Purpose & Principles I S2 43: Kris Cox - Stop Decorating the Fish

Kristen Cox is the world's leading authority on how to apply the
Theory of Constraints to governments and non profits.  She is
perhaps best known for her work as the former Executive Director of
the Governor's Office of Management and Budget (GOMB) for the State
of Utah where she orchestrated a 35 percent improvement across
Utah's $20B executive branch. It was 2008, and I was in serious
trouble...

I was leading a state agency in Salt Lake City during the
economic crisis. The worse the economy got, the more citizens
came to us looking for help.  And the economy was getting
worse by the day.


Caseloads were up by 60 percent. Common sense would say I needed
to hire 60 percent more employees and lease the office space to
house them. But that was out of the question. We all knew what
was coming: budget cuts.


My team was stressed out, overworked, and worried. Truth-be-told,
so was I.


I started trying different approaches--knowing there had to be a
better way.  Most failed.  One showed promise, but it
clearly wasn't going to work out of the shrink wrap--it was built
for business and industry.  It would need to be modified to
work in government.


So, that's what my team and I did.  We tweaked,
experimented, failed, learned, and then...we figured it out.
 


We were not only able to meet the unprecedented demand, but
improve quality, and we returned $30 million back to
the General Fund--we didn't need it. Morale was restored. We were
a team again knowing we just pulled off a huge accomplishment
against all odds.  


Soon after, the Governor made me executive director over an
agency that would oversee the state's $20 billion budget and all
of the executive branch's operations. Together, we set an
ambitious target to improve all of state government by 25
percent.  


We improved by 35 percent.


I started sharing our story online.   We organized the
biggest conference of its kind in the world,
and I co-authored two books.  I've now applied
this in over 200 systems in a huge variety of settings.  


It works.