A Note from Our Director ...

Dear Colleague -

Welcome to our new web site -- dedicated to excellence in local government.  Its launch is timed to coincide with the release of our 3rd annual publications catalog.  In the weeks ahead, we'll be adding more content to showcase success stories in performance-improvement as well as some new features to streamline our interactions with you.  You can read about them by following the links on our home page.  If this is your 1st introduction to our Institute, the following is a brief history of our organization.

For the past 30-plus years, I've had a passion for studying high-performance organizations.  I read whatever I could put my hands on.  I attended seminars.  And, whenever possible, I visited those organizations and interviewed their leaders.  All of this was aimed at discovering what had made them so successful.  Up until 1994, that research was devoted to growing a thriving consulting practice in the land-use planning and economic development fields.  Then, at the age of 50, I began a 2nd career.  Working with a group of like-minded individuals, we founded the Cordillera Institute.

If you remember, the early 1990s were tough years for local governments.  The economy was climbing out of recession.  Our senior governments had run themselves into debt.  As a result, local governments were expected to take on more responsibilities and to do it all with less revenue.  Something had to change.  And, it did.  Local governments everywhere began to innovate -- to find ways to do more with less.  But, most were operating at a disadvantage.  While there was abundant information available on improving the performance of businesses, relatively little was available on improving the performance of local governments.  Our Institute was founded to fill that gap.

We did that by establishing our Research Program to scour the local-government world for success stories.  Whenever we found them, we shared the findings with our Members through the Information Exchange Program and by publishing them in our Journal.  As a growing number of our Members began to search for benchmarks, we established the Performance Improvement Program.  This program enables local-government agencies to compare their performance with their peers and to share the best practices uncovered during the comparisons.

Until 2005, all of our efforts were geared to serving our Members.  Then, in late February 2006, we launched a new publication, designed to serve the full local-government community.  Each week, View from the Cordillera covers some aspect of excellence in local government.  It may examine 1 of the success elements; it may present a case study; it may introduce a resource (an individual, a group, a publication, etc.) which is advancing excellence; it may advocate a new direction for local government; or it may identify a wrong turn in public policy and offer an appropriate remedy.  After just 11 months, it was being read by municipal leaders on 4 continents.

If you are not a subscriber to View from the Cordilleraas yet, you may obtain a free copy of a recent issue.  And, you can keep up to date by registering for our complimentary summaries.  To respect all the other demands on your time, each summary is just 1 paragraph in length.  So, you can scan it over a cup of coffee.  Of course, if you want more information on any of the material covered, appropriate links are provided.  I look forward to welcoming you to our team of those pursuing excellence in local government.

And, as always, we welcome your comments.

David Barber
Director
Cordillera Institute
(416) 293-9300
CordInst@istar.ca