Dive Brief:
- Mayor-elects underestimated the amount of time they needed to spend on short-term policy work, administrative tasks and at city hall during their first 100 days in office, limiting their ability to be out in the community and tackle campaign priorities, a study published in Public Administration Review found.
- The Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a program of the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, surveyed 15 mayors from cities with more than 75,000 residents, asking them how they expected to spend their time during their transition before taking office and, following that transition period, how they actually spent it.
- Mayors helped set themselves up for long-term success during the transition period by getting familiar with the demands of the role and establishing relationships with members of the community and city government, said Matthew Lee, a Harvard Kennedy School of Government associate professor and report co-author. The mayors also spent a lot of time reorganizing city hall and hiring staff, he said.
Dive Insight:
The challenges mayors faced during their transition periods were not necessarily universal, Lee said. Mayors with a lot of executive power and large staffs differed from mayors with smaller staffs and mayors who are essentially part of the city council with city operations designated to a city manager, he said.
Still, “all mayors would tell you it’s not easy in any of these arrangements,” Lee said.
Many of the mayors campaigned on long-term strategic priorities and being present in the community but were shocked when they had to grapple with a host of administrative duties, Lee said.
The report said mayors should use the 100-day transition period to strengthen their personal, relational and organizational capacities, building their knowledge, skills and mental readiness while creating relationships with key stakeholders inside and outside the government and strengthening their administrative, operational and strategic capabilities within the city government.
Some mayors said supportive city managers and staff who aligned with their values helped smooth the transition; one leaned on the previous mayor’s chief of staff.
When taking office, mayors should think about the relationship between what they personally bring to the table, what they are given to work with at city hall and what they will need to deliver on their agenda, Lee said.
During the transition, mayors were often oriented toward quick wins, Lee said, but tasks like having conversations with community stakeholders could pay off two years down the road.
Mayors should try to achieve things that show they are making progress on their priorities and campaign promises but also use the transition time to make those long-term investments, Lee said.
Some short-term work, such as hiring staff, can be completed before taking office, said Lee. Mayors in the study said the right hires helped expand their capacity during their transition, he added.
A number of mayors tapped into their personal networks to hire senior staff, the study found. But balancing those connections with an open-hiring process was helpful in bringing skills that weren’t already in the mayors’ networks, Lee said.
As mayors spent more time in their city hall offices than expected, they worried that people didn’t understand what they were doing and said it could be hard to get advice, Lee said.
Some mayors used their transition period to build relationships with peer mayors in nearby cities, the study found. One mayor said building relationships with other mayors “has been absolutely key.”
