EW 061 – How A Municipal CAO And His Team Positively Transformed Their Work Culture – Winning with Stacey Wabick, CAO for the Municipal District of Greenview

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.285)
Stacey, welcome to the show.

Stacey Wabick (00:04.28)
Thank you, I'm happy to be here.

Gordon Sheppard (00:06.307)
Well, we are just absolutely lucky to have you here. Because fortunately for me, in the work that I do on the executive and leadership training side, I'm getting a chance to work with you and your entire group of leaders in your MD Greenview municipality. And I've had such a good time meeting people before the engagement to talk to them about how engaged they are, to talk to them about their wins. I've had a chance to spend a little bit of time with you to learn about your leadership style and how

That's all coming together at this moment in time to make MD Greenview, I don't know, a case study? It's just a remarkable, remarkable thing that I, and I'm being honest, like I don't lie about this kind of stuff. And I've just, one of the things I mentioned along the way was if I've met sort of, you know, at least more than a dozen of your leaders, I haven't met a dud yet. I'm just like, what's happening here? What's the secret sauce? But thankfully we've got you here, you know, to tell us about what that secret sauce is. And, but a lot of people haven't met you just yet.

So if you had to introduce yourself, what would you say?

Stacey Wabick (01:06.766)
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. My name is Stacey Wabick. I'm the CAO for the MD of Greenview. I've been with Greenview for about 12 years and I worked my way through the organization in all different capacities until I got to be the CAO for about the last five, six years. I'm excited to be here and the secret sauce is easy. It's great staff.

Gordon Sheppard (01:29.903)
Great staff, right? And there's something there. I just need to get a little bit into your origin story because you are, if I say you're a reluctant CAO, is that the right way to say it or work your way up? Like what was that moment where you were a worker and you could have done maybe something different, but you chose to try and step into this role. Take me to that origin story moment.

Stacey Wabick (01:50.58)
Yeah, you know what, I actually had a career in wildlife biology with Ducks Unlimited for 15 years and I was managing kind of northwest Alberta and I wanted to get out of management. I wanted to get back in the field and so Greenview started a new department called Outdoor Recreation and I thought, you know what, that sounds great. So I went to Greenview and I am a reluctant manager because I want to be out in the field but

It's just how things worked out and and within a year or so I was the manager of that department and then I ended up being the director of community services that initially I said no and then but I got convinced and by my wife and Then I became then I had to get convinced to be the the deputy CAO And then when our last CAO left the organization I was interim CAO and

council came to me after a number of months and they said you know what we like where this is headed what would you think what do you think about becoming it permanently and I actually said no no way I used some colourful language actually and

But at that time we had a real problem I thought in Greenview and we weren't happy. And after some more thought I thought, you know what, maybe I could be part of the solution here. So I reluctantly became the CAO. I did tell them, well, I want to apply, I want to earn it. And yeah, here we are today. So 12 years later, I'm still with Greenview and I'm really proud of where our organization is at and where we came from.

in a relatively short period of time, to be honest.

Gordon Sheppard (03:39.511)
And really when we think about it, and again, I don't need to, I don't know what the story was, you before you stepped into that main role as the chief administrative officer, but it was what it was. And then this sense of, remember the pre-interview just chatting with you, you know, with your, like I'm from this community. I want to make a difference. I heard that scream out loud and clear. It's also screaming out loud and clear with again, the leaders that I've met in your organization. They are in, I can tell you just right now, having spent little bits of time with.

so many of them and you should be proud. Absolutely, whatever you've done and the patience that it takes over that relatively short period of time, we're gonna jump into that too and kind of what that looks like on the timeline as well. Great setup, the reluctant leader, but thankfully the leader in terms of this moment. But then again, my guess is we're gonna get some aweshax stuff along the way here as you start to acknowledge the other people that have been a big part of this success as we go on and go forward. That's great. It gets me into this first question in this interview.

Stacey Wabick (04:19.917)
Thanks.

