The city of Hoquiam may not seem like a distant destination for a corporate retreat, but it was far enough away from their Montesano offices for the triumvirate of Grays Harbor County Commissioners to sequester themselves for a day.

The Board of County Commissioners, consisting of Georgia Miller, Rick Hole and Vickie Raines, along with County Administrator Sam Kim and Clerk of the Board Wendy Chatham, spent all of Monday, March 31, in the city council chambers at Hoquiam’s city hall.

Throughout the day, under the direction of Thomas O’Connor, the principal consultant for the Wind Mountain Group, LLC, and a former United States Navy submariner, the commissioners took part in a variety of exercises, games and activities to learn how to work together and ultimately serve the citizens of Grays Harbor County more effectively.

In business, job candidates are interviewed, vetted and selected by hiring managers, direct reports, and potential colleagues based on any number of criteria that lead that company to believe the new hire is going to be a good fit for that organization. As for elected public officials, the voters make the selections thrusting people together who didn’t necessarily choose each other, which can lead to challenges when it comes to working together and accomplishing goals.

In her four years with Grays Harbor County, Chatham said this is the first time she’s seen county commissioners participate in something like this.

“The county today is not the county I got hired into. (County Administrator) Sam (Kim) has experienced it before. I glean a lot of my confidence in his experience because I trust him. We’ve been through a lot in his eight months, just in terms of positive change and positive influence. I do trust him, and I lean on his experience because he had more experience with other counties,” Chatham said. “This is the first county I have ever worked for, I worked for a state government before. Those kinds of things were very frequent in the state government I worked for previously. They were often called just ‘retreat’ or ‘leaders retreat.’ They go and have meetings in secret off the record, and talk about planning and big 10,000-foot-level stuff. Personally, I was shocked that this kind of thing wasn’t a regular occurrence.”

Chatham said she was impressed with the progress that was made during the first session.

“I was blown away by the growth from the board that I saw, not just as people but as a decision-making entity and how they blossomed,” Chatham said. “They’ve been very aligned from the beginning, that’s unusual. The last board was interesting, there wasn’t as much alignment as I’ve seen already out of this board. To see that go up another level and see them be prepared for that tough decision of deciding what the mission of the county is and what the pretense for the goals should be, I think we’re well prepared for that.”

Kim said that based on his research, things in the county administration office hadn’t changed much in the last 10 years, and he decided to take an idea proposed a decade ago and bring it to bear. Kim said his familiarity with O’Connor made him an easy choice to lead the retreat.

“I decided to propose to the commissioners, ‘Hey, we really need to do this, imagine if we had done this 10 years ago how different we would be,’” Kim said. “I have a long history with O’Connor, and I know he can deliver, and boy, did he deliver.”

Raines explained the history behind the idea.

“The work related to strategic planning is more than a decade in the making. When I ran for commissioner in 2014, I became very much aware of the lack of [overall] planning at the county. We had no strategic plan, and what planning had been done was egregiously outdated,” Raines said. “After taking office, I reached out to Shelli Hopsecger, who continues to assist the Port of Grays Harbor with their planning processes. The goal was to have Shelli work with the commissioners in an effort to begin the process for creating a County Strategic Plan. Unfortunately, and due to a variety of reasons, the plan never came to fruition.

“In 2015, the county was very reactionary, watching our budget drive our actions. With appropriate planning and goal setting, combined with regular review, the county will become more proactive, allowing for our policies and practices to guide our budget with the desired outcomes we want to see.”

According to Raines, she has been aligned with Kim’s desire to get this initiative off the ground and that she had found a kindred spirit in Kim.

“Jump ahead 10 years and the county’s hiring of Sam Kim — Grays Harbor’s first-ever County Administrator,” Raines said. “I approached Sam with the info Shelli provided in 2015, asking what he thought of the idea to move forward with creating a strategic plan — establishing a mission, vision and values, along with both short-term and long-term goals. Sam agreed that we must do this planning, and it didn’t hurt that both Sam and I have backgrounds in planning.”

Kim said that the purpose of Phase I was to introduce the county commissioners to the strategic planning process and build an effective team, not just among the commissioners.

“The plan itself is the easy part, the hard part is communicating and talking to each other so that we can actually come up with the goals, the vision, mission, values. We did some training trying to build a cohesive team so that we can have a cohesive strategic plan,” Kim said. “And I intend to repeat that with other elected officials, other department heads, and ultimately, and this would be more of a year two exercise, with the community itself.”

Grays Harbor County Executive Assistant Rose O’Keefe said the retreat was an opportunity for the commissioners to knock down some barriers and talk candidly.

“My impression was that part of the role of the outside consultant was to get them comfortable with being part of a team,” O’Keefe said. “This was an opportunity for them to learn a little more about each other, their work styles, their personalities, they’ve only been together as a board for a few months. In a public meeting, they can’t really talk to each other. This was a session in which they could kind of work out their styles.”

According to Kim, starting at the beginning will be the key to forging productive relationships between three very different people.

