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Five Ways to Succeed as DONE’s New GM |
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Empowerment Report
By Greg Nelson
Being the permanent general manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment isn’t a whole lot different from being the interim general manager.
 The pay is the same. You can be fired at any moment for any reason.
Your office is in the same place. The duties, responsibilities, and
headaches are identical. Everyday you have to earn the respect of
those with whom you work. But there is one less word in your title.
As BongHwan Kim asks the City Council to shorten his title, he faces five significant challenges.
1) Help the neighborhood councils succeed before punishing them.
The Empowerment Academy, which provided educational classes into the community on a regular basis, has disappeared. We know little about what’s being planned for its reincarnation -- the Leadership Institute.
Neighborhood councils should be actively involved in design of the new educational effort, whatever it is called, and hopefully the neighborhood councils will be taught the skills they need to be successful before grumpy City Hall folks begin taking potshots at them for not living up to their unknown expectations.
Most importantly, DONE needs to teach present and future presidents how to be good neighborhood council leaders, and that means going beyond teaching people how to file Community Impact Statements, analyze zoning applications, or apply for grants. It’s not what you know, it’s how you lead.
2) Don’t try and make everyone happy.
Believe it or not, City Council members are not immune from coming up with stupid ideas. During a City Council meeting, one said he wanted me to edit and censor all neighborhood council newsletters. A couple of others told me privately that they wanted me to “take care of” a couple of neighborhood council presidents who were critics or potential political opponents.
After defining ones personal principles and goals, there will be times when a general manager just has to say no to people who aren’t used to being told no. Council members are used to asking general managers to help friends and smack down opponents.
3) Defend the system against the regulators.
The system demands that neighborhood councils be as independent as possible from City Hall, but there will always be someone, usually a planner or a neat-freak, who can’t accept the sloppiness that is participatory democracy. It’s a battle that was fought and won during the design of the system. Expect calls for all councils to have the same bylaws, select their directors the same way, run their meetings alike, so that democracy gets sacrificed for order.
4) Improve communications.
DONE’s general manager needs to be an unapologetic cheerleader for neighborhood councils and the cause of participatory democracy. The whole world is watching Los Angeles. The department’s newsletter and website should be used to keep people up-to-date on the important issues, and to alert them about important City Hall meetings. The accomplishments of neighborhood councils, which can be found in newspapers and from each council, need to be trumpeted from the highest point in the city. It costs nothing.
5) Improve morale, immediately.
DONE recently assessed itself using an online survey of staff and an analysis by a paid consultant. What jumped off the page was that 42% of the staff who took the survey refused to rate their immediate supervisor, and instead rated the interim general manager as a way of, in the words of staff, sending a direct message to him about how dissatisfied they were with his management. Many of the staff feared that the results of the survey would be suppressed and ignored.
This has created a situation in which many senior staff will be looking for ways to transfer out of the department, taking with them their knowledge and love for neighborhood councils.
(Greg Nelson participated in the birth and development of the LA Neighborhood Council system and most recently served as the General Manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. Nelson now provides news and issues analysis to CityWatch.) You can reach Greg Nelson at
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