Perspectives from the field.

Every CAO recruitment begins with a position profile. Most of them look remarkably similar: a list of required qualifications, a summary of responsibilities, and a description of the ideal candidate that could apply to almost any senior public sector role. That is a problem.

The best CAO for your community is not the best CAO in the abstract. They are the right person for your specific organization, at this particular moment, given the challenges your council or board is facing and the culture your staff has built. Finding that person starts with understanding those things clearly — before you write a single line of the position profile.

We ask councils and boards to think about four things before a search begins. First, what is the primary challenge the new CAO will face in their first two years? Is it a major capital project, a difficult labour environment, a council in transition, a community under financial pressure? The answer shapes what you are looking for.

Second, what is the culture of your organization — and what kind of leader does that culture need? A highly capable administrator who thrives in a collaborative, consensus-driven environment may struggle in an organization that needs decisive, directive leadership. The reverse is equally true. Culture fit is not a soft consideration. It is often the difference between a successful tenure and an early departure.

Third, what is the working style of your council or board, and what kind of relationship do you want to build with your CAO? Some councils and boards want a CAO who brings strong opinions and pushes back. Others want a CAO who executes direction with precision and efficiency. Neither is wrong — but the mismatch between the governing body's expectations and the CAO's natural style is one of the most common sources of relationship breakdown.

Fourth, are you replacing a long-tenured CAO? If so, the organization may have developed patterns and dependencies that a new leader will need to navigate carefully. That context matters when assessing candidates.

None of this replaces the standard assessment of qualifications and experience. It supplements it. The goal is not to find the most credentialled candidate — it is to find the right one.

Organizational reviews are frequently triggered by a specific problem: a service delivery failure, a staff retention crisis, a new council or board with concerns about how the organization is structured, or a CAO who has identified inefficiencies they want to address. The trigger matters, because it shapes what the review should actually examine.

Before commissioning a review, we encourage organizations to work through five questions.

What specific outcome are we trying to achieve? A review that is commissioned to "look at the organization" without a clearer mandate tends to produce a report that describes what already exists rather than identifying what needs to change. The more specific the question, the more useful the answer.

Who needs to be involved, and how? Organizational reviews that are conducted without meaningful engagement from staff tend to produce recommendations that staff do not trust and councils or boards cannot implement. Engagement does not mean consensus — it means that the people closest to the work have had a genuine opportunity to contribute.

What are we prepared to do with the findings? A review that produces recommendations the council or board is not prepared to act on is worse than no review at all. It raises expectations, consumes staff time and energy, and then delivers nothing. Before starting, be honest about what changes are actually on the table.

What is the right timing? Organizational reviews conducted during periods of significant instability — a CAO vacancy, a contentious election, a major labour dispute — rarely produce their best results. If the timing is wrong, it is worth waiting.

Who should conduct it? The answer depends on what you are reviewing. Some reviews benefit from an external perspective that has no stake in the outcome. Others benefit from someone who understands local government operations deeply enough to distinguish a structural problem from a management problem. Often, the best approach combines both.

The Local Government Act is reasonably clear about the formal division of responsibilities between council and the Chief Administrative Officer. Council sets policy and direction. The CAO manages the organization and implements council's decisions. In practice, the line is rarely that clean.

Councils and boards cross into administration when they direct staff directly rather than through the CAO, when they involve themselves in operational decisions that belong to management, or when individual members act as if they have authority that belongs to the governing body as a whole. These crossings are usually well-intentioned. They are also usually harmful.

CAOs cross into governance when they make decisions that properly belong to council, when they manage the flow of information in ways that limit council's ability to exercise its judgment, or when they allow their own policy preferences to shape what options they present. These crossings are also usually well-intentioned. They are also usually harmful.

The consequences of persistent boundary confusion are predictable: staff who do not know who to take direction from, councils and boards who feel they are not getting the information they need, CAOs who feel undermined, and organizations that spend more energy managing internal dynamics than serving the public.

There is also an accountability problem that is less often named directly. When a council or board — or individual members — involve themselves in operational matters, they compromise the very accountability they are supposed to exercise. A CAO cannot be held responsible for outcomes they did not control. If the governing body has been managing the file, the governing body owns the result. The accountability relationship that makes local government work depends on a clear separation: council or board decides, the CAO delivers, and the governing body evaluates. Blur those roles and you do not just create confusion — you make meaningful accountability impossible.

The most effective councils, boards, and CAOs we have worked with share a common characteristic: they have had explicit conversations about how the relationship will work. Not just the formal provisions of the legislation, but the practical questions — how information will flow, how disagreements will be surfaced, how the CAO will signal when a decision is moving into operational territory, and how the governing body will signal when it feels it is not getting what it needs.

Those conversations are most valuable at the beginning of a new council term, a new board, or a new CAO appointment. They are also valuable when the relationship is under strain. The willingness to have them — on both sides — is itself a signal of a healthy governance culture.

