Adventures in Job Shadowing

Last week’s classes were canceled (yes, after only one full week of classes following winter break) for “career week.” The intent was for students to have  a week to search out job prospects and internships, but the consensus of my classmates was that most of the time was spent either catching up on assigned readings, getting sick, or having babies (congratulations again, Tim).

On Monday I helped out with the kid’s home schooling and applied for two internships, both in Utah with city governments. On Tuesday I helped with home schooling again, caught up on some reading, and enjoyed time home with my Family. By Wednesday, I went to Eagle Mountain to job shadow the city manager, John Hendrickson. Eagle Mountain is a city of about 25,000 citizens and John has been the manager there for a few years. He has been in city management for over twenty years. It was great to see “a day in the life” of a city manager of a smaller city and become familiar with some of the challenges and opportunities that come with working in/for a small city. John was great to let me shadow him for the entire day, and even allowed me to sit in on all his meetings (including a top secret meeting with ——- and ——- about —————-). We had lots of one-on-one time for me to ask him specific questions about his career and some of the things I had learned over the past semester.

I also got a new favorite quote from him. it is taken from his great-great-grandmother who used to always tell him, “Everyone is a little strange except for me and thee, and sometimes I wonder about thee.” We were discussing how he deals with personnel issues and how reminding himself that not everyone will see things the same way he does helps him keep things in perspective.

Time to head to class. My next entry will be on Thursday’s job shadow in Sandy City.

Vacation’s over, back to work

Having been in the workforce since I completed my undergrad work in March of 2003, I’d forgotten how nice a two-week winter vacation could be. I made the 14-hour drive back to Oregon with my family and spent the holidays with my parents. We had a great time, and it was good to “home,” though both Jenny and I agreed that our house in Provo feels more and more like home.

We returned a few days before classes started and I am now fully emerged in my first week of classes. I’m looking forward to a great semester. If I continue to learn as much in each class as I feel I have this first week worth of classes, I am going to have a very fruitful three months.  My courses for this semester, which I’m sure I will pull examples from for this blog, are: Accounting and Computer Concepts, Advanced Excel, Public and Nonprofit Budgeting, Gov. Finance, Statistical Analysis, and Human Resource Management.

Classes have been canceled next week for career week, and I have a couple job shadow opportunities scheduled.

More details to come.

PROACT Model, Consequences and Trade-offs

The “C” in PrOACT stands for understanding the Consequences. A consequence table can be used in making my decision, but there are three main concerns to be aware of when giving a value to each alternative for each objective. First, the values need to be an appropriate level of preciseness. Most experts agree that the human mind can only distinguish between 7-9 levels of variation, so a scale of 1-9 is most commonly used. These numbers are subjective and relate to my preferences and values. They may (and probably would be) different for each individual that rates them.

I learned to use Excel to analyze and compare the various alternatives, but it it hard to explain in words. Suffice it to say that my analysis concluded an internship with Eagle Mountain would be the best alternative.

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In most complex decisions, like in this analysis, there is no one perfect answer and tradeoffs are considered when evaluating the highest scoring alternatives..

The internship in Eagle Mountain wins most of the time, but the internship in Salem sometimes wins the majority of the trials. So it is important to look at the tradeoffs I would be willing to make.

If I decided to trade some emphasis (say, 3 percentage points) on experience for more emphasis on future job prospects, the weighted totals would change significantly in Salem’s favor and it would be the clear winner over Eagle Mountain almost every trial.

If, on the other hand, I placed more emphasis on location (increasing its weight 3-4 percent) and less emphasis on either experience or job prospect, then the weighted totals would go up in Eagle Mountain’s case but down in Salem’s, since the Eagle Mountain internship is  rated higher in location then Salem’s internship.

One thing that stands out is that the Eagle Mountain internship and the Salem internship are both rated at a 5 under the income objective, which is almost always the highest weighted objective. This gives me confidence in the results of my analysis, being that these two alternatives finished so close to each other.

PROACT Model, Objectives & Alternatives

The “O” in PrOACT stands for formulating Objectives. To find my objectives Isimply asked myself what it was that I really want to accomplish, what did I need to do, and what were my hopes and my goals. After thinking through these questions I came to the following conclusions:

1) Income -This was a big one. My savings account and my student loans are going to be enough to get me through this year, but my financial situation for next year is very dependent on how much money I can save this summer.

2) Experience -One of my main goals was to have a positive experience. I wanted to feel like I was making a contribution and not just filing paperwork or taking photos of city buildings for my internship. I also wanted it to be somewhat prestigious, or at least not something I would be embarrassed to talk about with future employers. Lastly, I wanted my experience to somehow relate to my future goals.

3) Location -I really want to spend the summer someplace nice, with a good “quality of life. I also don’t want to spend all my money on moving trucks, though I would like to be close to family and friends.

