Leading the Way

with Milton Dohoney, City Administrator of Ann Arbor, Michigan

“We can’t sit in city hall and feel like we know what is best for people in neighborhoods without asking them what’s important to them. Sometimes we might not like the answer that they give us, or they might not deliver the message in a way that is polite, but we’ve chosen service, we are servant leaders.” – Milton Dohoney

Milton recently released a book called “It Always Begins With Leadership” where he shares decades of experience on what it takes to be a leader in a complex world.
You can get it here: Paperback or Ebook

We are very excited for you to hear from Milton Dohoney. Thanks for Listening!

You can watch it above or listen on your favorite podcast platform: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify

Transcript below:

Ron:
Good morning, Ryan.

Ryan:
Good morning, Ron.

Ron:
How you doing?

Ryan:
Doing great.

Ron:
Yeah, doing great. Good day. So Ryan lived in Thailand and his baby was going through jet lagged for quite a while. Is the baby sleeping better now?

Ryan:
Yeah, yeah. Still a little jet lagged, but she’s doing a lot better and we’re all sleeping again.

Ron:
Oh, cool. Well, hey, should we introduce our guest?

Ryan:
Yeah. Who do we have on today?

Ron:
let me let you know. So Milton Dohoney Jr. He’s the city administrator of the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan. And then prior to this role, he was the assistant city manager of Phoenix, serving as its chief operating officer. And this was before and during Covid 19. He was a city leader in Cincinnati, Ohio and in Louisville, Kentucky. And he’s also been a college professor at four different universities. So he has a wealth of experience 30 years or more to share with us today. Anyway, what caught my attention is the book that he recently wrote. It always begins with leadership. You can find it online if you go looking for it. And it’s a guide for city managers and those who hope to become one in the future. And I was grateful that Milton agreed to join us for our podcast today. What do you think?

Ryan:
Well, Ron, I’m excited. He sounds very knowledgeable. I’m looking forward to hearing his, his wisdom.

Ron:
Yeah. Yeah. I know it’s perhaps the understatement of the year, but Milton Dohoney knows how cities, how cities work, and what it takes to lead them. So definitely I’m be fascinated by what you have to say.

Ryan:
Cool. Right. Well, let’s bring him on.

Ron:
Hey, well, Milton, thank you for joining us.

Milton:
Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you.

Ron:
No, we’re really excited. My introduction of you was pretty brief, and I think our audience would love to hear more about how you got your first job as a city manager in Louisville, because I thought that was a fantastic message.

Milton:
<laugh>,

Ron:
Do you wanna tell us? Like it was, it wasn’t really, wasn’t easy for you. Well, maybe it was easy for you to get that first job. Tell us about that.

Milton:
Well thanks Ron and Ryan, when, when I was in the city of Louisville and that’s Louisville, Kentucky. I had worked there for many, many years, had always been in a department, had never been in the mayor’s office, had never held a upper level executive position. we had a new mayor that was coming in and he was meeting with different to I guess, interview them or see what they may be interested in. And the assumption was that I was going to ask for a department head position. And when I went to see him I told him I wasn’t interested in a department head position because I had already been in a, in a department. I was interested in the chief administrative officer position, or deputy mayor. And if he would give me 15 minutes, I would explain to him why I was ready for the position and why I wanted it.
And he sort of leaned back in his chair. And he gave me the 15 minutes. And I had been preparing for this for some time. I knew I could do it in 15 minutes. And I laid out why I felt I was the best person for the appointment. And at the end of the conversation, I had that job. And so I was thrilled to get it. a lot of people that had worked closely with me were thrilled, but there were others who questioned if that was the right choice. Because I wasn’t a household name. I wasn’t that widely known. I had never been in that position before. And some people felt like I wouldn’t be up to it. And I think what I took away from that is when we’re preparing to move our careers forward, we have to be confident in knowing when we’re ready, regardless of how other people see us. We shouldn’t let other people define our preparedness or define what the outcome is going to be. And literally, I have not looked back since I got that first job once, once I got to the top level position. I’ve been in top level positions in every city since then.

