Land Records Leadership Series: Collaboration and Teamwork
How do you build collaboration and teamwork in an organization(s)?
The overarching theme in this answer is “communication.” Whether by holding meetings, using communication technology, establishing advisory or user groups, or having hallway conversations, communication seems to get the job done.
Jon emphasizes to, “Describe/show how each individual on the team is a vital part of the organization.” Updates on the successes and failures are important but, “…don’t dwell on the negative, show the negatives and explain how they can help make them positives the next time.”
Brad and the City of Waukesha have “formed a GIS Advisory Group that is comprised of representatives from the various departments that are involved with or use GIS. The representatives, who we call GIS Champions, are intended to be a person (or persons) in each department that can be a central contact for GIS projects and have authority within their departments to advise or allocate personnel and fiscal resources. The GIS Advisory Group is not intended to be a policy or decision-making body, but rather a collaborative space that gives each department an opportunity to see what is happening in GIS on a city-wide scale, and to participate in the advancement of GIS.”
Jim has a great example of collaboration and teamwork at Waukesha County during the pandemic. “The entire team, spanning multiple departments, communicated weekly and sometimes daily via Microsoft Teams, Slack chats, and email. Many of these players had never worked with such a large team of cross-departmental folks before. It was driven in large part by a department head who put in long, grueling hours to keep the team on track.” One other perk of collaboration and teamwork is that when multiple people know how to do something, there isn’t a bottleneck when that person isn’t available. “Like many long, complex projects it became apparent as time went on that we needed to cross train other staff on the dashboard data update process. This provided a form of business continuity if the primary contact became ill or went on vacation, but it also gave the entire staff the chance to ability to better understand the dataset. In this case, we had a backup to the backup, and all of us understood the importance of teamwork to sustain the dashboard.”
Eric points out that “Collaboration can be hard and takes continual effort. We have a variety of users groups, team meetings, land information council meetings, hallway conversations, emails, phone calls, etc. with the hope of building a collaborative environment. I believe the common thread is open and frequent communication. It’s important to make a real effort to listen to and understand the problem the other person is trying to solve. Find out what is important to them and why it is important. Provide suggestions when asked and just listen when you aren’t being asked for suggestions. Anyone who has worked with me knows that some days I’m more successful at this than others, but it’s an area I continually work to improve in myself. And for the non-negotiables; be honest, be accessible and follow through with what you say.”
Understanding that not everyone we work with has a land records background we asked:
What are examples of the language, analogies, graphics, or maps you use to convey your ideas to leaders who do not have a land records background?
Kelly shows them using “our GIS, Tax Parcel iSite, and illustrates some of the basics, parcel lookup, explains the information available and basically walks them through how and why someone would be looking for information, and illustrates how to do it using our services.”
Brad uses their GIS Program Plan to “visually compare the capabilities of our GIS components over time… we generalized the ‘capacity’ of each element graphically in a qualitative way. Each year, management can see changes in the relative levels of data, software, etc. without being burdened with abstract numbers like the number of Portal items, etc. Relative information is enough sometimes.”
But how do you get that information out to who needs to see it? Jon suggests “have an open house, invite them in to see. Hold a lunch and learn explaining what you/your department does. Explain it with graphics, using words to describe what you do seems to confuse people more.”
Mike suggests that you should make it about them. “Show an aerial photo of the person's home (or somewhere else in their community), with parcel lines overlaid. Talk about how much is done in local government, as well as county, regional, state and even federal government, that is linked to parcels. Describe one or two cases that will resonate with the audience. Use popups to describe the immediacy of the data available for parcels. Links to the tax system, or permitting, or other systems amplify the power of the story.”
Eric shows us that we already have an “in” with other departments to expand collaboration and teamwork. “For better or worse, we are often still known as the people who make maps and consequently, we frequently get the, “Can you make me a map of…” requests. I view those requests as an opportunity. Step 1 is to provide the person exactly what they asked for. Step 2 is to go a little farther and provide another level of analysis or visualization. A conversation that starts with, “Here is the thing you asked for, did you know we could also do this other thing?” can often lead to a great exchange of ideas.” And if they don’t come to you, you can go to them. “One of the benefits of attending WLIA and other conferences is seeing what others are doing. Starting a conversation with, ‘I was at the WLIA conference last week and saw a presentation from abc county about how they helped their xyz department solve a particular problem. Is that something you’d be interested in replicating here?’ is a great ice breaker.”
We hope this advice will help you the next time you hear,
“The phone
The phone is ringing”
and you can say
“We're on our way
To help a friend and save the day
We're not too big and we're not too tough
But when we work together we've got the right stuff” *
* The Wonder Pets! lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group