The late Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz once said, “It is better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.” The insights of a 19th century military leader might seem irrelevant to 21st century governance, but at the 2015 Public Sector for the Future Summit, Mike Teller, the Chief Information Officer of the Idaho State Tax Commission, argued that the swell of data available to public officials today creates an information overflow not dissimilar to the fog of war. 

In 2014, the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS)—an organization housed within the state’s Department of Human Services that investigates child abuse and supports troubled families—was in crisis. It had recently experienced a 36 percent staff turnover rate and needed 60 percent more personnel—a major reason the unit had a backlog of approximately 6,000 investigations. Over 12 years, DFCS had had nine leaders. Most disturbingly, Georgia had recently experienced six high-profile child deaths.

The United States is a land of opportunity – a country that prides itself on the promise that if you educate yourself and work hard, you’ll achieve prosperity. Yet what happens when policies and systems impede progress and blunt the promise for people most in need?  According to analysis and insights from across the nation, this impediment to social and economic mobility is pervasive, and it’s called the “Cliff Effect.” 

The noted poet James Baldwin once said: “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” In this spirit, leaders at the Health and Human Services Summit forcefully faced the persistent challenge of ensuring that every individual, every family and every community has equity in health and human services opportunities and outcomes.

The resolve in the room was palpable. In fact, 90% of Health and Human Services Summit attendees reported that improving equity in social and economic mobility is extremely valuable in achieving new outcomes, and 39% included ‘racial equity in opportunity and outcomes’ as one of the field's biggest drivers of change.
 

Police Chief Medaria Arradondo of the Minneapolis Police Department will tell you that culture is like an iceberg: It hides more than it reveals. This is something that he, Deputy County Administrator Jennifer DeCubellis of Hennepin County, Minnesota, and other members of city and county leadership learned as they worked to reinvent their community’s approach to criminal justice. 

Dr. Ron Heifetz, Founder of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, shares insights around the different leadership challenges at each level of the Human Services Value Curve. This discussion revealed that these challenges become increasingly “adaptive” and cannot be resolved through authority and change management alone.

Leaders in Dakota County, Minnesota, recognizing the Human Services Value Curve's potential, embarked on a journey of vision and strategic planning. The resulting transformation integrates services provided by the county as well as those provided by partnering nonprofits—like 360 Communities—to create a circle of programs and services that promotes community-wide self-sufficiency.

Streamlining operations is a universal imperative in the health and human services industry, but myriad possibilities exist for how to tackle it. Deciding on the best approach demands a keen understanding of the convergence dynamics that shape the operating environment. At the national level, and in the midst of economic crisis, convergence becomes even more complex. Such was the state of affairs in Ireland beginning in 2008.

Governor of Ohio John Kasich took office in 2011, determined to resolve the state's alarming budget shortfall using a fiscally conservative approach while simultaneously improving the government safety net. To propel this agenda, he formed the Office of Health Transformation (OHT), a small leadership team possessing the skills and experience to formulate a successful transformation plan, which the Governor empowered them to implement.

The average U.S. citizen lives into his/her late 70s; the life expectancy for a person with a mental disorder is 66; and if someone has a mental disorder and is a Medicare or Medicaid beneficiary, that citizen is only expected to live to (roughly) the age of 55, on par with someone in sub-Saharan Africa. To Dr. Joseph Parks, the director of Missouri’s HealthNet Division (the state’s Medicaid organization), this is “an appalling emergency” and is emblematic of a foundational problem: the U.S. health care system “depends almost entirely on the person who’s sick.” People must identify when something is wrong and determine whom to see. For people with serious mental health problems or chronic medical conditions, the results of this setup can be catastrophic.