Preparing Cities for the Future with Clay Pearson

All right, TGIF! Welcome back to another episode of In Case You Missed It, our weekly news roundup. Good to see you again, Joe. We were just in person together, but now we're, uh, we're back virtual.

It was indeed.

So today we're diving into preparing cities for the future, and when we started thinking about this topic, we were thinking about, you know, the role that city management really plays in helping know, cities navigate uncertainty. As we saw during the pandemic, city managers really had to step up and become proficient at a variety of different domains. And as we look at, you know, technology and the future and the evolution of city management, there was one person that came to mind that could help us understand inside the mind of a city manager, a strong technology city manager. And so we've invited Clay Pearson today to join us, the former city manager of Pearland, Texas, but really one of the foremost thought leaders as it relates to next-generation governance practices, technology, and the role that technology plays in city government, and really just how to adapt and innovate. And so we'd like to welcome to the show Clay Pearson, a good friend and your foremost expert on all things cities of the future. So Clay, thanks for joining us.

You're very kind, Dustin. TGF, and for sure, it's a pleasure. I've been a big fan of yours, uh, for years, followed you, and, uh, it's an honor to be with you both.

So fantastic. Well, you know, first question, just to kind of help the audience get to know you a little bit, tell us a little bit about your, uh, your journey. I know every city manager's got a different journey, but would love to kind of break down, uh, your journey into, uh, into the world of city management.

That's right. Yeah, so, uh, I, I've been very fortunate, uh, in my career. Uh, somehow I've racked up 30 years of, uh, public service at the local government level, 3 different states, 3 organizations. So while it's varied, it's been stable, frankly, and able to spend a number of years at each of those places. So I've worked in Illinois when I got out of grad school at University of Kansas, and then worked in Michigan, and then finally here in Texas. So it's been varied and learned from each of those. I feel good about that. All through my career, I've been real involved with lots of different groups, primarily or foremost, I guess, International City County Management Association, ICMA, the state associations. I was real involved with the Alliance for Innovation on their board. They're now run by Strategic Government Resources, SGR, and their Transforming Local Government conference It's coming up, is, uh, always been a key, and I've been able to send a lot of people from our staff to that. They've learned and grown from that. So, uh, I've gotten around, and, and, uh, but, but at the same time, I've not as much as others in, in my profession who've had to move a lot more than me.

So, Clay, like Dustin said, we want to get in the mind of a city manager. And as a recent city manager, what were some of the most pressing challenges that you had to tackle after the pandemic?

So, you know, I think back about like where we spent our time and where we were strategizing the most and what our pain points were. And I gotta say, a lot of it revolved around talent recruitment, training, reskilling, retention, you know, just the people mix and trying to get the right mix of people and the skills onto the bus, as Jim Collins would tell us, and making sure they're in the right place. You know, if you talk to people I got to work with, they would tell you that, you know, we did spend a lot of time and attention about that talent management piece of it. I wasn't afraid to take people from the parts of the organization and put them into different roles. Our admin assistant in our office, for instance, she's just a crackerjack quality professional. We put her into a role where she was leading our high-performance organization work and attached to human resources but still in our office. You know, that kind of thing of moving people around who may not have the right title but putting them where they could plug in the best. You know, I wasn't afraid to do that. I also think the management of the culture was a big piece of responsibility of the CEO's job and sharing and communicating about what we're trying to build. Checking in and supporting our people, always shielding them from some of the bad things that are out there as best we can, whether that be from the public or from electeds or whatever, trying to explain and be a buffer between that. Post-pandemic, I think really people are raw and frayed. Thinking about this a little bit, I think you could use a metaphor. I don't know if it's a good one or not, but People got burned by that in a lot of different ways. The variety of forces and pressures, and some people got first-degree burns and some people got third-degree burns, but there's scars out there. I think we as leaders have to be aware of that and try to navigate through and support people and be patient as much as possible. Anybody that's listening to this will know patience is not my virtue, but I do try and understand and You know, support the team. And, you know, we're trying to get things done, but we also got to make sure we know there's human beings and people that we work alongside that have a lot to deal with outside of their work world and trying to support that as best we can in different ways. So if that makes sense.

