Fels Partners with Wharton on City Leadership Program

When Mayor Michael Nutter assumed leadership of Philadelphia in 2008, the task before him was formidable. The City of Brotherly Love had become infamous for its homicides, including the slaying of police officers. Children were dropping out of high school at an alarming rate. The citizens had become disheartened by a government that no longer seemed to be of, for, and by the people. And then came Michael Nutter. With a vision of government shaped by his passion for public service and his business background as a Wharton alum, Nutter has set about changing the very culture of the city.

Driven to breathe new life and hope into the beleaguered city, Nutter set about transforming the way city government operates in Philadelphia. He views the city as a $4 billion business that must deliver outstanding service to its customers and stakeholders—the people of Philadelphia. To prepare for this task, he reached out to his alma mater to prepare his top city leaders for what lay ahead of them. One hundred of his key administrators attended a two-day leadership program on April 10–11, 2008, delivered by the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government, the Leadership Center at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Wharton’s Aresty Institute of Executive Education.

“I realized a long time ago that most governments don’t think of themselves as a business,” Nutter remarks. “Because there is no real business-based training in government, I have long thought that governments should send people to professional development training. The leadership program at Wharton was exactly what I envisioned.”

The program focused on building leadership strengths from an interdisciplinary approach, integrating leadership from Wharton’s business perspective with legislative and policy insights from the Fels Institute. The program represents a launching pad for an ongoing collaborative relationship between Wharton and the city, according to Tom Colligan, vice dean of executive education. “This program is the first outcome of a close working partnership between the mayor’s office and Wharton,” Colligan says.

Academic co-director and Wharton professor Michael Useem helped design the program to support the mayor’s vision for improving education, expanding jobs, improving health, enhancing ethics, reducing crime, and strengthening services.

 “In terms of bringing the mayor’s vision into reality, the leadership of the mayor and his team will make all the difference,” Useem explains. “And to that end, the Fels Institute and the Wharton School worked with the city to help his top team sharpen and strengthen its leadership—an essential ingredient for achieving the mayor’s vision during the months ahead.”

Academic co-director Don Kettl, director of the Fels Institute, says that the program represents a unique collaboration of Wharton’s best faculty with cutting-edge ideas from Fels for improving government performance. “This signifies the very best of interdisciplinary partnerships, in service of one of the most important urban transformations under way in the country.”

The mayor visited on the second day of the program to address his team. “We’ve set the bar high, and people want us to be successful,” Nutter told city leaders. “The driving force behind what we do is to deliver higher-quality service. Your obligation to the public is to provide the leadership the city needs. You are here because you care, and I could not be more proud of you.”

The mayor views the city as a 24-hour-a-day business with a million and a half shareholders––the people of Philadelphia––who expect a return on their investment. Nutter has dedicated his efforts to reshaping the city’s culture for both immediate and long-term benefits. “We have to move beyond thinking in the short term, because we won’t have long-term impact. It’s not about who gets the credit,” the mayor says of his plan for improving the city. “It’s about what the results will be 20, 30, or 40 years from now.”

The change in the city’s culture is one that his managing director, Dr. Camille Barnett, expects to be one of the greatest organizational and city transformations ever. “Our partnership with the Fels Institute and Wharton allows us to benefit from best practices in both the public and business sectors. This program gives our people the tools they need to execute our five-year plan in six key areas,” she says. “Our two days at Wharton have given us a common experience and a common language. But most importantly, this program imbues us with courage and hope, the leadership values that are essential to accomplishing what lays ahead of us.”

The six areas of Mayor Nutter’s plan for Philadelphia include the following immediate and long-term goals:

• Transform Philadelphia into the safest large city in the country and reduce the homicide rate by 25 percent in 2008.
• Make Philadelphia one of the country’s premier education cities, reducing the high-school dropout rate by 50 percent in five to seven years and doubling the number of Philadelphians with a bachelor’s degree in five to 10 years.
• Increase jobs, raise incomes, and add 75,000 people to the population in five to 10 years.
• Foster vibrant neighborhoods, decrease litter, and increase recycling.
• Maintain the highest standards for ethics and increase the number of citizens who trust in their government.
• Become a national customer-service leader, meeting customer-service standards for all city services as measured by citizen surveys.

The Wharton/Fels program covered subjects such as reengineering government, successes and failures in city governance, and developing strategic leadership skills. The experience gave attendees a more in-depth understanding of how they could actively work toward implementing the mayor’s ambitious goals.

“Michael Nutter's vision for Philadelphia requires city leaders to think very differently about the organization and its mission. This program gave them the focus and opportunity to think of themselves as inspirational leaders and change managers as they steer their teams through this transition period,” says Sandhya Karpe, Wharton Executive Education senior director.

The program also gave city leaders who attended the time to reflect on their roles and process what they learned, according to Deputy Mayor Everett Gillison. “We don’t get that kind of time on the job. The faculty understood the culture we’re working in, and gave us tools we could put to use immediately.”

Anuj Gupta, a Fels graduate and one of the mayor’s “Team Performance” leaders who attended the program, says that the experience at Wharton represents a great step in what the mayor hopes will be an ongoing relationship with the university. “It is vital for the administration to work with civic institutions like the University of Pennsylvania to achieve results for the city.”

The future of the city hinges on the success of the mayor’s plan. Dedicated to making the city the “crown jewel of the east,” the mayor is convinced that a new approach to leadership, a new culture for the city, will make Philadelphia a magnet for business and new residents. “If we deliver, people will come back. If we don’t, they will leave. People vote with their feet. If we do the job right, people will come back to Philadelphia.”