Where is Patrick?

Keynote Topics

Patrick Ibarra has been invited to speak to audiences from 100 to 1,000 about a variety of topics.

Patrick Ibarra, co-founder and partner of the Mejorando Group, is available to speak at conferences, conventions, and other meetings of government leaders and officials.

Mr. Ibarra speaks on a wide variety of contemporary topics relating to trends impacting the public sector and organizational and individual performance, including The Next Government Workforce, Employee Engagement, Disrupting the Status Quo of We’ve Always Done It That Way, Driving Innovation and Reimagining Leadership.

He consistently receives rave reviews for his presentations as a result of his energetic style, his ability to connect with an audience, and his willingness to impart actionable information.

“Patrick Ibarra’s workshop on Innovation was the best program I’ve ever attended! He was really energetic, and it’s obvious that he enjoys what he does and practices what he advocates. It was also refreshing to attend a workshop led by someone with a real public sector background.”

Randee

Conference Attendee

Succession Planning and Talent Management

Leadership

Motivational

Innovation

The Mejorando Group has spoken to a variety of audiences, across a broad spectrum of topics. We can custom fit a presentation directly to your audience.  Below is a sample of just some of the groups we have had the pleasure of speaking to.

City/County Manager Groups

• Arizona City/County Management Association
• Association for Pennsylvania Management
• California City Managers
• City Management Association of Oklahoma
• Colorado City/County Management Association
• Connecticut Town and City Managers Association
• Denver Metro Managers Group
• Idaho City/County Management Association
• Illinois City/County Management Association
• International City/County Management Association (ICMA)
• Iowa City/County Management Association
• Kansas Association of City/County Management
• Maine Town and City Management Association
• Massachusetts Municipal Management Association
• Minnesota City/County Managers Association
• Missouri City/County Management Association
• New Mexico City Management Association
• New York City/County Management Association
• North Carolina City/County Management Association
• Ohio City/County Management Association
• Oregon City/County Management Association
• South Carolina City/County Management Association
• Texas City Management Association
• Virginia Local Government Management Association
• Washington City/County Management Association
• Wisconsin City Management Association

Professional Membership Associations

• American Public Works Association – Arizona Chapter
• Arizona Municipal Clerks Association
• Arizona Parks and Recreation Association
• California Auditors Association
• California Society of Municipal Finance Officers
• City Clerks Association of California
• FBI National Academy Associates
• Florida Recreation and Parks Association
• Government Finance Officers Association
• Government Finance Officers Association – Arizona chapter
• Government Finance Officers Association – Utah chapter
• International Institute of Municipal Clerks
• Intelligent Transportation Society of Arizona
• Los Angeles County (CA) Fire Chiefs Association
• Maine Police Chiefs Association
• National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials
• National Institute of Governmental Purchasing – Arizona Chapter
• New Mexico Transit Association
• Oregon Association of Municipal Recorders
• Public Works Officers Institute – California
• Texas Association of Government Information Technology Managers
• Utah Municipal Clerks Association
• Utah Risk Management Association
• Washington Municipal Clerks Association
• Washington Sewer and Water Districts Association
• Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association

Human Resource Professionals

• California Public Employer’s Labor Relations Association
• Central Maine Human Resources Association
• County Personnel Administrators Association of California
• Illinois Public Employee Labor Relations Association
• International Public Management Association-Human Resources (IPMA-HR)
• Iowa Public Employee Labor Relations Association
• IPMA-HR – Virginia chapter
• Maine Local Government Human Resource Association
• Massachusetts Municipal Human Resources Association
• Society of Human Resources Management (New Mexico chapter)
• Southern California Public Labor Relations Council
• Texas Municipal Human Resource Association
• Washington Chapter of Public Employer Labor Relations Association

Municipal Leagues

• Association of Washington Cities
• Colorado Municipal League
• Connecticut Conference of Municipalities
• League of Arizona Cities and Towns
• League of California Cities
• League of Oregon Cities
• Missouri Municipal League
• Municipal Association of South Carolina
• National League of Cities
• South Dakota Municipal League
• Texas Municipal League