Yeah, it's hard to be patient and innovative at the same time because you know that there's so much more potential. So, you know, you were definitely a strong technology and innovation-focused city manager. Would love to maybe hear some of the work that you used, you know, new thinking, new processes, new technology. I mean, you know, our audience knows that government is evolving and a lot of new innovations coming in. Would love to hear about, you know, some of maybe your most proud, you know, pieces of work.

Well, thanks, Dustin. You know, I think first off, my energy towards this comes from a place of always wanting to improve and change and adapt. I've never been a status quo kind of person, and it's good and bad. I know that. But you also have to realize that the world's changing, and so we've got to come along with that. And I recognize that and love that. But I also have learned over the years that we've got to try to understand the past and what people are attached to. And change management is a whole discipline. I've also learned that the hard way, and trying to implement that correctly. with good communication and so forth. I mean, that's a broad picture, but from my perspective, to answer your question, I think that also we got to understand and believe that there's so many connections internally and those can be supporters of change and innovation. Meaning whenever we talked about public safety, it wasn't a police function, it wasn't a fire function, It's an organizational function and we all have something to do with that. And so hazard reduction, how does code enforcement impact our public safety goals? How does our neighborhood relationships and partnerships connect with police? And then, you know, technology-wise, how does data and technology support all of those functions and all those things? So You know, I guess it comes from like thinking about the end in mind and, you know, holistically, but then, you know, coming from the bottom up, it's technology and data that can help support those whole works. And, you know, the other thing I think about is economic development. I mean, that's a team sport too. It's not just the economic developers that are trying to grow communities and value. They're the formal ones, but You've got communications people that are responsible for the reputation of the organization, the community, on building that and trying to push that a certain direction. You've got planning people that are there for the quality and the diversity of our community portfolios, education partners. All of those matter for the team sport of economic development. And then lastly, I guess, say I've learned the hard way, especially here when I was with Pearland Emergency Management, That's another team sport. The whole organization mobilizes and really gets focused when there's a Hurricane Harvey or a pandemic. George Floyd was entombed here in Pearland, and so that was another emergency situation, just managing the crowds and all of that. But all those things come together too for me with technology and data and information sharing and organizational culture. Coming together to deliver the product and the results. So during the Harvey hurricane, you know, we struggled to try to get information from what was going on with stream levels and traffic and roads and their conditions. So after that, we do an after-action report. That's a fundamental piece of our operation after every incident. And we said, hey, we've got to, Bolster that remote sensing and data management. And so we learned from that and Pearland now has a crackerjack system for all of that. And then we had the winter storm, was it a year ago, Dustin?

Yep.

2 years ago?

Yep.

And everything broke. All the generators, you know, that's an exaggeration, you know, struggled to kick on. And we really suffered and hurt. And so, you know, lesson learned there again. You know, we had to make some substantial investments. And, you know, again, all that got tied back to our GIS system and our emergency management system so that we could tell the condition of those assets remotely and whether their fuel levels and, you know, whether they're running, et cetera, et cetera, when they've been serviced and vehicle management, all of that comes together and emergency management. And if you want to advance your organization, just have a disaster and make sure you get through it, and then you'll learn a lot and get better at it.

So I like the idea of like success being born out of that collaboration. If you looked at your relationship with the IT organization, how did you interface with the IT department around technology decisions that needed to be made?

