When the COO of the Frederick County (Maryland) Public Schools charged our maintenance and operations team with improving customer service, we were stymied. We believed ourselves to be very accommodating.
Facetiously, a cynic offered, “The problem is always communication,” a common training trope. It’s fitting that research indicates a link between humor and creative thinking because some of our best ideas emanate from sarcasm. Recalling this quip led the district’s maintenance and operations team to implement our Close the Loop strategy.
Closing the Loop
Our FCPS customers seemed content with our level of service, but often upset by a lack of information. An example serves to illustrate:
A teacher submits a work order to heat a cold classroom. A technician later responds to the now-vacant classroom, disassembles the heating unit, diagnoses the problem, and leaves to gather repair parts from his vehicle. While his gone, the teacher enters the empty classroom and discovers the disassembled heating unit, which poses a safety hazard for students who will soon return.
The teacher contacts the principal, whose response triggers seven successive telephone calls between the principal, instructional director, assistant superintendent, COO, maintenance director, maintenance manager, maintenance supervisor, and finally the technician.
Ultimately, when questioned, the technician explains that he is retrieving a part and will soon return to render the classroom safe and comfortable before students return. This information must now be relayed, in reverse order, through the same string of callers. In the end, it requires 15 anxious telephone calls to inform and reassure the teacher that the repair work will be done before the students return to her classroom.
In this scenario, the technician’s repair service is commendable, but his customer service is flawed in that he didn’t keep the teacher apprised of the situation. The teacher is upset and the technician is bewildered by the overreaction of “the higher-ups.”
In the past, we dismissed this type of situation as an unavoidable circumstance. In truth, we can avoid such anxiety.
Changing the culture of a workplace doesn’t have to be momentous or costly
To prevent a repeat of this scenario, we instructed technicians to inform teachers of the purpose and status of the work being performed in their classrooms. If a teacher is not present, the technician will inform the principal or front office secretary. The technician makes sure that at least one member of the school staff is aware of ongoing activity and notifies them when the task is complete. We no longer have concerns over customer service.
Doing Something Rather than Nothing
Changing the culture of a workplace doesn’t have to be momentous or costly. It can mean standardizing a practice or protocol that changes how you operate and how others perceive you.
In 2017, our superintendent called for significant leadership development. We used my systems approach to identify a comprehensive and elegant solution. The elegance was exceeded only by the absurdity, given its reliance on costly, external training and nonexistent training staff.
Usually, at this juncture, we would abandon the effort and lay blame on the organization’s lack of funding. Before we could fully capitulate, someone mused, “Doing something is better than doing nothing.” I can’t recall if this propelled or shamed us into action. Regardless, we launched what has become a successful and satisfying professional development program.
Our first training event included 15 sessions. As in professional conferences, attendees selected the training sessions to attend. In one noteworthy session, our maintenance technicians were able to design a hypothetical elementary school. Working directly with architects and engineers, they gave voice to their concern that they are never fully considered in school design. For the first time, they experienced the challenges, decisions, and opposing objectives that shape design.
The response to our quarterly professional development program, now entering its fifth year, has been tremendous. Two-thirds of our maintenance and operations team voluntarily attend training. Session leaders include architects, engineers, vendors, and in-house leaders from instruction, human resources, business, and legal. Topics include servicing food service equipment, digital controls, effective hiring techniques, lighting design and maintenance, servant leadership, accident investigation, and spreadsheet skill-building.
Sessions on special education programs, the rights of transgender students, and adverse childhood experiences help us to better understand and serve our students. We also include employee wellness topics such as retirement planning and restorative practices.
Attendees complete a post-training assessment for each session. The survey is a simple online tool based on Kirkpatrick’s four-level training evaluation model and takes less than a minute to complete. Overall, the training sessions earn an 88% positive rating.
Promoting Leadership
Recently we expanded our program to include a Leadership Academy. Candidates applied for entry and participate in a three-prong interview process in which we assess leadership growth potential, teamwork agility, and organizational awareness. Fifteen employees have been admitted to the program.
The Leadership Academy is intended to give the participants a wide array of experiences, ranging from conceptual to practical, and identify the knowledge and skills needed to help participants progress in the organization. If we don’t identify the gap in an employee’s skill set and move to fill the gap, the employee never will stand a chance of meeting our expectations.