Other Public Sector Groups

• California Contract Cities Association
• California Special Districts Association
• International Hispanic Network
• Washington Cities Insurance Authority

Succession Planning: The Time is Right Now!
Effective succession planning in government is a whole lot more than increasing your training budget. In fact, it’s an ongoing, dynamic process, not a static, one-time objective that not only empowers employees to achieve their professional goals but also supports organizational goals. It’s essential in today’s competition for talent. Building your bench of potential successors is mission-critical to sustain performance and in this session you’ll receive the “what” and the “how” from one of the nation’s leaders in designing and implementing organization-wide succession planning processes for governments across the nation.
Breaking Glass: Ten Emergency Ways to Combat the Hiring Crisis
Frustrated with the lack of quality applicants for the vacancies you’re trying to fill? Tired of competing in a bidding war for new recruits? Likely you responded yes to both questions. Well, it’s past time to discard the “we’ve always done it that way” mindset and replace it with a contemporary approach to building a modern workforce. In this session, Patrick Ibarra shares the next practices on adopting and implementing a proven approach to attracting top talent.
Talent Management: It’s Not Just an HR Thing!
It is not the sole responsibility of your HR Department to hire and develop employees. Maintaining a modern workforce is an organizational wide imperative and consequently, requires organizational wide horsepower. Talent management is a systematic approach to performance excellence achieved by creating a culture of continuous improvement, high engagement, and workforce capability and capacity through integrated talent strategies and learning and development programs that are aligned with the agency mission, vision, and core values. Through talent management, achieving optimal performance is influenced more by preparing workforce members to handle present and future challenges and less by simply adding more employees. The adoption and implementation of a talent management process provides the opportunity for leaders to improve organizational performance despite not increasing workforce size.
A Healthy Workplace Culture is the “Secret Sauce” to Success
It’s practically impossible to name even a single successful organization, one that is a recognized leader in its field of endeavor, that does not have a distinctive, readily identifiable organizational culture. One of the most effective means by which to achieve a higher level of organizational performance is to create and sustain a healthy workplace culture where people can excel and pursue their potential. In brief, culture is about Language, Attitude and Behaviors that employees both espouse and share with their colleagues. In this session, Patrick Ibarra identifies the 10 ways workplace culture is the “secret sauce” for success and what steps you can pursue immediately to transition your culture from the prevailing to the preferred.
The Election is Over: Now What?
Transitioning from campaigning to governing can be a significant challenge even for seasoned elected officials. It only takes one election to change the complexion of your governing body. In this session, Patrick shares how trust is the currency in establishing and maintaining relationships with members of a governing body, the practices of healthy governing bodies, proven ways to ensure alignment of priorities, why no one washes a rental car and the distinction between policy and administration in the age of social media.
Think Outside the Building: Innovating Your Future
Government is trying to make progress with the emergency brake on. Knowing that innovation is critical isn’t enough – “getting it” is one thing, “getting it done” is quite another. If your organization thinks of itself only as a government, it behaves in only one way. But if it begins to think of itself as a community builder, quality of life advocate, and service provider, then it starts to behave differently. And that’s where innovation surfaces because to innovate is to implement change that creates a new dimension of performance. In this session, practical strategies and proven techniques are presented for leaders to (re)set the tone of a dynamic, always-on, learning culture that’s essential to unleash creativity and lead to faster, better innovation.

From Typewriters to Texting: Communicating Across Generations
Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials – in organizations there is an unprecedented blending of generations resulting in communication challenges. This session will identify continuing trends in the workforce and subsequent impacts on the workplace, examine the unprecedented changes younger workers are creating in organizations, and what organizations can utilize to recruit and retain employees from all generations.

