Case: Hillton’s Transformation
Twenty years ago Hillton was a small city (about 70,000 residents) that served as an outer to a large Midwest metropolitan area. The city treated employees like family and gave them a great deal of autonomy in their work. Everyone in the organization (including the two labor unions representing employees) implicitly agreed that the leaders and supervisors of the organization should rise through the ranks based on their experience. Few people were ever hired from the outside into middle or senior positions. The rule of employment at Hillton was to learn the job skills, maintain a reasonably good work record, and wait your turn for promotion.
Hillton had grown rapidly since the mid-1970s. As the population grew, so did the municipality’s workforce to keep pace with the increasing demand for municipal services. This meant that employees were promoted fairly quickly and were almost guaranteed employment. In fact, until recently Hillton had never laid off any employee. The organization’s culture could be described as one of entitlement and comfort. Neither the elected city council members nor the city manager bothered the department managers about their work. There were few costs controls because rapid growth forced emphasis on keeping up with the population expansion. The public became somewhat more critical of the city’s poor services, including road construction at inconvenient times and the apparent lack of respect some employees showed towards taxpayers.
During these expansion years Hillton put most of its money into “outside” (also called “hard”) municipal services such as road building, utility construction and maintenance, fire and police protection, recreational facilities, and land use control. This emphasis occurred because an expanding population demanded more of these services, and most of Hillton’s senior people came from the outside services group. For example, Hillton’s city manager for many years was a road development engineer. The “inside” workers
Hillton had grown rapidly since the mid-1970s. As the population grew, so did the municipality’s workforce to keep pace with the increasing demand for municipal services. This meant that employees were promoted fairly quickly and were almost guaranteed employment. In fact, until recently Hillton had never laid off any employee. The organization’s culture could be described as one of entitlement and comfort. Neither the elected city council members nor the city manager bothered the department managers about their work. There were few costs controls because rapid growth forced emphasis on keeping up with the population expansion. The public became somewhat more critical of the city’s poor services, including road construction at inconvenient times and the apparent lack of respect some employees showed towards taxpayers.
During these expansion years Hillton put most of its money into “outside” (also called “hard”) municipal services such as road building, utility construction and maintenance, fire and police protection, recreational facilities, and land use control. This emphasis occurred because an expanding population demanded more of these services, and most of Hillton’s senior people came from the outside services group. For example, Hillton’s city manager for many years was a road development engineer. The “inside” workers