Ron:
Hmm. Do you know, it’s interesting. I think most of the time people, they become a city manager of a smaller city, and then they get a city, become a city manager of a little bit bigger city, and then they become a city manager, maybe of another bigger city. And so for you to jump into Louisville without having really spent the time at a lower level, I bet you many people did doubt your capabilities.

Milton:
Yeah, I think the part that there’s no way they would know about it, but I had set my sights on that job some years prior. Once I really understood how government worked, I took every project and every opportunity to not only absorb what was going on in my department, but to learn how the overall structure worked, how the budget was presented. And so you do have to prepare for the job that you want. And I was putting in the time to do that. And having worked there for a number of years, I knew a lot of folks and I was just confident that I could do it. a lot of people can point to a big break that they had or a particular incident. When I think about early in my career or earlier in my career under a different mayor, I can actually point to when I really got noticed.
And when we’re trying to grow our careers and put ourselves in a position to get noticed, it’s not always in the situation that we would’ve drawn up on a board. It can come when, no, you know, when people are looking and we’re not really aware of it. We had a situation in Louisville where the city and county had made the decision to expand the airport. And in order to do that, we needed to take three entire neighborhoods and essentially demolish them to make way for parallel runways. And I was part of the group that was charged with bringing these residents in, in groups of 50 or 60 in Freedom Hall, which is where the University of Louisville used to play basketball. And telling these people who had no idea that your city needs you to sell your house and move to a different neighborhood for the good of the community, in order for us to expand the airport, and in very professional terms, I had to tell them that if they didn’t agree to voluntarily sell, we would use imminent domain and take their house.

Ron:
What a Difficult situation. I can hardly believe it.

Milton:
So when you’re telling people who live in neighborhoods where their family’s been there for generations, and when you look at their houses to the naked eye, the house doesn’t look blighted, but you’re trying to convince them that it is blighted and we need to tear it down in order to do this airport project. So over three days I did that. And given the time that this happened, I was talking to a lot of people from neighborhoods who didn’t have diversity. And so the fact that it was someone looking like me telling them that they were gonna lose their house, they were upset about it. Yeah. The point simply is the new mayor noticed me handling myself in that environment, and it was seeing me in action is really what got me noticed by him. And it was since that time, that experience, he called me to city hall, and from then he started giving me projects that were essentially above my pay grade to work on complex things because of what he noticed when he saw me talking to those people. Had he not done that, had, had he not given me those opportunities to perform above my pay grade, I wouldn’t have been ready to run the entire government when the new mayor came

Ron:
Do. You know, it’s interesting because I have heard people say look, I’m not getting paid for this. You know what I mean? And, and there’s sort of a, an a sense of, Hey, this is above my pay grade. And they, they don’t view it as an opportunity. They view it as a slight that they should be getting more money at that, at that point in time. Right. If you’re being asked to do something above and beyond, and yet your, your message is clear like, Hey, this is an opportunity, go for it. You know,

Milton:
Because it’s the experience of performing in different settings. It’s the experience of working on complex issues. That’s what’s going to develop your skillsets. That’s what’s going to give you the opportunity to work with a variety of people I love. So that you go for the brass ring. You, you know what you’re talking about.

Ron:
I love it.
So, okay, Milton, I, I heard a quote not long ago. Don’t let a problem to be solved, to get in the way of a person to be loved. And you don’t use this quote in your book, but it is an important theme that you cover. And you talk about how vital it is for managers to keep a focus on the employees they work with, even when the problems mount. And I’d love to hear you walk us through your experience and your thinking.

