The Blast Newsletter: Continuous Improvement Community of Practice

Office of the Governor / Office of Financial Management sent this bulletin at 12/01/2025 02:47 PM PST

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Issue No. 34 | November 2025

Reflecting on our customer experience journey so far

Together, all things are possible quote by Cesar Chavez

We're about to cross a HUGE milestone - the first deadline outlined in Executive Order 25-06 is tomorrow, December 2nd! For this first step that leads towards identifying improvement opportunities for the state's key services, agencies are submitted their key services they want to focus on, the processes and workflows for those services from the customer's perspective, and the types of feedback and data they collect to gauge customer satisfaction. We're so excited to see what agencies submit as their most impactful services to explore!

With knowing all the great work that's on the horizon for our state, our team is taking a moment to pause and reflect on the journey so far. As they say, sometimes you "can't see the forest for the trees" - the larger "why" and bigger picture can get lost when trying to navigate the how and what you're facing now. However, what's keeping us grounded is knowing that this is a new experience for not only us, but for everyone involved in making the governor's vision come to life - and that together, all things are possible.

While we're still learning how to incorporate human-centered design and principles in our own work, we've made sure to practice what we're preaching by leveraging the voices and feedback of our customers, state agencies, into the process of implementing our executive order. We were nervous at first but working with all the state agencies involved has dispelled any fears we might have had. To know that agencies are excited about the future of embedding customer experience into the very fabric of our state being has propelled us even further. It's been such a pleasure collaborating with agencies on templates and resources, meeting regularly to ensure shared understanding, and using their feedback to make sure we're providing more clarity on how they can be successful!

While the executive order helps provide steppingstones to our new way of problem solving, we're excited to continue helping agencies as much as we can so they (and their customers!) can thrive. We're so grateful for this partnership with all agencies and for knowing that we all are working together to see this through!

What you missed

At our November meeting, Derek Puckett with Washington Technology Solutions shared how his agency rolled out a robust Lean and performance management program throughout their agency. See more below!

Did you attend our session? Let us know what you thought by taking our feedback survey!

Reflection series

Don't forget to check out our Reflection Series interview featuring Todd Steben with the Washington State Lottery. Todd shared exciting information about a strategic initiative to enhance the organization's financial efficiency through optimizing the cash management process.

Questions?

For questions on anything related to the community of practice, contact:

Talia Mazzara, Senior Performance Advisor

Theresa Dew, Senior Performance Advisor

WaTech's Lean Program implementation: successes and lessons learned

Phase one of WaTech's Lean rollout, including wave one projects, divisional expectations, and Lean workgroups.

If there’s one thing we love to see, it’s when an agency invests in their employee’s continued education and then provides them with ample opportunities to put those skills into practice! We had an awesome presentation at our November meeting with Derek Puckett sharing about a year-long project Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech) has undertaken to roll out Lean and performance management across the agency. This year-long endeavor led to many successes, which include but are not limited to:

Training approximately 30 staff to Lean Six Sigma Green Belt level, who are embedded within divisions as Lean champions
Established tools/templates/guides for repeatable use by the agency/Lean champions as they conduct process improvement efforts
Captured a list of agency processes and determined an initial prioritization, level of effort, and other sizing approaches
Completed lean efforts for 5 processes in phase 1
19 additional process improvements currently active in phase 2 with target completion by end of year
Developing consolidated Lean process improvement toolkit, organizational training strategy, and ongoing Lean champion expectations & responsibilities
Transition to operations/program sustainment by end of year

If you missed the session, visit our session archives for materials, to watch Derek's presentation and to hear what great questions came up in the Q&A portion at the end!

We also received a few follow-up questions in our attendee feedback survey after the session, which Derek provided answers for:

Q: What did WaTech plan for in 30, 60 and 90 days vs. what was accomplished? What lessons were learned?
A: The project hasn't formally closed yet, but at this point we're anticipating delivering all of the project's deliverables on time. However, we do have 30/60/90-day outlook for each of the 19 or so Lean efforts that we initiated. We haven't done the delta analysis there yet, as we haven't hit the time milestones for that yet.

Q: Derek mentioned all agencies have access to data bricks. How can we access and use it in our agencies?
A: Agencies can request onboarding to the Enterprise Data Platform via our support portal. The link is available on the Data & Integration page on WaTech's website.

Don't forget to register for our 2026 meeting series!

As a reminder, our community will be meeting every other month beginning January 2026, and registration will be required to attend our series. While we're still hard at work on developing our schedule, take a moment and register now for our 2026 series to save the dates!

You will be registered for all meetings in the series but can choose to attend the session(s) that work best with your schedule. We're looking forward to continuing our learning journey with you!

Coming up next

One female standing up at a desk speaking to two others sitting next t oher

December 16, 2025
10:30am - 12:00pm
Zoom Meeting Link

Topic: Going the Extra Mile: Driving Better Outcomes with High-Quality Interaction

Presenters: Nikki Nesbit and Megan Oczkewicz, Washington State Department of Transportation