Past Projects
South Bend 2045 Comprehensive Plan Roadmap
My partners at Funkhouser & Associates and I created a roadmap for the City of South Bend, Indiana’s, state-mandated, 20-year comprehensive plan. Over 11 months we engaged hundreds of stakeholders from across South Bend’s diverse communities; more than 100 city employees; and scores of leaders from private sector, nonprofit, and educational organizations. The result was a practical planning roadmap to achieve the city’s vision for its future, informed by and infused with insights from a wide array constituencies and focused through specific strategic objectives and financial guidance.
City of Eagan (MN) Leadership Lab
The City of Eagan has invested in its rising leaders by offering them Xponential Impact’s core Leadership Lab experience—a two-part, 12-hour training regimen in which participants learn fundamental leadership and management principles, as well as practical implementation tools to execute on their learning. By following the Leadership Lab’s six operational imperatives—Determine the stakes, Identify a ripple-effect priority, Stop doing what’s not working, Go where there’s a high-impact opportunity, PLAY (Pilot, Learn, Apply, Yield), and Repeat—rising leaders both grow as professionals and produce significant results.
Public Sector Leadership Certificate Program
As the Director of Public Sector Engagement at the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University (CGU), and in conjunction with the Drucker School of Management at CGU and Engaging Local Government Leaders (ELGL), I designed and delivered an online leadership and management training program through which government officials from around the country earned a certificate in Public Sector Leadership. Long Beach (CA) City Council member and certificate program graduate, Al Austin, wrote, “I put the concepts and practices I learned from Lawrence to immediate use for myself and my staff, making us more effective in delivering services and outcomes for the communities we serve.”
City of Covington (WA) Mission, Vision, & Goals
I worked with Covington, Washington, city leaders (under the direction of City Manager Regan Bolli), elected officials, and community stakeholders to develop mission, vision, and goals statements for Covington. These core principles were then used to produce a strategic plan with specific action items for follow through on the four key strategic priorities we identified: A robust and resilient economy; a socially vibrant destination; a commitment to health and safety; and exceptional city services.
Drucker Playbook for the Public Sector
More than 2,500 public sector officials completed one form or another of the Drucker Playbook for the Public Sector—a leadership and management training program that I conceived, designed, and delivered as the Director of Public Sector Engagement at Claremont Graduate University’s Drucker Institute. Dozens of government entities, including the cities of Houston (TX), Memphis (TN), Long Beach (CA), Louisville (KY), the United States Department of Agriculture, and the Reserve Bank of India, invested in their rising leaders through the Drucker Playbook and its mission to provide government employees with tools for increased effectiveness.
Bendable South Bend
As the on-the-ground community engagement leader for the City of South Bend (IN) and St. Joe County Public Library’s City of Lifelong Learning initiative, I asked more than 2,000 South Bend residents and community stakeholders basic questions about what they wanted to learn; what they needed to learn; when, how, where, and with whom they learned best; what helped and hindered their learning; and what their learning dreams were. The insights gained from their responses were used to design and deploy Bendable, a lifelong learning system adopted first by the library in South Bend and then by library systems across the country.