Milton:
We are consumed with complex issues day in and day out. In fact, our job is to make complex decisions. And it’s easy from the manager’s chair to get totally consumed with what you’re doing. There are times when we need the employees to be willing to take a risk with us or to go out on that proverbial limb with us. And what I talk about in the book, and what I believe in the day-to-day practice of leading organizations is to pay attention to the lens that employees have for viewing the manager. do you speak to them when you pass them in the hallway? Do you acknowledge them on elevators? Are you approachable if they see you outside of the organization? When you go to social gatherings, are you spending all of your time with the executive level of the org organization and ignoring everyone else?
They take note of those things. I worked in a city where it was customary as it is. I think in most places if a police officer or a firefighter get injured or worse in the line of duty, you go to the hospital, you talk to their family, you spend time there. But I worked in a particular city where we had a person that rode on the back of a garbage truck, and they were involved in an accident where they got knocked off. And when I went to the hospital to see them, the union really made a big deal on the fact that city managers don’t normally come to check on us when we get injured. It’s almost like we’re not seen as equally as valuable as a police officer or a firefighter. And the point is the fact that I showed up and spent time with them the same as I would anyone else that worked for me, it was a big deal to them.
And it’s those kind of things that cause employees to really see you as a kind of leader that they want to follow. Someone who acknowledges them, someone who is empathetic with them, someone who wants to know about their families and what’s important to them. And I have found that when I invest the time in connecting with people in a very real and human way, when I need them to take a risk or go out on that limb, they’re happy to do it because they have confidence in the kind of person that I am as their leader. Oh, yeah. We know Milton. We, we trust him. He, he, yeah. It creates

Ron:
Trust, right? It creates trust In your book, don’t you title it Nickels and Dimes. What is the heading for that?

Milton:
It’s the value of Nickels and Dimes. And it comes from a saying that my grandmother used to say to me from the time I was a child all the way until I was an adult, she would say, Milton Jr. That’s what she called me. <laugh> always pay attention to your nickels and dimes and the dollars will take care of themselves. And what I took from that as an adult in the leadership role, is to pay attention to little things and human things. Not always be caught up in the big project or the headline grabbing situation. We are a leader of organizations made up of people and the people that we lead want and need to know if their person cares for them, if their person is mildly interested in their lives. And I’m making it a point to demonstrate that through communication, through getting out of my office through the way I relate to them. And it has really paid dividends across my career.

Ryan:
I know that’s, that seems like an obvious topic or an obvious thing that people shouldn’t forget, right. An organization is humans. and yet it can be so easy in the heat of the moment you got fires to put out, you got projects to handle all these responsibilities. do, do you have any other examples of how you were able to, you know, big project fire to put out and yet here’s this person that I need to show some love to or, or show that I care, you know, how do you, how do you keep on track when there’s so many distractions?

Milton:
Well, you know, there is a, a natural way to do it, and then there is a scheduled way to do it. And I tend to do a little bit of both. I’ll ask my assistant on a given day, don’t schedule any in in-office appointments for me. I want to go out and be in a particular department, contact the department and see if I can come and have lunch with them, see if they are interested in me dropping by their staff meeting, you know, doing things where you are connecting with your people in their space on their time. Hmm. And you really don’t have to come with an agenda. You don’t have to come and say a lot. They want to know if you’re a good listener. You know, when I ask them what they think about something or to give me their perspective, they really like it, that I’m looking them in the eye and listening to what they’re telling me. And even if I don’t take their advice, the fact that you ask them and the fact that you listen to them and the fact that you are honest with them when you talk about the challenges that we’re facing, all of those things make your leadership more effective. It makes the job as city manager be more cohesive because you’ve demonstrated that you can connect with people,

Ron:
You know, and you said, even though you may not take their advice, you’ve heard it though. I did. And, and I know you’ve heard it. You’re right. And, and oftentimes you maybe do take their advice too. So it’s probably a variety of possible outcomes from any of that. But it’s all in information that’s highly important.

Milton:
It certainly is. And one of the things that I always say to staff, I will never be defensive if you ask me to explain a decision that I made. I, I should be able to articulate, here’s why I went left instead of, right. Here’s why. The conclusion was to do A instead of B. And they may not agree with the ultimate decision, but at least having the benefit of understanding what went into it. Because, you know, you could easily say, well, I don’t have to explain myself to you, and I just don’t operate from that perspective. I think sharing of information makes the organization stronger.

Ryan:
As a follow up to that in the book, I think you mentioned this, and we’ve also seen this in our, in our research, where sometimes residents or citizens will complain that they feel a city council or their city government makes decisions and they get plans so far underway, and then they ask for, for input. and residents feel sort of slighted and perhaps employees might feel the same way in, in a different regard, that you’re asking for advice when it’s far too late and it’s, it’s sort of ingenuine. Have you ever seen that happen before? How do you avoid that kind of a thing occurring?

