A late addition to the TTC Board’s agenda for December 3 is a presentation on the characteristics the TTC should look for in a new CEO by the search firm hired to manage the process.
Updated Dec. 4, 2024: A section has been added at the end with additional information from the Board meeting.
Jayson Phelps, Senior Partner, Phelps Group, will make the presentation, but the deck is already available and contains some interesting reading. Over recent weeks, Phelps Group conducted 1160 surveys via a publicly available web site, as well as 1062 by email invitations. Individual interviews were conducted with 31 people including the TTC Board, Leadership Team and “key stakeholders”. [Full disclosure: I was one of those stakeholders.]
The presentation summarizes feedback from those surveys and interviews. It is broken down into four sections: Experience, Leadership Attributes, Capabilities, and Challenges/Opportunities. There is also a section on Key Success Factors At 18 Months.
Anyone who has read position descriptions for senior management will recognize many points of which these are only a few.
- Knowledge of transit systems,
- Intergovernmental experience,
- Good communications skills,
- Ability to build relationships with employees, governments and the public,
- Valuing diversity,
- Planning, budgeting and capital project management,
- Working within limited funding,
- Exploiting technology for organizational improvement.
Two particularly stand out:
- Demonstrated focus on rider experience, accessibility, and affordability.
- Passionate about improving transit systems as essential public services.
There is a long list of challenges including restoration of maintenance and service reliability, but also related issues such as organizational structure, departmental silos, and conflicting priorities.
Through the presentation, some points imply a very troubled background within the TTC. It has been no secret that the past era was not a happy one, but seeing some of these issues in print as part of a new CEO search gives a sense of the rot.
- Ethical Leadership and Accountability
- Upholds ethical standards, communicates honestly, and takes accountability for decisions.
- Stakeholder Engagement and Public Advocacy
- Skilled at navigating relationships with unions, government entities, and community organizations, fostering collaboration and trust.
- Skilled spokesperson, building credibility with the public and enhancing organizational reputation.
- Workforce and Organizational Culture
- Low workforce morale, mistrust in leadership, nepotism, favoritism, and resistance to change.
- Talent drain to competitors, non-competitive compensation, and limited diversity in leadership.
- Operational and Infrastructure Issues
- Maintenance backlogs, reliability issues, and slow zones requiring urgent state-of-good-repair projects
- Key Success Factors at 18 Months
- Public Trust: Strengthened public confidence through visible leadership, improved service quality, and consistent dependability.
- Employee Morale: Enhanced employee engagement and reduced turnover through recognition programs, inclusivity, and fostering a collaborative workplace culture.
- Workplace Culture: Addressed toxic workplace culture by fostering fairness, collaboration, and transparency
Terms like ethical leadership, honesty, accountability, credibility, low morale, mistrust, nepotism, favouritism and toxic workplace culture do not sound like the kind of organization TTC purports to be. Many senior staff have left either through retirement, buyouts, constructive dismissal, or simply through disgust with the TTC’s leadership.
That list of key characteristics and challenges for a new CEO tells a grim tale.
Rebuilding the TTC will be a challenge on many fronts, not the least of which is getting hold of today’s pressing issues, but simultaneously developing a plan for a new TTC and building the organization’s trust that it can be and should be implemented.
For many years, the TTC Board failed in their duty to manage their CEO and actions taken by him, and were happy to sit back as long as he met the City’s and Mayor’s target of keeping costs down. Whatever investigative details were provided to the Board prior to the CEO’s departure, we will probably never know.
For too long, some Board members chose wilful blindness. They have no place at the TTC.
Updated Dec. 4, 2024 at 10:10am:
The Phelps presentation contained additional slides that were not in the deck posted online.
First is the overall timeline for the recruitment process.
In the sections listing key attributes, challenges and goals for the new CEO’s first 18 months, slides were added showing the priorities identified by the public survey responses versus those from employees. The lists were similar, but with differences that are clearly from the “outside” versus “inside” point of view on what is needed.
In the Board’s discussion after the presentation, some members worried that the list of attributes was far too extensive and daunting for potential candidates, and that nobody could actually meet all of them. Phelps replied that this presentation was based on the full set of responses ranked in order of the frequency they were mentioned. For purposes of candidate reviews, the lists will be cut down to the top issues.