4) Job Prospect -Let’s face it, the most important aspect of doing an internship is the hope that it will somehow lead to a future job offering, so the opportunity for good job prospects completed my list.

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The “A” in PrOACT stands for developing Alternatives. The alternatives represent the different courses of action to choose from. In Smart Choices, the authors make mention that your decision will only be as good as your best alternative. That said, it is important to consider a wide range of possible pathways before narrowing the list of alternatives down.

I looked into multiple internships, spoke with lots of people about internships they were familiar with, and discussed lots of possibilities with my wife. I considered internships in Utah, Oregon, California, Florida, D.C., and Mexico before finally settling on what I felt were the most practical and realistic alternatives.

1) GAO -Government Accountability Office, located in Washington D.C. This is a federal government agency created by the legislature to perform audits.

2) City of Eagle Mountain, UT -small city that has experienced a large population growth but struggles to attract local businesses to the area

3) City of Orem, UT -Large city that is very compartmentalized. Good reputation as a city with a positive attitude toward growth and development

4) City of Salem, OR -Capital of Oregon and very big. This is where I was raised and I have lots of family and friends there.

5) City of Aumsville, OR -Smaller city located about 15 miles from Salem. Historically a very rural, ag-based community but it recently doubled in size thanks to the recent housing boom and low property taxes.

The PROACT Model

Thinking over the past semester (hard to believe there are only a few weeks left) I have decided to write a few posts to summarize a few of the key concepts I’ve learned.

The first concept or tool is used to assist in complex decision making. It is taken from the book Smart Choices: A  Practical Guide to Making Better Life Decisions, by John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa. The authors developed a model they call the PrOACT Model, which is an acronym for defining the Problem, specifying the Objectives, creating Alternatives, understanding the Consequences, and grappling with Trade offs. I used the PrOACT Model to help me reach a decision as to what internship I should apply for this summer.

The “Pr” in PrOACT stands for Problem, or more specifically, defining the problem. How the problem is approached will greatly influence the outcome of the decision, so I wanted to make sure that I gave a lot of meaningful thought to my problem.

When I first began thinking of my problem, I figured it would simply be “should I apply for an internship for this summer?” This question was triggered at new student orientation when all the second-year students reported on the internships they had completed over the summer. So the issue really became “what do you want to do this summer?”

In trying to define my problem, I asked myself several questions, such as, “Do I even want to do an internship? What could I do with your summer instead? Would not doing an internship compromise my future goals?”

In answering these questions I came to the realization that, indeed, I did want to complete an internship over the summer, but I still had no idea what my options were or what my search criteria should be. But after a few days of thinking it over, I knew that my problem definition was:

Which internship should I apply for?

I’ll continue with formulating Objectives in my next post.

H1N1 Survivor

It’s official. Other than a nagging cough that I haven’t been able to shake for a week now, you can add my name to the list of H1N1 survivors. I haven’t posted for a while because my family and I got the bug from my collage-age sister that moved in with us. Let me just say that it had all the potential of a horrific experience but we made the best of our time together and we consider ourselves better for passing through the experience.

I had a great opportunity to attend an open forum and luncheon with Korban Lee, Assistant City Manager of Sandy, UT. He graduated from BYU’s MPA program in 2003 and began his career with Sandy City as a managerial analyst. He discussed how he began his career and recommended several books including Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf and Servant First! Leadership for the New Millennium by John J. Sullivan just to name a few. This concept of a servant leadership is both new and interesting to me. It seems the most comon job experience I have experienced has been based on a leadership with servants rather than servant leadership. But I have very fond memories of working for one particular boss that embodied the notion of leaders taking on the responsibility of serving. He was very respectful of all his employees, and I remember feeling a sincere desire to give my best performance at work, knowing that my boss would do the same thing for me. he thought nothing of opening the door for me in the morning filling up the company car in the morning to save me some time before making my sales calls. He was a great boss and I regard him as a great man to this day.

Budget Travel’s Top 10 Small Towns

Budget Travel just released their list of the best little towns in the nation, and here they are:

CAYUCOS, CALIFORNIA (pop. 3,000)
LEXINGTON, VIRGINIA (pop. 6,867)
BREAUX BRIDGE, LOUISIANA (pop. 8,200)
TUBAC, ARIZONA (pop. 1,900)
WALLACE, IDAHO (pop. 1,000)
SAUGERTIES, NEW YORK (pop. 5,000)
MOUNT VERNON, IOWA (pop. 4,671)
JACKSONVILLE, OREGON (pop. 2,750)
ROCKLAND, MAINE (pop. 7,680)
WHITEFISH, MONTANA (pop. 7,723)

-http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/getaways/10/19/small.town.america/index.html

I continue to be intrigued with small towns and the quality of life they provide compared to their big brother counterparts -the metropolitan areas. Having been raised in Salem, OR, I don’t consider myself a small-town guy, but I have always been attracted to the ideals attributed to small towns. But I wonder, do the attributes traditionally associated with small towns really exist, or are they just ideals dreamed up by “city-folk” and portrayed by Hollywood?

