The Seamless City of St. Petersburg

The Seamless City 

 In keeping with the week’s long theme of highlighting successful public sector leaders and their leadership styles, this post introduces another city mayor, Rick Baker of St. Petersburg, Florida. Baker is not as well-known as Rudy Giuliani and certainly did not run a cosmopolitan metropolis the size of New York, but Rick Baker is a visionary leader who has been recognized as the Public Official of the Year by Governing Magazine and one of America’s greatest mayors for his approach to urban revitalization and neighborhood inclusiveness.

Rick Baker, a corporate lawyer and a staunch conservative, was elected Mayor of St. Petersburg in 2001 with no experience running a local government. In his previous positions he had led a medium-sized law firm and was president of the local Chamber of Commerce. In his words, nothing had prepared him for 3,000 employees in 34 departments which included police, fire, water and sewer, sanitation, parks, and roads. When he took office, St. Petersburg was plagued with an aging population, decaying infrastructure, and an undercurrent of racial tension. When he was elected in 2001, it took 2-1/2 years to fill a pothole in the City and the only two metrics available to him were a crime report and rainfall data. By the time he left office in 2010 (following an overwhelming reelection win in 2005), potholes were filled in mere days and he had created a “City Scorecard” of 160 metrics available in real-time so every citizen could see how they were doing against their goals. Crime also dropped dramatically, businesses moved into the city, and neighborhoods were revitalized.

When he was elected, Baker freely admits he was nervous. But he had a vision to “Make St. Petersburg Best.” This slogan became the prism through which every decision was made. With this vision as his foundation, Baker developed a 7-point strategic plan for his administration:

• Define the City’s Mission – this is what they were trying to accomplish. For Baker, it was simple: be the best!
• Develop a Plan of Action – this was the roadmap Baker used to get from where the City currently was to where it needed to be.
• Communicate the Plan Clearly – for Baker, this meant refining his roadmap into bite-sized, manageable pieces which were easy for his followers and citizens to remember (“The Baker Plan”): Improve public safety, promote economic development, support public schools, and build strong neighborhoods.
• Unite Around the Effort – to Baker, this meant eliminating any boundaries (geographic, economic, racial, education, or other subset) around the aforementioned goals. Baker proposed a “Seamless City” where no matter where one goes in the city – across any seam, whether a street, overpass, or railroad track – one never needs to feel they are in a part of town they shouldn’t be in.
• Work toward Accomplishing the Plan – this means to stay on track regardless of setbacks and failure, but it also means adapting to feedback. In Baker’s case, citizen input suggested he add a new goal of improving government operations.
• Measure Progress toward Success – metrics, KPIs, and benchmarks. As the old adage says, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.
• Keep Getting Better – this is the process of constant improvement.

Rick Baker wrote a book entitled The Seamless City: A Conservative Mayor’sApproach to Urban Revitalization That Can Work Anywhere. In the book, are all of the above points with chapters devoted to each. Most of what Baker writes is classic leadership. He is charismatic and a visionary. He believes in serving the public and he holds his followers in high esteem. A few areas of Baker’s leadership style are worth noting in particular with lessons for public sector leaders truly wanting to make a difference in their communities.

Leadership Styles

On the one hand, Rick Baker exhibits a transformational leadership style. According to Northouse (2015), transformational leaders change or transform followers to motivate them to do more and be more than they ever thought themselves capable (followers, for these purposes, are both Baker’s direct employees and the citizens of St. Petersburg who elected him – as governing is an interactive process between the governor and the governed). His vision of “Make St. Petersburg Best" and his charismatic manner motivated people to want to be engaged and to truly impact St. Petersburg’s quality of life. Baker led people to believe things could be better and encouraged them to collectively work towards that vision.

Rick Baker also used an Achievement-Oriented style of Path-Goal Leadership Theory (as discussed in Northouse, 2015). This style is illustrated by his setting high expectations of his followers through ambitious and challenging goals. Baker set these high goals, but he did not directly dictate how they were to be accomplished. He relied upon competent department heads to determine the best course of action, and Baker helped clear the path for their achievements. This resulted in engaged and committed employees.

Lessons for Today’s Public Sector Leader

The lessons Baker offers for public sector leaders are to set clear and understandable goals, challenge people to do more than they thought possible, and to have a passion for excellence.

In the public sector, we often find it difficult to prioritize and set goals. We are pulled in many directions at once, we face political pressures to embrace one policy or another, and we find our hands tied by stifling procedures and inflexible rules. Baker faced these challenges as well. They are difficult, but not crippling. We have systems in place and we learn to work within the systems – with passion, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a bit of risk-taking.

Our employees, our citizens, and our community are looking to us to provide leadership. We are appointed, elected, or hired to serve the public and it is not a task to take lightly. To quote Rick Baker, “We have the great responsibility and capacity to change people’s lives for the better” (Baker, 2011, p. xix).  

This video is part of a lecture series by the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (http://ihmc.us). In it, Rick Baker tells us, in his own words, his leadership style and how he worked to "Make St. Petersburg Best"