What is the purpose of a modern library? 

After a talent management evaluation found that among the library's top opportunities for change were a reimagined purpose and clearly defined values, leadership reached out to Great Mondays to help create a new culture platform to re-engage staff and connect more deeply with its customers, the citizens of D.C.

In collaboration with a team of culture ambassadors at DCPL and their leadership team, we identified the library's reason for being and created a purpose statement. Next, the ambassadors helped us home in on five characteristics deemed essential to acting on this new purpose. Bonus! We discovered the values became a hierarchy of commitments: to themselves, their team, organization, customer, and finally to the community of D.C.

With fresh content and an updated purpose, we created assets and training tools to help leaders across the organization articulate the behaviors that the staff should stretch towards. These priorities expressed through the values help employees make culturally-aligned decisions. We designed, produced, and launched the new culture through an in-person day long leadership training session, we call a Culture Lab.