Georgetown, TX

Georgetown is a community that's 30 miles north of Austin. "We are the fastest-growing city in the country, but we have this small town charm that people want to enjoy and preserve," City Manager David explained about the unique tension. In the last five to seven years, the population tripled. "And that is the driver for much of what we see occurring in the city," Ron noted about the explosive expansion.​

Physical Obstacles of Extreme Growth

"There's obviously a lot of just physical obstacles and difficulties that come with being the fastest-growing community in the United States. Just the day-to-day things that a city has to accomplish and maintain are extremely difficult when you're growing as fast as we're growing," Josh described the operational challenge.​

The city provides an enormous range of services: public safety services including police, fire, and EMS; recreational services; water, wastewater, and electricity; road paving; and public infrastructure that must keep pace with growth. Wayne emphasized the breadth: "From retail, to hotels, to the school district, to the chamber." Josh stressed the pressure: "We've gotta make sure that our public infrastructure is keeping up with the growth."​

Scarcity Creating Departmental Silos

"So, there's a lot of pressures that work against maintaining the small town charm of Georgetown," David noted about the cultural threat. "And it's difficult to do that in an environment of scarcity and sometimes that means that you don't handle or work with people as well as you should," he admitted about the dysfunction.​

"We have traditionally existed in silos. I've never been super concerned or tried to figure out what it is that Public Works was doing, or the library, or parks and recreation," Cory confessed about the isolated mentality. David described the breakdown: "It can be very difficult for a fire chief to understand why it's important for the transportation department to be successful. It's been an ongoing conflict for a number of years."​

David framed his role with an analogy: "I would say what's unique about the city manager's role is to think about a conductor with an orchestra. We have a sheet of music to play. My job is to make sure that each department is collaborating together and performing well." But without a framework for cross-departmental collaboration, the orchestra wasn't playing together—each section was performing its own piece. 

Needs Assessment Revealed Common Thread

"When I was brought on board to the city, I did a needs assessment. The feedback was we want to increase interpersonal development, communication, conflict resolution, conflict management, team building, and accountability," Tiffany explained about the employee input. The challenge seemed overwhelming: "The interesting thing was there was so many varieties of areas of focus and skillsets. And to bring in different individual trainings, then tailor each of those trainings to our audience levels to really have the best impact, it just wasn't possible."​

"The next steps were, let's look at what our options are for all of these needs from our employees. I attended the Arbinger training and I walked away going, oh my gosh, this is it," Tiffany recalled about the breakthrough. After extensive research, she was initially skeptical: "After doing so much research on so many other trainings out there, I was like, okay, well, let's, I'll give it a fair shot. And I walked away going, oh my gosh... this is it. This is what we can do that encompasses all of those other trainings that we've been trying to look for. It was like the holy grail."​

"It gets to those interpersonal skills, it's tackling that self-accountability, the team-building, the communication, the conflict resolution, and honestly, preventing conflict," she emphasized about the comprehensive approach. Tiffany's assessment was definitive: "In my career, 18 years in training and development, I've never come across a training that encompasses so many skill sets that are crucial to any workforce."​

Citywide Language for Collaboration

"What Arbinger has done for us, working with an outward mindset and having a focus on the impact that we're having on each other, on other departments across silos, like we're all on the same team, working for the same goals," Wayne described the transformation.​

The framework provided vocabulary that didn't exist before. "It's been so interesting here to see how the language of Arbinger is becoming part of the culture. With the shared language now citywide, it's like, okay, what are Parks needs, objectives, and challenges. And what can we, as PD, do to help them with their needs, objectives, and challenges and vice versa?" Cory explained about the practical application.​

Halle captured the impact: "That's really helpful to us because we get to feel the support and we get to reach out to other individuals who are outside of our specific team, our silo, and can see things differently." 

Wayne articulated the fundamental shift: "We have an organization where everybody cares about one another. As big as we are, you can't go into town and not see all kinds of people that you know and care about. Everybody wants to see everybody be successful."​

Ice Storm Reveals Cultural Transformation

The ice storm story captured the essence of the change. Hugh, from the hospital, recalled: "A few years ago, we had this horrible ice storm that shut the entire state of Texas down. I'm going to tell you, it took us completely by surprise. The next morning I get a call from a friend. She works on the city staff, and she said, 'Hugh, we've got a problem. We have all of these city workers who are out there cleaning streets and fixing downed power lines, and we have no way to feed them.' Because all of the restaurants were shut down. They didn't have power, they didn't have ways to get food in."​

Hugh's response demonstrated the mindset: "She says, 'Is there anything you could do to help?' And I said, 'Give me about three hours and then swing by. How many do you need?' They told me they needed about 120 meals. So we rapidly assembled a team of our staff. We set up an assembly line and we made all these lunches."​

But the reciprocal response revealed the deeper transformation: "And then a few hours later, we started to get in a little bit of a problem because the ice was forming on all the roads. And it was hard for ambulances to get into the campus. And somebody said, 'Hey, look out the window.' And it was the sand truck from the city, without having been called, the city said, you know what, I'll bet you they need, they have trouble at the hospital with the ice. And so they came and for the whole week they kept our parking lot sanded so people could get safely to the hospital."​ 

Maintaining Charm Through Growth

"It has allowed the city to maintain this small town feel. At some point, Georgetown is going to have 100,000 people. And when we have 100,000 people, we still want to be a community of excellence," Ron emphasized about scaling culture. Wayne captured the strategy: "We can't stop growth, but we certainly can manage growth. And the way we manage it is going to build our future."​

What Separates Extraordinary

"That's a conversation we have often, what separates extraordinary organizations from ordinary ones, and it's really the people and it's how the people feel towards their organization, it's how the people feel towards their teammates," Wayne reflected about organizational excellence. He continued: "That mindset is being spread broadly across our community."​

Wayne described the personal impact: "Once you have a language to talk about the impact that we're having on other people, like that is the most powerful thing in my 30 years of public service that I have seen and it's what gets me most excited to wake up and come to work every day."​

Ron summarized the commitment: "We're all invested, we're all committed to this work, and we believe that, that commitment leads us to embrace one another in ways that we might not do otherwise. That is an important element of what makes Georgetown unique."​

City of Georgetown proved that you can maintain small-town culture during hypergrowth—but not by hoping departments will collaborate when scarcity makes them compete. When America's fastest-growing city saw population triple in five years, the physical challenges were obvious: keeping public infrastructure, police, fire, EMS, water, electricity, and roads functioning during explosive expansion. But the cultural threat was more insidious: scarcity creating departmental silos where fire chiefs didn't understand why transportation's success mattered and ongoing conflicts prevented the city manager from conducting the orchestra together. Traditional training would address each gap separately: interpersonal development, communication, conflict resolution, team building, accountability—an impossible tailoring challenge. Instead, after 18 years in training, the director found what she called "the holy grail": one framework encompassing all skill sets needed.

By deploying Arbinger citywide, Georgetown created shared language where departments now ask "what are Parks needs, objectives, and challenges and what can we as PD do to help them?" The transformation became visible during the Texas ice storm: hospital spontaneously fed 120+ city workers cleaning streets; city sand trucks proactively cleared hospital parking all week without being called, anticipating ambulance access needs. As the city approaches 100,000 residents, they've maintained the small-town feel through cross-silo collaboration. The lesson: you can't preserve culture during hypergrowth by addressing symptoms separately when scarcity-driven silos prevent departments from understanding each other's importance. Give everyone language for impact across departments, and "what separates extraordinary organizations from ordinary ones" becomes how people feel toward teammates, even as population triples.