Magazine Posts

DIY Workplace Gratification

Nine strategies to increase your happiness and productivity at work Feeling stagnant at work? Demotivated? Unsatisfied? Happiness is identified as the key to improving productivity ...

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Office Politics with Honour

Most people respond to the topic of office politics with a monologue that goes something like this: “I hate office politics! It is a synonym ...

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Three ways to move beyond "squeaky wheel" leadership

If leadership styles had a “default setting,” it would likely be Squeaky Wheel Leadership (SWL). Elected councils are often fixated on how the Squeaky Wheels ...

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Breaking through the municipal glass ceiling

How deliberate systems of support can help remove barriers for women in local government In 1990, the United Nations Economic and Social Council passed a ...

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5 ways to build a culture of belonging through arts and culture

It stands to reason that the shared experience of the arts provides a common ground for social interaction. One also could claim that art programs ...

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7 vital qualities to look for in your local leader

With local government elections happening this fall in several provinces, there is an opportunity for communities to give serious consideration to who will represent them ...

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Leadership coaching the new hire

Minimizing risk while maximizing potential On-board coaching helps the newly hired or promoted individual expedite their assimilation into the role, organization, and to become productive ...

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Black Dogs in cubicles

Read up on Sir Winston Churchill and you’ll discover he was a lover of pets – with all types of skin coverings from fur to ...

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Five tips for creating a photo-friendly town in the age of Instagram

Being photo friendly is an important consideration that regional tourism authorities, municipalities, and businesses need to be thinking about when it comes to making their ...

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Urban innovation: How hubs, labs, and learning networks are the key to better city building

Across the globe, there is a bold new wave of ideas inspiring how cities share knowledge, create policy, build networks, and create new innovations that ...

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Back to values

Strategically managing employee-to-employee (mis)conduct Over the past several years, elected officials, executives, and senior managers of various local governments in Canada have expressed a high ...

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Respect and dignity

Creating a psychologically safe and healthy workplace We are witnessing a significant shift in workplace culture and accountability across North America. We are only now ...

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Top 10 strategies for employee attraction and retention

To many employers, employee retention remains about as much of a mystery as it is a widely discussed topic. Why is that? Organizations know that ...

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Building a people-first organizational culture

Feeding the beast There has been no shortage of ink spilled on think-pieces about what contributes to creating a great organizational culture. Peter Drucker is ...

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Facing a tough reality

When to leave The fact that so many of our municipal colleagues will be elected soon in elections taking place in many jurisdictions across the ...

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10 election season tips for municipal clerks and communicators

For many communities across the country this year … It’s election season! Potential municipal candidates have already begun to show their faces and raise their ...

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Leveraging the power of LEAN in local government

Lean is not a new concept and Lean’s true beginnings are not agreed upon by scholars. Henry Ford is the most talked about pioneer of ...

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What gets measured gets done

It’s likely that we’ve all heard this before: “What gets measured, gets done.” This often-repeated maxim has, as its foundation, the basic principles of performance ...

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How the legalization of recreational cannabis use will affect Canada’s municipalities

As a key pillar of its election platform for the 2015 federal election, the Liberal Party, led by now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, promised to ...

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Who speaks for council?

I was asked recently about the legitimacy of a council member speaking to a community issue on which the council had not yet taken a ...

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Councillors behaving badly

Is there an epidemic of municipal councillors behaving inappropriately? In recent years, news stories have told increasing tales of offside behaviour by councillors and heads ...

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Juice check - results of the survey

In last month’s issue of Municipal World, we introduced you to your executive function (E/F) and how it and the energized brain, together, are essential ...

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New Urban Allies Forging Partnerships in Mid-sized Cities

Twenty-first century city building is becoming increasingly complex. Municipal leaders are asking how to create community prosperity, while constrained by a fiscal arrangement that is ...

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Innovation and leadership in Canada's mid-sized cities

When we talk about city-building, it tends to be the large, global cities, like Toronto, New York, Paris, and Tokyo that dominate the conversation. These ...

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A council's "DNA"

A question frequently heard in the world of local government is this: Why does the council act as it does? This question sometimes refers to ...

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Why the wise ask why?

In the long-distant past, I’ve had the dubious opportunity to teach people how to use either a computer or some sort of computer application. Quite ...

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On being a CAO in Canada

I have long been concerned with the proposition that not only public servants, but also all citizens, are necessarily “independent moral actors.” The phrase derives ...

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New councillors: "keep your stick on the ice!"

10 Rules for Surviving Political Body Checks Now that you new councillors have a few meetings under your belt, I will wager 10-to-1 that you ...

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Is a leadership audit in order?

The City Manager (CM) knew he had a problem. In an effort to clean up a financially troubled department, a hard-driving numbers person had been ...

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A "Teeny Tiny" movement

Photo: Jeff Moorhouse (in purple Lions Club shirt with microphone) is a pilot based at CFB Trenton. Jeff has made good use of his layover ...

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Nevertheless, she persisted ...

Early in 2017, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked a little-known and rarely-used rule to silence Senator Elizabeth Warren in the middle of a speech ...

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Recruitment and retention

For many organizations and their hiring authorities, the recruitment and selection of qualified candidates is a constant struggle. What surprises me is how many postings ...

