By Elisa Speranza, President of CH2M HILL’s Operations & Maintenance Business Group
Last August, CH2M HILL announced a unique partnership with the University of Kansas’ top-ranked School of Public Affairs and Administration designed to transform the education of future government leaders, including examination of innovative models for delivering government services more efficiently. This week, it was my privilege to visit the Lawrence campus to speak before a few graduate classes as part of this collaboration.
My visit to KU started as it should, with a trip to the legendary Allen Fieldhouse to take in a Jayhawks’ basketball game against Texas A&M Monday night. KU won, thankfully, so everyone was in a good mood the next day. College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Dean Danny Anderson was kind enough to take me to the game, and we talked academic politics, leadership and public policy during the ESPN timeouts.
It’s a beautiful campus, and my old Kennedy School classmate Charles Jones (now a professor at KU) walked me from my hotel to the Student Union for class Tuesday morning. The class is called “Collaborative Leadership, Professionalism and Citizen Engagement.” As a public policy wonk from way back, this is right up my alley. The graduate students are all splitting their time between classroom work and internships, mostly in city governments. One is interning with our client, the City of Centennial, CO, where I’m sure he’s getting a good education in public-private partnerships.
The morning session is on emotional intelligence. It’s gratifying that these future city managers are getting a solid grounding in the intangible side of their jobs. Anyone can teach budget management, but KU’s approach seems to be very holistic,which should make for more well-rounded and successful public servants. It’s hard for me to sit quietly, though, having worked in and around government my whole life. Professor John Morris provided a great refresher on strengths-based leadership,which says people want to work for senior leaders who actually care about them. What they need is: trust, compassion, stability, hope and happiness.
The students are learning about something called “Adaptive Work,” an approach taught by Ron Heifetz at Harvard. My part in the day was to present a case study illustrating the principles of adaptive work, basically how to make change sustainable, based on Water For People’s work in Chinda, Honduras. Then I was pressed into service to talk about CH2M HILL and my own career journey. From the great questions I received from this talented group of students, I’m positive the future is in good hands wherever they end up serving. With all the negativity about government floating around in public discourse these days, it’s great to be reminded of how important functioning, values-driven local governments are to our everyday quality of life. Can’t wait to see what’s next from our strategic alliance with KU.
