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Shelton: I'm Missy Shelton for KSMU's Sense of Community series. This morning, we began our conversation with Springfield City Manager Tom Finnie who will retire from his job as chief executive officer and administrative officer of the city on April 24th. He's served as city manager for Springfield since 1990. During his tenure, Finnie has overseen the turnaround of Center City and the creation of Jordan Valley Park. Now here's more of my conversation with Tom Finnie…We pick up with Tom Finnie talking first about the difficulty of getting any group of people to work together and then he discusses how well the Springfield community works together.

Finnie: Human nature is not to work together. It's to make our own decision. It's a lot easier to look in the mirror and say, “I think today this is what I'm going to do.” And not have to go talk to your wife or your kids…just make your own decisions. It's fairly common that when you sit down and try to work through a decision with two or three groups, all of a sudden what looks right to you, doesn't look right to them. And then you have to start making compromising and that's painful. To me, community building is a little like a marriage. It's plain hard work. Sometimes you give more than the other person, sometimes you get more than the other person. It's not always 50/50. But it's always hard work. I really admire many of the people in Springfield. Jim Anderson comes to mind. He's done such a magnificent job of putting partnerships together and keeping them together. I think the best example in my mind is the industrial park. City Utilities, the chamber and the city went together as partners. There was a lot of criticism, a whole lot of criticism, it was a pretty divisive issue for a couple or three years, if not longer and there was a lot of pressure on that partnership. I know Jim had some members who dropped out of the chamber. I know we had some people who ran for office in opposition to it. Interestingly enough, it was very successful. A lot of that criticism started dissipating, not all of it but some of it. But then when we filled that first one up and it was time to do a second one, the chamber and City Utilities were much more interested in locating it next to the successful one. And that probably was the right thing to do. But by that time, we had done Vision 20/20 and there was a strong recommendation from Vision 20/20 to encourage more balanced growth to the north and west. So the city felt strongly that the new industrial park ought to be on the north side or the west side. And it's interesting…the internal strife between the three partners in many ways was more difficult and more of a challenge than the external criticism we received. I think probably the most important thing that came out of that was that the partnership survived that internal strife. We were able to continue talking. The principles knew each other. We had relationships. For a period of over a year, we talked, discussed, we were able to come to agreement on a site on the west side. It probably wasn't as good as the east side but it accomplished some other goals. In fact, today we have Airport Plaza with 700 jobs at T Mobile that I don't think would've been there if it hadn't been for the industrial park establishing some credibility for that development on that side of town. We've got the new airport midfield terminal that's going to be located in that area. We've seen the Lowe's and Applebee's. I believe that decision was a good decision. But more importantly, the partnership was able to work through that and continue to work together. I guess I say all that to say this working together is just plain damn hard work. There's nothing easy about it. It's painful sometimes. It takes a lot of discipline on a lot of people's part. All it takes is one organization going south and it can fracture the whole deal. This community should take pride in how well people work together. But they should not take it for granted that it's going to always happen. It's hard work and it requires a lot of commitment from a lot of people.

Shelton: Tom, obviously, to have a good community and these kinds of partnerships, you have to have good community leaders. What qualities does a good community leader need to possess?

Finnie: I look around at people that I admire. You look at the qualities they have. When I started working in Nashville, there was a finance director, Mr. Torrence and Mr. Deep who were real models for me. They had the ability to recognize a good idea but more importantly, they had the ability to fight through all the obstacles to get a good idea implemented. There are lots of good ideas. There is a dearth of people who have the ability to get those good ideas put into action. How do you get those ideas into action? I think you have to have the willingness to recognize someone else's good idea. I've not had a good idea that I can remember. I've been very fortunate to have been surrounded by people who are bright and do have good ideas. I give myself for saying, “I can recognize a good idea when I see it. I don't have any pride about it. Let's get their idea on the table and get it done.” Keeping your ego out of it, allowing other people to get involved is very important to good leadership. Probably tenacity and stubbornness, the ability to surround yourself with good people and let them blossom is probably the art of leadership. I admire people who do that and do it well.

