Recently, a book and video called "The Secret" received a great deal of attention by the national press. The secret I am going to share with you this month is a secret for Mayors, Council members, City Managers and other public officials. In my travels, I have received more positive comments about "My Secret" than any other strategy I share.
The one thing that seems to frustrate local officials is meeting a constituent on the street or in the grocery store and being asked to take care of some type of problem. It's not that we don't want to help our constituent, but they generally don't have all of the information or the correct address for us to properly take care of the problem. They just want us to "take care of it". We often try to follow up but find that we lack critical information needed to address the problem. So when we go out to dinner with our spouse, we shutter when we look over and see someone who had asked us to fix some type of problem. So much for a quiet dinner.
I suffered through this for several years before discovering "The Secret". I discovered it quite by accident when one of my constituents had no idea what street the old vacant house was located. I said to him, "Just send me a note with the location and exactly what you want done and I will take care of it as soon as I receive your note". He sent a note with a detailed description of where the house was located. The note was so good that I simply forwarded it on to our department head, with instructions to call my constituent when the job was completed. What a discovery!!!
I then made this my standard response. It was difficult at first. Many people just wanted me to "take care of it". But holding fast, I put the ball back in their court. I'd say "I really need the note to make sure I can give our people the exact nature of the problem". Sometimes they didn't follow up. I don't know if it wasn't that important to them or what, but it changed the way I felt when I would see them. I'd say, "Please don't forget to send me your note, because I want to take care of your problem". I often went to a dinner and people were apologizing to me because they hadn't followed up with a note. Another benefit is that often I would go ahead and report the problem and they were so impressed that I did it without them having to remind me with a note. It works great!
Please try this. It requires discipline, but you will want to buy me dinner the next time we meet. Like most secrets, this is simple but effective. Let me know your experiences with "The Secret" and I will feature them in our upcoming issues.
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