For years, Stanislaus County has experimented with off the shelf organizational management trends and techniques -from total quality management in the early nineties to the principles of Malcolm Baldridge through the end of the millennium. While these approaches had their relative successes, none quite "fit" our organization or our unique culture.
In late 2004, on the heels of a new and progressive CEO leadership appointment - the County began a very forward thinking process of developing its own organizational management approach. Not your off the shelf variety - this new direction, for a time, went primarily unnoticed to myself as I was deeply immersed in the multiple assignments and projects that define my contribution.
Recently (last spring) I was asked to take on a more hands on role with this approach - now three fiscal years into deployment, with the specific assignment to "market and educate line staff" to what has, to this point, been primarily a department head and senior leadership mandate.
A FEW WORDS ON THE PROCESS
Ours is a priority based framework.
County elected officials - working with senior department heads and executives have developed seven (7) core priorities. They are:
A Healthy Community
A Safe Community
A Strong Local Economy
Promoting Effective Partnerships
A Strong Agricultural Economy and Heritage
A Well Planned Infrastructure
Efficient Delivery of Public Services
These broad brush categories serve as guideposts to the various disciplines and departments that make up the Stanislaus machine.
Annually, each of the priority teams (comprised of those departments that align best with each of the priorities - i.e. Sheriff and Probation help comprise the Safe Community priority team) report out in public session to the Board of Supervisors, sharing their successes (and misses) related to goals and objectives self projected in advance of the fiscal year. The process is gaining a healthy momentum with senior leadership and has created a very open and honest forum for stretching and aspiring to better and more efficient deliveries of public service.
However, at this point (as I eluded to above) the process has been purposefully inspired from the top down - meaning, very little participation or input has been solicited from the many employee groups that bring our goals and objectives to life and who perform countless hundreds of varying jobs of work.
That is my directive: Share the priority process with the masses and develop an educational and social space to provide employees an opportunity (and the tools to empower that opportunity) so that employees from all walks have a better understanding of the process and more importantly - an understanding of how they fit into that process.
No simple task.
A CONTINUUM THEORY
Before discussing our implementation strategy I should probably make a quick disclaimer at this point, a disclaimer that I call my "continuum theory." What I mean is, (my belief and my opinion - not the collective) in all organizations (public and private) employee motivation and willingness to make cultural change can be measured on a simple continuum. Picture in your mind a horizontal plane. On the far right side of this plane you have your overachieving, mission dedicated types - you know the ones, willing to try new ways and embrace new policy and procedure. On the far left side are the opposites. Those employees who clock out early, forget their work by the time they hit the elevator and see any attempt to align work and culture as a waste of time and far outside the sphere of what they are paid to perform. Like most large organizations, ours has its fair share of individuals on both ends of this continuum - very fortunately, more on my theoretical right side than on the left.
However, it is not these extreme sways that our effort will focus toward.
After all, those on the far right will come along willingly just as those on the far left will balk and deny regardless of the perk or the purpose. No, the primary attention that our strategy will speak to are those (majority) employees who fall somewhere in the middle (or just left or right of the middle).
A STRATEGIC OUTREACH
Our outreach process is multi-pronged and includes a concerted effort to:
a) simplify the messages,
b) develop an organizational dialogue - to better communication, and
c) to provide tools for self analysis.
The primary outreach includes developing:
1. A Board Priority Handbook - a simple primer on the subject matter
2. Quick Start Primer - developed to align with department internal workshops
3. Monthly E-Newsletter - sharing best practices and tools
4. Intranet Web Presence - home base information and resource center
5. Improved Customer Satisfaction Survey development and deployment - including improved data collection and internal/external analysis
All of these tools will be shared to the organization in a phased approach.
This roll out will begin later this month and continue through quarter one 2009. Our goal is to reach 30% of all employees during calendar year 2009.
These are just the broad highlights of our employee outreach effort.
Rather than take this simple blog post to a white paper level - I have left out the specifics and time tables associated with the initiative.
Needless to say, this will be an organizational journey, one that will succeed or fail based upon buy in and ownership from policy makers, senior leaders and our wonderful, inspired employees.
Stay tuned....
1 comment:
loving the blog, daddio.
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