Gordon Sheppard (04:36.088)
to say, know, if you had to describe one of your biggest wins, and I'm sure there's been many in this time, in this tenure, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Stacey Wabick (04:43.757)
So just to go back to the reluctant leader my staff had to actually convince me to do this because I didn't know I was like I don't need that. You know what the the biggest win for Greenview is our culture and we were what I felt was a really dark place we had a high turnover rate we had people leaving at an alarming rate so for me the win is our culture we've turned that around month over month we averaged high 90s retention rate.

and that's with a lot of positions that have high turnover rate you know quite often like recreation centers that have kids coming and going to university and all that stuff and we're still able to maintain a very high retention rate.

Gordon Sheppard (05:33.551)
I mean, congratulations again, because you know, I don't know what the old stat was in terms of retention, but we'll say it's worse than 90, like significantly worse than 90. But now, whatever you've been doing along with building up this strong leadership team that you have and the managers that are in there and all the people that are in support of what's been happening, that 90 alone is sort of a huge indicator. Why was culture so important to you as a focus in your leadership?

Stacey Wabick (06:01.001)
Because we were really unhappy and I was unhappy too. We spend so much time at work. We spend more time at work than with our families, quite honestly. So when I got the CAO job I went to council and I said, got a problem here. We have too many people walking out the door. We have a culture problem. I want to connect everyone to the strap line.

Council strap plan. want everyone in our organization to understand how important they are no matter the position. We all contribute equally to achieving Council strap plan and Green New Goals. And so I came up with an idea on the vessel that I thought we could achieve that with and then staff took it over and they did the hard work to be quite honest.

Gordon Sheppard (06:53.284)
There's something in you that goes to council without worries. You've got your eye on the future. You weren't concerned about getting fired or not getting in there. What is it inside you that made you make what many would consider to be kind of a bold move to go to council, I guess would be the idea.

Stacey Wabick (07:09.949)
Well, you know what, that's a little misleading. At first I used to have, I have about a 45 minute drive to work.

And on council days, I would actually have some small panic attacks because I was worried. I had two kids in school, high school, they were about to go to university. I'm like, I can't get fired. And then, you know what? decided I don't have much of a filter and I decided one day, you know what? I just got to be me and however it pans out, it pans out. So I speak very boldly. I don't hold back. And what I've learned is

Council appreciates that and you know, I admit to our mistakes and if we mess up, I go to council right away and I'm like, hey, you're gonna hear about this, sorry. I have a rule that I've always kind of lived by, make as many mistakes as you want, but don't make the same ones over and over because if we're making the same ones over and over, that tells me either you don't care enough or we're not doing a good enough job communicating with you.

Gordon Sheppard (08:17.102)
so nice to hear something I've experienced and I know myself just not on that level, but certainly facilitatively when you say what's right, when you say the honest thing, when you say what needs to be done, people respond. And isn't that interesting? Again, not mischaracterizing, there was risk involved in sort of starting out those early moments for you internally, of course. And so, but there's something in you that had to be...

Stacey Wabick (08:34.669)
Okay.

Gordon Sheppard (08:41.144)
I had to be me, is I think what I heard you say. And isn't it lucky again that that little pebble in the pond has had such a ripple effect, right? Ripple effect through council at the time to get the support. Ripple effect to then start to build out what this, again, relatively quick turnaround in this timeline that we're gonna hear along the way. So, so good. We've got a feel for what the win is. We've got a feel a lot for you and your leadership role. I'd like to jump in to examine the wins now with what I call the anatomy of a win. This is where we look at the strategy, the work plan, people.

Stacey Wabick (08:43.531)
You're right.

Stacey Wabick (09:07.894)
Okay.

Gordon Sheppard (09:10.496)
operations and results in terms of how this win got pulled together. Strategically, when we think about, you know, vision, mission, values, goals, objectives, those sort of things, you would have had a vision in a sense, something in there were in the values. What's the strategic highlight that allows this culture to get this good at this time?

Stacey Wabick (09:29.965)
The strategic highlight was opening up communication. sounds simple. I had three goals. I had rebuild our culture, start talking more, communication, and connect everyone to the strap line. And so the vessel for that was I created something called Greenville University.

and I don't know how much you want to talk about that but that was the strategy built around how we're going to fix our culture and Greenfield University was the vessel that really started to allow us to do that.

