State Government The learning is vastly different when you are committed to attaining a goal

Industry: Public Sector

Expertise: Executive Alignment and Coaching, Leadership Development

Schaffer Team: Robert Schaffer, Andrew Shapiro

Teams at a state government department reduced workplace injuries, eliminated fraud, and reduced cost by being accountable for success

Real Business Results Achieved by Learning Through the Process

Achievement is the heart of Schaffer Consulting’s leadership program, but certain specific learning is built into the process. For example, selecting reachable goals and modifying a strategy that is not working as planned. Being accountable for real business results leads teams to victory.

Learning Through Success Problem

The Department of Labor & Industries employed a leadership program that used teams made up of actual on-the-job associates. These teams were given direction on the subjects they were to deal with. The idea was to develop the department’s managers while they worked on accelerating progress on the Department’s critical goals. Among other goals, projects focused on reducing workplace injuries by employees in certain industries, eliminating fraud by employers trying to avoid mandated payments, and reducing the cost of mainframe computer usage. In such programs, participants develop their ability to get things accomplished while actually getting things accomplished – in fact because they are getting things accomplished.

Schaffer Sets Them up for Success

While achievement is the heart of the program, certain specific learning is built into the process: how to select achievable goals; how to win acceptance by people who have not invited you into the situation; how to develop explicit work plans; how to work as a team, even when not co-located; how to modify a strategy that isn’t working too well; how to find out what groups of people are ready to do (vs. what their resistance may be) – and many other topics that participants feel would be useful.

Sense of Accountability Helps Managers Conquer Roadblocks

These subjects can, of course, be covered in more conventional programs, but for teams committed to achieving a difficult goal, the learning is vastly different. When they hit road blocks, for example, most refuse to accept failure. Their sense of accountability impels them to find ways to overcome barriers. The conventional learning would be akin to aspiring mountain climbers discussing in a cozy classroom what they would do on Mt. Everest in a storm. Valuable as this discussion might be, only the real experience develops the real capacity.

 



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