Why your city needs a chief organisational culture officer

By: Neil Kleiman and Alexander Shermansong, New York University Urban Policy professors

Ask almost any city leader what their biggest frustration is, and you are likely to get an earful about organisational culture and how daily work habits and attitudes are what stops progress dead in its tracks. Then ask that same mayor or manager what’s being done about it, and they shrug.

Most public officials notice when culture is not conducive to innovation and high performance, but rarely do they find the levers that enable change.

To address this issue, we developed a first-of-its-kind guide to organisational change, dubbed the “Culture Cascade”. It is a nine-step process that begins with a clear vision and set of values, and proceeds to communications with staff throughout the agency, leading to changed HR, technology and training regimes.

But the framework – the entire culture improvement effort – will not succeed without one essential element: the ecosystem engineer.

The ecosystem engineer is the designated champion and the one responsible for innovation, performance and for transforming the operating ecosystem – essentially for driving culture change organisation-wide.

An ecosystem engineer needs to be adept at translating, connecting and motivating staff at all levels and in every role. And, most importantly, they must have the power and support of the chief executive behind them.

Central role

We want to be clear what the role isn’t. The engineer needs space from day-to-day fires to focus on organisational reforms, so head of HR or Chief Operations Officer is not the right fit.

The role is also distinct from that of the many other ‘chiefs’ that have been appointed in the past couple of decades. Many cities now have chief innovation, data and/or equity officers. Often these new chief roles are specialised offices of two or three people focused on a specific initiative or project.

The engineer must be at the core, not the periphery of governing, and able to directly influence everything within government – from how staplers get ordered to new public financing schemes.

To get specific about the role, we have outlined the following responsibilities:

• Clarify the new mindset: Define two to five central behaviours or mindsets that are needed to deliver the citizen experience and mayor’s values. The key is to be concrete. For example, to set daily and weekly targets to foster a culture of continuous improvement. Or to ask residents for feedback after each interaction to create a culture of customer service.
• Modelling behaviour change: Workshop new behaviours with senior staff so they can model it in day-to-day work – you must walk the talk every single day.
• Establish a decision mechanism that embodies the culture change: Department executives can demonstrate how the culture drives strategic and tactical decisions with a highly visible decision mechanism like CitiStat or annual resident surveys. Then visibly link intended behaviours to the decision mechanism. This is where the cultural values get real for whole teams and departments. For example, mayors can explain budget choices in relation to the culture they are creating by embedding values into budget presentations and linking allocations to values.
• Incentives are critical: Create feedback loops to celebrate the right behaviour in frontline staff as well as to identify barriers that need to be removed. Since incentives in the public sector tend to be less cash-oriented than in the private sector, it’s critical to provide mission-based incentives. This could include frequent, formal recognition for specific actions tied to the culture, e.g. new ideas for a culture of innovation, or exemplifying a problem-solving culture when addressing a resident’s complaint.
• Training matters: Collaborate with HR and unions to develop citywide training around the behaviour or mindset. Each year, provide soft skills professional development, in addition to technical training, to ensure employees have the resources they need to thrive under new culture expectations.
• Job postings count: Update key job descriptions to reflect the values. Beginning with highly visible and high turnover roles, embed the culture into the job description, recruiting methods, screening, interviews, and orientation.

While this plan may seem straightforward – it is anything but. There is a reason virtually every city in America has avoided organisational and cultural change.

It demands serious strategic planning and a new team of leaders who will enact new edicts, ways of communicating and operational processes. Other than the guide we issued there isn’t much in the way of training. That is what we propose now. There is a need to work directly with officials coast-to-coast to assess organisational readiness, draft new change plans, monitor progress and problem solve, and to share practices from city to city.

We are planning to work with cities and professional organisations on this effort and welcome feedback as we aim to create this new movement of organisational improvements and support.

The authors welcome discussion and feedback on Twitter: @alexshermansong and @NeilKleiman

Image: Flynt | Dreamstime.com