Reimagining Leadership
Taking control of uncertainty and successfully steering through frequent bends in the road is the fundamental leadership challenge of our time.  As catalysts for continuous improvement, leaders must realize that to build organizations which are simultaneously purpose-driven, performance-focused, and principles-led is mission-critical.  New circumstances require fresh solutions, and in this session, participants will learn the roots and anchors of creating a healthy workplace culture, proven approaches to attracting and developing “rock stars,” differences between goalkeepers and gatekeepers, the benefits of a self-awareness x-ray, how best to close the imagination gap and to succeed by choice, not by chance.

Building a Talent Centric Organization
Are you changing as fast as the world around us?  Talent drives success, but the talent practices many local governments use are vestiges of another era.  They were designed for predictable environments, traditional ways of getting work done, and organizations where lines and boxes defined how people were managed.  Modern leaders recognize that talent selection decisions are an increasingly important determinant of organizational performance and success.  For many organizations, they are the most mission-critical decisions they make.  Those organizations that attract and retain the right kind of talent and treat it, reward it, develop it, and deploy it correctly, perform better than those that simply fill jobs with people.  In this session, learn the five elements of a Talent Formula that will ensure you have a motivated engaged knowledgeable workforce.

Next Government Workforce
Historically, government at all levels has relied on decent pay, generous benefits and stable employment to attract workers. As a result of the economic downturn, each of these attractions has been significantly diminished, leaving public leaders scrambling. Combined with other factors including the political pressure to be leaner and more efficient to the expansion of interest in work-life balance programs to the explosion of social media, the impact is that for government to build its 21st-century workforce, old models must be discarded in favor of “next practices”–contemporary, progressive and practical strategies and tools to attract, retain and optimize talent. This session focuses on four practical approaches government leaders should embrace to translate the headwinds of disruptive change into a tailwind.

Government’s Crucial Employer Brand
The convergence of various trends – changing workforce demographics, retiring baby boomers, lack of skilled workers and use of the hiring freeze – offers the ideal opportunity for your agency to strengthen its Employer Brand. Top performers always have employment options and when the economy rebounds, the demand for talent will intensify. The challenge for your agency is when prospective candidates think of it as an employer, what comes to mind? Better yet, what do current employees think about their employer? Branding is increasingly receiving more and more attention today as a strategy to counter these forces and this session will outline the 5 Steps to Brand Strength.

Leading Change isn’t a Spectator Sport
During these times of unprecedented change, leaders of organizations have the opportunity to refresh the focus and spirit of members of their workforce resulting in a higher-motivated workforce delivering superior service. This session focuses on identifying common scenarios related to managing change initiatives and how to translate the forces for change into a tailwind with practical, tactical and impactful ideas you can begin using tomorrow.

Revolutionizing Government in the 21st Century
The future has arrived and with it, an emerging role for the local government manager. Visionary leaders realize that today playing it safe is no longer playing it smart. Increased scrutiny, expanding regulations, a shifting political landscape, and significant workforce challenges add up to a valuable opportunity to activate change, drive innovation, and successfully lead your organization towards a better future. This session will provide a powerful combination of a sound strategy along with a series of integrated tactics designed to disrupt the status quo and optimize your capabilities in your role for the 21st century.

Sense of Place: The Value of Government
Besides its function as a democratic institution, the role of government is to be the protagonist for a better quality of life for citizens. In that pursuit, beyond the delivery of public services and programs, government also creates a sensory experience, which requires the investment of tax dollars. In this session, Patrick Ibarra will provide a roadmap on transitioning the discussion from the cost or price of government and toward the value of government.

Six Ways to Engineer Employee Engagement
According to the latest Gallup report on government workers’ engagement, a median of only 29 percent of them are engaged at work.   Disengaged employees stay for what they get from the organization. Engaged workers stay for what they can give.  While high employee engagement doesn’t guarantee high organizational performance, there is a strong linkage: an engaged workforce increases innovation, productivity and overall effectiveness.  In this session, six actions are shared that organizational leaders can implement immediately to improve employee engagement.

