Dr. Sandra Solano-McGuire joined the Ohio Department of Health in 2000. As chief of vital and health statistics, she was brought on to standardize the agency’s health-data collection and reporting while also bolstering staff morale through the impending changes. The department, with a staff of 70, had come under heavy criticism and now had to change direction. She attended Leading with Vision, Value and Strategy in the fall of 2003, an opportune time to alter her perspective and rethink her strategy for taking the bureau from a paper-based entity to a fully electronic one.
Sandra used the strategic triangle and performance measurement model as a framework to analyze her political environment and assess operational capacity issues specifically related to technology and human resources. She realized that obstacles in these areas stood in the way of successful change. Because of delays in accessing and poor quality of data being collected, it was difficult to gain the support of programs that depended on the data. Without that support, the need to modernize the data collection system was seen as a marginal value activity.
While she understood the importance of communicating with external stakeholders such as legislators and the public who used the Center’s services, Sandra realized that internal political management issues, both up and down, needed attention first. She made a presentation to her superiors using the concepts of public value creation, political management, operational capacity and performance measurement. This application of the model gave her a framework to bring critical issues to the table, helped clarify her mandate, and enabled a shared understanding of the public value created by the major changes underway.
There were three major operational capacity concerns to address for successful transformation of the department: buy-in from her department’s management team and staff development, and a multimillion-dollar technology investment.
Sandra dealt with the staff issues by developing a two-phased approach. In the first phase, she created an upper management “team” and helped this new group develop as leaders. She began to talk about the departmental changes in the framework of the model, and this helped her develop a common language with her management team. Sandra said that before this, there had been a communication gap even when talking about what ‘big picture’ or strategic management meant. She had the team attend training that reinforced the strategic triangle concepts and helped these staff members develop leadership skills. Sandra said they have now truly evolved into a team.
In the second phase, staff at the supervisory level will receive training as a group. She goes into this realizing that, given the major changes underway, some level of dissatisfaction from the staff was to be expected. The dissatisfaction during this transition time is being managed by defining the message that the upper management team can rally behind: what is our mission, who are our customers, who do we serve, and why we do what we do. The most important and effective one has been to communicate the importance of being competitive and being able to ‘justify’ their existence.
The triangle model was used to help evaluate major infrastructure issues. Sandra met with department staff for a full day to review requirements for six new projects that would launch within the next 18 months. The staff assessed timing and human resource reclassifications, and identified and budgeted for all appropriate resources. The staff also identified “knowledge” workers who could be relieved of supervisory duties so as to focus exclusively on project work.
A large part of moving to a paperless system includes extensive upgrades to the technology infrastructure. This multimillion-dollar investment would be closely scrutinized because of the higher user fees required to pay for it. Sandra and her staff prepared for potential questions from legislators, the press, and advocacy groups by assessing the expenditures using the Strategic Triangle model as a guide. This helped her and her team make a decision that she is comfortable defending to the director, Governor’s office, legislators and the public at large.
Sandra said using the triangle and performance measurement model as a strategic management tool has contributed significantly to her job satisfaction and performance. She found the strategic management tool to be a vital component of finding the best approaches, successfully implementing the reforms, and helping the people it would touch understand and accept the changes.
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