โข๐ฅ Who: Tim Bolduc (Crestview City Manager) and Jessica Leavins (HR Director).
โข๐ What: Released a book, A Solution Focused Culture, combining narrative and instruction for municipal reform.
โข๐๏ธ When: Published in November.
โข๐ Where: Based on experiences in Crestview, Florida.
โขโ Why: To guide other municipalities in shifting from a regulation-focused to a resource-oriented culture, improving services and community outcomes.
Crestview’s City Manager and Human Resources Director have released a new book that they hope will revolutionize the way cities do local government.
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Crestview City Manager Tim Bolduc and HR Director Jessica Leavins came up with the idea as they implemented a new form of government for the city, called the council-manager form of government, after a referendum in 2018.
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The book, called A Solution Focused Culture is half narrative and half instruction manual. The narrative half tells the story of Clearview, Florida, and a manager’s quest to change city employees’ mentality from focusing on regulating actions in the city to becoming a resource for residents and businesses.
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The instruction manual portion of the book outlines the steps needed for a city to implement the changes that the City of Crestview made that they say created a better place to live for residents and a better place to do business.
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“One day, I was stomping around the office, like I do from time to time, complaining about the way that sometimes we handle things,” Bolduc Remembers, “Jess came in and said, ‘Well, if you want us to do better, teach us to do better. What do we need to do?’ And so, that day, we wrote a training program for how to convert the culture in an organization from being regulatory to resource-based.”
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The pair outlined the five steps they say are essential to making the changes necessary to improve internal culture so that the organization can positively influence the rest of the community.
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According to Bolduc and Leavins – these are the steps that need to take place to make the changes that help city employees make a significant positive difference in their communities.
Bolduc and Leavins say managers should plan for implementation of this program to take at least a year from start to finish – longer for larger organizations.
But, the pair warns, successful program implementors should be warned against complacency after cycling through the program once. “You gotta go back and rechallenge yourself, because new things come up and new policies get created,” Bolduc said.”
A Solution Focused Culture is available on Amazon in audio, paperback, hardcover and for your e-reader. You can purchase the book here.
The book was released in November.
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