I was leading a state agency in Salt Lake City during the economic crisis. The worse the economy got, the more citizens came to us looking for help. And the economy was getting worse by the day.
Caseloads were up by 60 percent. Common sense would say I needed to hire 60 percent more employees and lease the office space to house them. But that was out of the question. We all knew what was coming: budget cuts.
My team was stressed out, overworked, and worried. Truth-be-told, so was I.
I started trying different approaches--knowing there had to be a better way. Most failed. One showed promise, but it clearly wasn't going to work out of the shrink wrap--it was built for business and industry. It would need to be modified to work in government.
So, that's what my team and I did. We tweaked, experimented, failed, learned, and then...we figured it out.
We were not only able to meet the unprecedented demand, but improve quality, and we returned $30 million back to the General Fund--we didn't need it. Morale was restored. We were a team again knowing we just pulled off a huge accomplishment against all odds.
Soon after, the Governor made me executive director over an agency that would oversee the state's $20 billion budget and all of the executive branch's operations. Together, we set an ambitious target to improve all of state government by 25 percent.
We improved by 35 percent.
I started sharing our story online. We organized the biggest conference of its kind in the world, and I co-authored two books. I've now applied this in over 200 systems in a huge variety of settings.
It works.
Purpose & Principles I S2 E48: Dr Matt Pollard & Scott Saxton -- Continuous Improvement in Patient Care
Purpose & Principles I S2 E47: Katie Anderson -- Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn
Purpose & Principles I S2 E46: Scott Miller -- Master Mentors
Purpose & Principles I S2 E45: Bryan Crowell -- Own the Gap & a Leader‘s CI Journey
Purpose & Principles I S2 E44: Stephen MR Covey -- High Trust in a Low Trust World.
Purpose & Principles | S2 Episode 42: Roger Martin -- When More Is Not Better
Purpose & Principles | S2 Episode #41: Mike & Katie Stallard
Purpose & Principles | S2 Episode 40 - Jared Spataro, VP Microsoft on Humanizing the Workplace
Purpose & Principles | Episode 38 - David Taylor-Klaus: Mindset Mondays
Purpose & Principles | Episode 37 - Dana Rizer: What are you hungry for?
Purpose & Principles | Episode 36 - Jeff DeGraff
Purpose & Principles | Episode 35 - Becky Robinson, CEO Weaving Influence
Purpose & Principles | Episode 34 - Eileen McDargh - Burnout to Breakthrough
Purpose & Principles | Episode 33 - Lisa Fain: Mentoring Excellence
Purpose & Principles | Episode 32 - Nate Regier -- Compassion in the Workplace
Purpose & Principles | Episode 31 - Wes Herman -- CEO, Woods Coffee Guest Experience
Purpose & Principles | Episode 30 - Joey Price -- CEO, Jumpstart: HR
Purpose & Principles | Episode 29 - Rick Wang -- Leadership & Business in China
Purpose & Principles | Episode 28 - Jim Kouzes -- The Leadership Challenge
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