Meeting 21st Century Challenges of Water Delivery Addressing Organizational Psychology Before Organizational Anatomy

The Central Arizona Project (CAP) provides over 1.4 bgd (5.3 million m3/d of water) to serve 80 percent of the State of Arizona's population. In 2010, with a new general manager at the helm, CAP was ready to take the necessary steps to ensure it will meet its vision. Rather than focusing on the organization's structure, CAP's leaders decided it was necessary to begin with an evaluation of the organization's psychology. Therefore, the first step was to conduct an enterprise-wide assessment of the agency and evaluate the effectiveness of its management practices. The assessment's findings confirmed some of the perceptions of leadership and employees, but somewhat surprisingly, also showed that there was general alignment in the desired future state of the agency. The assessment provided a comprehensive evaluation of the organization's psychology and offered several recommendations to provide for more effective and efficient approaches to address the challenges faced by the CAP. The assessment also demonstrated that the CAP could achieve its mission and vision without necessarily altering its organizational anatomy.