Before You Tear Down the Fence

Growing up in Kentucky, local politics was mostly background noise. There was a mayor. Probably a city council. Things got done or they didn't, and life went on.

When I moved to Kansas nearly two decades ago, I encountered something I'd never really noticed before: the office of city manager. I probably assumed every city had one, as though there's a standard template somewhere that all municipalities are working off of. I never stopped to ask what the difference actually was, who had real authority, or why the structure existed at all.

That's a funny thing to admit, given that I've spent my career thinking about organizational structure, in healthcare leadership, small business consulting, and pastoral ministry. Structure shapes everything: who has power, who gets heard, what gets prioritized, and who's accountable when things go wrong.

Somehow I'd never applied that curiosity to the city I live in. Then I listened to Wide Open.

A Fence Across the Road

Produced by Sevenfold, a strategy consultancy here in Wichita, Wide Open is hosted by Evan Rosell and explores one question across four episodes: should Kansas communities stick with the council-manager form of government, or shift to a strong mayor model?

Rosell opens the final episode with Chesterton's Fence. Chesterton describes a reformer who comes upon a fence in the middle of a road and declares it useless. His response? Don't touch it until you understand why it was built.

I've bumped into this principle throughout my career. New leadership comes in, sees a process that looks inefficient, and dismantles it, only to discover six months later that the "inefficiency" was actually load-bearing.

The council-manager form of government is, in this metaphor, a very old fence. Built in the early 1900s in response to political corruption and rapid urbanization, it sought to professionalize city administration. Kansas was an early adopter. Wichita shifted to the model in 1917. The fence went up for very specific reasons and has stood for over a century.

So when conversations emerge, as they have recently in Wichita, Lawrence, and Prairie Village, about whether to rethink that structure, Chesterton's question becomes urgent: do we understand why the fence is there before we start pulling at it?

What the Debate Is Really About

Here's what I didn't expect: this podcast isn't actually an argument for either side.

Rosell's guests are Dr. Russell Arben Fox, professor of political science at Friends University in Wichita; Dr. John Nalbandian, professor emeritus at the University of Kansas and former mayor and commissioner of Lawrence, Kansas; and Kathy Sexton, ICMA-CM, senior management consultant at the WSU Public Policy and Management Center and former city manager of Derby, Kansas. None of them give you a clean verdict. What they give you is a framework for asking better questions.

The short version: in a council-manager form, a professional non-elected city manager runs daily operations while the mayor plays a consensus-building, big-picture role. In a strong mayor form, the mayor is the chief executive with real hiring, budget, and veto authority.

Dr. Fox argues the strong mayor model is ultimately about representation and accountability. People need to say "this is my mayor" and know that person has the tools to actually do what they were elected to do. Without real power, accountability is hollow. Kathy Sexton counters that professional management, insulated from political winds, is what keeps cities running with stability and expertise across administrations.

Both arguments are serious. Both are grounded in something real.

The Story That Changed How I Heard All of It

About three-quarters through the final episode, Dr. Nalbandian tells a story. It's 1993. There's been a flood in Lawrence. He's exhausted. A resident calls and asks if he'd come see the damage near 4th and Michigan. He almost says no.

He goes. Ten people are waiting. They walk him through flooded basements, furniture piled in the backyard, everything soaked and ruined. Think about what that moment must have felt like. Homes damaged, belongings destroyed, and then the mayor shows up. Not to fix anything. Not because he had the technical answers. Just to walk through it with them, to bear witness. By the time he's done, the group of ten has grown to thirty.

Thirty years later, he's in a library. A woman in her fifties recognizes him. She used to live on Michigan Street. She has tears in her eyes.

"It didn't matter what I did," he says. "It mattered that I showed up."

That's the center of the whole season. Not the org charts. Not the governance models. The person who shows up.

I've seen this in every context I've worked in, healthcare, small business, the church. Structures matter. They shape where authority flows, who gets heard, how decisions get made. But structures don't show up after the flood. People do.

The Harder Question

Rosell brings in Jim Collins near the end, distinguishing between executive leadership (formal authority, top-down direction) and legislative leadership (influence through relationships and coalition-building), mapping them roughly onto the two models.

But here's the line that landed hardest. Collins writes that Level 5 leaders are "ambitious first and foremost for the cause, the mission, the work, not themselves." And then he asks: "Why should those over whom you have no direct power give themselves over to a decision that is primarily about you?"

That's the question underneath every leadership structure debate I've ever been part of. Are we trying to find the right model, or are we trying to find more power for someone who already wants it?

The answer to that question matters more than which box you check on the governance form.

So What Do We Do With This?

Rosell never tells you what to think. That's a feature, not a bug. His goal, and Sevenfold's broader mission as I understand it, is to help leaders ask better questions, not hand them pre-packaged answers.

The fence deserves to be examined. But Chesterton's point stands. You examine it by understanding why it was built, what it's still doing, and what you'd actually replace it with. Not by tearing it down because change feels like progress.

Communities that engage seriously with those questions tend to be stronger for it. So do organizations, teams, churches, and healthcare systems.

I'm not done thinking about this one. Which, I suspect, is exactly the point.

What's a "fence" in your organization or community that you've questioned lately, and did you take the time to understand it before deciding whether to tear it down?

About Enthusiastic Generalist: This blog explores ideas across disciplines, science, leadership, faith, parenting, book reviews, personal essays, and the occasional deep dive into whatever I find genuinely interesting about the world. It's what happens when a former pastor, HR professional, healthcare leader, and small-business strategist can't stop asking questions. If this post made you think, subscribe for more unexpected connections from someone who refuses to pick just one lane.