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September 2018
From Our Office
Our Excellent Year
My
team and I are proud of the work we accomplished for Minnesotans this past
fiscal year (July 2017 to June 2018). Thank you for reading this newsletter,
giving us generous and specific feedback, and engaging in continuous
improvement every day. A BIG thank
you to team members past and present: Cathy Beil, Geneva Martin, and Jennifer
Hyser for your persistence, resilience, and creativity! Here are some of our
accomplishments:
Creating
the Conditions for Success: Continuous Improvement Culture
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96%
of Cabinet-level agencies worked with us on problem solving continuous
improvement projects, consulting, or specialized training. (Same as 2017).
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88%
of Cabinet-level agencies engaged with us to learn how to
create a culture of continuous improvement and innovation. (+ 6% from 2017,
more than 480 managers/supervisors).
Sharing
the Knowledge for Action: Continuous Improvement Capacity
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27%
increase in training feedback survey response.
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12.5%
increase in agency-requested or leadership training attendance.
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26%
increase in state agency staff trained via agency-requested custom training.
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80%+
consistent satisfaction score 2017 and 2018.
Efficiency
and Effectiveness: Continuous Improvement Results
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71%
of Cabinet-level agencies participated in the 2017 Governor's Better Government
- Awards
(+6%), nominating a near-record 60
projects.
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16%
increase in participation in the biennial CI Index, a comprehensive survey of
all Cabinet-level agencies about their culture of innovation and improvement.
You
may access a PDF of the report here.
BONUS: It has a picture of the current team!
What’s Next
We are
implementing work in these key focus areas in the next fiscal year:
- Revising our Design Thinking course.
- Creating a new Building a Culture of
CI course open to all managers and supervisors.
- Developing a new partnership for a
government-sector CI Community of Practice.
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
Customer Feedback ROI
“Who are your
customers?” “What do they want?” “What do they need?” It can seem obvious that it’s
important to value and use customer feedback, but why can it be so challenging
to get people to act on this concept? Feels time consuming? Afraid of what they
will say? Don’t have easy access to our customers? Customers have to comply, so
what difference does it make?
 An objective
for our upcoming Human-centered Design in CI training is to “learn how
developing empathy for your customers will lead to designing a solution that
best meets their needs.” We want to teach not only what Human-centered Design (HCD)
is, but how and why to integrate customer feedback and research into problem
solving efforts.
A project team
I have been working with decided to
implement a process change that would reduce work the customer had to do (a
pain point expressed by their customers before). This change for the team reduced
part of their own work and made a huge difference for a group of their
customers. Practically the same day they implemented the process change, they
heard back from customers about how much easier the process was for them.
By the team acting
on feedback, is the customer now better off? Yes. Is the team? Also, yes. Plus, hearing the positive feedback from
their customers validated their improvement efforts. That makes it a
win-win-win situation!
Instead of
focusing on the barriers, let’s concentrate on the benefits of taking time to
invest in enhancing our customers’ experiences. For an interesting read supporting
the benefits of investing in customer research see here.
Geneva Martin, CI Consultant, Department of
Administration, Minnesota Office of Continuous Improvement.
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Tool Spotlight
At the height
of conducting research, it can become overwhelming to prioritize what is most
important or where to act next. Top Five is a quick and
easy tool to pick out themes that are sticking out to you in the moment and can
reveal opportunities for design and improvement.
CI News
- What
is your approach to asking meaningful questions? Read this
article to uncover how to get the most out of the questions you ask.
- In this
article, author Scott McAllister, uses the analogy of growing a
garden to facilitating change. What analogy would you use to describe change
management?
This Quarter's Long Read
Don't Miss
Sign up and learn time-tested CI methodologies and tools that will
help you to solve problems that improve work processes and service quality for
Minnesotans!
For our upcoming trainings we have limited seats left in our
Problem Solving training being offered on Wednesday, September 12th
and in our Process Improvement Measurement training happening on Thursday,
September 20th. September sessions for Intro to CI are
Human-centered Design in CI are full (thank you!). Check here
in October to register for the December sessions.
We design our training courses to provide you with the skills you
need and can easily put into action:
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The Introduction to CI training
will show you the basics of CI principles. The hands-on simulation
activity will help you recognize that no process is perfect and most of
them can be improved.
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The Problem Solving course
will help you recognize the root cause behind some of the work
challenges we face and offers useful strategies for identifying
solutions. Much of our work now requires us to show results.
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The Process Improvement Measurement course
helps you select measures that matter and how to use data to guide and
sustain the improvements you make.
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The Human-centered
Design in CI course will show you how to
apply HCD to your work and the benefits of creating solutions when you
involve the perspective of the customer in all steps of the process.
With all of these courses you can take the knowledge and skills
you learn back to your workplace to implement changes. These efforts have
real results, saving resources and staff time, while improving the quality of
State services.
For more information
and to register for these or other upcoming trainings visit our registration page!
Minnesota state agencies: Can’t make one of
our scheduled trainings? We’ll come to
you! You provide the space, date, and
at least 20 participants, and we’ll bring the training!
We want to connect with YOU!
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Follow @CI_Minnesota to
keep up with
CI news and examples of people using continuous improvement
tools to "solve problems that change lives."
- Yammer
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