The city : understanding how frontline leaders can inspire excellence in the workplace

Abstract

The City is a large complex government organization that provides a diverse array of services to the community from recreation to engineering. The City has undergone services reviews resulting in improvements in technology, structure, and process in order to improve efficiencies and increase accountability to the community. In addition to the service improvements, expectations of leaders have changed in order to meet the new and changing demands of the transforming organization. In 2012, the City released its first corporate business plan that articulated the goals and objectives of the organization; one of the goals specifically outlined the City's desire to inspire excellence in the workplace. This study took this corporate goal and considered it in the context of frontline leaders across the organization, and this inquiry investigated the question: how frontline leaders could inspire excellence in the workplace? Short and long-term recommendations resulted from this research inquiry, which included (1) increase the awareness of inspiring excellence, (2) develop a frontline leader excellence retreat, (3) develop a vision of inspiring excellence, (4) create a leadership framework for excellence, (5) develop a decision making framework, and (6) create an organizational culture of excellence. This action research project was conducted in accordance with the Royal Roads University (2011) Research Ethics Policy. Every effort was taken to ensure that the research was conducted fairly, with respect and met all legal requirements. In general, the study was of low risk to both the organization and its participants, and these efforts were enhanced by keeping the organization confidential and removing all organizational identifiers.