Milton:
I’ve seen it happen many times. And the advice I always have for staff and, and for myself, you know, we put a lot of time and effort into developing plans and approaches to dealing with certain things. It’s imperative that we start planning for the communication strategy at the very beginning. And the communication strategy is who are all the stakeholders, internal and external that need to know about this, that may have a perspective on it? And yes, it does take longer, but we need to engage them. we can’t sit in city hall and feel like we know what’s best for people in neighborhoods without asking them what’s important to them.
Hmm. Sometimes we might not like the answer that they give us, or they, they may not deliver the message in a way that is polite. But we’ve chosen service. We’re servant leaders. So engaging and listening and getting their perspective and engaging your employees to see what they think it will pay off big time down the road when they can say, I may not be 100% on board with the outcome, but I was heard, but I was respected. I had an opportunity to give my input. Then that’s how you build trust in communities and that’s how you build trust within organizations that you’re leading. And it’s well worth the time and effort that you would put into that.

Ron:
I love it. You know, this thought makes me think of something else in your book. You have an interesting title called “it’s their music, but it’s your song”. And and you specifically mentioned the choir, and I thought it was a really fascinating chapter. And the reason why I think it’s fascinating is because you’re gonna get a lot of feedback some of it helpful and some of it less helpful. And here you kind of address how to deal with certain things that are a little, maybe a little less helpful, you know?

Milton:
Yes. In you know, all of the cities that I’ve worked on or worked in, and when I think about the kinds of projects that I’ve been involved with, a lot of them have been projects that are high stakes, high risk, high reward, and complex, expensive, take a lot of time. And no matter how much time and effort you put into organizing an approach and building your team and moving forward, there’s always, in my experience, there’s always this choir that shows up. And in my book I talk about ’em being in, you know, glowing choir robes and singing in harmony that it’ll never happen. You’re trying to make it happen, and they’re gonna tell you it’s never gonna happen. And you can get caught up in listening to that. And every city that I’ve gone to, that choir seems to show up. And I think I, I even referenced in the book, I felt like the choir was following me.

Ron:
<laugh>. Yeah.

Milton:
So when I worked in Cincinnati as an example, when I went there in 2006, there’s 18 acres of dirt between the stadium, the Bengals play in, and the stadium the Cincinnati Reds play in. They had never been able to develop the waterfront, and the city had talked about it for more than a decade. And with the team that I had and with the leadership of the mayor and the city council and the county, we decided that we were going to develop the waterfront at long last, well, here comes the choir, <laugh>. You haven’t been able to get that done in all these years. What makes us think you can do it now? And you know, there’s even more, the choir was huge at that point, because it was something that had been talked about for so long, but it never happened. But if you go to Cincinnati today and you go to that 18 acres that used to be dirt, it’s an area called the banks.
And there are restaurants and hotels and a corporate tower and a waterfront park. We broke ground and built that while I was working in Cincinnati. And so for all the people that thought it couldn’t happen there’s no way you’ll be able to pull that off. It stands there now. And I haven’t worked in the city for 10 years, but it’s still there going strong. And it’s now the place to go at the waters edge in Cincinnati, Ohio. And the point is, you have to be able to overcome the naysayers and all the people telling you you’ll never make it happen. The same with the Cincinnati Street car. It was very unpopular with some people, but the street car is running. We built it from nothing and the choir was singing, but we were able to move forward. regardless.

Ron:
I think that’s just a great story and I just don’t know. I think it’s wonderful. I have, there’s another topic I’d like to explore with you, and I don’t know that it’s in your book or not, but I’d love to hear what you had to think about it. Because in some cities, there is a citizen desire to kind of stop growth. Like it’s getting chaotic in here, it’s getting too congested. You’re ruining our good city. And those are really valid concerns. We see it routinely like you, you know, you’ve gotta stop the growth here and, and then but yet I, I think I saw on another podcast that you did that you have a perspective on that and you, you you see the value of growth and I’d love to hear what you have to say, first of all, to leaders whose citizens are telling ’em, you’ve gotta stop the growth. And maybe what you say to citizens, you know, I don’t, I I’d love to hear your thinking.

