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Minutes 11-12-03 VALUES TNTEGRATZON MEETZNG HELD I'N THE LZBRARY PROGRAM ROOM BOYNTON BEACH, FLORZDA ON NOVEMBER 12, 2003 AT 3:00 P.M. Present at the Meetina: Meeting Facilitators: Welcome Tom Balfe, Bill Bingham, Mark Bobich, Dan DeCarlo, Dominic DeMauro, Carol Doppler, Brenda Gibbs, Bonnie Glinski, Dan Hager, John Jordan, Alan Karjalainen, Bob Kenyon, Arthur Lee, Carisse Le_,leune, Jeff Livergood, Christina Mayers, Mark Pyne, Chris Roberts, Robbie Robertson, Brenton Rolle, Wayne Segal, Francie litcomb Wilfred Hawkins, Assistant City Manager Patricia Spoerri, Professional Development Mr. Hawkins opened the meeting at 3:00 p.m. and welcomed the participants. A sign-in sheet was circulated. A compilation of the input from all the areas in the City was provided to each participant. Mr. Hawkins tendered a hearty "Thank You" to all the people that had worked on the project, saying that he was proud of the tangible result of their efforts and greatly appreciated the amount of effort and time that went into producing it. He noted that the Operations Teams and all participants had made history, since this had never been done in the City before. He felt that some outstanding ideas had surfaced through their efforts and that they had made a significant step in the right direction. All present shared in a round of applause. Goal of Reconciliation Team Mr. Hawkins explained that the Reconciliation Team would now sift through the information from each of the departments and search for common themes. Eventually, the Reconciliation Team will distill the information contained .in the compilation of values into a document that can serve as a reference for everyone in the City. The Reconciliation Team will contact the various departments if they are unable to understand the reports that have been submitted or feel that more content is necessary. The compilation of each department's values will continue to serve as a source document, from which a Mission Statement and Goal(s) Statement for the City will be derived. In a follow-on effort, the City will then undertake work on its Vision Statement(s). Mr. Hawkins invited the participants to comment on the experience. Meeting Minutes Consolidated Values Teams Update Boynton Beach, Florida November 12, 2003 Open Discussion and Feedback Dan DeCarlo likened this process to his neighborhood meetings where the focus was on how a diverse group of people could work together harmoniously to achieve its goals. Mr. DeCarlo felt that the neighborhood groups and the City had a shared mission to formulate and express a common identity. Each is trying to identify its values and determine its identity, a key component of making an impact on the community at large. Each has to decide "Who We Are" and "What We Value." In the neighborhood meetings it was a challenge to get the group to work together in such a way that the few people with problems did not drive the majority. Mr. DeCarlo thought that the exportation of the City's values into the community was vitally important and would have broad impact. Throughout the meeting various people referenced Mr. DeCarlo's remarks and agreed with them. Chief Bingham stated that the Communications Team could spend a lot of time marketing the value ideas, but the end result would only be as successful as the employees who were expressing those values on a daily basis in their jobs. They need to communicate the values to everyone, encourage them, and facilitate their expression. Also, Chief Bingham referred to the disparity in the size of the departments in the City, saying that it would be relatively easy to communicate and implement the values information in the smaller departments, and more difficult in the larger ones. Dan Hager felt that the values work would serve as filters that could be used by each employee as different situations arise in the workplace. He expressed concern, though, with whether the supervisors had too much involvement with the input in certain departments. Mr. Hawkins appreciated that point and stated that the Reconciliation Team would be sensitive to this when reviewing the input and in certain cases, might call the departments for clarification. Arthur Lee stated that the values had to go UP as well as DOWN in the organization, including the City Manager and the Commissioners and that this was of particular importance with the new Commission. He was not confident that this had always happened in the past. He also spoke of the importance of establishing an identity for the City. Mr. Hawkins said that it was like building a house of either wood or concrete. He prefers concrete because it lasts longer. He wanted to think the City was going from building a wooden house to a concrete house, with the blocks being the individuals and the concrete being the values that hold the house together. The values will form a common foundation that glues the blocks together to make a strong house. Meeting Minutes Consolidated Values Teams Update Boynton Beach, Florida November 12, 2003 Brenton Rolle stated that values could not be legislated. Regardless of what is put down on paper, people cannot be made to do it. Each employee has to first "buy in" to the values and the people above them have to buy in also. He felt it was important that all employees be exposed to and involved in the values work to facilitate this buy in. Participating in the process was a learning experience for his area and it gave them an opportunity to feel a part of a worthwhile process. Chris Roberts stated that Public Works was a very large and diverse department. Before they submitted their value statements, each person representing the various departments met with the employees in their respective departments. Each employee had an opportunity to read the value statements and offer input. Some of this