Lamont’s scorecard written in invisible ink
Could everybody please sit down!
We need to start, so ... if you just just find your seat.
Folks? If you could just ... this meeting is about leadership and captaincy so ... it doesn’t look good if people won’t sit down.
Thank you. My name is Mackinaw Manitoba. I’m with Hexagon Consulting, and we’ve been asked to bootstrap this meeting on the first 100 days of the Lamont administration.
We’re going to go ahead and get started here although some of our participants are going to be late due to the rock excavation of the Metro-North New Haven line, the collapse of the Norwalk Walk Bridge, the plague of locusts on Route 9 and the human chain of toll protestors lying across Route 72. Also, 95 is stop and go both ways because a rabbit ran across the road in New Rochelle four hours ago.
Anyway, the point is, some folks will be late, but we’re getting started because that’s how you need to roll if you’re going to have the string of historic achievements that have been the watchword for the first 100 days.
So let’s begin. Kiley is over there at the dry-erase board, and I’m just going to have you blurt out some accomplishments. Just yell ’em out. Don’t be shy.
Just somebody go first because that’ll get us rolling.
You sir? You were just stretching? I get that.
You know what? Maybe starting with accomplishments is getting out over our skis a little. Let’s start instead with “things that didn’t go wrong” and we’ll just transition from there to accomplishments.
Great! We’ve got one. Say that a little louder, ma’am.
“Thought about taxing groceries, but didn’t do it.” Is that true? You were gonna tax food? But you didn’t!
That’s the key part. So write that one up there, Kiley.
Someone else? You? Let me just repeat that one back to you: “Tried to incent small school districts to regionalize back office functions but they told us to go” — can we pick a different word because I don’t think we want to look at that one on the dry-erase board all day — “ourselves.”
See, we were looking for things that could have gone wrong. That sounds more like a thing that could have gone right but didn’t. But write it up there anyway, Kiley.
OK, we’ve got one down at the end of the table. Speak up, please.
“Only 125 losers showed up for the anti-toll rally.” OK, I’m from out of town, so you might have to catch me up on this one. Mmmhmmm! So you promised not to do tolls on cars during the campaign, but then you totally changed that and some people got mad at you.
I’m going to put that in the plus column. Kiley write: “Major broken campaign promise and only a teensy rally.”
I think we’re momentuming now, and as a consultant, I know momentuming leads to solutioning, so let’s transition over to accomplishments. People have been telling me there are historic accomplishments, so let’s get them up on the board.
I think the man over here said, “Filled all the major positions.” So that’s what? A major accomplishment of this government is that there is government consisting of people who have agreed to be in it. I think how we phrase that is going to be key.
Someone else? “A billionaire-friendly environment.” Help me out: what does that mean?
I think I get it. The billionaires were threatening to move away, so you guys, in concert with the business community, came up with a plan of giving the billionaires whatever they want. And it’s working, right?
OK, one more, and then we’re going to break and check out this wonderful spread from Panera. Anybody? You, sir! Let me repeat that back. “Sticking to a strict agenda but also not ruling anything out while giving people confidence that the benefits are going there when they’re needed even if some of those benefits have to be cut in order to have a budget that begins to deal with our long-term issues and gives people confidence our commitments are going to be held even if, short term, we have to eliminate certain commitments, as long as the people know we will try anything, but we’re not flailing around.” Great, sir.
Could I ask your name? Oh, YOU’RE Governor Lamont! I had heard you were stuck on the Walk Bridge.