A confidential peer group for city and county managers
A monthly working session with peers who hold the same job. Every prospective member sits in on a real one first, at no cost.
August 2020
The first nationwide Think Tank convened, and the groups have run continuously since.
250+
Sessions facilitated.
8 to 12
Managers in a room, the same people month after month.
90 minutes
Facilitated and confidential, with city and county managers as the only participants.
“Thanks for all you do to bring us together. I think we all see the value in a safe space to be honest. We can’t save everything to hanging out at the annual conferences.”
The work needs a room of its own
Every decision lands in a community shaped by council dynamics, staff challenges, and public scrutiny. Candor gets complicated when nearly everyone nearby either reports to the manager or holds a political relationship with the office.
That leaves little room to think out loud before an idea is finished, or to hear how a peer handled the same constraint.
Think Tanks are that room. The people around the table understand the chair because they occupy it too.
Confidentiality is a condition of participation. Imagine That Performance does not record or transcribe sessions, and does not distribute what is said in them.
What members develop
Pattern recognition
Members report seeing patterns earlier. Watching a dynamic unfold in another organization can make the same one visible at home before it escalates.
Decision confidence
Hearing how peers frame choices sharpens the judgment of when to decide and when to gather more input.
Transfer to the team
Members report carrying the same questions back to their own teams, so the team surfaces the real issue before anyone reaches for the fix.
City managers and county administrators work through the decisions that come with the role in a peer group where confidentiality is a condition of participation.
Who facilitates
Rob Duncan founded Imagine That Performance and has facilitated these rooms since the first one convened.
He came to this work from engineering and the private sector rather than from a city or a county, and that is deliberate. The peers in the room have held the chair and can say what the job is actually like. What Rob brings is the outside read, which is the one thing a room of peers cannot give itself.
One member brings a live challenge and the room works it. The facilitation exists so the quiet perspective gets heard rather than the loudest one.
Sit in before either side commits
A visit is one real session, not a demonstration arranged for visitors. The group knows in advance that a guest is joining. There is nothing to present and nothing to prepare.
The visitor is deciding whether this is the right room. The group is deciding whether the fit is right for everyone already in it. That mutual standard is how the room stays worth being in.
There is no fee and no membership commitment for the visit. A visit is arranged in the conversation.
Think Tank Membership
Membership starts with one real session at no cost and no obligation. Once the visitor and the group have both said yes, membership is a one-year commitment.
Think Tank
$1,428/year
Billed annually. The equivalent of $119 a month.
Twelve monthly sessions, one each month, with the same group of managers, facilitated and confidential. Each session brings:
- One member’s live decision on the table, worked by peers who hold the same seat.
- The outside read the facilitator brings, which a room of peers cannot give itself.
- Patterns seen earlier, by watching them unfold in another organization first.
- Questions to carry back, so the team surfaces the real issue before anyone reaches for a fix.
Think Tank Pro
$2,148/year
Billed annually. The equivalent of $179 a month.
Everything in Think Tank, plus four Pro group sessions and four private sessions with Rob each year:
- A quarterly session, for Pro members only, where the group works on how each member leads rather than on a single decision.
- A quarterly private session with Rob, the direct accountability point for the leadership development each member has chosen to work on. The member sets the direction; the session keeps it moving.
The confidentiality terms are the same in both tiers: nothing recorded, nothing transcribed, nothing distributed.
Questions
What happens when a member misses a session?
Nothing is written down, so there is nothing to carry, and a missed session is missed. The member is back with the same group the following month, and the group does not restart.
How are groups formed?
Members hold the chief administrative officer’s seat, whatever the local title: city manager, county administrator, or town, township or village manager or administrator. Groups intentionally mix geography, organization size, and tenure. The manager of a 50-person organization often sees what leaders in larger organizations miss, and vice versa. Every placement is checked for conflicts of interest, and the check runs again for everyone already seated when a new member joins.
How the Think Tanks began
July 2020: the first virtual Think Tanks for city managers and county administrators were announced, and the first group began meeting monthly in August, drawn from local governments across Florida.
September 2020: the first nationwide group met for the first time on 18 September, one member per state and an even split of counties and cities, and a second nationwide group was formed the same month.
October 2020: two open houses let prospective members sit in and put their questions to the people already in the rooms.
Visit a real Think Tank with city managers and county administrators before deciding whether membership fits.