We have been talking a lot in local government circles about data management and knowledge transfer. The sheer scope of available data is a story for another day. What has interested me lately is the transfer of information from one generation of local government leaders to the next. When a new manager needs information about a subject, they can usually contact the former manager for insight. Trust me, nine times out of ten the former manager is only too happy to oblige. You may need to set a hard stop on the conversation. But how do you ask for information that you don’t know exists?

I am a big believer in the lowly background memo. When you are going through a major project or in-depth investigation, writing a background memo is extremely useful – mostly to your later self who can’t remember the details. In my memos, I would include information such as who worked on the project, whether it was an official committee or a staff team, what research was done, how many times and when the group met, what the research process consisted of, what we found, and what action or votes were taken, if any. Caution: waiting even a month to write the memo will surely mean you forgot something that was so obvious it wasn’t written down.

I was talking to my friend and colleague Peggy recently about this background memo concept (nerd alert). She pointed out that managers who follow us would benefit from the memo only if they knew it existed. My career was split between periods of only paper records, some paper records, and all digital records. While it is certainly simple to search digital records, you can’t search for something if it doesn’t occur to you to look. It’s not a failure not to know what you don’t know. (Is that a triple negative?)

An example of this occurred in Decatur Georgia recently. Peggy’s neighbors asked her why the transit busses had moved their location. Back in the 1990s (Ok with the eye roll I know you were in grade school), Decatur supported the transit authority’s development of a rail to bus transfer facility right in the center of the City. The City and the Authority entered into an agreement setting forth the terms of the project. One of these terms was a requirement that rail to bus transfers would occur in a location other than on City streets. Peggy contacted Andrea, the current city manager, to let her know there was an agreement somewhere in city hall. Sure enough, Andrea’s team found the paper record, worked with the Authority, and the busses are moving back where they belong. (Andrea is also a friend and colleague!)

So what can we do? What if no one is around who knows that there is an agreement? When possible, it is a great service to document important records prior to leaving a position in local government. When I left Needham, I created a spreadsheet that listed all of my paper files and some of my digital files, including a note as to why I thought they were important. If future managers review it on occasion, something may stick in their minds. When working on a major project, and ask yourself – what is the background on this that I might not know? You can then search paper and digital records, or ask “old timers” what they know. Examples include:

• Environmental contamination in sites or buildings,
• Conveyance, transfer, or reuse of municipal property,
• Building construction, reuse, or demolition,
• Long term leases (such as for rail trails, land, or buildings),
• Anything having to do with transportation projects and State/County collaborations, and
• Any issue that becomes significantly controversial.

How about you? Have you ever found a file that saved you a lot of headaches? Is there a major project category that you would add to this list?

Let’s practice – jotting down notes for a background memo that future you (or the future manager) will greatly appreciate.

I had the great fortune to travel to three cities in Norway last month with my husband and our friends. While the scenery was breathtaking, local government nerds can’t help taking pictures of infrastructure.

Joy sneaks up on us – often in ways that we least expect. This happened to me recently while I was attending a strategic planning workshop. A large group was separated into three rooms – “leadership,” “supervisors,” and “everyone else.” I realized that in my current role I am solidly in the “everyone else” camp, and I am irrationally happy about it.

I spent 40 years in government – 35 of them at the local level – in a state of perpetual striving. I tried to make myself indispensable, reaching for assignments, promotions, and (if I am honest) recognition. Becoming Town Manager was a dream and also a logical next step. Once that goal was achieved, striving took the form of local, state, and national associations and initiatives. Even though I was certain it was time to retire last year, I wasn’t exactly ready. I didn’t know who I would be when I was no longer the Town Manager.

The big question is what to strive for now. Is there such as thing as a post-striving world? Will I be forced into dreaded self-reflection? After “retiring” I jumped right into a new job that allows me to work hard and connect with others, and you would think that there is little striving required. And yet.

One definition of striving is to devote serious effort or energy to something. Differentiating between striving for attention or recognition, and striving for connection, wisdom, and purpose is my new goal. Let’s face it, I am incapable of doing a job without devoting serious effort and energy, so I am all in.