Shelton: Who do you look up to as a good example of a leader?

Finnie: This town is just blessed with some tremendous people, in the private sector, on the not-for-profit side and on the government side. The city management team is as good a group of people I've ever worked with and I've worked in much larger cities. The private sector in this town is remarkable. When I look back I can talk about Joe Torrence and Ferris Deep, they did have the ability to see a good idea and to put together the resources and the stubbornness to get things down. I really admire that. And they did it without breaking the rules. I think I was very fortunate…I've never had a job or worked for anybody that ever asked me to do anything even remotely wrong much less illegal. Starting your career surrounded by people who were doing things right was wonderful. Probably the best experiences I had was Mr. Torrence's secretary was a lady named Mrs. Madamore. The day she died I called her Mrs. Madamore. I couldn't imagine calling her by her first name. I remember as a young analyst going down and I had an assignment and asking her if she could get me some information. She said she'd be glad to do that. It was similar to some information that someone had asked her for in my same job a few years earlier. She said she never did know why they wanted the information. I said, “I'd be glad to tell you why I want the information.” And I explained it to her. And she said, “Give me two days and I can get what you really need.” What I really needed was only about a third of what I had identified. It was a tremendous eye-opener to me to realize that this lady knew more about what I needed than I would ever know. She didn't have a college degree. She didn't have a high position or a big title but she knew what was going on. She helped me get that job done and in fact, I was successful where my predecessor had failed because Mrs. Madamore didn't get him the information because she didn't know what the right question was. So by her asking and my sharing, it was a whole big new insight. Today, I still live by that. Most people know Wanda Merritt, my executive assistant. Wanda is the real city manager. She and Bob Cumley are the brains behind the outfit. I feel so strongly about that my business card has Wanda's name and number on it and I tell people, “You can call me and it may take a while or you can call Wanda and get a better answer a lot quicker.” It's not your position, not your education, it's your abilities and that comes in all different places. You need to keep your eyes and ears open for good ideas. And it doesn't always come from your level or above but most of time, from a different level and that's really an important issue in my mind.

Shelton: You're getting ready to retire and looking back on your career, all the way to where you started with this feeling of an obligation to make the world better and you were laughing and saying that was so idealistic. Do you still have any of that idealism in place?

Finnie: Yes. And I'm glad. If you had the choice, I'd rather be optimistic, idealistic than the other way. There's still a lot of that in me.

Shelton: Do you feel confident you've been able to accomplish something, make the world a better place?

Finnie: I think so. What I learned very early and this is good. You're not going to do that by yourself. Coming out of school, I think I saw myself as a Lone Ranger, doing everything by myself, my way. It's important to recognize early, you're not going to get those things done by yourself. You're going to get it done working with other people but it's still good to have those goals and the group can have those goals. At the risk of sounding na�ve…I think the economic partnership, Jim Anderson and Bob Rountree would say the same thing I'm saying…they feel really good about those jobs. It's not the buildings or the property tax. What you feel really good about is you made a difference for, not just those 2400 people but most of them have families. They're able to have a higher standard of living, a higher quality of life…gosh, that feels good, just to be a small part of that.

Shelton: What does the future hold for Tom Finnie as he retires?

Finnie: We're going to stay here in Springfield. This is home for us. I did agree to work for Bob Cumley, the new city manager, part time. I'll be working on economic development and downtown. So, I'll do that for a while. I enjoy volunteer work. I'm really looking forward to what a lot of people tell me is the best part of retirement…you have enough time to start a project and finish it. I'm looking forward to that.

Shelton: Tom, thank you so much.

Finnie: You're welcome.

Shelton: I've been speaking with Tom Finnie, Springfield City Manager. He'll be retiring on April 24th. Our conversation is online at KSMU dot org.

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