IntegrisPerformanceBid.pdf

Bidder Name: Integris Performance Advisors

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Categories that your company is bidding on (Mandatory, Not Scored)

Check the box(s) next to each category that your company is bidding on:

Organizational Development Change Management Management and Business Analysis

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Bidder’s Organization (4 pages maximum) (150 points)

Introduction We launched this company in 2011 with the mission of “Expanding the existence of healthy organizations and great places to work,” and we have been very successful in living up to that vision. To help DES best understand our qualifications, and why we would continue to be an effective and successful partner for the State of Washington, below we list some factors that we believe set us apart.

• Extreme Customer Focus – This is something that is hard to prove in writing, but will certainly come out in any conversations you have with our other clients. Our founders/senior executives believe deeply that our company is here first and foremost to serve others. The mantra “we have to give value before we get value” is embraced by all team members.

• Unparalleled Team of Experts – Ours is a tight-knit group of learning and development professionals. Each of our coaches and facilitators are career professionals with an average 15- 20 years of directly relevant experience. Most have direct experience with WA agencies.

• Guided By Shared Values – Trust. Passion. Service. These are the core values that guide our actions and bond every member of our team. This is a difference that is difficult for us to explain in a proposal, but very easy for clients to feel through personal interaction with us.

• Deep Government Experience – We serve clients of all kinds, including corporate and non-profit, in addition to government. But an overwhelming percentage of our work is concentrated on government agencies. The broader list of government agencies we’ve served in a significant way (multi-faceted engagements around organizational development and change management) includes: WA Departments of DES, Ecology, Fish & Wildlife, Lottery, and Licensing; King County;

Snohomish County; County of Santa Cruz; Los Angeles County; City of Shoreline; AZ Departments of Revenue, Corrections and Health; the State of MA; and Sacramento Sewer.

• World-Class Development Programs – We strive to leverage the brightest minds in the world of leadership development and organizational excellence. That’s why our team has built personal relationships with some of the most respected people in our industry, including Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner (authors of The Leadership Challenge), Patrick Lencioni (author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team), and Brené Brown (author of Dare to Lead). Through these relationships, we build our own knowledge and skill, which we in turn pass on to clients.

• We Practice What We Preach – We actually apply what we teach to others. For example:

o We know our DiSC communication styles and we use that knowledge in all our interactions. We actively pursue productive conflict, where we leave personal attacks and petty feuds at the door and focus our disagreements on the discussion of ideas.

o We complete the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team assessment several times a year to monitor how we are doing as a team and what we can do to improve.

o Our leaders complete the DiSC Management assessment, which helps us be most effective in how we delegate, recognize and development our people.

o We use the LPI 360, which provides insights into how we can better inspire, challenge, enable and encourage our team.

o We actively apply Lean Six Sigma concepts, doing our best to know our customers’ requirements and deliver against them in the most effective and efficient way possible.

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Our Story

For years, our founders and many of our current team members focused exclusively on helping clients implement organizational change efforts related to Lean management (including training and certification programs for Six Sigma techniques). During that time we supported hundreds of projects and delivered millions of dollars in savings and revenue gains. But something was missing.

For many executive teams, the decision to pursue Lean was built around the premise that embracing process improvement tools would lead to a shift in organizational culture. Unfortunately, for most organizations, the cultural evolution remained elusive. In far too many cases, organizations were pushing “Lean training” on front line workers, while those in leadership positions gave it little attention.

This was the realization of our founders. They knew the problem wasn’t with the Lean techniques themselves, but rather with how they were being implemented. They knew that if they could help leaders improve their own behaviors, it would open the door for Lean techniques, and really, any organizational change effort, to thrive. So they set out on a multiyear journey to find the best of the best when it comes to leadership and team development.

And so, our company was born!

In our quest, we looked for programs that were based on research and proven to drive results. We combed through a lot, and as we did, a few certainly did rise to the top:

• The Leadership Challenge, based on 30+ years of research about what effective leaders actually do

• The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive team, built around the concepts in one of the most successful business management books of all times, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

• Everything DiSC, one of the most accurate personality styles instruments available based on the latest research in psychographics and computer adaptive testing

We studied these programs, became Certified in them, and built relationships with the authors and publishers who designed them in an effort to ensure that we could optimize their value as we worked with clients to address issues related to organizational culture, employee engagement, process improvement, and team productivity.