So, so first off, I think it's recognizing them as a valued critical partner and have a seat at the table. You know, when I got to Pearland, IT was buried under finance, which is traditional old-school sort of thing. I was able to help recruit and get our fantastic CIO, our first one, Dan McGinnis, and made that a standalone, brought GIS and centralized that under Dan and the Pearland IT. Giving them a place and role and developing strategies and shaping that, listening to them. They've got a lot to offer, the technology people, and resource them. I try to get them as much resources as possible and people training them and making sure that they were at the forefront of their skill levels. And then I'd say too, having a strategy and a plan. Pearland had one before I got there. We worked that, we got a lot accomplished, and now they're gonna be publishing a new one. But, you know, 'cause there's so many choices out there and you need to, you know, just listening to the vendors, no offense, to show up and tell you what you should do probably isn't the best non-strategy out there. And we really worked at that. And then also I'd say with the IT department, understanding and dealing with their frustrations of tech rollouts and slow adoptions by users. You know, major initiatives have to have a project management approach to it and sponsors and clear identification of goals and communications. You know, and then I'll go back to that change management too, adapting to having a strategy for how you're gonna communicate and do that. And then, you know, again, I think being realistic, you know, every software vendor will tell you that they'll integrate with every other thing. And sometimes I think API means all promises issued, not what it's supposed to. And, you know, these things don't work in the real world as they're advertised. So you got to have some patience and some bandwidth to do that. I've been a part You know, we've taken hits for, you know, technology challenges and rollouts. We're not perfect at it, but, you know, we just keep after it and recognize that and, you know, learn from each of those, you know, successes as much as mistakes.

So in addition to your experience here in the US, you've traveled the world kind of looking at various governance models. What have you learned and what can you share with our audience in terms of what the international community is doing?

Well, thanks. Yeah, so I love to travel and I've learned from that and I love to host. And so I think it's a two-way street, but there's physical things. Way back when I started in Elgin, I took a trip and learned about roundabouts and traffic calming before that was really popular. And much to the chagrin of the Elgin Fire Department, we installed the first roundabout in a neighborhood to try to calm down traffic. Carmel, Indiana's gotten a lot of publicity for theirs, but there's one at Gifford and Park, I think, in Elgin that's still there, and the neighbors love it, and it works. In Japan, I learned about emergency management and preparedness 'cause they have more than their fair share of natural disaster challenges. Digital twinning is all the rage now in trying to create In the metaverse, I guess, right? Your city or your facility. I think you can have physical relationship twinnings too. When I was in Bangkok studying over there, you know, there's so many similarities with Houston in terms of climate and, you know, challenges there. I think we can learn a lot from that. You know, it's like I said, it's a two-way street because Whenever I've hosted, our team learns a lot and they get to share and show off and they enjoy that, what they're working on and their experiences. And I think that's a positive for our team internally. We get to answer questions and brag about that. And I think there's a lot to be said. I've been very fortunate to travel to Asia and Europe and the hospitality's been fantastic. Maybe in the US, we are so big and diverse ourselves, it's not necessarily an imperative to get out and travel. I know, Dustin, you were over in China and saw their bullet trains and experienced that. And, you know, we've got a lot to learn and see. We don't have to copy and paste everything, but at least I think we owe it to ourselves to extend ourselves and see these things firsthand and see what we can bring back to our own communities. I think it's a positive thing.

Absolutely. We all have very similar challenges. And so rather than reinventing the wheel, let's learn from each other. So, you know, looking to the future, I'd love to get your thoughts. You know, what are some of the emerging challenges or issues that you think city leaders need to be thinking about or preparing for? I know, you know, health, global pandemic has been top of mind, but, you know, kind of looking now ahead, what's on your radar?