Academy instruction is a combination of lecture, group activity, and role-playing scenarios. Sessions include finance and business, leadership and strategy, emergency management, data analytics and decision making, and project management. By interacting with leaders from other departments, our emerging leaders lay the groundwork for enduring partnerships.
In hindsight, it’s amusing to consider that we almost failed to launch professional development for lack of funding. In fact, we still have no training budget. But consider the absurdity of hiring someone to improve writing skills in an organization that already employs 98 language arts teachers!
Our vendors, suppliers, and contractors have been a tremendous resource for gratis technical and leadership training. We would not have been able to maintain momentum without their generous participation. At first, I was embarrassed to request their participation, but after each event, they thanked me for the opportunity to spend time with my staff.
Assimilated Wisdom
Finally, I will argue that reading is essential. I enjoy the unexpected discoveries that come from fiction, nonfiction, and periodicals that include cooking, travel, sports, history, fashion, and cars. When I saw a radar (or “spider”) chart used to compare attributes of million-dollar sports cars, it gave me the vision to employ the same tool when presenting a complex dataset to our board of education. Rest assured, I still drive a 2003 station wagon.
You can find and borrow visionary concepts from so many sources. The following is some of the wisdom that I have assimilated.
You can divorce a decision from its outcome. You will make bad decisions. You will make good decisions that result in unexpected, adverse outcomes. Even the benefit of hindsight doesn’t necessarily make it a bad decision.
Many people are indecisive to a fault, yet there is pride and personal growth in learning to be a decision maker. There may always be those who come forward to judge the outcome of another’s decisions; however, the hollow pride of a critic will never surpass the deepening pride of one who takes charge, makes decisions, and ventures forth into uncertainty.
You hurt the ones that you love. Every organization has a few high achievers who accept and even pursue difficult tasks. As a leader, it’s easy and convenient to continue tasking these employees because you have confidence that they will never let you down. However, by doing so, you do not develop less-productive employees and you risk overloading your high achievers.
This tendency will be viable only as long as the high achievers acquiesce out of indifference or dedication. Be aware of this dynamic and, being mindful, work toward an alternative—for your own professional integrity if nothing else.
I may be the only one here who doesn’t understand. As a contractor, I was assigned to support a brilliant naval officer. During a technical meeting, it became apparent that the presenter had outpaced his audience’s comprehension. The commander stopped the meeting to say, “I may be the only one here who does not understand, but can you simplify this a bit.”
I sensed a collective sigh of relief from everyone in attendance. The commander, likely the most intelligent person in the room, was the only one confident enough to admit his confusion. I wished that I had been the one to interrupt the meeting, and then perhaps the commander would have admired me as much as I admired him.
He wanted to be right, not necessarily to do what was right. When asked how to maneuver at the highest levels of the organization, a past supervisor stated, “Don’t take it personally, and do what’s best for the organization.”
I took that to mean that one must abandon insecurities. Stop tilting at windmills. It’s possible for there to be more than one correct answer, especially in an organization with such diverse perspectives. Value team success over personal achievement. With respect to subordinates, remember that authority, whether earned or bestowed, does not guarantee one’s correctness or righteousness. You should not command others by virtue of their subordination but rather through your integrity.
This ain’t no dress rehearsal. My friend Stuart doesn’t put anything off until tomorrow. His “done” list dwarfs his “to-do” list. His pursuits aren’t simple or even typical. He learned to play the bagpipes and leads a small band that offers First Footing to neighbors on New Year’s Eve.
When he invites you to lunch, you should expect some obscure, alluring eatery and not a chain restaurant. He will order a dish with ingredients that he cannot pronounce. I want to be more like Stuart. I want to avoid unfulfilled intentions, squandered opportunities, and I want to prioritize hope over fear.
Starting Simple
Stop thinking of culture change as a daunting endeavor. Aspirations for sea change may be preventing you from enacting simple, meaningful transformation. A different mission statement is unlikely to advance the cause. I suggest that you start with simple, concrete action and remember that “doing something is better than doing nothing.”
Finally, when you become a keynote speaker, your success will be measured by the number of speaking engagements. How will you ever know whether you’re a great leader? In the end, it’s foolish to declare oneself a great leader; only your followers have that privilege. Perhaps it’s better to simply focus on providing your team with what it needs and not about what makes you a great leader.