Results-Driven Government

Session Summary

Perhaps the most powerful movement in state government is the shift to a focus on results, a shift being driven from within states by people committed to making a difference to the people they serve and excited to see that difference in concrete, measurable terms. This series explains the concepts that drive new management thinking that ultimately leads to remarkable changes in how a team, department and state operate.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the origins of modern management
• Understand why it is critical to bring freedom and order into balance
• Understand what a management system is and how it is build
• Understand the Theory of Constraints and its application

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Management Principles
• Deming’s 14 Points
• Waste Exercise
• Management System Schematic

Session Time: 25:15

Unleashing the greatest source of value

Session Summary

People are the source of improvement; improvement driven by their knowledge, experience, expertise and passion. Modern day management practices bring into balance an organization’s order and freedom, providing a system of management that enables people to act on their commitment to make government better.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the complexity we as humans bring to work
• Understand the impact fear has on people
• Understand that the role of management has changed
• Understand how the management system determines if people get heard

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Definition of fear
• Order/Freedom Assessment

Session time: 15:17

Those we serve define value

Session Summary

Everyone serves a customer, and the better that customer’s needs are understood, the easier it is to eliminate the waste in the work it takes to meet their needs. Customers define value – whether they are residents of the state or work in the office building next door – whoever receives your work is your customer.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand that we all have customers
• Understand employees are management’s customers
• Understand how to identify your customers
• Understand that it is critical to capture our customers needs in order to focus our work
• Understand how to assess your customer needs

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Customer Need Assessment
• Sum Total of People

Session Time: 16:59

The power of seeing how we do our work

Session Summary

All work is the product of a process. We can understand even the most complex work if we take the time to walk through it step-by-step. Seeing it gives us the power to improve it. People often believe that becoming process-oriented means reducing flexibility and creativity, but just the opposite is true. Process thinking accelerates the learning curve by capturing what we know that works, and giving us a solid foundation for developing new ideas rather than relearning what others in the past have already learned.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand why processes are so important
• Understand the roles processes play in improving results
• Understand that being process driven doesn’t limit creativity, it harvests it
• Understand how processes play a central role in the performance of the organization

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Exercise: Name a Process

Session Time: 20:13

Dealing with reality is a relief

Session Summary

Facts move us away from our heavy reliance on symptoms and opinions which often serve to mislead us to work on the wrong things. Facts reveal truths and make solving problems so much easier because the search for facts often leads us directly to the root cause. Facts also, oddly enough, tend to dampen emotion and drama because they help us focus on where our efforts will be most productive.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand how facts make life simpler
• Understand how to find facts where there are none
• Understand how you can find the right facts you need to solve your problem
• Understand how to take facts and find meaning

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Encouraging the use of facts

Session Time: 22:06

True accountability demands safety

Session Summary

Healthy accountability is all about ownership for results in an environment where transparency is valued because it enables and inspires collaboration. For transparency to thrive, people have to be safe knowing blame has been replaced by the desire to find the root cause in the process so it can be minimized or eliminated.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand that we all have customers
• Understand the role accountability plays in resultsdriven government
• Understand the elements of accountability
• Understand accountability in situations where you don’t have control
• Understand the relationship between accountability and ownership

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• What is accountability?
• Rating your order/freedom balance?

Session Time: 16:00

How do we align with our Governor?

Session Summary

Aligning with your Governor’s priorities is the responsibility of every state agency and ultimately every state manager. That direction will most likely come through your agency, but when in doubt it’s easy to get aligned. In addition to getting aligned, it is critical to make sure that you understand the major risks you as a manager need to manage and that you assess those risks and manage them. One of our most important jobs is to prevent and or detect problems that can do harm and disrupt people’s lives, and cast a negative light on state government. This course will help you both align your direction with the Governor’s priorities and make sure you are appropriately managing your risks.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand how to know what’s on your Governor’s agenda
• Understand the most important thing you can do for your Governor
• Understand how to do that most important thing
• Understand how to align your team’s efforts with the Governor's agenda

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Failure Mode Analysis tool
• Failure-Proofing Government article

Session Time: 16:42

Where is your agency headed?

