August 18, 2005

The Ideal Village Manager

The ideal manager

The following is the draft statement on the “ideal candidate” for the manager’s job:

The Village Manager of Yellow Springs is a complex mixture of vision (for a complex, small community) and attention to detail. On one side, the Village requires a skilled player in smart growth management in an ecologically aware community that needs a growing economic base. On the other, it is one that requires a person accustomed to hands-on management of a small village with a full range of service demands from a constituency that is accustomed to almost personalized services. To be successful in this environment, a Village Manager must be able to recruit and retain a skilled workforce, then delegate and hold them accountable while the Manager actively participates in the community helping to build consensus around a shared vision.

The Village Council seeks a manager with the energy, experience, demeanor and commitment to small communities to work with it in delivering quality public services within a political environment that encourages energetic debate from an informed electorate that is insistent on participating in local governance. The ideal candidate will not control, but rather must lead and facilitate participative governance practices that build consensus.

The following attributes are sought in the ideal candidate for Village Manager:

• Be a strategic thinker with an eye for detail and a strong orientation toward customer service. The successful candidate will also be accustomed to working in a larger noncontiguous metropolitan, urbanizing area from the perspective of a small community intent on retaining its individuality and independence while benefiting as appropriate from that larger environment.

• Willing to play a highly visible role in the community. The ideal candidate must participate broadly across the leadership structure of the community and region, while at the same time being directly accessible to the community’s neighborhoods, retailers, institutions and employers.

• Able to delegate internal management responsibility, holding the workforce firmly accountable for performance. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in staff development and team leadership.

• A personal commitment to diversity and inclusion as a way of life, governance and managerial style.

• Willing to work openly with the community and employees; not confrontational or flamboyant, but rather direct, collegial and facilitative.

• An experienced leader with five or more years’ experience in leading a comparable organization with extensive personal experience in smart economic development and reinvestment, finance, employee relationships, and staff development. The ideal candidate will have the appropriate educational background (MPA desirable), and a history of continued career and personal development.

• A professionally stable administrator with a record of both tenure and consistent career growth. The Village Council does not seek a resume builder as the Village has a history of long tenured managerial leadership. They do seek a manager willing to stay, but also willing to take risks to improve the organization and to contribute to the growth of the Village.

• An active regional leader with experience in representing a full service community key to regional vitality and growth.

• A proven track record of staff development with an emphasis on diversity and team building.

• A demonstrated background in guiding and participating in the redevelopment of small communities within much larger, noncontiguous metropolitan areas. The ideal candidate will be a coalition builder, equally at home with the business and community leaders involved in the redevelopment effort.

• A person of strong professional values and ethics, politically neutral, but actively engaged in the political process.