input was used to make changes in the original value statements. At first the understanding of the process was not clear and there was some positive, but probably more negative, feedback. .]eft Livergood commented that there was a lot of the feeling, "Leave me alone and let me do my job" and "! don't care." Carisse Le.]eune commented that even if every employee in the larger departments had not been touched during this process, the Communications Team was working on implementing a process to draw in everybody else and even make it fun to become involved. She stated that it would be up to the participants at this meeting and the rest of their teams to lead by example. People will be watching to see that they were expressing the values and would probably point it out if they were NOT using them. Dominic DeMauro said that a process similar to that of Public Works was followed in Finance with similar results. He commented that a lot of attention was paid to whether the people presenting the values had actually bought in to them or not. Bob Kenyon stated that some people had a bad taste left over from Architecture for Excellence and were still thinking that this was "the flavor of the day." Mark Bobich stated that the way they explained it was that it was a starting point. Chief Bingham stated that the City had started too many things and not finished them. He felt it was imperative that everyone involved in the process adhere to the project timetables and actually produce something that will be incorporated and used. Anything short of that would be unacceptable and would feed the cynicism of those who are not on board with it now. Mr. Hawkins asked that everyone retain the agenda for today's meeting since it contained important deadlines. He stated that he was looking to the people in the room to be examples and leaders for this process. The City needs people in the organization Meeting Minutes Consolidated Values Teams Update Boynton Beach, Florida November 12, 2003 to stand up for these values and help reinforce them. This will help to convince the cynics that this is here to stay, that it will be an integral part of the way the City is run from now on. Pat Spoerri stated that the cynical individuals were only seeing a conceptual thing, and did not yet see, feel, or touch this. For the people in this room it was a reality. When the Communications Team comes out with a plan of action and specific activities and instructions on how this will work and things begin to happen "on the ground," it will become a reality. It will eventually reach all individuals in the organizaUon. She felt it was important to give the process time to work. If measurements were taken in anything less than 18 months to 3 years, there would not be enough data. Mr. Hawkins thought this was well said and wholeheartedly agreed with Ms. Spoerri. He expressed his belief that this would be the way the City will walk, talk, breathe, and see in the future. He did not even want to call it a program. "This is who we are. This is our identity." That is what keeps it from being "the flavor of the month." Report from Communications Team Chief Bingham reported that the Team had met three times. They were charged with seeing that all employees in the City have the ways and means to implement the values. They have had meaningful conversations about this and have established a list of creative ideas for ways to get the message across to everyone. They plan to have some of the least costly ideas rolled out by the end of this year. They had viewed videos of other communities that had undertaken the same process and this was very useful. They had also taken on an extra responsibility of coming up with a template or design for the City's Mission and Value Statements. This will be a part of their position paper. The City's Vision will be determined in the future. They were meeting bi-weekly now and expected to meet on an ongoing basis for an undetermined period of time. Some committees will have an end point but they feel that their committee will have a role to play for quite some time to come. They understood that and accepted it. They expected to have their position paper completed by January 1. Then they will go into a monitoring phase. Chief Bingham hoped that the Reconciliation Team and CMLT would look at their position paper to make sure they were headed in the right direction. Mr. Hawkins related a story he had heard while networking around the country on this topic. There was a town in Virginia who successfully implemented the values approach. There was a hurricane and all the City employees were out helping to clean up in the aftermath. A visitor asked one of the workers why he was doing this work. The man stated that aside from getting paid, he was helping in the cleanup because it was a part of his City's culture and a part of the way they had agreed to work together. This is what Mr. Hawkins hopes to hear from all of the employees in the City of Boynton Beach one day. The job of the Communications Team will be critical to the success of this 4 Meeting Minutes Consolidated Values Teams Update Boynton Beach, Florida November :12, 2003 effort and Mr. Hawkins expressed appreciation for their work and looked forward to seeing the results. Chris Roberts asked for more clarification on the role of the Reconciliation Team. Mr. Hawkins stated that the Reconciliation Team would go through the compilation of the submissions from each area and look for common themes. They will also look for things that are in "left field" or seem to indicate that people did not "get it." If they find those things, they will communicate with the department to clarify where they were coming from. The compilation of values will be the raw material from which the City's mission and values statements are derived. In its current form, it is not conducive to handing to