Michael Coleman has big
plans, but he knows he can’t make them happen on
his own.
The mayor of Columbus
wants to make 2012 “the first
year of Columbus’ golden
age,” but he understands that
he’s going to need a lot of help
to make that a reality. And as a
starting point, he began asking
people what kind of city they
want to live in and what values
are important to them
Next, he hired a consultant
to distill the thousands of ideas — he calls it “input on
steroids” — into community
priorities. The results will be
used to create a bicentennial
blueprint that he hopes everyone can buy in to.
When you want to implement
change in your organization,
Coleman says you must get
everyone to align their vision,
bringing people together to
solve tough problems, then
following up and executing to
achieve the goal.
Smart Business spoke with
Coleman about how he solicits input, communicates a
clear vision, and gets buy-in
from his citizens, the city’s
corporate leaders and his
9,500 employees.
Sell your ideas. If, morning
after morning, you get up and
say something different — a
new goal — the people will
start scratching their heads
and saying, ‘What the hell is
he doing?’ You need to have a
collaborative environment to
achieve things sometimes.
Nine times out of 10, we’ve
been able to achieve goals by
bringing people into the room
and saying, ‘This is our goal,
and this is our mission. How
do we get there?’ It helps to
leverage talent and engage a
strong dialogue, and it also
builds a sense of investedness
of those who are in the room.
First, I do some good
research. I’ve got a clear idea
of what direction I want to
go, and I provide good
research to explain why this
issue’s real important: What
is the impact of achieving
this particular goal? Why
does it make a difference to
the people? When people are
vested in your idea, your
ideas are going to be more
successful than not.
Be passionate. You have to
believe in your idea — know it
backward and forward — and
you have to understand how
you’re going to achieve it. But,
to reach the goal, you never get
there by yourself. You have to
use your powers of persuasion
and powers of information.
Be a salesperson and a
visionary at the same time.
Believe that you can achieve
these things, and then it
starts happening. Push it,
nudge it, and keep it going.
You’re the bus driver.
You’ve got to persuade people to get on that bus, and
then you’ve got to drive it all
the way to your destination.
If you’re driving that bus and nobody’s on it, you’ll get to
that destination and you’re
on that bus alone.
It’s much better to have
people working with you to
achieve the goal so that
everybody benefits.
Consider the greater good. My
ideas are never about me,
they’re always about what’s
the best for this community.
I’ve done a lot of things and
accomplished a great deal.
But in each and every one of
those instances, it was about,
‘Here’s the goal. Here’s the
vision. Now, I need you to buy
in to this vision and help us to
achieve this because it’s good
for you, and it’s good for others. This isn’t about me; this is
about you.’ It’s achievement
through collaboration.
Hone your listening skills. You
have to be able to listen to
people’s problems, ideas and
concepts. You have to be
able to translate it; what
does it really mean? You
can’t have a deaf ear.
Listening is a skill that some
people frankly don’t have.
You have to understand
what people want. Where is
the psyche of your constituents? What are the
desires of the people you represent? If you don’t understand that, it’s going to be
very difficult to establish a
vision that people will buy in
to. Don’t go down to specifics,
stay at the values level — the
umbrella level — and develop
your ideas from there.
I bring neighborhood
groups into the mayor’s
office. We’ll sit down, and I’ll
say, ‘What’s going on in your
neighborhood?’ Or, I’ll go out
in the neighborhoods and
ask what’s happening in their
community. They’re most
likely to tell me what their
problems are. I often have to
come up with the solution,
but I want them to help
achieve it. If they’ve got the
problem, they need to be
vested in the solution.
Be visible. It’s important for
people in the community to
see me listening to them.
Oftentimes, leaders sit in
their ivory towers and never
get out to talk to the people
that work for them and their
customers. Sometimes, people just want to know that
you’re listening to them. It
makes a big difference.
It helps you adjust along the
way what you’re trying to
achieve, and it helps you fine-tune some things. If you’ve
got a product that you think is
the best thing in the world but
it’s not selling the way you
thought it would, you go out
and talk to your customer
base. They might say, ‘We like
it, but we really don’t like the
color of it.’ You change the
color of it from green to blue,
and, all of a sudden, it’s the
hottest thing on the market —
just by listening to your customer base.
That’s not a bad thing to
do.
HOW TO REACH: City of Columbus, Mayor’s Office, (614) 645-7671 or mayor.columbus.gov