The road ahead

By 2024, led by Gordon, the DMV had made impressive progress in its transformation journey since 2019. Online services had made common transactions more convenient and more often completed without visiting a field office. DMV employees and front-line staff felt safer—indeed, often obligated—to identify and communicate customer pain points to headquarters in Sacramento. As a result, processes had become more efficient and wait times had fallen.

Yet Gordon acknowledged that daunting challenges remained ahead—along with compelling opportunities. Replacing the DMV’s aging IT systems, a multi-year undertaking, would be critical to reaching the same standards that customers experience in other industries like banking or airlines. “We should look to the best in the retail space, whether it’s Chase, Amazon, or United,” Gordon reflected. “We need to think of ourselves as a competitive customer product and behave as if dissatisfied customers could take their business elsewhere.”

“In some areas of government, we went from some of the worst…. to first,” Gordon reflected proudly. “We still have a lot more to do, we are certainly not celebrating in the end zone yet.”

In sharing his leadership lessons from his time leading the DMV so far, Gordon emphasized the importance of challenging the accepted status quo: “It's so important to challenge and question whatever the perceived convention is.” He also highlighted the value of decisiveness and swift action in driving change in a complex and established environment. Reflecting on some of his first major decisions, Gordon recalled his move to remove a senior leader who was not a good fit for the new culture. “It got the attention of the team,” he explained. “There were obstacles that folks had refused to act on for so long. And all of a sudden, in the second week, we're taking decisive action.”