabled teams to over-achieve on strategic goals through developing ecosystems that embody the tenants of improved morale, increased efficiencies, and enhanced customer service.
You will discover:
– How to manage key transitions or “meteors” before they hit
– The distinct roles of government and business and how they complement each other
– One simple “hack” you can use to start to get ahead of your challenges instead of fighting to catch up
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast and I am here with yet another high demand coach. It is the one and only Shane Shane Silsby. Now Shane is a civil and transportation engineer who for over 20 years held various government leadership positions in cities and counties across the United States. More recently, he’s worked with an executive as an executive in the private sector with multiple international engineering firms. Shane is passionate about sharing his experience working with and within local government agencies, specifically with emerging leaders. He also provides strategic advice on improving organizational culture, increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of operations, refining financial approaches to capital projects and establishing goals and accountability metrics. Well, Shane, so excited to have you on the show. Welcome. Before we jump all the way in here, I’ve got a bunch of questions for you about your book, managing for meteors. And you getting this government slash private enterprise thing working in getting them working together? Well, what would you say some of the most important work you’re doing today?
Shane Silsby
I’d say and Thanks, Scott, for having me, by the way, you do a great job, appreciate everything you’re doing for our communities and the industry. But I think the most important thing I do is try to help emerging leaders, she talked about that a little bit. We all know about the changeover in all in all the workplaces, but especially in the government side, where continuity of government all the way up to the federal level is so important. We sometimes forget, people are moving out retiring, taking out other lines of work in the backfill is not seamless, and there aren’t enough people with leadership experience to fill all those voids. So we have, you know, well intentioned motivated people and a filling in and so we need to give them support and assistance.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow, wow. So walk me through a little bit of what have you found has worked, right? Because it is something that’s unique, you know, most businesses don’t roll through an entire leadership change every, you know, 246 years. And so it’s something that in a couple of ways is unique to it. How How have you helped some of these leaders overcome it? And if there are, what are some of the silver linings of a model like that?
Shane Silsby
Yeah, thanks for the question. I mean, what I tried to do is set their organizations up to be as efficient and effective as possible, in a number of different ways. So that if that big thing happens, and I refer to it as a meteorite and metaphoric meter, if that thing happens, political change or leadership changeover, that the structural elements of your organization can withstand that, right, so you’re ready for that if you’re doing the most efficient and effective things you can. And they cover all the categories, from organization to finance, to programming, to addressing politics, mean outreach, all those things. Not perfect, but every community is a little bit different. And trying to set them up for success, regardless of kind of what happens as an external factor.
Scott Ritzheimer
So you talk about this a lot is really the, arguably the main focus of your book is this idea of managing for meteors. So the obvious question here is, are we talking about real meteors? Or like, what is a meteor in the context of the book?
Shane Silsby
Yeah, thanks for the question. I did have somebody responded today I was trying to use this for my science fiction novel didn’t quite work with that. And I said, No, no, no. It’s a metaphoric meteorite in the media, or, as I describe it, are these major disruptors that are happening not normally the government sector, but it could be in the private sector. And it’s have such an impact that you cannot do, do your job and address this thing, this disrupter at the same time. And so, for that reason, I call them EDR. And the idea of the book is to try to help you prepare, so that when that thing happens, right, you’re, you’re already up to being as effective and as efficient as possible. And therefore, you can withstand some of these other pressures coming at you from these metaphor at yours. And could be any number of things.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I think you made a great point as well, somewhere as I was getting ready for the episode that these can be positive too.
Shane Silsby
Sure, yeah. I mean, you can have a new leader come in, that’s very motivated and great at what they do, and, and very good at giving direction and accountability and all those things. But that is, if that is a new cultural element to that organization, that’s going to come in as an impact. Right? It’s a positive impact, but people still have to be ready, still know how to address those things. Same thing with an elected leader. They can ask some very great ideas. Maybe they’re focused on something that the community hasn’t focused on before, like sustainability, working with people experiencing homelessness or something like that. Maybe that’s their passion. And, and you as an agency needs to be able to adapt and figure out how to address that issue, even if it’s a positive impact people are trying to make.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s so true. It’s so easy, especially when there’s a bunch of negative impact. things happening, it’s so easy to completely overlook the impact of something that is a positive impact, right? It’s still CI that still requires, you know, new habits or new ways of thinking. And it leads me to my next question, which is kind of tied into it. And that is, how do we make time for this right, for example. So we actually, these meters, we call C transitions in our language, some of our audience may know what we’re talking about there. But the these big events, I love how you said that change that make it so that it’s not possible to do what you do the way that you do it right, in some way, shape, or form. And the biggest, at least in my experience, the biggest challenge to to working on these things to pining for them before they come is prioritizing it, right? Like where do you find the time? So how do you help teams justify the time when they there are arguably more pressing urgent needs on the table?
