Continuous Improvement

[No Audio:  Oklahoma Department of Human Services logo]

[No Audio:  Ed Lake, Director, Oklahoma Department of Human Services]

How do we improve our outcomes, how do we improve our services to clients, how do we 
demonstrate to Citizens that their tax money is well spent on DHS, that's what Continuous 
Improvement does.

[No Audio: Shannon Rio, Director, DHS Office of Performance Outcomes and Accountability]

You're not just putting temporary solutions in place or going with your gut instinct instead 
you're using data to inform what you understand about a process

[No Audio: Misty McGaugh, 2017 Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt Graduate, Child Welfare Services]

The process of constantly improving, making data driven decisions, those are imperative to 
continual improvement in every division of the agency.

Director Lake: We want to reexamine what we do frequently because there's always a better 
way. Continuous Improvement and being a part of a team that analyzes policies and practices 
continuously, puts you right there in the middle of the work in the middle of redesigning it, 
changing practices for the better. I think that's something that is energizing for employees.

Misty McGaugh: What excites me most in engaging our employees in Continuous Improvement 
is using their years of expertise, using their knowledge and experience on the job to drive how 
to make things better. 

[No Audio: Amy Baustert, 2017 Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt Graduate, Developmental Disabilities 
Services]

They’re the ones that are doing the work, they’re the ones that know the most, they’re the 
experts on it, and so they can give us the most information to make the processes better.
 

Misty McGaugh: The agency is doing a lot of things right now to try to support this effort and 
support this work as well as the cultural transformation that comes along with Continuous 
Improvement. The office of performance outcomes and accountability is here to serve DHS. 
What that means is that we're making recommendations we're making observations where 
we're sitting down as a team with a division and working a tool and then figuring out what that 
tool tells us and how it drives the decision-making process within the division.

Director Lake: So the office is there to support both the trainers who are training for this, 
leaders and practitioners, frontline staff that are doing these kinds of things. To push 
sometimes, to urge and encourage, and to help do the follow-up and to then analyze and 
broadcast the results of what we found so that we are continuing to drive ourselves by the data 
that informs our decisions.

[No Audio: The DHS infonet is shown with a user clicking on the Continuous Process 
Improvement link on The Office of Performance Outcomes and Accountability page.]

[No Audio: Katie Thomas, 2017 Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt Graduate, Child Care Services]

We’re excited to teach these tools to our staff, to increase customer satisfaction, we’re excited 
to create more groups for continuous process improvement, we’re excited to better our 
division.
 
[No Audio: Jace Thoreson, 2017 Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt Graduate, Child Welfare Services]

So the tools allow us to find the problem, and to resolve it, using the fewest resources possible.
 
[No Audio: How is Continuous Improvement shaping our culture?]

Director Lake: Continuous Improvement and an engaged workforce are key aspects of our 
strategic plan so as we look forward to where we want to be in the next few years, those are 
important drivers. So that's where we start. 

[No Audio: DHS Strategy Map, SFY 2017-2018. (1)Stronger Oklahomans, (2) Stronger Workforce, 
(3) Stronger Communities, (4) Stronger Practices.]

The next thing is setting expectations with managers all the way down, that you will understand 
the concepts of Continuous Improvement, you will practice and model those concepts and 
apply the model regularly in what you do. Then after that, we provide the training for teams 
that are engaged and Continuous Improvement so that they have the skills and the knowledge 
to do those kinds of analyses. Then we provide follow-up support to the teams. 

[No Audio: Graphics from the DHS Annual Report showing statistics about Lean Six Sigma 
training and opportunities for improvement.  Another graphic included statistics about the 
4,378 vulnerable adults confirmed to have experience abuse.]

And then last but not least, we spread the word about what the teams have produced and 
accomplished. Just in the recent past there’ve been some impressive gains and achievements 
from the teams that’ve been engaged in Continuous Improvement.

Misty McGaugh: The Director holds conversations and meetings specific to Process 
Improvement to find out what our divisions are doing to try to make things better be more 
efficient be more effective. Process Improvement and Continuous Improvement discussions are 
a part of every budget discussion in our organization, they're a part of every strategic plan 
discussion in our organization and we will in the future be able to relate that to individual 
employee goals.

Director Lake: What we're trying to do is inculcate these processes in your everyday work. It's 
not an add-on that you do and it takes away from what you do every day. The whole idea is to 
think about doing this on a regular basis.

Misty McGaugh: There’s also accountability associated with training so when someone has 
received a greenbelt or blackbelt training there’s an expectation that they are then using that 
new knowledge and skillset to continue to improve business processes within their program 
area of responsibility.

Jace Thoreson: Using resources wisely is important and these tools allow you to do that.
 
[No Audio: How can I get involved in Continuous Improvement?]

Misty McGaugh: We have something that's been created that's called an Improvement Pipeline, 
and what that link does is create a way for an employee to tell us I've identified an opportunity 
for improvement, and here's what it is so that our staff out in the field who are working within 
these business processes have a way to tell us what we need to be working on improving. They 
can identify a problem that needs to be solved, give us an idea of something that's not working 
well that they'd like us to pay attention to and those ideas will then be used. Other ways that 
staff can get involved to some extent is just being open minded being willing to contribute to a 
project.  Being willing to imagine that there is a better way that we might be able to do this and 
participate in that effort. 

[No Audio:  Tina Chance, 2017 Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt Graduate, Developmental Disabilities 
Services]

I really think it’s going to change the culture of DHS and we’re ultimately going to improve the 
lives of all the individuals that we serve.

Director Lake: We want employees who know what they're doing, love what they're doing, and 
believe in what they're doing. And if every employee in DHS could honestly say that that's how 
they feel, what a great agency we would have.

[No Audio: To learn more about Continuous Improvement, or to recommend a process for 
improvement, visit the DHS Infonet and select Office of Performance Outcomes and 
Accountability.]