Gordon Sheppard (10:11.524)
Interesting. So again, what I can hear is not an overly complicated approach. You know what mean? We're gonna communicate. You got these three things. Let's connect to the strategy. Let's communicate at a higher level, right? And these are very absorbable by anybody in the organization very quickly. Again, a reflection of your leadership style, getting that started out, but then getting that to, again, ripple out throughout the entire thing. Now Greenview University, I am so excited about this. Please tell us what it is and a little bit about it so that if you had to introduce somebody to it, what is it?

Stacey Wabick (10:16.149)
No.

Yeah.

Stacey Wabick (10:40.525)
So Greenview University is exactly what it sounds like. It's our own internal university where we gather once a month on various topics and it's interesting. The way we built Greenview University the first couple years was we went out and we did employee engagement workshops and we asked them, what do you like about Greenview? What don't you like about Greenview? And I didn't allow any manager

to facilitate them. I was left completely out of the loop.

and so it was completely anonymous. So any of the comments that I got back, I didn't know who said them. And we started to structure our Greenview University around what staff was seeing, what they were worried about, what they wanted. So we meet once a month and someone will facilitate that. Every once in a while we'll get in outside speakers, but the goal is to learn from each other. And so anyone can go as long as their manager can spare them.

permission and I actually prefer staff going to Greenview University

on a subject matter that's not in their department. Because then they get to learn more about the organization. So you might be a front desk person and there's a planning Greenview University coming up from our planning department telling us all what they do and what their challenges are. And we share stories, we share what our common challenges are, we share what our common wins are. And we learn from each other like, smokes, that's a really good idea. I could probably do that in my job. And so that's

Stacey Wabick (12:22.297)
That's Greenview University and it's just, but the magic happens during the breaks. I don't even care if they learn anything, to be quite honest. It's just being together, starting to talk. I'm in Grand Cache right now because we shut down the town for half a day yesterday and we gathered our entire staff, 90 of them, and we had a Greenview University and that was a result of the workshops because we did the workshops

right across the organization. Greenview is 33,000 square kilometers. We're bigger than Belgium. And we did the workshop right across the organization. And there was a little bit of an outlier with Grant Cash. They weren't happy with some stuff. And it's like, okay, there's our next Greenview University. Let's go talk to them. Let's figure out what's going on here. And it's like anything in life. Once you start talking about it, you feel better.

Gordon Sheppard (13:18.37)
I'm hearing the vessel, you know what I mean? The way to go about it, that's your word. It's a wonderful word in terms of what it is. Greenview University becomes a way to do it. And in fact, the university word, funny enough, has so many meanings. It's a chance to gather. It's a chance to learn from each other. It's a chance to bring Belgium together around more than just chocolate, I guess is the assumption in there somewhere, right? So we've got that sort of coming together. And I think what strikes me, having been on the executive coaching and advisory side, is, we have no time.

Stacey Wabick (13:39.5)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (13:47.781)
We have no time. I remember sitting with a leader one time saying, how often do you, know, when's your annual retreat for you and your leadership team? Oh no, we don't have time for that. I was like, wow. So some people are perceiving that they don't. And yet here, you just said it. We shut down, you know, for a half day, 90 people serving an area for not, and shut down is wrong word. We invested in the 90 people, right? We invested in them.

Stacey Wabick (14:10.061)
Good point.

Gordon Sheppard (14:11.288)
to allow them to do the things that you're talking about, which leads to this massive, massive win around culture and what that becomes. So really, really clearly now, the win, you got this great culture that you've worked at in a relatively short period of time. We know sort of some of the vessel and components that go in there, a simplified one, two, three punch where everybody gets it right away. And then Greenview University becoming the vessel for that opportunity to allow as one piece of the puzzle to build that culture forward. That's great. Anytime we have a strategy,

we need a work plan. help me out. What's first day in office in a sense as the official full leader in your role and then how long has it taken on the timeline from then until now?

Stacey Wabick (14:42.221)
Thanks

Stacey Wabick (14:51.949)
So I'm sorry, am not sure.

Gordon Sheppard (14:55.909)
What was your first day as CAO and then how long has it been since then?