Session Summary

As a manager your job is to support the goals of your agency and to support the achievement of any measures it has established. The key for you is to find any specific direction so you can align your team’s efforts to the priorities of the department. This connects you and your teams to the agency, which is connected to the Governor’s priorities. In this session you will learn how understand your department’s priorities and use that information as a foundation for aligning your team to support to those priorities.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand why it is critical to align with agency direction
• Understand agency direction and priority
• Understand how to align your team with agency direction
• Understand the #1 thing you can do for your agency

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Failure Mode Analysis tool
• Failure-Proofing Government article

Session Time: 9:35

Bringing Order and Freedom into Balance

Session Summary

We all work in a system of management, whether that system was intentionally designed to drive toward well-defined results or operates simply out of tradition and habit. Management is often thought of only as the activities of supervising people. In a results-driven world it is understood as a collection of processes developed and followed in order to enable the organization to define what it wants to accomplish, know how and who will accomplish it, know how it will monitor its progress and make adjustments along the way to maximize the ability to achieve the desired result. It is a full, closed loop system going through the plan, do, check, adjust cycle in a healthy, transparent and safe way.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand what makes state government so complex
• Understand the difference between managing people and management as a system
• Understand the purpose of a results-driven management system
• Understand the “doing and “being” aspects of an organization cultural transformation

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Our Efficiency-Killing Tangle of Laws article

Session Time: 24:29

Agreeing on Direction

Session Summary

As human beings we all aspire to be part of something bigger than ourselves, at least that’s what sociologists and psychologists claim in studies about our better nature. The process of developing a team’s mission, vision and values can help lift a team from the mundane of the daily grind into a place where you can find opportunities for greater good. In this session your team will be given the opportunity to ask and answer some critical questions about your work: What business are we in and why are we in this business? Who do we serve? What beliefs guide our work? And you will develop your team’s mission, vision and values. This presents a great opportunity to start thinking big and what the impact your team could have if it stepped up to the opportunity results-driven government represents.

Use What You Have:

• Create a mission statement
• Create a vision statement
• Create a statement of values

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Mission, Vision, Values & Key Goals Step-by-Step Guide
• Results Map

Session Time: 22:16

Defining What We Want to Accomplish

Session Summary

Key goals are the highest level goals an organization sets, and there is a way to set them so they are enduring. A mistake that is often made is that leaders mix goals and measures: Goals define what you want to accomplish and measures define how you will know if you are making progress. Often measuring towards your goals may take 2-3 measures. The other advantage of separating goals and measures is that you can set incremental targets for measures making improvements quarter-over-quarter and year-after-year. In this session you will learn how to set Key Goals appropriately and in the Outcome Measures section you will learn how to set measures that gauge progress toward your Key Goals.

Use What You Have:

• Create your team’s goals

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Mission, Vision, Values & Key Goals Step-by-Step Guide
• Results Map

Session Time: 7:12

Making our Essential Work Visible

Session Summary

In a results-driven management system we understand that the only way results improve is when we improve processes, so it stands to reason we ought to identify and consciously monitor and manage our Core Processes. Identifying the most critical processes in your function is the first step in managing the results those processes achieve. Process thinking causes us to identify our processes, bring them into conscious view, identify the constraints, discover the root cause of those constraints, and then improve them. In this session you will identify the products or services your teams produces, name your team’s Core Processes involved in those, who those processes serve (your primary process customer), and what subprocesses make up that Core Processes. You will be all set to develop your process measures.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the role your process play
• Identify the products/services your team produces
• Identify your team’s primary customers
• Identify your core processes and the subprocesses within them

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Core Process Step-by-Step Guide
• Core process Blue Sheet
• Examples of core processes and subs

Session Time: 12:18

Defining success in concrete terms

Session Summary

Outcome Measures answer the question, “how do we know how well we are doing making progress toward our Key Goals?” Government has traditionally measured outputs such as dollars spent, number of people in programs, contractors signed, etc., instead of the outcomes of such programs. In a results-driven system where Key Goals are used, often Key Goals have multiple Outcome Measures which serve to gauge the success of that goal from different dimensions. Outcome Measures “lag” the activities that lead to the result they represent – meaning they often get reported well after the work is done. Because of this they are often referred to as “lagging indicators.” This does not make Outcome Measures any less valuable as indicators of performance, it just makes them less frequent and less immediate and not as helpful if we are looking for immediate feedback. EXAMPLE: If you have a Key Goal of Clean Air, you might have multiple Outcome Measures including Ozone, Nitrogen Oxides, Carbon Monoxide, Sulfur Dioxide, Particulate Matter (PM10 & PM2.5).

