A different kind of conversation

It’s easy to point the finger and tell others what they’re doing wrong, but not as easy to talk in front of everyone about what you’re doing wrong. One of our team members was instrumental in setting the tone for the team’s success. She talked about reviewing hundreds of cases and finding where her own staff struggled to meet expected outcomes. In front of all of us, she said the framework just wasn’t working. She said, “I need to figure out with you how to make this work.”

A few simple words that changed the conversation.

We decided to define the end at the beginning; start with the end in mind. How do we define “safe case closure?” And the result was rich conversation that focused on the work we share.

Once the trust and relationship is there, things just start happening. Instead of protecting who is “right” or “wrong” everyone’s energy is spent on innovation, problem solving and the future.

Let’s not talk about money…let’s talk about what we want to achieve.

Historically public and private agencies walked into meetings in our perceived roles: the state has a regulatory/compliance role and the private agency has the responsibility to fulfill a contract. Deciding that our first meeting would center around what we want to achieve and our shared responsibility to achieve a common objective kept us focused on what was important. By concentrating on the best way to keep kids safe, we were able to see how our roles compliment each other

When we prepared for the first meeting of the task force, we agreed: Let’s not talk about money – let’s talk about what we want to achieve.

Fortunately we both agreed this was the best approach for our first meeting. When we all came together for the first time - focused on the objective – something remarkable happened. We started out talking about the practice of keeping kids safe. That’s what we’re all about. That’s what we know.

In the room were two Chief Executive Officers of human service agencies, a program manager and two levels of DHS administrative personnel. The total years of experience in human services in that room tipped the scales, and we started our task of defining a pay structure by talking about best practice in keeping kids safe.