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| A target on his back? He's just offering you a burger! |
As someone who was once responsible for the work of a group of people, I often had situations where I was faced with accusations that a person was not performing well or was guilty of some infraction.
That gives me a perspective on one of the latest crises in our town government and my conclusion doesn't fit the view being perpetuated or the habitual way that we assign blame in Charlestown. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to air my thoughts - below the break.
Before I proceed, and before I see responses that include the phrase The Dems, I must give the now-repetitive disclaimer that these are my views. These are not the views of the other writers on Progressive Charlestown. I have not discussed these views with the Democratic Town Committee so I have no idea how they will feel about the points I am about to make. Also, this is my opinion today. I had not formed this opinion yesterday so it wasn't my opinion then. I have no idea whether this will be my opinion next week.
Ok, got that? If so, you may read further. Otherwise, stop now.
I start by saying that Charlestown has a terrible reputation as a place for a Town Administrator to work. Worse, we don't seem to care and we even seem to relish that fact – "Here's a new one who will last until the next Town Council is elected." Yet we behave like there's a line of qualified and capable candidates outside the door of town hall waiting for an opportunity to put their family photo on the Town Administrator's desk.
And the next one we hire will lead us to a time of wine and roses. Until the next Town Council is elected. Or maybe not that long.
It gets to the point where you wonder – if a prospective TA is willing to work here, isn't that almost a disqualification?
Let me tell you this – the failure of an employee often tells us more about the supervisor and supervision of that employee than it does about the employee her/himself. The overarching job of a supervisor is to develop employees into better and more skilled performers in their job than they ever thought they could be.
The first question to be asked when the performance of an employee is in doubt is "what did we do that contributed to this situation and what can we do now to turn it around?"
So here are my two questions:
- Who supervises the performance of the Town Administrator?
- What have he/she/they done to maximize the chance that the Town Administrator will be successful in his job?
Has Bill DiLibero made some mistakes? When someone is trying to get something done, in a basically hostile environment, it's a trivial exercise to position some of his/her actions as unacceptable. I have seen that often in competition between individuals in a business organization. It just looks a little different here in Town government.
I'll close by saying that I would much rather worry about putting the right working environment around someone trying to accomplish things than deal with a person who's only going through the motions and not making waves.