Case Study:
Tapping a New Resource in the Desert

New Directions Charted for Mesa, AZ

Utilities Department

Like many of today’s utility organizations, the City of Mesa (AZ) Utilities Department faces a myriad of challenges. Bringing quality water, wastewater, electric, and gas utility service to one of the fastest growing populations in the country can be nothing less than complex and demanding. The leadership at the Department turned to TAP Resource Development Group to assist them in building an even more effective organization: one that is more strategically-focused and results-oriented with a strong leadership team. 

Mesa is a city of over 400,000 residents.  The City’s Utilities Department provides water and wastewater service to virtually all of the City’s residents, plus gas service to 70% and electric service to 15% of its residents.  The Utilities Department employs a staff of over 270; about 50 of these are in the electric utility division with the balance distributed among the operations, construction, and services divisions, which serve the water, wastewater, and gas utility functions.

TAP Resource’s Principal-in-Charge on the Mesa Project, Richard Gerstberger, put Mesa’s situation in this light: “At Mesa, we saw fairly strong leadership, an aligned culture and a capable, proactive workforce.  However, there was a disconnect between the leadership’s vision and how the workforce was executing that vision.” While this type of disconnect is not unusual in utilities, or any organization for that matter, it needs to be rectified in a timely manner.  This is particularly true in an industry where there is a significant  paradigm shift happening, such as that being experienced in the utility marketplace with the current emphasis on deregulation, privatization, and competition. 

The road to improvement in Mesa began with an organization-wide assessment.  This process is designed to identify any Focus, Alignment, and/or Integration “disconnects” related to strategy, culture and leadership.  Every employee in the organization was given the opportunity to contribute to this process, ensuring a more complete look at the organization.

This process yielded an action plan and a set of recommendations developed by the leadership team with TAP Resource’s guidance.  The assessment process and the follow-up tasks such as feeding this information back to the Department’s workforce proved to be a valuable experience for all of us – the Department’s leadership team, the workforce, and TAP Resource’s staff, as well.  This is a very proactive, forward thinking group.

At the heart of this entire process are the recommendations and action plan, along with the Department leadership’s commitment to put the plan into action.  The key areas of the plan are:

• Strategic Focus – the leadership team is aligned, but communicating the strategic purpose  across the organization and getting “buy-in” from the workforce is critical

• Organizational Structure – the department’s current part functional/part utility structure needs to be rethought with an increased emphasis on customer service 

• Leadership Development – providing front line leaders, as well as senior managers, with a better leadership skill base will reap numerous benefits over the long-term

• Results and Performance Focus – building an Organizational Performance Management System with customer, organizational, employee and financial metrics will facilitate a focus on results AND on the necessary follow through to achieve those results

In the final analysis, the value of this entire process will be in the achievement of tangible, measurable results.  This process will provide the Department with not only a clearer picture of where it needs to get to in order to be successful, it will also provide the tools to improve its competitive position.