Hey water utility managers! Let's change the culture.

You may find yourself wondering how to meet your mission when navigating a confluence of megatrends that include aging infrastructure, employee turnover, increased customer expectations, digital transformations, all while under new environmental constraints and the specter of PFAS, lead, and microplastics. After rising from the ranks with technical and specialty knowledge, you may find yourself and your team needing to absorb many new skillsets to meet the technical, social, and management challenges of the day.??

Let us acknowledge that our industry has adapted to daunting challenges, be it changing populations, losing a major industry within the service area, a new environmental mandate, or a change in receiving and source waters, our industry has quietly and carefully adopted technologies to meet the challenge.??

But today’s challenges require more than buying technology and resizing facilities. Most water utilities, contractors, and consultants have become experts in selecting and applying technology. But today, truly successful utility leaders are focused on building can-do cultures that encourage inventiveness, ownership, transparency and a shared sense of purpose. ?

To do this, many have revisited their mission statements and core values, and re-aligned their organization. This is the right track, and we need to go further to evaluate each job description and define new roles and job responsibilities to build an organization that is positioned to succeed in this rapidly changing environment.??

This task of cultural change is harder than picking the right piece of equipment, managing a large capital program or maintaining an operation. Only by addressing the hard, uncomfortable issues within our utility culture and management can we attract the best people, address the current nexus of issues and hold the trust of our customers. We have the best jobs in the world, we are the foundation of a healthy ecology and human health. Let us rise to the occasion and stay current before we find ourselves without the trust of the customers we choose to serve.?