Right. So I think one thing we still don't do well as a— in the US local governments is how to navigate through, you know, free agency labor. You know, Dustin, you've talked about like how there's resources with online and so forth to access these. I haven't seen really, frankly, a local government that's learned how to grab those and bring them into projects. We all complain about we can't find the right resource people and so forth, but You know, we gotta figure out how to plug ourselves in and bring in an expert who may be remote and help us out on a project and integrate that. Just project management, I don't think we really do fantastic either. We do build things infrastructure-wise, but other projects, you know, I'll go back to that change management and technology rollouts and things like that. You know, we've got a lot to learn on that. The private sector seems to do that better, but maybe we need to learn from that. Overall, I just really believe too, we got to get past titles and boxes on an org chart. I got indoctrinated into high-performance organization culture leadership really early on through the University of Virginia, and now it's at South Carolina. But I really genuinely believe in leadership at all levels and teams. genuine empowerment for people to— people want to be engaged and be a part of something. And so we as leaders have to give them those opportunities and support that and not just give that lip service. So I think those cultural organizational things, we've got a lot to work on, and that's going to continue to challenge us, if that makes sense. And then lastly, challenges going forward, I think water and wastewater, You know, those kinds of resources, natural resources, and trying to understand that and also apply the right technologies to sensing and measurements of those and asset management. I think all of those are opportunities that we can really get behind and leverage towards making our communities better.

You know, looking at all those challenges, it's clear that we're in an era of more uncertainty. Still tremendous opportunity, but your peers are gonna have to be prepared to deal maybe with more frequent change. How should they be prepared to do that? And what are the critical skills that they're going to need to do just that?

Well, yeah, I think you're right, Joe. It's not going away, right? We can want and wish all we want for things to be the way they were supposedly. I don't believe that. You know, my parents, talked about how things used to be. My grandparents told me how things used to be, and we've gotta not fall into that trap. But I really believe just reading and listening and engaging and sharing and putting yourself out there to stay atop. What you learned before isn't what you need to know necessarily all now. So I try to, I listen to GovTech whenever I can and read that stuff, and I learn from the private sector. And then I watch those international examples too, because they're seeing things in a different way. So all of that comes together and you can figure out if you're plugged into that network and that system of learning that what the next thing's gonna be, whether it be demographics or climate or infrastructure, there's resources out there and you just gotta be a— I went to a liberal arts college. I like to know a little bit about everything, but not an expert in anything. I can't design a bridge. I don't know how to code, but I know the values. I try to build relationships with people to make them feel a part and sign up for this enterprise of the city or the organization wherever I'm at.

So what's next for you? You know, you've got such a vast experience in this area and have navigated a lot of different challenges. What's next in your world?

Well, you're kind. You know, first off, my wife and I, we plan to stay in Houston Metro. We love the city. I think it's really underappreciated. It's a great place. And we also like it, it was 75 degrees here yesterday. So I'm done with winters. We are as far as a permanent thing. But, you know, we've got lots of good friends. I've been visiting and traveling around a little bit back to Detroit and done some other stuff. And I'm going to the Philippines with ICMA and see some, some actually some fellows that had come to Pearland. We were able to host a couple different rounds, and I'm gonna get to go over and see them in their workspaces in a few weeks. So that's gonna be exciting. But You know, it's, it's gonna be some food and drink and culture and rodeos and beaches, but I know I'm gonna have to get back into the mix of things. And so if maybe you'll give me till March to figure that out, that's kind of where I'm headed out.

Well, as you're navigating all of that fun stuff, how does our audience keep up with you?

So probably the easiest is LinkedIn. You know, I'm a big advocate. I wish I would have invested when they came out. I knew that was gonna take off, but I love LinkedIn and I'm on there and share a lot there. I also got a Twitter handle of JayhawkMI. And so I share stuff I come across a decent amount. So, you know, I like to share and my friend, colleagues, staff team, I think they appreciate it, but I'm always sending them articles and highlighting and noting stuff and, you know, whether it can be, and, you know, I just try to share that learning and let people, take it for what they— their environments, what they want to do with it. So, uh, uh, happy to answer and engage and, uh, learn from wherever I can.

Well, Clay, thanks for joining us, and thanks for sharing your insights with the GovTech audience.

You guys are awesome. Thanks for all your work and supporting local governments.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.