I don’t know the answer, but I hope to discover it over the course of my career. The conflict for me is deciding where to start, in a small town or in a large city. It’s a question I will continue to pose to myself and others until I’m ready to start applying for positions.

Staying Neutral in a Political Environment

I appreciate the most recent post by Wes Hare, City Manager in Albany, OR, and his example of innocently getting too caught up in the politics of a friend while he served as a young city administrator:

“Elected officials rightly expect that a manager’s decisions and actions will be guided by professionalism, ethical principles, and the will of the city council…Managers are not free to be Republican, Democratic, or Libertarian administrators; and those who subscribe to the International City-County Management Association Code of Ethics are specifically prohibited from any political activity beyond voting…Managers who stray into the political arena lack the legitimacy endowed by an election, not to mention good survival instincts.

As a young city administrator, I worked for a mayor whom I greatly respected; and when he decided to run for the county commission, he asked if I would help out with his primary campaign.  My wife and I made a small financial contribution and handed out brochures in a neighboring city.  I was not a member of the International City-County Management Association (ICMA) at the time and had not read the organization’s Code of Ethics.  Our mayor lost the election, and it was fortunate that the eventual winner probably had no knowledge of my participation in the campaign.  The city I worked for could have paid a heavy price for my ignorance if the new commissioner held a grudge every time we needed something from the county.  More importantly, my political activity invalidated my claim to being an objective analyst of public policy.  I believe it is critically important that a politically neutral, objective analysis be available to decision makers as they consider public policy.  If the city manager’s objectivity is compromised by political activity, an important perspective may never get to the table.”

This is a great example to me of unintentionally crossing political lines by simply wanting to be a good guy and help out a friend. As someone preparing to enter the city administration profession, this is a great lesson to learn now rather than later.

The Ethics Monster Rears His Head

I encountered my first real ethical dilema within my MPA studies this week. Our first mid-term (first of two, so it should actually be called a third-term, sorry) in Managerial Economics was yesterday. After the test, I was in the student lounge area when I heard a coleague say something to the effect of, “I’m she glad we reviewed that test from last year that Sally (name changed to protect the parties involved) emailed to everyone.” What?! What test form last year? What email? I must have mis-heard, right?

I hopped on my laptop and got into my email account; sure enough one of my fellow students had somehow gotten a hold of last years mid-term and had emailed it out to everyone as a “study guide.” What made things worse, all the test questions were identical to the questions on the test I had just taken! Since then I have learned that several groups of students got together a few hours before class and went over the entire test together.

At first I felt like an idiot for not checking my email the night before (I was up all night studying for the econ mid-term), but then the thought crossed my mind,”Would you have used it?” I don’t think I would have. I believe I would have felt very uneasy about having last years test to study off of. It is hard to second guess what I might have done, but I can confidently say that had I known the test questions were going to be exactly the same I definitely would not have used it. But in not knowing how much the test would change form last year to this, it poses a somewhat different spin on the issue.

In the end, I think it comes down to how close to the edge you are comfortable walking. I recall the story of a traveler at the Grand Canyon that was inquiring after a mule he could ride down to the bottom of the canyon. As he asked the first mule master he was told, “this is a very fine mule. He can walk within two feet of the ledge without getting spooked or falling.” The second mule master boasted, “My mule can easily walk within one foot of the cliff’s ledge and remains study and confident!” As the man asked a third mule master he was told, “My mule stays as far away from the ledge as possible.” The traveler wisely selected the third mule.

Though I believe it is important to  push the boundaries of creativity and continually balance risks and rewards, I think ethics is one area in business, and in life, that we are better off staying as far away form the ledge as possible.

Using Shrek to Grapple with Tradeoffs

My team gave our first class presentation this week. We are reading Smart Choicesby Hammond, Keeney, and Raiffa individually, and assigned to present the chapter on Grappling with Tradeoffs as a team. We chose to start with a video clip from Shrek where Lord Farquaad is looking into the magic mirror, trying to decide which of three princesses to marry in order to lagidamize his kingship. We thought the best lead in would be to form a consequence table, displaying all the alternatives along the top, or x-axis, and the the decision criteria along the left side, or y-axis. We worked through the graph, weighing the various criteria, eliminating alternatives and neutralizing criteria using the techniques taught in the book, and ended with the video clip of Farquaad choosing Princess Fiona.

We got a lot of complements from the groups that had gone before us, but the group that has to follow us this week just called us names. I thought we did great, and we had a lot of fun with it to boot. it showed me that complex and serious problems can sometimes be more easily explianed by using simple examples.