In this article, Peter Nichols discusses the importance municipal councils have in encouraging municipal innovation.

There is a common tendency to think that organizational innovation and change is the responsibility of management, and in the case of municipalities, of the chief administrative officer. Certainly the CAO has a major role in stimulating and implementing change and sometimes will "lead the charge" but it is fundamentally the municipal council that sets the stage for adopting change in local government.

Municipal councils often fail to encourage change -- by devoting too much of their time and energy on representational issues, operational and program concerns, budgets, and so forth, and by giving too little attention to governance issues, priority setting, and progress review. To use the common cliché: "too much rowing and not enough steering".

Innovation in a municipal organization requires leadership from the top, and municipal councils can provide the necessary environment for change in a number of ways, more specifically by:

• communicating unambiguously their support for and openness to fresh ideas, experimentation and change to the community at large, to the CAO and to the municipal administration.
  
• engaging a CAO who has both a shared interest in examining and pursuing new approaches and the capability to manage change. The council's periodic performance appraisals of the CAO should incorporate as an important criterion the demonstration of management initiative toward improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the municipal government.
  
• articulating the municipality's mission, goals, expected outcomes, and priorities: these provide the necessary framework that will guide the municipality's management and administration in pursuing change.
  
• instituting a high-level review and performance measurement system that allows council to monitor and "track" the progress toward meeting the municipality's goals.
  
• recognizing those in the organization who have assisted the municipality to become more effective.

The adoption of these practices often requires a significant departure from the conventional approaches taken by councils. Indeed, surveys of municipal councils suggest that while councils themselves believe that their effectiveness has improved, their responsiveness to public concerns has increased, and their budgetary review practices have improved, they accept that their performance has lagged in areas that support municipal innovation, for example, the setting of directions and goals, reviewing programs, and assessing administrative performance.

To be fair, in many instances councils may not be adequately prepared to be able to redefine their role and priorities in ways that will enhance their governance function. Given the critical part municipal councils have in encouraging better local government, it is important that they are equipped with an adequate understanding of effective governance. In this regard, some councils have found that information- and skill-building by way of seminars, retreats, training programs, the use of facilitators, and other forms of "technical" assistance are particularly useful. All of this can assist in fostering innovation in municipalities.