How does one of the fastest growing cities in the United States keep improving its services without simply hiring more people? In this episode, we speak with Paul Grimes, City Manager, and Brandon Opiela, Chief Data and AI Officer, both of the City of McKinney, Texas, USA, about the answer they have landed on: reforming the way work gets done.


We explore McKinney's High Performance Organisation culture, which networks talent across teams and pushes decision making down to whoever is closest to a problem. Paul explains why protecting space for staff to experiment is a leadership priority, while Brandon describes the results in practice: an internal innovation fund called Project Magpie, an Innovation Academy that teaches lean process thinking in plain language, and the data centralisation work that gives AI something trustworthy to build on. We also discuss the city's AI sandbox, where staff with no coding background build tools for their own departments.

 

Listen to the episode on:
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts
- Amazon Music
- YouTube

 

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