The Challenge: This organization was facing a lack of employee empowerment, lack of accountability, ineffective communication, and increased inefficiencies.

The Solution: 120 managers and supervisors participated in an organizational change process to transform the current mindset from one of entitlement to one of accountability, teamwork, and initiative.

The Results: The organization tripled its customer base, reduced costs, realized millions of dollars in savings, reduced government funding by 70%, and improved customer response time. In addition, the environment has been transformed to one of mutual respect and trust where information is shared freely.

Health Services Organization Realizes Cost Savings and Culture Shift through the Power of Teamwork and Collaboration

Background

Summit Pointe is a community mental health treatment organization that assists individuals with mental illness, developmental disabilities, and emotional problems. A mental health authority, in Battle Creek Michigan, Summit Pointe provides behavioral health services and is open 365 days a year for crisis intervention services.

Issues

Summit Pointe had become a typical hierarchical government organization. Many people in the organization—from the governing board to the staff—had forgotten the reasons why they were there. Employees did not feel empowered and, as a result, there was a lack of accountability, proactivity, and productivity among staff members. In addition, communication was poor and, in some cases, nonexistent. Employees did not talk to each other and, therefore, did not know each others’ scope of responsibility, which led to duplication of effort and a “turf” mentality. Employees also felt their individual opinions or contributions meant little to the organization, and they felt they had no control over their work environment.

These issues led to increased inefficiency, and Summit Pointe was spending money faster than it could earn it. In addition, some employees felt they did not need to do a quality job because Summit Pointe was the only mental health provider in the area. However, Calhoun County was growing faster than Summit Pointe, which meant the demands for performance and quality were also growing. Something had to change—and fast.

Process/Solution

When CEO Erv Brinker came to Summit Pointe, he had a vision. His goal was to make the organization less dependent on county government support and to run Summit Pointe as an independently supported business while improving the quality of the customer’s experience. In a bold move, he proposed to reduce the amount of county funding in exchange for the ability to run Summit Pointe’s business practices separately from the county while embarking on a comprehensive change process.

With the assistance of an outside marketing consultant, Brinker found that only 11 percent of the community knew of Summit Pointe, and that that percentage consisted of individuals who had previously been patients of Summit Pointe. In addition, of the 11 percent, only one-third of individuals were satisfied with the service they had received at Summit Pointe. The next step was to look at the business and eliminate elements that were distracting the organization from its mission of providing quality health care. As a result of this data, Summit Pointe utilized The Ken Blanchard Companies^® training programs to initiate an organizational change process with the goal of transforming the current staff entitlement mentality to the entrepreneurial mind-set that is present in an empowered, team-based, and profitable organization. Specifically, Summit Pointe hoped to achieve the following outcomes:

• Increased efficiency
• Consistency of services
• Ownership of responsibilities and outcomes
• Sharing of responsibility
• Acknowledgment of individual abilities
• Celebrating achievements

In order to achieve these outcomes, the Blanchard Building High Performing Teams program was initially rolled out to all employees. Additionally, Blanchard partnered with Brinker to design a comprehensive solution incorporating Situational Leadership^® II, Building High Performing Teams, and The Leadership Bridge: Situational Leadership^® II and DiSC processes that was implemented with the Summit Pointe leadership team.

Throughout this organizational change process, Summit Pointe faced several challenges. First, to become more streamlined and effective, the organization underwent a comprehensive restructure, which meant downsizing their current staff. As a result, some supervisors and managers accepted line staff positions and others left the organization. Second, to ensure that the change process was successful at addressing the temporary confusion and lack of accountability to transitioning to an empowered culture. And third, to create benchmarks to measure progress.

Results

Over a 14-year period during which they implemented Blanchard solutions, Summit Pointe has documented millions of dollars in savings.

Moving to a team-based culture provided impressive results for Summit Pointe. In addition to realizing tremendous cost savings, the organization has continued to evolve and improve.

Employees now have a framework for embracing responsibility and accountability and, as a result, have increased ownership of their work and of the organization. In addition, the corporate mind-set has shifted. Employees now behave more as owners of the organization rather than as bureaucrats waiting to receive direction. Staff members are committed to their work and contribute to the success of the organization through brainstorming, problem solving, customer service, and sharing information across teams in an open and honest manner. Most importantly, employees now value their customers and an environment of mutual trust and respect is evident.

Summit Pointe has grown dramatically, increasing its customer base from 2,000 customers to over 7,000 with half the staff while improving customer satisfaction. The amount of funding requested from the county decreased approximately 70% and remains at that figure. As a result, Summit Pointe is well on its way to achieving its mission of “Making Life Work” for its customers by using entrepreneurial and innovative practices.

But, making the transition to a team-based culture is not something that happens overnight. As Erv Brinker states, “This is not a destination for us. This is clearly a journey.”

Summit Pointe found that empowered, entrepreneurial, team-based mental healthcare organizations

• Focus on outcomes rather than on process
• Concentrate on customer needs
• Can dramatically improve financial condition
• Empower staff to deliver services
• Embrace competition
• Are driven by missions, not rules
• Invest in prevention
• Decentralize authority
• Solve problems by collaborating with others