Shane Silsby
Yeah, great point. And there’s only a finite finite amount of time in the day, and especially with local governments that I try to focus on their days are packed with many different things, right? Planning for budgets, dealing with public meetings, working with constituents, right, dealing with big projects. And so one of the things we talked about is, how can you approach it strategically. And the way I lay it out in my kind of my roadmap readiness in the book is we you know, we start with the organization, and then we go into looking at the team, and then we look at how to set priorities and goals and all those things. And the challenge is that there isn’t a lot of extra time to do that. But at the end of the day, somebody’s going to ask you, you know, what are the goals for your agency? Or what what are your objectives? What are you trying to achieve? If you don’t have a good answer for that, that’s going to hurt your credibility of you and your organization that makes it harder to do things in the public sector. And then the second piece of that is, it’s going to reflect in the performance of the agency. Right, one of the biggest things that that is a key in government is aligning people lining all of your resources to a common purpose. And that’s done through the establishment of good structure. So you can have communication back and forth, and then setting your goals and SmartWay. So that your performance metrics and what you deliver, then is you can be held accountable to that. And everybody sees that, that increases your, your credibility, and then you can do more things. So it’s not that you have a lot of extra time. So where do you find the time is your question? Well, you find it in the planning that you would normally do for big projects or big initiatives, but you just alter that to look at maybe some more strategic ways to do that. So that your end results are improved. And we’re objective to people who might want to look at those things.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s so true. Because I mean, one of the challenges, is that, like, you just feel like you’re constantly behind and folks are like, they’re looking for Wi Fi, like, how do I do and I love this idea of just piggyback on what you’re already doing. Don’t make it so complicated, complicated, don’t make it a five day off site, right, that you’ve got to do and you know, Turkistan or some bizarre place, like, did you just piggyback on an existing structure and habits? Great, great advice. I love it. I want to shift gears a little bit if that’s okay with you. And I want to talk about you because we’ve got a lot of business leaders and nonprofit leaders in our audience. And I’d love to just kind of give them a peek behind the curtain of local government, if you will, and and see from someone who’s worked in both environments, what is the distinct role that government serves? And how is that different from private enterprise?
Shane Silsby
Yeah, great question. And a lot of people don’t consider that a lot. They are maybe being critical of their governments or wanting more in the basic rule of government, right is to do for people or do for communities, what they can’t do for themselves. Right. So if you think about building a roadway, if you had to have all of the people in the neighborhood agree on where a roadway should go, how it gets done, or somebody’s got to take a lead all that stuff, it wouldn’t get completed, right? Or people would argue about the design of the cost or whatever. So government comes in, and they deliver things that individually the community members cannot do alone or cannot do for themselves. Right. So that’s, that’s the baseline of it. Private sector at the end of the day is to deliver good quality projects, but to make a profit, so that they can continue continue to keep delivering those quality and, and on time projects. And the reason why that symbiotic is the government is not structured to deal with peaks and valleys of resources or staffing or external funding or project needs. So they need the private sector to fill in those gaps and be ready when that project needs to get released or needs to get constructed wherever the case may be to help with reaction time and to kind of be there as a good partner to jump in and provide the delivery on the delivery side.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So I’m wondering if you could do a little bit further on that in just kind of share it with you maybe even to an outsider, right, someone who’s who’s not used to working with government. What are some of the keys to working effectively with local governments?
Shane Silsby
Yeah, that’s great question. And I work with people on that quite a bit. And one of the things is to figure out, as I said earlier, each government’s different right there, they have different issues they have to deal with, could be financial, could be project could be a community based issue could be political issue. So the best way I find it to deal with your local government, your regional government entity is to figure out what their pain points are right? What are their goals? Do they have strategic goals and priorities? And where might they need help and delivering those because as I said, governments are not set up to have steep peaks and valleys in their resourcing or staffing needs. So. So looking at that local government, you’re targeting or government strategic priorities, what are their goals? And then what are their other needs or challenges? And sometimes you just have to talk to people about this, like, what’s, what’s the most challenging thing? What are the top three things that you struggle with dealing with and your daily duties? And then trying to figure out from a private sector standpoint, how do you fill in those gaps, a system where those things, because my opinion is productive, effective government is better for everybody. So we ought to try to make sure that happens if we can, if we can approach that.
Scott Ritzheimer
What is the cost? If we don’t, right, if we don’t bridge that gap, if private media stays private, and public stays public, if we don’t get folks who can cross that line and integrate the two, what’s the cost us is our communities?