Stacey Wabick (15:01.453)
My first day of CAO, well the prior CAO, municipal government's very volatile, I think we all know that. So the prior CAO was removed from the position. So my first day was, and for...

reasons that aren't great. staff was in an uproar, so my first day as CIO was just walking around talking to staff and say, hey, we're fine here. And that actually started as the interim. And so the first day, my entire focus was just let's calm the waters, let's make sure everyone knows that we're fine, and we're going to start working.

Gordon Sheppard (15:38.69)
And what year and what month was that that was the first day?

Stacey Wabick (15:43.117)
boy, so it's 2026, so that would have been around, 2021.

Gordon Sheppard (15:51.174)
2021, so in a five year period, we go from what you've described, you know what mean? This overview of not functioning well, and then it's your first day. And then if you had to describe sort of the ups and downs along that road, was it easy sailing out of the gate or how would you describe that journey along those five years?

Stacey Wabick (15:53.954)
Yeah.

Stacey Wabick (15:58.562)
Yeah.

Stacey Wabick (16:09.159)
No, it wasn't easy sailing at all. Actually Greenview had such a bad reputation. We had social media pages dedicated to hating Greenview and staff where we were getting lit up in social media. So

The message was we're going to stay the course here and we're going to do things right and we're going to be open and honest and communicate and we're going to talk to each other of course and all that. So no it wasn't easy sailing but we did get buy-in. So the other interesting thing about Greenview University is that it is not, I came up with the idea but staff owns it. That we have a volunteer committee they come up with the ideas of what they want to see in Greenview University. They're the ones who put it on. We have

people in the field that say, I got an idea. I want to show off, you know, how a grader operates. And we're like, okay, great, Green Bay University. So it wasn't, it wasn't smooth sailing for probably about two years. And then we really started turning a corner and we...

We really seen results after two years and I actually went to council because this takes money. And I actually went to council in two years in and I said, you know what, we're turning a corner. We can reduce this budget line and count, you know, I'm trying to save some money, be financially responsible and council, we're like, absolutely not. I have 11 counselors, we have a huge council and council said, absolutely not.

if you want some more money, we can talk about that, but you are not scaling back this program because we've heard so many good things about it. And I invite council into some Greenview use as well so they can learn more about the organization that they're trying to guide. So about after year two, we started really seeing results and our retention rates went way up and the social media stuff went away completely.

Stacey Wabick (18:15.311)
completely. Those sites don't even exist anymore. We just put our head down and worked.

Gordon Sheppard (18:21.987)
Incredible. Right. And because those, mean, it's thank you. I always get lucky on this show when leaders go through torturous times to come out and eloquently say, yeah, we got this win now. Whatever. Those two years are tough. You know what I mean? You said there's that 45 minute drive or whatever. There's those nights when you're chatting, you're wondering if it's going to

Gordon Sheppard (18:52.445)
years and then finally get full day off from council as you're kind of moving these things forward. I mean that's just wonderful that that was able to occur. You know anytime we have a strategy and we have this work plan and timeline we understand kind of what pays off and we get into then the third part which is people and if you had to look at yourself in that timeline how would you describe your attitude throughout that five years? Again just straight line or ups and downs, peaks and valleys, how would you describe your own attitude in this journey?

Stacey Wabick (19:21.513)
You know, the way I approach it, and I talked about this yesterday and I told staff, my attitude...

I need to be the leader and I need to lead by example. I need to create an environment where people want to come to work and be happy and be safe mentally, physically. And then I told my staff, even yesterday, I said, the rest of it's up to you. You create the culture you want in your building, because we're so spread out here. And so when I wanted this big, happy Greenview culture, I learned that I missed the mark actually, because we would go around to every building and I'm like, hmm, OK.

every building is a little different, you know, depending on what department those workers are in or whatever. So then I just encourage everyone to create their own culture. And I try to lead in my building by creating my own culture. I'm a bit of a prankster. IT doesn't respect me enough to allow me to use the intercom system because they know it'll run amuck. So I went out and purchased a megaphone just to

despite them and I think that's what makes a good workplace is a little lightheartedness and we can't take ourselves so seriously.