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand how to think about measures
• Understand how to select measures
• Develop your team's outcome measures

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Measures worksheet
• Measures example

Session Time: 10:36

Seeing our constraints

Session Summary

Process Measures tell us how well our Core Processes are meeting the needs of those who receive their output – whether the output from those processes is a product or service. Process Measures serve as ”leading indicators” in that they indicate multiple dimensions of performance and serve to give immediate feedback when improvements are introduced. Best practices teach that processes should measures three dimensions, cost, quality and time. In this session you will be developing your Process Measures to support the processes you developed in your Core Process session.

Use What You Have:

• Understand what a process measure is
• Understand the forcefields of measurement
• Develop and define your team’s process measures

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Forcefields summary
• Measures worksheet
• Measures worksheet example

Session Time: 10:34

Making performance visible

Session Summary

Scorecards, as proven in sports, keep us informed and focused, and those two things inspire us to work together to improve. Scorecard represent the unambiguous reality of how we are doing. Transparency and inspiration are totally dependent upon people’s sense of safety. A results-driven environment that focuses on finding the problem in the processes, instead of finding the person or persons to blame, is the only organization that can become high performing. Our scorecards, our transparency, depends upon how safe people feel. The rest is mechanical. In this session you will learn how to build a scorecard and get access to a number of valuable resources you will find useful.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand scorecard guidelines and practices
• Build your scorecard
• Using your scorecard

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• ORPERS
• AZC Bowling Chart
• OYA Sparklines

Session Time: 9:50

Keeping results front and center

Session Summary

Whether you use these powerful tools daily or once a week, in person or virtually, Performance and Flow Boards are easy and intuitive tools to engage your team in improving their department. Performance Boards help your team see how they are doing on their measures of performance, identify and work things that are in the way, keep track of problems, visualize ideas, make incremental improvement, recognize action, and aid communications across shifts and geographies. Flow Boards are powerful in their ability to help you see where working is bottlenecking, so your team can focus on its constraints and take down the stress inherent in the problems that get in the way every day. Learn step-by-step how to build and use these powerful tools.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the power of visual management
• Understand how to bring a results-driven focus into your daily work
• Understand how to build and use a team Performance Board
• Understand how to build and use a Flow Board

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Improvement Actions
• Performance Board Steps
• Flow Board Steps
• Daily Management Highlights

Session Time: 33:56

Closing the Performance Loop

Session Summary

Closing the loop – checking performance – is an essential activity in results-driven government. It is one of the key “check” activities in what is known as the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle popularized by Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Routinely stopping to check-in on your Outcome and Process measures, as well as projects that are underway, affords your team the ability to make any needed adjustments. That’s one of a number of good reasons to have regularly scheduled business reviews. Some organizations hold these monthly, but most often they are held quarterly and called Quarterly Target Reviews or Quarterly Business Reviews. These reviews focus on actions taken to work on shortfalls, and the key for leadership is to set a safe tone so everyone knows the purpose is to solve problems and to recognize accomplishments. In this session you will get the tools and you need to begin holding effective, formal business reviews.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the purpose and architecture of business reviews
• Understand the roles essential to good reviews
• Understanding the critical importance of safety to true transparency
• Understand the best practices for business reviews
• Understand how to set the right tone for business reviews

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Business Review Groundrules
• Business Review Details Checklist
• Business Review Toolkit
• Business Review Preparation Kit

Session Time: 34:10

Managing your people for results

Session Summary

Results-driven government represents a significant change in the role of executives, managers, supervisors and frontline state employees. Everyone is focused on learning and on continuous improvement. These changes require the development of new skills. At a practical level as we expect everyone to engage in driving results – which means improving processes. There is no better place to help people advance their comfort and skills in this new environment than in a personal, one-on one coaching with a skilled and patient supervisor. This session includes the introduction of a Blue Sheet, an agenda for your one-on-one meetings that helps bring a results-focus to these critical conversations. It is prepared by the employee as part of learning accountability for the results they own. In this session you will learn how to hold effective one-on-one meetings and teach your employees how to use a Blue Sheet.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the need to create a focus on results
• Understand your role in a results-driven environment
• Understanding how to work through your own resistance to change
• Understand how to coach for results

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Blue Sheets
• Coaching Summary