Shane Silsby
Yeah, great question. I mean, there’s a couple straightforward, objective costs is you’re not going to have good infrastructure. In your community, you might not have good quality of life, because some of your elements are not up to speed, your parts, your bridges, your roads, your emergency response. And so they’re, then your community start to drop a little bit, and your home values can drop a little bit, or your school systems can drop a little bit. So. So those are real objective things. But the other piece of it, if we try to impact that positively, is something like the bipartisan infrastructure offering the federal government, all of those funds, the $1.2 trillion in funds in some way, shape, or form. Those are almost all going to flow through government agencies, to get through to private sector partners to then help deliver those funding sources. So it’s might be a surprise to many, but almost no government agency has a construction force, right? They have construction management oversight, but they don’t have people going out there and building all these things that’s partnering with the private sector, and then you’re designing those things while unhealthy funnels. So you’ve got the objective things if you don’t make the investment in helping and having good government, communities can drop. And the alternative is if you have something coming in like a positive media or like federal funding, if you’re not partnering and supporting, then those funds are not going to get delivered as efficiently effectively and as quickly as they could to help improve some of the efficiencies communities might have.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. You don’t really pause to think about it, we I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a local, you know, a local county construction company. It’s fascinating. So I’ve got a question. I like to ask all my guests, and it is this. What is the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching listening today knew?
Shane Silsby
I think from my perspective, the thing I’d like people to think about that that might be a secret is that your government agencies don’t have it all figured out. Right? They need help. It’s not that the employees are not well intentioned, motivated smart people. It’s just that they have, you know, more priorities on their plate than they do time to deliver those. And there are many things that impact their ability to deliver on something that might seem simple, that might be a political issue might be a funding issue might be an environmental regulatory issue. But they don’t have it all figured out. It’s about the journey, though. Right to get it figured out. That’s, that’s what I look at when I when I think about good government employees is those people that are trying to figure it out. So So the secret is, it’s not all perfect. It’s not all figured out. But the flip side is, you know, with a little bit of patience, a little bit of support, we can help them figure it out. And then we’ll all be improved. Our communities will be improved for the better.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s fantastic. So I want to, there’s a couple of things. I want to hit her right at the end. And the first one is, is your book. So we’ve talked a little bit about it, but I’m wondering if you could just tell us, who did you write the book for?
Shane Silsby
yes, great question. I wrote the book really specifically for leaders, local government that are either new to the leadership position, that they moved up maybe 20 years faster than their predecessors and or somebody that came in from the private sector in the government sector and they’re trying to lead or been put in a leadership position. And there are certain things in the book tries to cover this more in a shallow format that really deep a masters or a thesis level on any one category to try to cover as many categories as it can. Just so you have familiarity is new leader in government to the things you just don’t know, academically, you’re just don’t get from general experience in the private sector or when you’re delivering heads down technical work in an organization, even if it’s government organization. So that’s the target to support those folks. And I came to the resolution after dealing with public agencies across the country. And I kept hearing kind of the same story or experiencing the same phenomena, which people I was dealing with, again, very smart, motivated while attention, but just didn’t have that deep experience. And I was just trying to help accelerate that a little bit. Yeah, that’s the bullet.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic, had a chance to read a little bit of it myself. And I would recommend, even if you’re not in local government, but you want a master class on how to handle these key transitions, and how to start thinking and planning ahead, just masterful, is just phenomenal. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough if you work with local government, also, just a brilliant read for you. So where can folks get a copy of the book?
Shane Silsby
Thanks, Scott. And I appreciate your time today. Again, great job. Appreciate the discussion, they can go to Amazon, you just type in Managing for Meteors. Or you can go to managingformeteors.com. And you can hit the order now button there, there’s a couple of things there, you can get for free couple of exhibits, which might help you try to get aligned in what the book tries to cover. So yeah, I’d love to partner with folks or if they have any questions, they can reach out to me directly as well through the website.
Scott Ritzheimer
And that was gonna be my next question. So folks who are thinking: Hey, I’ve got to know more what this guy knows. How can they find more out about the work that you do and get in touch with you?
Shane Silsby
Yeah, thanks, Scott. If you want to take advantage my 20 plus years on the government side or working with major global firms on the private side, you can just go to silsby-sa.com. Or you can drop me an email [email protected]. Looking forward to working with anybody who has interest.
Scott Ritzheimer
Shane, thank you so much for being on the show. Just an honor and privilege having you here. For those of you watching and listening. I’d get as much out of this conversation as I know I did and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Shane Silsby
Shane Silsby is a civil and transportation engineer who, for over 20 years, held various government leadership positions in cities and counties across the United States. More recently, he has worked as an executive in the private sector with multiple international engineering firms. Shane is passionate about sharing his experience working with and within local government agencies, specifically with emerging leaders. He also provides strategic advice on improving organizational culture, increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of operations, refining financial approaches to capital projects, and establishing goals and accountability metrics.
Want to learn more about Shane Silsby’s work at Silsby Strategic Advisors? Check out his website at https://silsby-sa.com/ You can also get a copy of his here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQWSPJ42#detailBullets_feature_div
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