Steve Munro 
Not to put you on the record but what are your thoughts regarding Adam Giambrone as TTC CEO?
Steve: As a friend of Adam’s I don’t think it is fair for me to comment, especially without knowing who else might apply.
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“A fish rots from its head.”
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I agree, and it makes me wonder who would want the job? The long list of 16 (!) “key success factors” suggests a troubled organization (the old saying being: if everything is important, then nothing is important).
My transit industry friend agrees the TTC has been bleeding talent the past few years. In their view it’s partly because global opportunities have never been more plentiful in the transit business, and partly because the TTC pays poorly at the middle and senior ranks … so up and comers join the TTC to get experience but then leave for better opportunities.
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How about Steve Munro?
Steve: Thanks, but no thanks. First off, I am enjoying retirement, but more importantly being the CEO of the TTC requires far more depth and experience than I have.
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The TTC should really just get an CEO who has experience running a world class transit system (i.e Asia or Europe) or airline similar to how we got Andy Byford.
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I hear Phil Verster might be looking for a new job…
Steve: He already has a new job. Pity whatever organization hired him.
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Hopefully, we’ll get someone good this time around. I don’t know why the TTC hired Leary in the first place; he left the MBTA after failing to take accountability for a damning NTSB safety report.
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The successful CEO candidate would have to be on a friendly relationship with the current (Progressive) Conservative government at Queen’s Park. In other words, attended the Ford’s stag-n-doe party.
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Unfortunately the next CEO will be beholden by the Board anyways. So whatever creativity or experience they will bring will be handicapped by the board.
I’m sure they already know who they want. All these reports are just a mask to make it seem like they’re doing some kind of intensive global search.
The biggest item id like for the next CEO is operational efficiency. And practical functional lens to transit, than just reports on paper where customers can’t relate too. Or see the effectiveness of those reports in real world. There are clearly reports on service and then the reality of those services in real world.
TTC should bring back shared routes amongst divisions to reduce deadheading.
Another example is route 52, way too many branches. Just split the route in two, Lawrence West route , and 58 Dixon. Much easier for customers to understand and differentiate between Westway and Dixon. You don’t even have to change the operational expense.
Two examples that are user friendly that that save you money.
Steve: It used to be called 58 Malton, separate from the 52 Lawrence.
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WOW. That’s a mouthful. People used to be proud to work for the TTC. And the City. Your ending makes me think no wonder trains are so poorly maintained and street cars…. well you know about the lack of reliable scheduling that’s been going on for years – made worse on cold winter nights, waiting…….. This is sad news. But we sure aren’t fixing problems when bad management is left to their own devices. I’m glad this is being exposed. But Steve, will there be change?
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Please no Giambrone.
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We shouldn’t indulge our Canadian inferiority complex and just assume that some foreign leader of a big transit agency is somehow better than local talent. Verster and Leary have shown us how foolish that thinking is. Despite its flaws, Toronto is still a world-class city, and there should be plenty of opportunities at home for local residents to grow and mature into their own world-class leaders. They can even go to other Canadian cities to broaden their experiences. We should be nurturing our own transit leaders and exporting them around the world, not the other way around.
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Also, I worry that some of the items on the list are warning signs of a bad leader: innovative thinking, decisiveness, great communication, strong advocacy, etc. You might end up with one of those “big-talkers” who dazzle everyone with their charisma. But the best person for the job might actually be someone who submerges themselves in the details of the organization and just makes sure that everything runs smoothly with quiet competence.
Steve: Some of those items are a direct result of Leary’s resistance to change, indecisiveness, lousy communication, and lack of advocacy for better transit. Yes, we don’t need a “big talker”.
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But do talents and skills really matter, given just how top heavy the overall system is? The TTC isn’t just for Toronto, that is to suggest that decisions made aren’t local to Toronto. Instead they involve at least the province and I imagine the federal government. Another issue is one plaguing politics in general, the people making the decisions aren’t actually interacting with the system itself from a user perspective. Perhaps the first interview question should be, tell me about how you got yourself to the interview. Should the people who don’t actually use transit be running the system?
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Any update Steve?
Steve: There have been interviews of short-listed candidates, but nothing announced yet.
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