InTouch – Firm Values in a Season of Change
/
We’re heading into that “most wonderful time of the year.” I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely ready for it.
It’s been a roller coaster of a year. For many reasons, but certainly the election looms over it all.
At their heart, elections are about competing visions. If we all wanted the exact same thing out of our government, we wouldn’t need to vote. So elections are fundamentally about differences. People feel strongly about them.
But this election cycle, more so than in any other I recall, I felt those divisions, and the passions that surround them, hardening people into rival camps. Sides that seemed to have little understanding of each other and no common ground. We simply cannot let that happen.
One of my greatest sources of pride in our organization is our notion of One County, a mindset that means working across department lines to realize our highest-level goals. We’ve also embraced “collective impact,” a term that describes the way we boost our achievements by teaming up both internally and with community partners who share our vision. Our Diversity and Inclusion initiative is meant to build awareness of the variety of perspectives we’ll find in the people we work with – and work for.
These concepts and actions are all related. They don’t ignore differences, but instead stress recognizing individual strengths and pulling them together for the common good.
They’re not feel-good slogans. They’re part of our County culture and critical to how we operate.
It’s too early to know exactly what the national change in leadership will mean for us here at the County level. We can deal with change. In recent years, we weathered the Great Recession with far less pain than many agencies felt. We rose to the challenge of public safety realignment.
We did those things by staying focused on our main goals and standing by our principles. They’ll continue to guide us now. Not just practices like fiscal discipline, but principles like respect.
Respect is the R in our HEART customer services qualities, and we define it as “treating everyone with dignity and courtesy.” That’s not just something we aspire to. I expect every member of our organization to offer dignity and courtesy to every co-worker and customer. No exceptions. I encourage any employee who feels deprived of respect to come forward and discuss it with your supervisor, your HR representative or the Office of Ethics and Compliance, whichever is appropriate.
I’ll admit, respecting opinions that differ from our own is often hard. However, it gets easier the more we learn about each other. We can be proactive in building that understanding. Reach out to people, hear them out, give their views a fair shake. That can all go a long way toward bridging some of the stark divisions we’ve seen emerge this election. It won’t always work. But all successes require taking a chance.
By the nature of our work as public servants, we’re familiar with a cross-section of the population in a way few others are. I take comfort in knowing that much of what I’m saying here reflects what you’re already doing each day. I just want to make clear in a time of transition what remains constant.
We’re in the business of doing what we can to help all members of our county, to make their lives better. And you all do a remarkable job of delivering on that. A lot of that work involves building relationships, from interpersonal to inter-agency.
The holidays are a time we pause and focus on our own relationships: with our families, our friends, our community ties. As the year draws to a close, I want to offer you my thanks for your continued dedication to the people we serve, my assurance we’ll stand by our values, and my best wishes to you and your loved ones for a joyful season.
Recent InTouch columns