task forces?

[Zoe Girl]

i have talked at length about the dysfunction in our department ( i am thinking even our entire district ). i appreciate being able to talk here because i am strict about not getting into negative gossip groups at work. even if you are right you are not effective and end up looking bad in general. still re-adjusting this year and basically working with admin like this is just a job, while being passionate on my own time ya know.

i just got an email that our department head is starting task forces. they are being led by a trainer that i highly respect in being able to facilitate trainings into more of the relationship aspects of work. the task forces are on
* communication
* atmosphere of fear/lack of trust
* managing change
* equal treatment
* not feeling valued

wow, not sure however if i trust this. i tend to be very idealistic and sometimes naive. i think that was part of what went so wrong last year, i thought other people were ready to have conversations that got into some issues and cleared the air and it turned out in the end to be a bad idea. i am very interested in the atmosphere of fear and the communication topics, there is so much work we could do here. yet how much of this would be me trying to deal with and fix the past and getting all caught up in it.

So what do i want out of getting into this? i want to be a trainer in our department and i want to be on the committee that i recommended and was not invited to join. and i want to apply for a job that will be advertised in january (long story) and have a very good shot. Maybe i need to be on these task forces in order to get this done.

[sweetana3]

Maybe a selective task force. You are starting a big new project and should not stretch yourself to the breaking point. Better to ensure the complete and accurate organization of your big project and the accurate reporting of the "normal" job before adding more to it.

[freshstart]

How long have you worked there again? In my 23 yrs in one place, I saw so many outsiders (read incredibly expensive) come in to "fix" things similar to your list of task forces. We had Ernst and Young, probably 3 more that are well known but completely not in my memory today, the company that talks about Pillars, Toyota and the last was freaking Disney, with the CEO dressed as Mickey and so on down the line all the way to the dwarves. That was the very worst one. They sang, they made us sing. You could've flipped me on gun control.

We would implement some 'sweeping corporate change of outlook and process', it would take a year to get everyone on board, we would follow along, using the buzzwords for another year. Then all of that was tossed and we had another expensive outsider start their thing, lather, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat. They didn't keep anything long enough usually for the outside company to be able or allowed to analyze the success or failure of their system.

I stopped volunteering (yet still was often placed) on the task forces. I believed in it, supported it, helped implement it and then we were supposed to be evaluating it but it was already about to be replaced. That got old real fast. Had this large company ever actually whole heartedly embraced one of them, any of them, good work that came out of task forces would be put to use. Instead that work was used for less than a year, trashed and "ooh, look at that shiny new thing" took over. Toyota with the kaizen process could've been great, it was sorely needed. But the people taught the kaizen process were not able to explain it very well, we knew we were doing a kaizen blitz, that always turned out to be a kaizen bust. DONE. If you are not training the trainers, at the very least investing in that process, none of what you pick is ever going to stand a chance and the old ways and habits endure.

example: "we are going to do a kaizen blitz, a Japanese technique used at Toyota," end of explanation. 3 people left the conference room thinking apparently that kaizen was replacing our time card system, Kronos, simply based on both words start with K? lol, IDK, but for 3 people to think it had anything to do with time cards was scarily bad.

so I would suggest starting small, get the lay of the land and if your corporate culture is anything like mine was, don't over-invest yourself, it will drive you nuts.

[iris lilies]

...
so I would suggest starting small, get the lay of the land and if your corporate culture is anything like mine was, don't over-invest yourself, it will drive you nuts.

yep, good advice.

Participate in the Great New Thing at a level your boss expects, but investing in it at the expense of other work obligations is likely not going to pan out.

[Zoe Girl]

thank you all, I feel like we are 2 years into the mess you lived through freshstart. It is the district level too, and education kinda loves changing everything. We finally got all the old books, furniture, etc hauled off that we won't use this year. So many systems get changed out so fast! At least if we dress in a costume it is because we work with kids at least, on a side note one of my favorite goal systems is a logic model that spans longer periods of time. I actually have one for my program that I am ready to update to span 3-5 years and the transition from grants to other funding in 2 years. I don't put a lot of work into it because I may not get to use it.

I am making a plan to meet on the phone with my job coach before I have to respond to the email but my guess is that I should join one. They are time limited and without homework so that helps. There is a general expectation to be on 2 committees and this would be a short-term addition. Since I have been in the department longer than a lot of people it seems I should show some engagement and leadership in this. Also the trainer has been working with our department fairly regularly for a couple years and knows the work we do well. She was a teacher and then an after school programmer. However she has been doing the leadership training with the supervisors and I honestly do not see the great improvements.

On a side note, so far the project is going well. I am getting all the flyers and contract through the process. One boss is going on maternity leave at any time so it has been already passed to the next person.

[freshstart]

sounds like a good plan

[Zoe Girl]

i went to the first meeting of our task force and i think i will love it. i was impressed that another person has been on communication committees for 2 years, worked through all the meetings and plans, even made it part of her personal goals, and then each year it was totally dropped at implementation, and she is on our committee. that takes a lot of trust and commitment in my opinion. that is what i love about this group, the people on it are people i feel comfortable with and trust. i was in another meeting that was good and productive and yet i was on edge based on one of the other participants.

we got to 'clear' today and that was so important to me. i think we all, myself included, want to go forward in a positive way but it has been a rough time leading up to this. we all got to share something that had happened and how we felt (and we have a strong agreement of confidentiality). another person shared exactly what i would have, having 2 supervisors and getting an answer from one only to have the other supervisor change that and include you in an email correspondence that felt like a reprimand to the first supervisor as well as being told to do something different. apparently this paired supervisor structure means this is happening all over. And i actually got to say to a room of my peers what happened with changing the name of my after school program without informing me other than a sticky note with a harsh tone. that was the worst this year. i have not gossiped about it or vented much but it has been weighing on me. the facilitator asked what the follow up was and i was able to say that i didn't talk to one of the people involved because i felt it would cause more negativity and not change much. i am not sure i can express how good that felt.

So i am realistic that we can work at this and possibly not make a change. there are 2 people in this group who specifically are taking responsibility for making sure the work does not get dropped. they still need cooperation and to stay in their jobs. However this group helps me feel that i have a support system of people i can trust. i think i could share with any of them in the process of working something out and not just mired in negativity but still be honest.

[sweetana3]

+++1