Today we are recognized as one of the top coaching and consulting firms in the world that are Certified by the authors and publishers to help clients embrace these concepts:

• For The Leadership Challenge, we are one of less than 10 firms in the U.S. authorized as a Global Training Partner

• For The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team, we are one of fewer than 30 firms that are Certified by the publisher as a Diamond-level provider (the highest honor available)

• For Everything DiSC, we are in the top 1% of DiSC providers globally and we’ve written a best-selling book about how to use DISC in organizational development efforts (we can’t say any more for fear of identifying ourselves)

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Of course, the world does not stand still. New research, new experts, and new development programs are being designed all the time. We stay on top of these developments, and when it makes sense, we’ll add new programs into our service offerings. And that’s exactly what we did when Brené Brown released her Dare to Lead program, built on her decades long studies about courage and vulnerability.

And like the other programs, we are proud to say we are part of an elite group. For Dare to Lead, our lead facilitator is one of only 700 people around the world that was Certified directly by Dr. Brené Brown.

Our Relationship with Washington State

Government agencies in Washington were among our first clients back in 2011. Over the last decade we were on multiple Master Contracts, and have been fortunate to have several thousands of state, county, and city employees use our assessments and/or participate in our development programs. During that time, our commitment to you has grown, and we hope that the next decade allows us to provide even more value to Washington State than we did in the last!

Through the telling of our story above, we highlight a unique qualification that is particularly relevant to agencies in Washington…our deep history and experience with Lean improvement. We know how important the Lean journey has been, and continues to be, for Washington. We’ve been a part of Governor Inslee’s Lean Partnership Program from the beginning, and we’ve supported/participated in the annual Lean Conference every year since inception.

Though this Master Contract does not focus on Lean services, we highlight our experience in Lean to make the point that we have a unique perspective on how to pursue organizational development and change management in agencies who are also pursuing Lean efforts. Our knowledge of Lean means that we can be a more effective strategic partner to any agency as they plan their efforts, ensuring that the structure and content of executive coaching, team development, change management, and other services support and align with other initiatives going on within the agency.

Relevant Services

• Executive Coaching: Our team includes qualified professional coaches who work with senior executives, mid-level managers, and other employees to measure/assess their current situation;

identify improvement goals related to personal, team, and organizational objectives; set an action plan that typically involves 1-to-1 coaching, group training, and/or self-directed learning; execute the plan providing feedback along the way to both the individual and to management; monitor and assess progress using follow-on assessments; and concluding any coaching program with clear next steps for the individuals involved to ensure the effort leads to sustained growth and long lasting behavior change. To build credibility with the individuals involved, and to ensure that the coaching program is built on proven, data-based methodologies, we utilize the programs outlined in this proposal to structure coaching plans.

• Support for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs: Every coaching and/or training program we offer is built with the underlying goal of helping to build more safe, more respectful, more inclusive work environments, where every individual feels welcome and free from harassment or discrimination. The skills and concepts we help leaders and teams develop form a foundational

EXHIBIT C - 2 – BIDDER RESPONSE SHEET / 01620-BUSINESS CONSULTING SERVICES PAGE 5 mindset that will help other DEI programs to take root.

• Team Development: Anything that gets done in a government agency ultimately relies on a team. By working directly and exclusively with an intact team, or by organizing group learning events with members from multiple teams, we help teams break down the walls that inhibit effectiveness, productivity, and cohesion. We focus on helping them work together more effectively, enabling individuals and the team as a whole develop their strengths and overcome their weaknesses, using the proven methodologies highlighted in this document. Our efforts apply to all stages of team development (forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning), and equip teams to not only perform at a higher level, but also to embrace and champion efforts to create a safe, respectful, and inclusion work environment.

• Coaching Workshops: We have a broad library of coaching workshops and training programs built around the concepts explained elsewhere in this proposal. All of these programs have been revised over the last 12 months as the world shifted to a virtual workplace. We are now fully equipped to support leaders, teams and organizations with fully virtual coaching workshops associated with all our programs. In the years ahead, during the term of this Master Contract, we commit to staying ahead of workplace developments so we can be an effective partner for the State regardless of whether or not we are able to providing coaching and training in-person or virtually.

• Change Management: Everything we do as an organization is about driving change – for individuals, for teams, and for organizations. Our core team has worked together for 20 years, learning, developing, and training others in the latest concepts associated with helping people embrace change in the workforce. While we frequently offer coaching workshops to teach others the principles of change management, the real value of our change management background is in how we apply it to the other organizational development services we provide. When we coach leaders or teams, effective change management techniques are always built in, ensuring that those efforts achieve the long term goals our clients seek.

