Tansy Hayward: Embracing the spirit of local government innovation
Tansy Hayward has moved around quite a bit while exploring her career in local government with her current stop speaking to not only her own beliefs around the need for thoughtful change, but also the mission of the Alliance of Innovation.
Hayward, who is currently Assistant City Manager for Services at the City of Raleigh, North Carolina, shared these thoughts with Municipal World CEO Susan Gardner when the two sat down to chat at the Alliance for Innovation’s 2019 Transforming Local Government (TLG) conference in Reno, Nevada.
Understanding the Role of Innovation
“A lot of our philosophy in what we’ve done in trying to really set smart frameworks to help the organization succeed … really align with the vision of how the Alliance thinks it all works,” she said. “While we have incredible, headline-grabbing cool projects that happen in Raleigh, like happen in lots of other places, our city manager – I’ll steal a phrase that he uses to us – innovation isn’t chasing shiny pennies, but really making incremental improvements across all of our services that will benefit our residents and our community.”
Hayward is originally from a small town in Kansas called Council Grove. Hayward started her career in Olathe, Kansas, before moving on to Des Moines, Iowa, before spending nine years at Tacoma, Washington – the former and the later being members of the Alliance for Innovation. She moved to Raleigh about five years ago, attracted by the high quality of life and the city’s reputation. However, it was the “fearlessness” of the city’s pursuit of excellence in local government that was the biggest draw.
Teamwork the Key in Pursuing Excellence
Given Hayward is also an Alliance board member, that mission spoke well to her. This was particularly true as the city focused on its organizational structure, adopting it’s first adopted strategic plan, undertaking business planning in every department, reforming the city’s compensation system, and renewing it’s employee evaluation and goal-setting systems.
“It really started to chart a new course in terms of what continuous improvement, use of data, and performance excellence was going to mean for the city,” she said. “I really appreciate the Alliance taking that same philosophy. Everybody throughout the organization is a leader and when everybody in the organization feels empowered to take the initiative, and they have the tools to improve their services, it is really remarkable what we can do together.” MW
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