As published via agency update on July 10, 2023

During the summer of 2022 and in conjunction with an annual retreat, the agency’s leadership team made leadership commitments to pursue in the SFY23 (July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023). The commitments represented the continuing evolution of the leadership team’s goals and priorities in SFY23 alongside the implementation of the strategic plan informed by an annual assessment of the opportunities and challenges of the agency as a whole.

Each member of the leadership team championed one of the commitments. The paragraphs below represent a wrap-up of efforts completed during SFY23. As always, if you are interested in learning more about any of these topics, you are welcome to speak with a member of the leadership team.

• Implement new strategies and practices for collaborative quarterly resource and work planning (leader: Annette Demchur). Directors and managers collaboratively developed a shared spreadsheet-based tool for quarterly resource and work planning with a focus on the quarterly deliverables. Managers are using this tool to reflect on actual progress versus planned progress at the end of the quarter and to guide discussions about workflows and resource needs. While some conversations between managers about specific resource needs happen on an ad hoc basis, the quarterly planning tool provides a high-level overview of the quarterly needs.

• Extend project workflows to include promotion, debriefs, archiving, and follow-up (leader: Marty Milkovits). Leadership attention on this commitment in SFY23 focused on assessing the agency’s archiving practice. While it is in everyone’s interest that completed work is easily accessible, complete, and organized, we recognize that it can be a challenge for project and program managers to effectively archive materials. The leadership team outlined the following approach to assess and identify challenges with the existing archive guidance: 1) survey existing project archiving practices, 2) develop a statement of archiving goal/purpose, and 3) identify next steps to improve process and practice.

• Explore technological and physical infrastructure as supports for communication, collaboration, and culture (leader: Hiral Gandhi). The leadership team worked with IT staff to discuss technology needs for the agency and explored ways to fund those needs. IT staff set up needed equipment (Meeting Owl, second mobile cart unit) to allow for hybrid/remote meetings in the office. The exploration of technology needs in SFY23 will inform a SFY24 purchase of a tool that allows for collaboration within all groups at the agency for data platforms and visualizations. Leadership and IT staff also identified and discussed options related to physical office infrastructure in the context of a possible office space move. The strategies will be adapted as we determine next steps for our physical space in SFY24.

• Identify opportunities to increase creativity, innovation, and risk tolerance (leader: Rebecca Morgan). Following workshops conducted in SFY22 that focused on making space for creativity, a working group identified processes that slow opportunities for innovation, developed recommended strategies for improvements, and began to implement aspects of these strategies. One recommended strategy advanced in SFY23 was the establishment of themes in the UPWP – safety, uncertainty, resiliency, and equity. In addition to helping advance collaboration, these themes provide a structure to stimulate idea generation. The leadership team plans to advance these themes more broadly in the coming year, and introduce other recommendations that came out of the initiative.

• Establish path for internally-facing diversity, equity, and inclusion committee (leader: Tegin Teich). The leadership team engaged with the MAPC Director of Equity and Culture to convene workshops to develop a diversity, equity, and inclusion statement for the agency, reflecting where the agency is at this point in time. The statement was vetted and adopted by the leadership team and shared with the agency as a whole. In SFY24, a committee will develop its charge using the diversity, equity, and inclusion statement as its foundational framework.

• Implement year two of the agency's strategic plan (leader: Gina Perille). The leadership team treated the January-June 2023 time period as an implementation sprint to help accelerate and focus work on the second year of the strategic plan. An updated implementation dashboard was published in January 2023, reflecting shifts in some timing and responsibility for certain implementation activities. To assist with the acceleration, regular check-in structures specifically focused on the strategic plan were established to support the leadership team. During these check-ins, which took place in March and May, and are again scheduled in July, leadership team members reported on progress, challenges, and schedule adjustments for their areas of responsibility. A summary of strategic plan goals and activity status for the year was shared during the May 2023 all-staff meeting. During the August 2023 leadership retreat, the team will plan out SFY24 strategic plan implementation work.