Ask Marcia Carty what makes an effective city manager, and she won’t lead with a textbook definition. She’ll tell you it starts with listening — really listening — before anything else happens.
Vision Before Action
For Carty, effective leadership follows a rhythm: listen, observe, ponder, seek counsel, pray, and only then act. But even action isn’t the finish line. She believes a city manager has to hold a clear picture of what the finished project looks like before the first shovel hits the ground, then build a plan flexible enough to survive contact with reality. That means communicating goals and obstacles clearly, bridging cultural and literacy gaps across the community, and pairing all of it with real experience in both managerial leadership and public engagement. Vision without adaptability, in her view, isn’t really vision at all — it’s just a plan waiting to fail.
Trust Is Built, Not Assumed
Carty treats trust with elected officials as something earned through repetition, not a single well-run meeting. Clear, strategic, and authentic communication opens the door to genuine two-way conversation, where officials can raise the concerns their constituents bring to them and receive honest, transparent answers in return. She leans on town halls, public forums, community meetings, and one-on-one time with each elected official to keep that channel open. It’s not a box to check once — it’s ongoing work that has to stay deliberate and consistent to mean anything.
Motivating People, Not Just Managing Them
When it comes to staff, Carty’s approach centers on the basics too many organizations overlook: recognizing accomplishments regularly, paying people fairly, and genuinely supporting work-life balance. She believes trust has to be demonstrated, not declared, and that every employee deserves a clearly defined sense of purpose in their role. Flexibility in scheduling and honesty in even the smallest interactions round out her approach — the idea being that culture is built in the details, not in the mission statement on the wall. The Weight of Hard Decisions
Not every leadership moment is comfortable, and Carty doesn’t pretend otherwise. She points to letting a senior staff member go as the hardest kind of decision she faces — someone who has often been trusted with an organization’s deeper goals and vision, which makes their
departure feel personal for everyone on the leadership team, not just the two people directly involved. Her approach is to give people real opportunities to correct course before termination becomes the only option, and when it does become necessary, to handle it as humanely as possible.
A System Built on Accountability
Carty runs her organizations on a management style she describes as heavily interactive, team-based, goal-driven, and accountable. She relies on the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle — gathering information, implementing changes, reviewing progress, and completing the assignment — paired with a leadership style that sets concise expectations and clear timelines for department directors. Once expectations are set, she makes sure her teams have what they need to meet them, whether that’s staffing, materials, or direct guidance from her office.
She measures success just as broadly as she manages: revenue growth, expense reduction, customer and employee satisfaction, retention, engagement, innovation, and continuous improvement all factor in. The common thread is simple — is the strategy actually working the way it was designed to?
Steady Hands in a Crisis
Crisis management, for Carty, is about swift but measured action. Using a contaminated water event as an example, she describes a sequence that starts with testing to understand the scope of the problem, followed by communication with governmental agencies, clear directives to organizational leaders, and finally transparent information to the public about what steps to take. Establishing hotlines and working closely with law enforcement and fire services aren’t just emergency protocols to her — they’re how public trust gets restored, built on quick reaction and open dialogue rather than silence.
What She Tells the Next Generation
Carty’s advice to future city managers is rooted in her own experience with both the good and the difficult. Relationships built on open communication, she says, are the real key to success. She encourages new leaders to study the people around them — both operational staff and elected officials — early on, so those stakeholders understand what kind of leader they’re working with, formally and informally, from the outset. First impressions, in her experience, set the tone for everything that follows.
Becoming a city manager is a transition, she notes, and being responsive to the public matters — but being responsive to employees, elected officials, and stakeholders matters just as much. People need to feel heard before they’re directed. Her practical roadmap for new
managers: review governance documents with legal counsel, clarify expectations with elected officials early, and make sure policies actually align with the real scope of the role. Do that groundwork, she says, and success becomes possible and probable.
