After earning an MPA from the BYU Marriott School of Business in 1970, Michael Dyal focused his career on creating a culture of continual improvement and customer service in each of the four cities where he worked as a city manager. Dyal says he relied on spiritual promptings to guide his leadership to help others find value and fulfillment in their work.
While working as the city manager in Silver City, New Mexico, Dyal felt a strong impression that he would soon be working in North Las Vegas—before he even knew about a possible job there. When he discovered an open position for city manager, he remembered the impression: “The Spirit told me, ‘That’s your next job.’” Dyal applied for and was offered the city manager position in North Las Vegas.
“The city was slowly but surely headed toward bankruptcy—but it was where the Spirit told me I needed to be,” Dyal says. Low funding meant that Dyal was instructed to lay off 40 employees almost as soon as he started working. But Dyal didn’t let that initial task discourage him.
Dyal describes how one day another spiritual impression came to him—this time as a number: 1,080 acres. Talking to other city leaders led him to discover that the US Department of the Interior had previously granted the city 1,080 acres of desert land.
He recognized that developing those 1,080 acres could be an opportunity to bring more revenue into the city. After a competitive bidding process, a major developer built houses, with a park, elementary school, and fire station included in the development proposal at no cost to the city. Within months of opening the development, the city had 800 new residences. “We went from 45,000 to 77,000 people in five years—and our income mushroomed,” Dyal explains.
To improve city operations, Dyal also worked with internal departments. When the utilities department showed that water meters in older commercial buildings were underrepresenting water consumption, Dyal helped the department create and implement a plan to replace old meters. “When we turned the department loose, they had ownership of that process,” Dyal says, which resulted in an additional $50,000 in city revenue.
By Dyal’s last year working in North Las Vegas, the city’s population and budget had soared enough to hire 100 additional employees—a sharp contrast to the layoffs he had to implement when he started the position.
Subsequent city manager positions in Orem, Utah, and later Medford, Oregon, also presented Dyal with opportunities to help his employees feel more invested in their work. “I’ve met public employees who weren’t challenged. They didn’t find meaning to what they were doing, and I knew that was a leadership issue.” To encourage engagement, Dyal challenged departments to underspend their budgets, which allowed them to reallocate some of the unspent money to other priorities.
In addition to increasing employee satisfaction, Dyal also wanted to help community members feel seen and heard, so he started “neighborhood walks.” Once a month, around ten teams went door-to-door in various neighborhoods to conduct surveys and ask residents about changes they wanted to see. Dyal set a policy that residents who brought up concerns should be given status updates within a week of the neighborhood walk. “It was the most immediate personal yet professional way to learn what was going on in neighborhoods and if there were any issues that required our immediate action,” Dyal says.
Now retired, Dyal continues to serve by returning to his alma mater as a member of the alumni board of the Romney Institute of Public Service and Ethics. Dyal enjoys collaborating with other alumni and MPA faculty and staff on the same goal from his days as city manager: to leave things better than he found them.
