Evergreen Transit Case Study

Case Overview

“Kelly, I need you to go help Evergreen Transit Authority*. The Board is very challenging, the GM is at his wit’s end and just called me and told me he’s quitting. I told him you would call him.” That was how our work with Evergreen began. The person who called was a colleague of the GM in the transit sector. He knew the GM was a strong leader and wanted to see the agency thrive.

We called and initiated a Board development engagement. We agreed on a set of outcomes and deliverables. The focus was on clear strategic direction, strong strategic alignment between Board and staff and communication strategies for preventing some of the existing conflicts from continuing.

Like most of our work, we started with a discovery process. Since this was a pre-pandemic world, I made the four-hour trek to be on site. Board members came to the agency’s Board meeting room for a 45-minute 1:1 meeting with me. Some brought their lunch, some came before or after work, some were retired. All of them were elected officials serving on a federated transit board, fitting in their service around day jobs, family commitments and responsibilities to their elected municipality. They were a combination of frustrated, angry, perplexed, inspired, motivated and change oriented.

As I listened, it became clear that Board members had radically differing views on the role of transit and the future vision of the organization. Board members also had not had a solid on-boarding to their role and Board roles and staff roles were muddied. In addition, a well-intentioned 360 performance evaluation had been handled incorrectly, resulting in deep damage to the GM’s leadership and divisions among staff.

Once the interviews were completed, we met with the GM and Board Chair to set the agenda and direction for Board engagement. We worked with the Board over two meetings, both held as open, public meetings.

In the first meeting, we shared a synthesis of the discovery interviews with the full Board. It was the first time they had seen a summary of Board member thoughts on the strategic direction of the organization. Should Evergreen focus more on resource stewardship or advocacy? They did not realize how far apart some of their views were and began to engage with more curiosity about different Board member perspectives. We also clarified Board roles vs. staff roles and provided clear direction on what needed to change to have a healthy GM evaluation process. Board members were grateful for the guidance and readily moved to adopt some of the changes and strategies that would address the role confusion and communication gaps. The meeting concluded with an introduction to strategic thinking and strategic planning and a simple SWOTs exercise.

Two months later, on a warm sunny day in July, the Board convened again to continue their work together. The overall tension was markedly reduced. We introduced the concept of inquiry vs. advocacy to set the table for the strategy conversation to come. We also provided a simple strategic framework to provide consistent and shared language for the Board to use together. A small team consisting of the GM, Board Chair and Vice Chair had worked with us to develop some draft strategic guidance. We reviewed draft work on organizational mission, vision and values and got enough input for the smaller team to finalize. Together, we worked on understanding how a strategic planning cycle aligned to existing reporting requirements and what routines the Board could adopt for regular strategy work. We established their rhythm of business for strategy work that included an annual new Board orientation. The GM left with clear marching orders for working with the Board to implement direction from the two meetings. Board members said that they felt they had advanced Evergreen by two years in these meetings and created a culture that was more open, collaborative and personal.

The GM went on to serve for several more years until he retired from Evergreen after a successful tenure as GM and 40 years with the agency. His leadership team and Board were sad to see him leave, saying “We absolutely love the guy here. We have a really good organization.” Five years after Clarity’s original engagement with Evergreen, they called again. This time, the call was much different. “Working with you was the best thing we’ve ever done as an organization. We have a new GM coming in and want our leadership team to start off right. Can you come help?”

Transit organization name changed to protect anonymity