someone and saying, "Read it." It needs to be netted down and presented in a way that will be understandable to all who see it. Eventually there will be a chapter on it in the APM. Pat Spoerri stated that the compilation of responses from the various departments would be a source document. Bob Kenyon was concerned about Mr. Hawkins comment about the Reconciliation Team on "left field" and creativity, not wanting to sacrifice the latter. He asked how "left field" would be defined. Carisse Le.leune responded that this group would define "left field," as a group. Dan Hager stated that perhaps someone in the City might have wdtten down something that did not make sense. The Reconciliation Team could make sure that this did not "get in." Mr. Hawkins stated that the Reconciliation Team report was due by December 17. The final document, called the Philosophy of Operations, will come out in February 2004. The Operations Teams will get back together with the Reconciliation Team before February. The Communications Team will keep in contact with the Reconciliation Team from time to time also. The participants viewed a video presentation. Video on the Integration of Values from City of Prince William in Canad~ A video presentation from a City that had undergone an identification of values process was shown to the participants. Supervisors were interviewed and shown while speaking of what their values were and how they were implementing them in their operations. Meeting Minutes Consolidated Values Teams Update Boynton Beach, Florida November 12, 2003 Francie Titcomb expressed her understanding of what the Reconciliation Team was going to do with the compilation of values statements from the individual organizations in the City. She understood that the Reconciliation Team was going to condense the document into a form that was easier to disseminate to the City at large. She asked how they would differentiate between the left field idea and innovative or creative ideas..3ust because an idea did not fit into the commonality of everybody else's there was no reason that it could not work in some way to serve as a tool for getting the information out, even if it seemed a little strange. Mr. Hawkins stated that he was defining "left field" as something that could not work or was not appropriate. He was defining it as making sure that people took this seriously and that what they did write down was workable. Ms. Titcomb stated that the compilation then was just a temporary document or sheaf of information until it could be reworked, rvlr. Hawkins stated that it was a source document. He compared it to the Constitution of the United States and the common rights that devolve to all, regardless of the State in which they live. There are certain rights that a person has. The City wants the common elements of the combined input to go through all the departments of the City. Ms. Titcomb verified that ultimately, it would not be a matter of illustrating one department at a time, but something that represents the City as a whole, and Mr. Hawkins agreed. Carisse Le3eune stated that they would be creating a Philosophy of Operations so that when an employee comes to orientation, they could give them a document and say, "These are our values. This is how we implement them." But, each department has created a document that shows the way that department wants to implement this in their operation. The department will keep their input and use it. The Communications Team might be able to add something to help them implement it, but the individual departmental input will continue to be used by the department. Patricia Spoerri stated that the Philosophy of Operations was a series of statements that outlines how the values will guide the decision-making process in the City of Boynton Beach and how the City will reflect the values. When the Reconciliation Team goes through the statements from the departments, they will search for common themes. In a Philosophy of Operations, there may be several statements and those support the mission statement and vision. They are your guidance. They are your decision-making tools. When in doubt, you reach for the values. Carisse Le.leune commented that the Reconciliation Team was a very diverse group and had a lot of "out of the box" thinkers. Nothing would be thrown out and everything would be considered. Meeting Minutes Consolidated Values Teams Update Boynton Beach, Florida November 12, 2003 Recognition of Pat Spoerri Mr. Hawkins asked that everyone join him in recognizing Ms. Pat Spoerri, who had done a tremendous amount of outstanding work to pull this process together. The participants gave Ms. Spoerri a big round of applause. The meeting concluded at 3:56 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Susan Collins Recording Secretary (111303) Attendance Sign-In Meeting Name: Date: Facilitator(s): Name An~ Arkensaw Graham Wayne ~eg~l Dave ~ Department/Extension Attendance Sign-In Meeting Name: Date: Facilitator(s): Name Bonnie Glinski R~,obert Robertson., ,, Carisse LeJeune Brenda Gibbs Alan Karjalainen Cathy M~/~avitt E'~I~n I~a~cuso Dan ~/a rio TomBalfe /~ ~' Mark Bobich Leslie Rogers Dennis Flushing Doug Solomon Department/Extension CONSLIDATED VALUES TEAMS UPDATE MEETING AGENDA November I;~, ;~003 Welcome ....................................................................... Wilfred Hawkins Review ~x Update Thanks to the Operations Teams for a .Job Well Done Open Discussions on the experience and feedback to date Role of the Reconciliation Team Due Date for Reconciliation Report December 17. ;~003 Open Discussion and O[~A Report from the Communications Team .................Chief Bingham Due Date for Communications Team Position Paper Januaru ;=004 Open Discussion Publish the Philosophu of Operations Due Date I=ebruarg ;~004 Video on the integration of Values in Prince William Citu