Under One Roof: New Governance Structures for Aligning Local Economic and Workforce Development (cont.)

The review showed that the five communities used a wide array of approaches, and that there is no single right path for restructuring local government to align workforce and economic development functions. The five areas highlighted were motivated by diverse factors, and chose drastically different organizational realignments. Some approached the task of restructuring slowly and methodically over many years, other boldly and dramatically over a short time horizon. Strategies and tactics were as varied as administrative streamlining, co-location of staff, cluster analysis and implementation of sectoral approaches.

The remainder of this article addresses crosscutting insights from the five cases organized around five separate categories: drivers for change, ability to change, engagement of stakeholders, the restructuring process, and the impact achieved.

Drivers for and ability to change

Three major drivers led local leaders to conclude that agency or organizational structural change was needed. These included:

• dissatisfaction with the status quo,
• unwelcome public attention precipitated by questionable financial practices, and
• impatience with less than optimal results from existing agency structures organized around narrow functional or geographic lines.

In all cases, these drivers inspired strong local elected or agency officials to action. In Denver, for instance, the Mayor’s experience as an entrepreneur led him to propose expanding nascent structural changes in city government. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg promoted reorganization in order to make public services more business-friendly. In North Central Indiana, county officials supported collaboration across individual counties because they could identify more attractive assets when speaking as a multi-jurisdictional region.

Once restructuring was decided upon, numerous factors contributed to the rate at which the change could occur and the degree to which the changes were welcomed. These factors included:

• the familiarity and experience that key staff had with the different agencies’ roles and responsibilities in advance,
• the vision that leaders brought to the restructuring process, the respect and perception of key agencies and leaders among those with whom they merged,
• the political sense of urgency exerted by political and agency leaders,
• existing staff culture and attitudes, and
• how well the proposed changes fit the community and organizational cultures in the participating organizations.

In Stanislaus County, the County Board of Supervisors’ extensive experience pursuing countywide collaboration around economic and workforce development convinced the Board to disband both the economic development agency and the WIB in order to create an entirely new entity that could benefit from a fresh start.

Engaging stakeholders

The cases share several important characteristics of stakeholder engagement in their efforts. In each instance, proponents and those charged with implementing the restructuring sought to appeal to a wide range of stakeholders, using their political capital and credibility and building on early successes to advance the agendas. Most importantly, they used the potential value of the restructuring to attract stakeholders’ and partners’ support and cooperation. Their value, in terms of new opportunities identified and services delivered, reinforces the benefits of the restructuring and further builds the relationships.

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