While I was procrastinating drafting this post, I attended a professional development workshop that involved more self-reflection and sharing with strangers (sigh). It turned out to be a fantastic and moving experience. At the end, one of my partners gave me a note that says “Wanting to strive to do more and be better is not bossy or pushy.” Well said, friend.

How about you? Are you locked in striver mode? Do you dream of joining the “everyone else” club? Is there such as thing as a post-striving world?

Let’s practice – telling ourselves we can stop striving for the wrong reasons, and hoping it’s true.

Readers of a certain age ought to be humming already. Last week I had the occasion to take a bus from historic Staunton, VA to Washington, DC – a ride just under four hours. A very generous colleague offered to drive me to DC at the last minute, but I decided that I had planned on a sojourn, and a sojourn I would take. As an extreme extrovert, even I needed a few hours with no talking. Also, I kept humming America by Simon and Garfunkel, and couldn’t forgo the opportunity to write a blog post about it.

My younger daughter gave me the idea, even sending me the lyrics. She followed up with “And then you usually do something vaguely sad and meaningful so I highlighted the last paragraph.” Vaguely sad and meaningful? Is that really what I write? The last paragraph:

“’Kathy I’m lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America.”

I guess empty and aching counts as something sad and meaningful.

I ended up on the bus because I was attending the Virginia Local Government Management Association meeting in Staunton, Virginia – the birthplace of the council-manager form of government (nerd alert). I don’t think empty and aching is the sentiment I would use to describe the local government managers I talked to, but overwhelmed and living with uncertainty would be about right.

There is nothing that gives me more hope for America than spending time with local government professionals who are passionate about their work, and who refuse to leave anyone behind. What I am certain of (in this unending epoch of uncertainty) is that trust in government can only be improved through connection. Every positive and intentional interaction between local government staff and the public we serve moves the needle, even if only a fraction. Recognizing that our community members themselves are empty and aching is a good first step. We are all looking for America, in different places, in different ways, and with different outcomes in mind. I think most of us would like to find an America where the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is universally accessible.

I didn’t see a man in a bow tie, but I thoroughly enjoyed my mini-sojourn. Since the roaming was draining my phone battery, I mostly just looked out the window. Shocking, I know.

So how about you? Have you taken a bus since the 1980’s? Are you thinking about being lost in America?

Let’s practice, looking for the best of America. And in case you were tired of the song your head, note that on this bus I was Homeward Bound.

Recently, as I was pondering my long to-do list, I starting thinking about President Eisenhower. As one does. According to the former president, “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.” The Eisenhower Matrix, later popularized by Steven Covey, purports to help us be more strategic about task prioritization.

I decided to experiment, creating the recognizable matrix of importance and urgency – do, decide, delegate and delete. I added a category below the matrix called the “LOOMING AREA”. So in theory, we should spent most of our time on items that are strategic and long-range, and finish, delegate or delete those that aren’t. Since all of my identified tasks were assigned to the LOOMING AREA, I began to categorize them as instructed by Eisenhower and Covey.

I counted six tasks that were important and urgent (“do”), 16 that were important, but not urgent (“decide”), two that were urgent but not important (“delegate”), and 12 that were not important or urgent (“delete”).

In what will be a surprise to no human working in late 2025, I had completed 100% of the “do”, and 100% of the “delegate” tasks (to whom am I supposed to delegate?). It is pretty clear that when something is urgent like filling out a time sheet or filing an expense report it gets done even at the expense of long-term planning. Fifty percent of the “delete” tasks had also been checked off. Is there really a manager out there who will just ignore these tasks?

So that leaves only 19% of the “decide” tasks completed. These are the important things that we have promised to do – presentations to draft, articles to write, staff to mentor, plans to develop – in other words, the things that create meaning. Only 19% complete.

The problem I have with this matrix is its oversimplification. Items feel like they are equally weighted – booking airfare for a trip and developing a performance improvement plan sit next to each other with boxes to check. But the matrix did show me – quite clearly – how much I am procrastinating.

