Strategic Public Management

CHAPTER 1 ________________________________Planning and Managing Core Mission Functions at the Municipal Level

James H. Thurmond

How do local government managers respond when confronted with a major problem? Are they internally or externally focused? Is their response instinctively based upon their organization’s functional and process-based work formats? For example, if street pothole repair sequentially requires a street repair policy, a budget line item, and a work order signed by a supervisor before the repair work occurs, do these formalities blind the public works team to seeing challenging problems that do not resemble its own functions and processes? Or does the team look outward, beyond the organization, to scan the landscape and the ...