Gordon Sheppard (20:41.795)
And this is again continuing to hear from a leadership perspective, you being you, and then encouraging other leaders to be themselves within their units. Do you know what mean? Within their departments or whatever you want to call it, in their buildings. That's really interesting that that sort of, again, leadership style, you can lead by example, but then it's not your responsibility to micromanage the whole thing. It's not possible. And then you've got that opportunity to kind of go forward. Who are some of the other key people along the way? You can name names. You can name.

positions, whatever you'd like. Who are some of other key people that have contributed to building a winning culture?

Stacey Wabick (21:14.893)
Well, all of our management team, literally. All of our management team.

one key person, probably I would say is Wendy Younger. she was my executive assistant at the time and I had this crazy wild Greenville University idea and I said, Hey, can you do this? And, so she, and then we created a committee and all that after, once she got it going, our front desk people are, are, are, public facing people. They are amazing.

and I actually was feeling bad for them. Our men assistants, holy smokes, our men assistants keep this place running.

And interestingly, I thought our men's men assistants were a little bit siloed. They're so busy just doing absolutely everything under the sun to keep a department going behind the scenes. Despite the manager. I said, you know what, we need to form a little group there to let's get them in a room and let them talk it out just between them. And because we heard that some of our men assistants use certain applications and they're brilliant at it. Well, maybe they can learn from each other.

This week I heard from our front desk people. They're feeling a little bit the same too. Where they're like, you know what, we're pretty important here and we're the ones dealing with the public and we're feeling a little undervalued. And so yesterday at Greenview University I said, we need to get you guys in the room. Let's talk this out. So it's always an ever evolving, flowing thing. We don't pin ourselves down to any kind of real hardcore structure. We have one Greenview University a month.

Stacey Wabick (23:02.219)
And depending on demand, need, we kind of go with what feels right at the time. The other thing we do is we pay very close attention to mental health. We have a mental health committee and we run regularly a survey called guarding minds. It's anonymous and people, so that gives us some insight where people are feeling a little stressed or burned out. And that has provided the basis

on some of our Grandview University will hire a motivational speaker or someone to come in and talk about how stressful life is these days. it's, you know, it's hard to pin down what we do. We just kind of go with it.

Gordon Sheppard (23:45.626)
Well, and I can hear you working through the whole org chart. You know what I mean? In terms of like what makes it work, I can hear eventually there's an inclusion. And funny enough, if you haven't gotten to them yet with specific groupings or specific supports, you're gonna get there. And this is part of this ever evolving, you know, five years that turns into whatever the next five looks like as you kind of get better and better. And don't we hear the incremental improvements? there's something we can grow on. Let's grow. Let's bolt that in.

Stacey Wabick (24:09.687)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (24:10.263)
And again, the leadership is there to support. The council is there to support. We haven't even mentioned the stakeholders in the community, which I'm sure you've got a whole bunch. You could talk about where you're getting a feedback loop. I know talking to one of your managers in the ag area, there's a whole bunch of turnaround in that area where community support's coming back to the community as well because of efforts by the municipality as well. So that's really interesting. So strategy, work plan, people. Operationally, we have to operationalize an idea to get a win. Now, you did it. You said we got the vessel.

Greenview University is the way to operationalize it. And any comments on sort of any other operational highlights, or is it mainly the Greenview University initiative that you think that helps to build this winning culture?

Stacey Wabick (24:50.157)
Well, Green, again, as I mentioned, Greenview University is the centerpiece of what we do, but we do pay close attention. We have SLT, our senior leadership team. do, we've kind of gotten away with it, gotten away from this and we got to get better at it again. We would do town halls because we're so big. So we would zoom the entire organization for an hour or something and say, Hey guys, this is what's going

on in Greenview here's a little update. We would do our employee engagement workshops. We would do our guarding mines surveys. it's the work plan is a little bit, it all has a little piece into figuring out what to do next.

Gordon Sheppard (25:42.969)
Including, I'm gonna say, operationalizing your humility to a certain degree. Like you said earlier, we're not trying to get it right here. We're trying to be open. We're gonna change. We're gonna evolve with the times as we go. And we're gonna put in all these pieces and test them out and as needed, react and help to build this workforce in a way that I would, it'd be interesting. I don't know if you've got a trust score.

