Commissioner Rowland, after observing your leadership in a couple meetings now, I have to give you some constructive advice. I’m writing this for the good of the forum, and I expect you to change your speaking style as a result of it. I have to assume no one has told you this before, and that you’re not going to hear it from anyone at the county over whom you have dominion. So here goes.
The campaign is over. You don’t need to consume every available syllable in the room like a ravenous pack animal at a feeding frenzy. You won already.
I wouldn’t expect you to change the way you think. But the way you speak impacts everyone in the room. The cumulative time you cost an audience is significant.
If you expect to hold an audience over the next four years, you must not continue to air out every incomplete thought, and every alternate construction of language that just says the same thing in as many different ways as you can imagine. The repetition is not effective. It’s redundant.
The office you hold is not a casual forum. People go there to hear legal decisions that might affect them in the future, and if necessary, to add some data to improve the quality of a future decision. They don’t go to hear streams of consciousness that are not dispositive to making a decision.
Effective leadership is orderly, succinct, and respectful of scarce time. Please respect the time of “we the people” whom you have often spoken of as your principle motivation.
Lay out the facts in clear non-repetitive statements when a decision calls for them. Everyone thinks about the issues all the time. If you have new information, then please, advance the topic. Otherwise, let someone else speak who does have new information to impart.
B_Imperial