“Structurally, the county is fragmented. They can’t talk to each other, they didn’t choose each other. When they have to talk to each other in an executive session or a public meeting, it’s very difficult for them to have a conversation of any sort. Things can blow up in a public meeting, and that has happened in this county (more) often than I like to admit,” Kim said. “It’s even more important that the cultural fit happens with disparate (individuals), they didn’t choose each other. That’s why start at the beginning, start with how do we talk to each other when we have controversial things to talk to each other about. What I have found working in corporate America is that technical competency is the easiest thing, learning how to behave, learning how to talk, learning how to share information — that’s hard, especially when the stakes are high. There’s lots of emotions and there’s disagreement. Three people who didn’t choose each other coming together, that’s a powder keg.”

Kim added that he feels fortunate to be working with these three particular county commissioners and that their willingness to commit has been a pleasant surprise. He said that these strategic planning sessions will lead to quantifiable results for the citizens of Grays Harbor County.

“(This) is unusual, I got very lucky, this is my fourth county, even in corporate America, even when they have a choice we find there’s not necessarily cohesive leadership. We tend to hire for technical competency, less about the cultural fit in reality,” Kim said. “I have learned over time it is that cultural fit, it is that emotional intelligence, it is the ability to communicate and relay. This will translate into better decisions for the community members, it will translate into us becoming better strategists in making sure we’re heading in the right direction, that we’re working on the right goals. For far too long we’ve been reactive, and we’ve been at odds with each other, we’ve been very siloed and fragmented. Yes, there are structural things that prevent us from working together naturally, that’s why we have to make the effort to go beyond these restrictions and be able to work as a cohesive leadership team.”

District 1 Commissioner Georgia Miller said Phase I involved learning communication skills and working on a vision for the future of the county.

“We did some mind-mapping to help us really think steps out, that’s what the strategic planning is, it’s the here and now, and then next steps, and then further steps. Mind-mapping is a great tool,” Miller said. “We also did some games to get us comfortable with each other, we did some activities around communication. I think those were really important because sometimes progress can get stalled out when we don’t effectively communicate. There’s what’s being said, and the reason why it’s being said, sometimes things get lost in translation. All of those things are tools to help us communicate more effectively because a cohesive board of commissioners is truly going to be the catalyst that launches the community forward.”

Miller added that the retreat will go a long way in forging the commissioners’ working relationship in the best interests of the community.

“I think that is exactly what the people expect, regardless of political affiliations or personal beliefs, is to work together to do what’s best for the community, and we’re doing exactly that,” Miller said. “That doesn’t mean we will always agree, but I think all of us are focused on the same thing, and that is driving the community forward and doing what’s in the best interest of the people we serve. If we can work together and have that amount of trust and communication between us, what wonderful things we’ll do.”

District 2 Commissioner Rick Hole said the retreat was essential to the working dynamic and opening a more productive dialogue between the three commissioners.

“We’re very compatible, we like each other, but we really need the time just to talk among ourselves and set up and agree on what are the major components of the vision that we’re all trying to achieve together. That’s what a strategic planning session does,” Hole said. “We’re trying to get to a more open dialogue with our non-action action meetings, but Georgia (Miller) and I are starting our fourth month but it’s only been one month since that we’ve actually had the non-action meetings, and at those meetings we’re able to talk and I think we’re going to have great, interesting discussions. It’s so essential the three commissioners get together and understand and develop a strategic plan, something we can all agree on.”

Hole said that he’s still running to catch up with everything that goes on in Grays Harbor County and working through how county government works.

“It’s important citizens understand what’s going on in our county, and there is so much going on. I had no idea when I was running. What we’re trying to do is grow organically a county that has to grow. We have to grow to be able to provide our services, but it has to grow so it serves our current residents, we have to hear those voices,” Hole said. “(The procedures) caught me by surprise coming from the private sector. I can’t just talk to another commissioner? C’mon.”

Hole added that he was familiar with some of the concepts heading into the retreat, but he learned quite a bit and feels that county employees could also benefit from similar activities.

“There was so much coming at us, I’ve seen a lot of that stuff before. It reinforces the necessity for the county to invest in that kind of training for their people, it just shouldn’t be happening at the commissioners. We should all learn better how to communicate with one another,” Hole said. “I think the three of us are pretty comfortable with our opinions and concerns. I think what we’re learning is to maybe slow down and listen better and to express ourselves in a non-confrontational way. I think that’s going to serve us all. We’re all interested in collaboration.”

Raines added that she is excited about the strategic planning initiative and that she is grateful for the work the team is putting in.

“​​I’m extremely pleased that our County Administrator has been so supportive of strategic planning, as have our two new county commissioners. Commissioners Hole and Miller have enthusiastically embraced the planning process, for which I am very thankful. A single commissioner cannot accomplish much on their own, but there is endless potential with the support and involvement of all three commissioners together,” Raines said. “We just finished our first day of planning, with a few more to go. I’m looking forward to continuing the work we’ve started, with our commissioners working collaboratively and collectively on a plan for our county. Georgia. Rick, and I have a common desire for our county to be unified in effort and results as one Grays Harbor. Stay tuned, we have much more to come.”

After working through all of the exercises and spending the day together, by the end of this first session, the commissioners had crafted a rough draft of a mission statement for the Grays Harbor County Board of Commissioners. Phase II is scheduled for April 23.

County Commissioners Vickie Raines and Rick Hole participate in a strategic planning session for the Grays Harbor County Board of Commisioners in the city council chambers at Hoquiam’s city hall.

Grays Harbor County Administrator Sam Kim participates in a strategic planning session in the city council chambers at Hoquiam’s city hall.