So where is our time going? A colleague introduced me to the concept of “occupational hobbies.” These are the tasks that are routine, often mindless, and fit squarely in our skillset. They are often things than can and should be done by others in our organizations. Unless your occupational hobby is to read comments or scroll local social media sites, these tasks often add some value – just not at the level of the more strategic items. They also allow us to (gleefully) check a lot of boxes.

Common occupational hobbies include:

• Getting to Inbox Zero
• Reviewing staff memos for typos
• Filing emails into folders
• Updating HR policies
• Integrating collective bargaining agreements (research shows I am the only person who enjoys this task)
• Fixing broken links on websites
• Using fun new software to create maps and charts
• Developing creative PowerPoint templates
• Actual paper filing
• Creating a spreadsheet to track data that is already available in another source
• Organizing the books on your shelf
• Organizing your pen drawer (this really is a great task for boring Zoom calls).

Now that I work from home, and no longer have HR policies to update, it is the spice drawer that calls my name when I should be learning how to use LinkedIn to better advantage. Far and away the thing I procrastinate most is this blog. It is my one creative outlet and I love it – when it’s done. So why I am procrastinating? My goal for 2026 is to really examine what I am doing to sabotage my efforts to do what I say I want to do – to actually do the important but not urgent tasks.

So how about you? Do you have a task management strategy that you swear by? What is your occupational hobby? By the way, that LOOMING AREA? It hasn’t gone away.

Let’s practice – devoting at least as much time next week to strategic projects as we do to our occupational hobbies. Once the spices have been rotated.

In her book Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin highlights strategies for making and breaking habits. She suggests a clean slate strategy when you have the opportunity to start or stop a new habit – such as not installing all of your apps on a new phone, or taking advantage of a new commute to read more. Rubin says “There’s a magic to the beginning of anything. We want to begin right, and a good start feels auspicious…It’s a shame not to exploit the power of the Strategy of the Clean Slate when it presents itself.”

This past summer I made a major job transition and started thinking about the clean slate. I left my Town Manger role in Needham on July 4, 2025, and have started a new role as the Northeast Regional Director for the International City/County Management Association. This is a part-time, fully-remote role. In the three weeks that I had between jobs (I don’t recommend this) I quizzed everyone I met about their experience with a clean slate. Many of them mentioned starting a new job, moving to a new home, and both joyful and painful family transitions.

Concrete clean slate examples included changing from a nickname to a full name, changing email strategies like tone, inbox zero, and scheduling, not saving and filing every email, not making paper copies, avoiding emojis, setting new boundaries, and establishing closing rituals to end the workday.

To my surprise, when I asked about clean slate ideas, what I heard most was people wishing they could “clean slate” workplace behaviors. To be honest (and longtime readers know how I feel about self-reflection), we have probably all exhibited some form of these at some point in our careers. Unofficial survey results indicate that people would like to see less of these traits at work:

• Impatience
• Complaining
• Sarcasm
• Gossiping
• Defensiveness
• Know-it-all-ing
• Over-talking
• Over-sharing
• Close talking
• Arrogance
• Contrariness
• Passive aggression
• Looking at phones in meetings
• Non-responsiveness.

So how am I doing three months into my new role? I can confidently say that I delete some emails. Typically these are the one word kind like “thanks” or “great.” Baby steps. I once had a colleague who deleted EVERY email under the assumption that she could simply search her deleted folder if she needed something. That’s one way to get to inbox zero, but it makes me break into a cold sweat. My former colleagues will be astonished to learn that I have not printed a single work document in three months. To be fair, this is mostly because personal printers are generally terrible, and my brand new one takes about a minute to print one page and runs out of ink every nine pages. Not to worry, I still have a paper calendar and notebook. I have been mindful of exclamation points in email, and I am no longer thinking about whether to send an email outside of “normal business hours” since I have no one working for me. (I do wish I had been more thoughtful about that in the past). Finally, I make it a point to look at the list of traits people dislike in leaders and colleagues – and am diligently trying to avoid them.

How about you? Do you have a memorable clean slate story? Do any of the annoying workplace traits resonate with you?

Let’s practice, taking advantage of opportunities to start fresh (or buying more notebooks and pens – after all it is autumn).

