|
June 27, 2017
From Our Office
Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginning's End
My team and I
are proud of the work we’ve accomplished for Minnesotans this past fiscal year,
and are ready for the promise of a new year! Thank you for reading our newsletter, giving us great feedback, and
engaging in continuous improvement every day! Here are some
of our accomplishments, and plans for the new (fiscal) year!
Accomplishments
 Our Star of the North Fellow
Geneva Martin is completing her Fellowship year with us. Her last official day is June 30th. She will work on a few special projects this summer, then off to “What’s Next” for her! Geneva's can-do, positive attitude, ability to handle ambiguity, and skill in quickly learning new concepts made her a joy to have on the team! We’ll miss her. A lot. She made significant contributions in a short period of time. Here are some highlights:
- Led a successful recruiting improvement project for the Minnesota Board of Soil and Water Resources.
- Wrote and delivered (3x) an interactive human-centered design course.
- Completely revamped and dramatically improved our Intro to Continuous Improvement training course.
- Key member of the Enterprise Sustainability project team.
- Reviewed our division website and recommended key changes that improved the usefulness, look, and content of the site.
- Editor for this newsletter, increasing subscribers and readers every month.
Our CI Team
|
CI Culture: Culture of Continuous Improvement – Leadership
- Trained more than 400 new managers/supervisors, representing nearly 90% of state agencies.
 CI Capacity
- Increase of 40%: State employees taking one of our three foundation training courses.
- Increase of 200%: agency/group-requested training sessions.
- Overall 'positive’ training ratings improved four percentage points to 98%.
- Entire division trained in Human-centered Design via IDEO/ACUMEN and Stanford’s D School.
CI Result
- The Departments of
Administration (3!), Commerce, Education, Health, Management & Budget,
and the Board of Soil and Water Resources all took advantage of
our free services to implement projects; and we implemented an
enterprise-wide project in Sustainability requested by Lt. Governor Smith.
- The Governor’s Better Government Awards had a record 63 nominations, including projects from 17 of 24 state agencies (71%!) and several agencies that hadn’t nominated projects in many years.
|
New for FY2018
- Scheduling
our three foundational training courses quarterly instead of monthly.
- Offering
every Minnesota state agency/Board/Commission the option to have us come to them
to train any of our free foundational courses, or the new mini-training tool
sessions, free, with a minimum registration requirement.
- Developing
and delivering five free one-hour mini-trainings covering tools that you can
use right away for improvements.
- Continuing
to work on enterprise-wide projects and support agency-specific
problem-solving.
- Publishing
this newsletter quarterly, with expanded content, beginning with the September
2017 issue. This June issue is the last
monthly issue. We’ll be reaching out to
our readers for feedback on the new design and content soon!
We are excited
for what lies ahead! As fiscal year 2017
comes to a close (June 30), remember: you too can solve problems that
change lives. If you work at a Minnesota state agency, board, or commission
and are interested in having us help you, please contact us at: CI@state.mn.us. All of our services and trainings
are free of charge.
Joe
Raasch, Director, Department of
Administration, Minnesota Office of Continuous Improvement
What We Can Do For You
All of our
services and trainings are 100% FREE. We are results-focused and work with you to both identify the right
problems to solve, and stay with the
project through implementation of solutions. We work exclusively with Minnesota state agencies, boards, and
commissions.
Continuous Improvement
Problem-solving, improvement project management, productivity, solution
implementation management.
- Examples: Implementation of strategic plans, financial process
consolidation, purchasing process implementation, asset identification
improvement, increase process productivity without increase in staffing.
Training
Our new schedule starting in the fall will be posted soon! Register for one of our scheduled trainings. We will also come and train at your agency if you have at least 15 attendees. Check out our three foundation classes that can help set up your staff to do their own improvement work!
- Introduction to Continuous Improvement
- Problem Solving
- Process Improvement Measurement
Leadership for Innovation and Improvement (also FREE)
- Training on creating a culture of improvement/innovation for managers/supervisors
Improvement Tools
- One hour mini-trainings on various tools that get you improving work right away!
New Features on our Website
- Check
out some of the projects we are currently working on by visiting this page.
-
Read
about recent problem solving project success stories of different agencies here.
CI News
Things We Found Interesting
Five Techniques for Maintaining a
Positive Mindset
Thinking clearly about quality
Human-centered design is the next
necessary skill every professional needs
Are You Solving the Right Programs?
15 Podcasts that Inspire Creativity
Live Cam - Bears
Using Metrics for
Measuring Success
4 Types of Questions for Better
Brainstorming
Changing Company Culture Requires a
Movement, Not a Mandate
We want to connect with YOU!
 |
|
-
Follow @CI_Minnesota to keep up with CI news and examples of people
using continuous improvement tools to "solve problems that change
lives."
-
Yammer
|
| 