Session Time: 39:57

The most critical new skill for everyone

Session Summary

Government today is challenged to do more and more with less and less, and that challenge is not going to go away. So where will you find the capacity to meet the demand? It is not going to come from outside government or from vast new sources of tax dollars, instead a significant proportion of it must come from within the existing processes. The good news is studies show that typically government process have as much as 60 percent of the activities within them that add no value – in the language of Lean this is called “waste”. The vast majority of processes in government have not had the benefit of process improvement, so there is plenty of waste to be removed. Process improvement teaches to approach improvement by working problems that are presenting themselves often in the form of issues that make our customers unhappy, endanger those we serve, cause us to fail to meet our obligations or get us in budget trouble. Rather than randomly making improvement, we improve what is broken because what is broken usually consumes lots of time and when we find that problem, we find a problem in the process. In this session you have everything you need to implement a process improvement project.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the central role of process improvement
• Understand the basic process of process improvement
• Understanding the various models available and what they have in common
• Understand the 7-Step Method

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Step-by-Step 7-Step
• Waste Defined
• 7-Step Storyboard

Session Time: 24:12

The 5 core tools you’ll need

Session Summary

We solve problems by improving our processes using these basic tools: Checksheets, Cause & Effect Diagrams, Process Maps, Pareto Charts and Run Charts. While there are many more tools available, these are the most versatile and essential. In this session you will learn the basics of the five power tools and how to put them to use to help you and your team improve processes.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the use and value of the five power tools
• Understand when to use each of the five power tools
• Understand how to use each of the five power tools

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• The 5 power Tools Step-by-Ste
• The 5 Power Tools in Brief

Session Time: 30:09

Solving the problem begins by defining it

Session Summary

Before you start any process improvement or problem solving effort, get agreement on the problem in very clear terms. You can’t succeed if you aren’t aligned. A good problem statement aligns and focuses your improvement team from the outset.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand why it is critical for a team to agree on the problem statement
• Understand what an effective problem statement looks like
• Understand how to write an effective problem statement

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Problem Statement Highlights

Session Time: 20:29

Seeing the work is understanding it

Session Summary

All work is done using a process. Even the most complex work can be understood if we take the time to walk through it step-by-step. In this session you will learn how to lead a team through the development of a process map.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the use of process maps
• Understand how to build a process map
• Understand how to use each of the five power tools

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Process Mapping Step-by-Step

Session Time: 25:13

Finding solutions that work

Session Summary

Every problem, once the root cause is understood, can be solved in a variety of ways. The simplest and most targeted solution is almost always the best. In this session you will learn how to select, test and implement a solution to the problem you are working to solve.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the pitfalls to avoid in process improvement
• Understand smart boundaries to work within on your project
• Understand how to select solutions that make the most sense

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Defining Solution Highlights

Session Time: 17:10

Holding the hard-fought gain

Session Summary

Gains have this funny way of way of drifting away. So it’s key to lock in the win achieved through process improvement. The way to do that is to keep the measure that’s improved highly visible and to make sure you take action immediately should it start declining again. In this session you will learn how to do this.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand what a control is
• Understand the impact of buy-in to control and how to build control from the outset
• Understand how to put in place controls to make sure you hold your gains

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Securing the Wins Highlights

Session Time: 9:02

Building your autonomy

Session Summary

When an organization is viewed as well-managed that respect earns it more latitude for action, more support from senior management, and often access to additional resources. What you build in your MasterClass is a powerful set of tools that can readily support communications with your agency, the Governor’s Office, the legislature, advocacy groups, clients, and other stakeholder. Being able to tell the story of your efforts to make improvement is critical; no one expects perfection but they do expect that you are on top of things and driving measurable improvements. In this session you will learn how to use the tools you have built to communicate your direction and progress. You will also receive a “story template” to help you better communicate what your organization has accomplished.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the critical need to be able to communicate with others your accomplishments
• Understand the impact of communication in building confidence and support
• Understand the structure of a good story
• Understand how to use the tools you created in this MasterClass to communicate

Session Downloadable Handouts:

• Stakeholder Analysis
• Story Template

Session Time: 25:35

Taking time for acknowledgment

Session Summary

Change takes personal courage as each and every learner has to step out of their comfort zone and be willing to risk embarrassment trying something new. Change is always personal, but above all else change is most natural when people choose it rather than have it imposed. Recognition serves to acknowledge those who step up and lead no matter what level, and yet it is key to be sensitive that recognition itself is a very personal thing and it must be adapted to what people are comfortable with. That said, celebration is far less personal, far more group. Both recognition and celebration can come in many forms and in this session you will learn about some simple yet powerful ways to acknowledge the extra ordinary change you are all accomplishing.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understanding the power and role of recognition
• Understand how to give recognition that is meaningful to the recipient
• Understand the power and role of celebration
• Understand the various options for celebration

Session Time: 24:00