Austin's “Women Leading in Local Gov.” speaker explains upside of long meetings, ‘stupid’ questions
While my earlier blog post on the controversial training session on women focused on two speakers’ comments that were widely perceived as stereotyping women, there was other eyebrow-raising commentary at the March 27 “Women Leading in Local Government” training session at Austin City Hall.
After describing women leaders as more likely to ask questions, less likely to read the agenda packet and disinterested in financial-based arguments, former Lauderdale Lakes, Fla. city manager Jonathan K. Allen pivoted to discuss several tactics that members of city management can use to get what they want:
Late meetings = tactical advantage. Allen confided that it can be a tactical advantage for him when his city commission meetings go late. “If it’s going to be to my advantage and the discussion is going to tire them out, and then I can swoop in with my proposal, I use that to my advantage,” he said. Allen described a time that his city commission was having a high-level policy discussion and “it was getting late in the hour.” He said the discussion was getting off-base and he wasn’t sure if they would arrive at a decision. “I said to myself, it’s getting late, when it’s getting late, they are going to get tired, when they are getting tired it’s at the end when they are going to make a decision,” Allen said. He then said he decided to “let it go on” and started interjecting questions to make the meeting last even longer. “Then I just swoop in with the solution,” Allen said.
(His advice was in response to a question that can’t be heard on the training video. But I thought it was interesting in light of the fact that Austin’s previous City Council struggled with late night meetings, prompting the new council to revamp the way it vets proposals as a way to stop the midnight-decision-making. Still, some meetings run past 10 p.m.)
Read more: http://cityhall.blog.statesman.com/2015/05/15/controversial-speaker-explains-benefits-of-long-meetings-stupid-questions/