“We’ve Always Done It This Way” is Over: Transforming from Status Quo to Status Go
During these times of unprecedented and disruptive change, leaders at all levels of government must improve their ability to manage a perplexing paradox – how to stay focused on today’s business while building tomorrow’s.  Leaders must be vigilant and disrupt the fossilized mental model of “we’ve always done it that way” and replace it with a progressive approach to continuous improvement. In this session, seven actions are shared that organizational leaders can implement to translate the headwinds of change into a tail wind and create the recipe required for future success.

Your Leadership Playbook
As catalysts for continuous improvement, government leaders are facing significant challenges during these uncertain times and are searching for a simple, powerful and productive approach to leadership in the 21st Century. Using football as the basis, Your Leadership Playbook provides a series of synchronized leadership practices that enable leaders to propel their organization and workforce forward in all directions.

Best Practices: The Enemy of Innovation
The problem with best practices is that they often merely masquerade as innovation. In the wrong hands, they become a shield to deflect critics, as though one can expect to be granted management immunity by proclaiming the use of supposedly tried-and-proven solutions. But a cut-and-paste approach to better government is emblematic of status-quo thinking, the “we’ve-always-done-it-that-way” mindset that serves as a powerful deterrent to meaningful change.  This session shows how progressive government leaders are taking a sharp pivot away from best practices and toward “next practices” in their efforts to build stronger, more effective organizations.

Creativity and Cooking: A Recipe for Success
Where cooking has become somewhat of a lost art, so has the emphasis on leveraging creativity as an essential ingredient to powerful and productive problem solving.  Using cooking as a framework, the goals of this session are for participants to enlarge their perspective and expand their creative problem-solving approach to issues impacting their organization and community.  In particular, on how to learn to replace the status quo thinking of “we’ve always done it that way” standard operating procedure with an 8-Step approach to cooking up your creative juices.

Government: Factory, Enterprise or Both?
The tendency for government officials, elected or appointed, to try to play it safe by seeking guaranteed outcomes leads to an over-reliance on rules, regulations, policies and procedures. The result, too often, is a “factory” approach to the delivery of government services. This session identifies several proven methods successful government leaders use to create a hybrid approach to running their governments or agencies, blending a healthy mix of factory and enterprise — combining science and art — to provide high-quality government by designing and steering their organizations to generate better results.

R.A.P.I.D. Innovation
Converting Ideas into Results: Governments are in business…in the business of public service. Whether in lean times or flush times, playing it safe is no longer playing it smart. Dramatic change is necessary today and through the use of RAPID Innovation, leaders can inject a booster rocket into their organizational mind-set of problem-solving.  Based on extensive research, RAPID Innovation is a fresh, problem solving tool designed to generate immediate dividends all through the directed efforts of your workforce.

RAPID is an acronym for:

  • Ramp up the Idea Generator
  • Analyze the Impact
  • Prepare the solution
  • Implement the solution
  • D – do it again

Running Government Like a Start Up
At first glance, the techniques for starting a successful business might not seem to have much in common with leading effective, transformational government. But the two actually have a great deal in common — not least the atmosphere of volatility and uncertainty in which both increasingly must operate.  For government leaders who are looking to restart their organizations, the four foundational principles of successful business startups covered in this session will serve as a valuable guide.

Replenish Your Passion: Your Personal CEO
What’s influencing your everyday life?  Are you numb from the seemingly endless and predictable series of handling Chores, Expectations and Obligations?  Do you want to transition towards a more rewarding personal and professional life?  This session will feature a powerful booster shot to your entire life by learning how to adopt a new CEO full of Challenges, Experiences and Opportunities that naturally replenishes your spirit.  Launching this fresh CEO will restore the positive arc to your life’s trajectory as you explore life’s adventures.  Patrick will focus on the 12 Ways to unleash your new CEO including your Self, Mind, Body, Soul, Spouse or Partner, Children, Family, Career, Community, Environment, Technology and the Human Race.

As consultants to government organizations, the members of the Mejorando Group provide expertise in all aspects of performance improvement and organizational effectiveness services, including government succession planning, leadership and management development and training, strategic planning, performance coaching and group/development/team building.