Do you know what mean? Like a trust score on day one. But the trust score would be significantly deeper from all these different angles for all these different reasons as you're going forward. And you're still even going further with that as you're going along. Strategy, work plan, people, operations. Finally, there's results. And we get into results thinking about what are the quantitative results and qualitative results. So quantitatively, you said 90 plus percent retention. Any other quantitative things that you'd like to put out there in the world to describe this win?

Stacey Wabick (26:36.897)
You know, happiness is hard to measure, but that's what's probably most important to me. I'm not responsible for everyone's happiness. I can't be responsible for that, but we are, as an organization, want to be responsible for setting the table so they can be happy and be productive at work. So I don't, you know, I'm sorry. I can't think of anything that we really fully measure. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (27:01.542)
I don't mean to pin you down. would say I would just jump to qualitative and say, you know, what are the indicators I'm going to say anecdotally, qualitatively, feedback that you're getting, any sort of highlights in that area to sort of indicate that this is happening.

Stacey Wabick (27:14.445)
You know, 1 of the most important indicators that I have is our willingness staff willingness to have hard, tough conversations. And I.

like to preach, let's have the hard conversations. I also have another rule, you can't complain and do nothing. So I do push, I'm a pretty happy go lucky guy at work, but I do push back and I do have high expectations of staff. And that's another reason I'm in Grandcast this week is because I just felt something was wrong and I challenged them yesterday. said, look, you guys, you can't complain and do nothing. So let's have the hard conversation. Why are you unhappy? What's frustrating you? And a lot of it is

burnout. It's been a tough winter. The world's pretty crazy right now. So I do measure a little bit on, okay, how open and willing are people to have conversations? What I like about SLT, our senior leadership team, is I don't even think I'm batting 500 in the argument category. I lose all the time because I come in with this great idea and then

those guys and gals will challenge me they're like no you can't do that and here's why and I'm like crap okay so the willingness to have tough conversations and challenge each other respectfully

Gordon Sheppard (28:43.12)
What a great result, right? We've heard again, the win being the culture, we've gone through the anatomy of the win strategy, work plan people, operations and results. We've heard really a lot about this story. And again, congratulations. And you said earlier, you're proud and you have every right to be proud. And it sounds like you're still evolving in your own lifelong learning as you go. And then the steadfastness from that starts with you is spreading out.

Stacey Wabick (29:02.679)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (29:06.086)
throughout the organization? Well, whenever I get great leaders on like you, I always have to ask, if you had another leader, someone else maybe in an interim CAO role, or they're looking to tackle maybe a culture that isn't on the ups, but maybe on the downs, and they could use a few sentences, what would you recommend to another leader stepping into a situation like this that they could take away here at the end of the conversation?

Stacey Wabick (29:30.381)
Be open honest and patient. I struggle with patience. I'm an impatient guy, but You you gotta you gotta take a deep breath

and resist the urge to jump all over everything and let things play out. There's, especially in municipal government, there's not two sides to every story. A lot of times there's three, four, five sides to the story. And so what I have really had to work on for myself is patience and understanding what the big picture is around me. So that would be my...

My advice is just relax a little bit and let things play out a little bit.

Gordon Sheppard (30:16.464)
Well, and you've gotten the results, right? And when we talk about turning culture in an organization of your size, with the geography that you tackle and the complexity that you tackle, to do something like this in a five year period is remarkable. To get results after a two year period is remarkable. So it sounds like whatever you've been doing, along with all these other wonderful people that you've been mentioning, along with your community is making it all come together. Well, Stacey, you know, I'm so grateful that you've taken the time. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Stacey Wabick (30:19.072)
Yeah.

Stacey Wabick (30:46.701)
Thank you. And I really appreciated this opportunity, even though my staff had to talk me into it. And the reason they had to talk me into it, I do appreciate me being able to tell my story, but it really is, it's staff that make it work. I just came up with a bit of a three things to focus on and an idea, and they're the ones who made it work.

Gordon Sheppard (31:12.112)
Humble at the end, my guess is that's a big part of the secret sauce here. Thank you so much.

Stacey Wabick (31:16.493)
Thank you. I really appreciated this.