Milton:
I just do not subscribe to the notion that we can just keep everything like it is now and we’ll be fine. the reality that I’ve experienced is that if you’re not moving forward, you’re going backwards. No community is standing still. It doesn’t mean that you have to turn your community into a city that’s full of skyscrapers on every block, but you do need to continue to work on your community to ensure that it’s dynamic and vibrant and that it’s welcoming to young people. You want your kids to be educated and feel like they have a choice. They can stay home and thrive. You want to invite visitors to come into your community, and growth is what expands your tax base. It’s what gives you the revenue to do all the things that your residents want.

Ryan:
So I’ve got a question for you. the one, one thing that might add some evidence to your opinion that you can’t just ignore development or try to keep things how they were, is that the US has grown by over 80% since 1960. And so the old infrastructure is insufficient, combined with the fact that the infrastructure built 40 years ago is now 40 years old. And so we have to either maintain it or replace it and city leaders cannot ignore that. Right. And what are your thoughts on that?

Milton:
One of the major challenges in communities across the country is infrastructure. You’ve got old pipes underground, you’ve got poles out of the ground. That’s the technology from your electric utility. A lot of that needs to be replaced. The older housing stock in cities needs to be updated. And these are things that cities struggled to do on their own. That’s why there was so much emphasis in the federal infrastructure bill, the roads and bridges and all of those things that cities don’t have the ability to do on their own. They need federal help. And so it, it’s in and of itself goes back to you just cannot stand still. You’ve gotta perpetually be working to improve your community, to enhance your community, to give opportunities for future generations to be able to thrive in your community and not replacing your infrastructure, not upgrading your housing, not upgrading. Just think about how bringing wifi into communities and expanding it, giving young kids the opportunity to do their homework at home. giving them the opportunity to connect with the internet the way that we teach and everything today is just different. And I think it requires an ongoing emphasis and effort from local government.

Ryan:
If I could ask one follow up question to that is how do you manage to keep growth sustainable and, you know, without tearing apart green spaces or, or community spaces while still managing to reach the objectives that we’ve been talking about?

Milton:
if I heard your question correctly about community spaces that speaks to equity and inclusion. It speaks to connecting with all parts of your community to make sure that the public or common spaces are inviting or culturally inclusive of everyone, you know, the, and to find out what that means. It goes back to did you seek input from those you are serving? Did you ask them what they want to see in the new park? Did you ask them what they want to see in the New Town Plaza? when you think about the restaurants and retail operations that you’re recruiting to your community, are you recruiting in an equitable and inclusive manner so that all of your residents can see themselves in the thriving town center that you’re building?

Ron:
So important. You know, it’s interesting, we’re just finishing a, a survey for a city in Texas and they have an old part of town that has potential, but it’s not really delivering. Right. And they floated so many really interesting ideas, and it is kind of interesting how the citizens were able to be quite clear about what, what the future of that area should be. And they were quite helpful for the city, city leaders. And the beauty of it was that they had far more support than they thought. You know, they immediately assumed that they’d have a lot of naysayers, you know, the choir you’re talking about, but only from the citizen side. Right. But the overall support was massive, even around the area that was most effective affected. And it was really kind of interesting to see. And I think like getting that feedback, like you’re talking about, sometimes it just opens the door so that you can move for it. I’ve had, I had that happen in another city in southern Utah. They wanted to build housing, but they couldn’t build housing because the people were saying no. But when they did a survey, a broad open survey, they found that like they, there was 10% who said no, but 90% who said, please, you know, it was just like, we’re hearing from the naysayers, but they weren’t getting a representative voice.

Milton:
It’s really important to get that input and perspective and they will become your strongest advocates when you do it. And the interesting thing is that when you take the time to get the input and the perspective of the stakeholders, even if your finished product is not perfect, you’re gonna get the benefit of the doubt.

Ron:
Yeah.

Milton:
Cause you engaged with them. Well, yeah. It’s not quite what we thought, but they did try to give us what we wanted. You know, they partnered with us and it gives you the impetus for things that come after that.

Ron:
So. Good. I think everything you gave covered it really well. I’d like to ask you one other question, and maybe Ryan has another one after this in your book. I, it, it seems that it’s written for other city managers and so forth routinely, but I think it’s also written for somebody who maybe wants to become one in the future. And do you have any suggestions for someone? They have an ambition, they hope to be in city leadership at some point they’re pretty junior right now, or it’s not even, maybe they’re still in school. Like what do you have to say to to people like that?