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Broadband connectivity & your community

Municipal broadband presents real challenges to Canadian communities, not only as a standalone initiative, but also in relation to connectivity within a smart city or ...

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Budget 2017

Canada’s future unfolding in our municipalities 2017 is Canada’s big year. All across the country, Canadians are marking the 150th anniversary of Confederation with festivals, ...

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Talkin' bout my generation

A Millennial’s take on shifting workforce demographics From water-cooler chats, to executive conversations on workforce planning, people are grumbling, “The Millennials are coming. The Millennials ...

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Who evaluates the CAO? (Part 2)

After discussing performance evaluation from the perspective of “why evaluate?” (May 2013); what should be evaluated? (June and July); we turned to the question of ...

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Who evaluates the CAO? (Part 1)

To recap this series of articles to date, we have examined the issue of a council evaluating its CAO by first considering the question: Why ...

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CAO evaluation criteria (Part 2)

In the May issue, we explored the question “Can a council evaluate a chief administrative officer?” In the June issue, the focus was on “What ...

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CAO evaluation criteria (Part 1)

Last month, we explored the question “Can council evaluate its chief administrative officer?” In this issue, we now turn the focus to “What should a ...

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Delighting residents and making cities smarter

Today, it is not enough to simply make digital versions of old ways of delivering services. When it comes to technology, cities and governments are ...

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Can council evaluate the CAO?

I hope to pen some thoughts around the issue of a council and its chief administrative officer (CAO) over the next few issues. I will ...

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Seven steps to civility in the workplace

Communication is not simple. If it were, there would not be thousands of books and articles written on the subject. Yet, communication is the key ...

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Reconciling Canada together

There are few words more powerful in Canada right now than “reconciliation.” There are also few words more challenging. Thanks to the work of people ...

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Mad about modernism

When you think about heritage buildings, you often picture cute Victorian houses and main streets or grand Gothic Revival churches. Buildings from the 1950s and ...

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Restoring energy to exhausted, depleted employees?

Manage energy, not engagement Are your traditional employee engagement efforts delivering the results you need? That is, are your municipality’s engagement surveys, town hall meetings, ...

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Do municipalities have a duty to adapt to climate change?

As extreme weather events linked to climate change hit Canadian municipalities increasingly hard, what is happening to the risk of municipal governments being sued for ...

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Thriving in the midst of a talent revolution

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.” This popular saying has often been used in leadership courses to encourage ...

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Mobile devices & your municipality

Avoiding Downstream Liability It’s become increasingly common for municipal staff, particularly those requiring secure access to municipal servers, to sport at least one, and in ...

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When volunteering hinders

I am a great supporter of those who volunteer their time and talents in the service of others. These folks are the very backbone of ...

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Better drives change ... doesn't it?

Every new road, upgraded computer application, cancelled project, corporate reorganization, downsizing, or relocation (to mention only a handful of endeavors) have something significant in common. ...

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Looking in the mirror

Leadership for a more sustainable future begins at the top With smaller budgets and an eye to the future, communities across Canada are taking steps ...

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Municipal vision alive on national stage

In November, FCM was on Parliament Hill to meet with 190 parliamentarians – including 14 cabinet ministers – to highlight municipal priorities for Phase 2 ...

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The serious game of tactical urbanism

Professional planning has great influence in the design of public spaces so that they reflect a community’s needs, culture, and character. In general terms, this ...

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Internet voting

In 2000, I participated in a panel created in response to a request from U.S. President Bill Clinton to examine internet voting. My initial reaction ...

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Building a connected city

Local government is in the business of making connections. Whether it is connecting commuters to workplaces, older adults to recreation centres, students to campuses, or ...

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Our aging, shifting population

Every day, all over Canada, decisions are made that will ultimately shape our cities. These decisions dictate how and where cities will grow and shrink. ...

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Cultural regeneration

The case for cultural regeneration in European capital cities has been made for at least two decades in Europe. More recently, however, second-tier cities have ...

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Expropriating contaminated land

When a municipality expropriates contaminated land, can it deduct the full cost of remediating the contamination from the amount paid to the reluctant seller? Surprisingly, ...

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Building a culture of prevention

In today’s organizations, strong leaders recognize that solid health and safety performance drives business results. They realize the importance of promoting a culture of health ...

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For electric utilities, energy is the holy grail

The billion-dollar question is, how can we cheaply and reliably store energy for the grid? The picture is clear: coal-powered electrical utilities and the oil-powered ...

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It takes two to tango (part 1)

The above aged expression refers to the fact, as Pearl Bailey sang in 1952, that a relationship – like a marriage or like the tango ...

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Problems! Glorious problems!

C. K. Chesterton penned a quote that I’m especially fond of: “It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It’s that they can’t see the ...

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Shifting communities

When the Kenyan priest arrived to take up residence at the local Catholic Church in Yellowknife Northwest Territories, he expressed some concern over his safety ...

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Innovations in municipal service delivery

Innovations in service delivery are helping municipal governments cope with the public’s demand for improved service and reduced costs. While some municipalities, both large and ...

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City of Windsor - a city reinvented

In August, our team was excited to attend the annual conference of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, hosted by the City of Windsor. It ...

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Riding the momentum of Pokemon Go!

With its launch here in mid-July, Canadian communities were suddenly swept up in the latest video game craze: Pokémon Go. The game combines the popular ...

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