British Columbia has approximately 160 municipalities, 27 regional districts, and a range of other local government bodies. Each of them needs senior leaders. The pool of people with the experience, judgment, and track record to fill those roles at the most senior levels is not large — and it is not growing as quickly as the demand for it.

This creates a competitive environment that many local governments are not fully prepared for. The assumption that a well-written posting will attract a strong field of applicants is increasingly unreliable. The most experienced candidates have options. They are not searching job boards. And they are paying close attention to how organizations conduct their searches — because the quality of the process signals something about the quality of the organization.

Reaching those candidates requires an active search strategy built on direct outreach through networks developed over years of working in the sector. That kind of reach cannot be manufactured quickly, and it cannot be replicated by posting a vacancy and waiting. The organizations that consistently attract strong candidates are the ones that start with a genuine understanding of what they are offering — the community, the challenges, the council or board, the support the incoming leader will receive — and can articulate that clearly and honestly to someone who did not apply.

Senior candidates are evaluating the opportunity as carefully as the organization is evaluating them. They want to understand what they would be walking into, who they would be working with, and whether the role is one they can succeed in. Organizations that can answer those questions directly, and that treat candidates as the professionals they are, have a significant advantage over those that cannot.

Process matters more than most organizations realize. Slow timelines, poor communication between stages, and disorganized interviews are noticed — and they affect whether strong candidates remain engaged through to an offer. A process that respects candidates' time is not a courtesy. It is a competitive signal.

None of this is complicated. But it requires deliberate effort, and it requires starting with an honest assessment of what your organization is offering and what kind of leader it actually needs. The organizations that do that work before the search begins consistently achieve better outcomes than those that do not.

One of the most consistent observations we make across BC local governments is the gap between the demand for experienced senior leaders and the supply of people who are ready to step into those roles. That gap does not appear suddenly. It develops over years, in organizations that have not invested sufficiently in developing the managers who will eventually become their directors and CAOs.

The reasons for underinvestment are understandable. Development takes time and money. The benefits are long-term and diffuse. The pressures of day-to-day operations are immediate and concrete. And there is always a risk that you develop someone and they leave.

That last concern is worth examining. The alternative — not developing people — does not reduce turnover. It accelerates it. Talented managers who do not see a path forward, who are not being challenged and supported, leave anyway. They just leave less prepared.

Effective development in local government is not primarily about formal training programs, though those have their place. It is about deliberate exposure to the full range of organizational challenges: budget processes, council relations, labour negotiations, community engagement, capital planning. It is about giving emerging leaders real responsibility and real accountability, with appropriate support.

It is also about mentorship — connecting developing managers with experienced practitioners who can help them make sense of what they are experiencing, build their judgment, and navigate the particular complexities of public sector leadership. That kind of relationship is difficult to replicate in a classroom. The most valuable learning in local government tends to happen in conversation: working through a difficult council relationship, figuring out how to deliver hard news to a governing body, learning to read an organization's culture and work with it rather than against it. Those are not skills that come from a course. They come from experience, and from having someone alongside who has been there.

The organizations that do this well share a common characteristic: their senior leaders see developing the next generation as part of their job, not a distraction from it. That orientation, more than any specific program or initiative, is what separates the organizations that consistently produce strong leaders from those that are perpetually searching for them.

When a council or board recruits a CAO, the search is visible, formal, and often politically charged. When a CAO recruits a director, or a director recruits a senior manager, the process tends to be quieter — but the stakes are no less significant. The people in those roles shape service delivery, staff culture, and the organization's capacity to execute. Getting the hire right matters.

The questions a CAO or department head should ask before a search begins are different from the ones we pose to councils and boards, but they follow the same logic: understand what you actually need before you start looking.

What does the team need right now — and what will it need in two years? A team that is technically strong but lacks coordination may need a director who leads through structure and process. A team that is cohesive but risk-averse may need someone who challenges assumptions and drives change. The vacancy is an opportunity to be deliberate about that, not just to replace what was there before.

What is the relationship between this role and council or board? Some director-level positions carry significant public and political exposure — planning, finance, communications. Others are primarily internal. The candidate who thrives in one environment may not thrive in the other. If the role requires someone who can present to council, manage media inquiries, or navigate politically sensitive files, that needs to be assessed explicitly, not assumed.

What kind of leadership relationship do you want to build? CAOs and department heads vary considerably in how they work with their direct reports — how much autonomy they extend, how they prefer to receive information, how they handle disagreement. A new director who expects a high degree of independence working for a CAO who prefers close coordination is a mismatch that will surface quickly. Being honest about your own style, and assessing candidates against it, is not a soft consideration. It is a practical one.

Is the organization ready to receive a new leader? If the team has been through significant disruption — a difficult departure, a period of interim leadership, a restructuring — the incoming director will need to rebuild trust and stability before they can drive change. That context should shape both who you look for and how you support them in the early months.

The same principle that applies to CAO recruitment applies here: the best candidate is not the most credentialled one in the abstract. It is the right person for your organization, your team, and this particular moment. Finding them requires the same deliberate approach — and the same willingness to do the thinking before the search begins.