Milton:
There is a myriad of opportunities available to you. in the city management world, there are somewhere around 13,000 of us worldwide. the organization that I belong to, the International City County Management Association that is our governing body. And we have city managers in more than 20 countries around the globe. The baby boomers in our industry, just like in other industries, are retiring out. And there’s so many of us leaving. You know, I’ve been in the business almost 40 years. I’m at my fifth and final city. When I’m done now, I will stop. I might do other things, but I won’t seek to run another city. So what we need, and when we look at the numbers of people coming behind us, there’s this big gap. There are people in municipal management, but they’re not necessarily prepared for or preparing to take the city manager jobs that are going to be there.
My book was written primarily for people from a practitioner standpoint to share with them, this is what leadership is all about as it relates to leading cities. Here are things for you to consider. Here are things that were successful in helping me have a long and tenured career. And even if you’re not aspiring to work all the way up to the city manager’s chair, you may wanna lead a department, you may wanna lead a unit within a department. And the focus, and that’s why the title is, it always begins with leadership. No matter what level of the organization you’re talking about, it begins with leadership. you know, it’s not for everybody. It’s a difficult job if you don’t have thick skin, it’s not the place for you to be. But if you can’t, I believe that little criticism and have the ability to really think analytically and communicate with people. It’s a wonderful profession and very rewarding, not necessarily financially, but rewarding in other ways.

Ron:
I think it’s a huge statement, and I totally agree with you. And the more I work with city managers, the more impressed I am with the caliber people that are there. And then to think that there are many who will be retiring out in time, leaving a lot of opportunities for those who wanna come afterward. I think that’s a good powerful message. But I think it’s, like you said, they don’t prepare like they need to prepare, you know, and take every opportunity right now to prepare. It’s not gonna just be handed to them. They’re going to have to earn it.

Milton:
That’s exactly right. And it’s everything from understanding how the budget works to the fiscal side of the, the business works, to knowing what service excellence looks like, to knowing what top shelf customer service looks like, to understanding communication. And you’re gonna have some dark days in the city management world. It’s just inevitable in the society that we’re living in now. You have to prepare for things that years ago we never would’ve thought of that seemingly have become commonplace, but I still say it’s a fulfilling career, nearly four decades. I’m trying to share what I have as I move closer to exiting the profession.

Ryan:
Right. Well, Milton, you said you’re at your final city, but you’re not done yet. so in, in Ann Arbor what are you working on now that you get excited about? what, what’s going on in Michigan that still, still keeps you getting up in the morning? Well,

Milton:
We have a mayor and city council now that has completely embraced the notion that we have to be about responsible development. We’re focusing on density within our city. We’re also focusing on sustainability. And our Arbor is a huge college town with the University of Michigan. Being there with its five campuses. And so you see students all over the place. but we did go through a period in, in our city where growth was a bad word and development was a bad word, and now we have a different mindset. And so it’s exciting to be a part of it.

Ryan:
That’s great.

Milton:
Let me get my one commercial plug in here before we end. Let’s do it.

Ron:
Let’s

Milton:
Do it. This is my book. It, it always begins with leadership, a city manager’s perspective. If you’re interested in acquiring a copy of the book, you have two options. In about three weeks or so, you’ll be able to go to amazon.com or barnes and noble.com and get it. But if you want to get it right now, you can call the Durance Publishing bookstore +1 800-788-7654

Ron:
Monday through Friday and you can order it. Hey, and Milton, we went online and found it easily, and instead, because we knew we needed, wanted to speak to you, we went for the ebook version. Okay. And we didn’t, we delivered and it came like, we waited one day and then we had it. Okay. Well, good, good. Yeah. Yeah, that was great. It’s a good read. I would, I would, I would suggest it to anyone.

Milton:
And hopefully people that see it, we’ll get something out of it. And I look forward to connecting with you in the future.

Ron:
All right. Thank you so much. All righty. Hey, well, we hope you have a wonderful week. Thank you for your time.

Milton:
Thanks, y’all have a great day.