Many readers will know that I have recently retired from full-time work as a local government manager, after almost 24 years in the seat (all of them in one town). I’ve been musing a lot about who I am since I am no longer the Town Manager. I am sure to have a lot of feelings about this transition, but I have decided that the time for self-reflection is most certainly not now. The absence of my second phone, however, is a constant reminder of my altered circumstances. It’s like a phantom appendage that itches to be checked.

Local government managers have a complicated relationship with their phone(s), and we have strong opinions about phone strategies. My first phone was work-issued – I think it was a Nokia – and it had an antenna (seriously). Most people did not have personal phones in the late 1990’s, so my work phone was also my personal phone. The next phone evolution was to my beloved Blackberry. Remember those? It was sort of rounded at the bottom and had a radio/walkie-talkie feature that we only ever used for fun. But that keyboard – real keys!

In the late 2000’s we got iPhones, which were an improvement in every sense of the word – although initially we mostly used the “calling other people” feature. How quaint. The work-issued iPhone was still my personal phone until the late teens. I came back from a conference where I heard about a colleague whose phone was subpoenaed, and promptly bought a second phone. Keeping work and personal data separate became a priority for me.

As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of work cell phone users – those who cannot wait for the new technological tools that will make it easy for them to use one phone for dual purposes (you know who you are) and people like me, who would have to have the second phone pried from our clutching hands.

How about you? Will you fight to the death to keep two phones or drop one as soon as you can?

Let’s practice, one or two phones in our hand, contemplating how to separate our selves from our titles.

Readers will recall that I recently lamented about giving up my father’s collection of books about the City of Boston. I couldn’t bear to put them in the book sale bin at the local library, and no one else wanted them.

A thoughtful reader referred me to Dan Dain, a lawyer who lives in the town where I work. The reader told me that Dan had recently written a book called A History of Boston (with photographer Peter Vanderwarker), and that he may be interested in taking some of the books. I contacted Dan, lugged the four boxes and one bag to my office, and invited him to take a look. Dan was happy to peruse the books. He kept pulling them out telling me what he knew about the book, or the author, or the subject. Then he uttered the best words ever: “Can I have all of them?” We couldn’t put them in his trunk fast enough.

Fast forward. Dan is the founder and president of the Boston law firm Dain Torpy. He installed all of the books at the firm’s library, printed out and laminated my blog, and invited me to visit. Can you think of a happier ending?

How about you? Has anything amazing happened to you lately because you asked the universe for help?

Lets practice, staying connected to each other and asking for help when we need it.

I woke up at 4:39 a.m. the other day, as one does, thinking about uncertainty. I realized that there was one thing I knew for certain – it wasn’t 4:39.

Remember during the pandemic years when everything was “unprecedented?” Well now we cannot escape “uncertainty.” Changes in the presidency always bring some level of uncertainty, and it’s fair to say that the current uncertainty quotient is quite high. For me, uncertainty is right around the corner from despair. Nadia Bolz Weber wrote recently that “(i)n the last few weeks I’ve had to actively try to avoid despair like I owe it money or something.” Same. Uncertainty I can learn to live with, despair I need to avoid.

Back to the clock. We renovated our bedroom this year – a project that has been on the list for more than a decade. We took everything out of the room, and have been judicious about what gets allowed back in. (To be honest, I’m not sure my husband knows where I put all his stuff). For some reason, even though we use our phone alarms like all other people living in this century, this clunker of an alarm clock made the cut.

We have always set the clock a bit fast in the hopes that we would actually get up on time. With daylight savings and being unplugged a few times, the clock was 39 minutes slow. Doing math involving the number 39 in the middle of the night isn’t my strong suit, so the clock is essentially useless. It does, however, remind me that there are constants in life, even if the constant is what time it isn’t.

Even though I don’t need this clock, and it really is ugly, I decided to keep it as a reminder that I can live with uncertainty – another tool to fend away despair.

How about you? How are you managing uncertainty? How do you keep despair at bay? Do you still own an alarm clock?

Let’s practice doing alarm clock math. The clock is now exactly two hours slow – much easier to interpret in the night.