• Strategic Planning: Aligned with Lean management and the process called Hoshin planning, we work with senior teams to plan for the future, helping them work through the stages of goal setting, analysis, strategy formation, and implementation/monitoring.

• Process Improvement: As explained in Our Story above, our roots are in process improvement. Using the full range of Lean and Six Sigma tools and techniques, we can both train others how to execute process improvement efforts, and/or we can roll up our sleeves and get to work side-by-side with teams, serving as a coach as analyze processes, determine options, and implement solutions.

Summary Points

• Founded in 2011

• Offering a mix of services focused on executive coaching, team development, change management and process improvement

• Financially stable throughout our existence

• Serving a robust mix of government, non-profit, and corporate organizations (with deep experience with WA agencies)

• Managed by the original co-founders who are also the authors of a best-selling book about organizational development topics

• A team of well-qualified coaches, consultants, and trainers ready to serve Washington State

• Committed to helping clients develop healthy and inclusive workplaces, where every employee can feel safe, respected, and valued

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Experience (4 pages for each category bid) (200 points)

Project 1 / Reference 1 – Organizational Development This was a 2 year project with a government agency with ~180 employees

This government agency’s journey to become the “best-run finance department in government” has earned accolades from both the public and the private sector. The National Association of Counties took notice, awarding our client its Financial Management Achievement Award in recognition of the agency’s successful initiatives that have streamlined operations, provided value to customers, and created a work culture focused on problem-solving and respect.

Several years ago, the organization was in a different place. The group’s fundamental culture needed to shift. Where the agency was going wasn’t going to get them where they needed to be—to be the best.

There needed to be an intentional focus on resetting the culture. That’s when they reached out to us for counsel, coaching, and our expertise in organizational development and change management.

Over the course of this project, we coached the executives of this agency and helped them focus on preparing managers, supervisors, and others to be cultural enablers of leadership and respect. Early in our engagement we trained and coached all their leaders using The Leadership Challenge, the world-class leadership development framework that helps leaders master the Five Practices proven to lead to better outcomes: Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart.

As part of our coaching efforts, every leader completed the a 360-degree feedback assessment called the LPI® (Leadership Practices Inventory). We conducted 1-on-1 coaching sessions to debrief individual results, and we used group learning events to build a shared language around what it meant to be a leader in this agency.

The Director of this agency has this to say: “Having [our company] help us implement The Leadership Challenge was absolutely critical because what I’ve learned over time is that your work culture for any kind of a unit is most influenced by the supervisor or manager of that unit. We wanted to create more alignment—one culture instead of 20, depending on the supervisor—and The Leadership Challenge gave us a common purpose and understanding of what is expected of a leader in our environment. It gave us a construct that helped us achieve our vision. We couldn’t have done it without the support and strategic guidance of [our company]”

Knowing that leadership development isn’t a one-time training event—that it takes on-going practice and commitment—our client’s Executive Leadership Team took extra care to make sure everyone kept a daily focused on The Five Practices of Model, Inspire, Challenge, Enable and Encourage. We helped the group form five non-hierarchical, cross-functional teams (one for each Practice), whose charge is to promote initiatives that support extraordinary leadership behaviors throughout the workplace. By collaborating and sharing ideas with others in the organization, they continued to strengthen the agency’s culture.

Building Teams to Continue Organizational Development

Although many of the positions depended on each other, teammates often saw themselves as working more individually than collaboratively. They had a hard time sharing information. The blame game

EXHIBIT C - 2 – BIDDER RESPONSE SHEET / 01620-BUSINESS CONSULTING SERVICES PAGE 7 kicked in whenever a mistake was made, setting off finger pointing and creating grudges that literally lasted for years.

The team had many of the same issues experienced by our other clients, and we had a solution for them

– a team development model that would enable them to successfully work through their struggles. We interviewed the members of the team to understand the issues and opportunities more clearly and then introduced them to the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team. We had everyone on the team take both a DiSC personality assessment and complete the Five Behaviors Team Assessment. We used the results of those assessments to plan a customized 2-day Team Retreat, where we debriefed the results and set a path forward. Using the retreat as a spring-board, we scheduled regular coaching sessions to help them layout new, more effective team procedures. Some of the outcomes from that work included:

• Improvements to their team meeting agendas and creating a “buddy system” for bringing those who missed meetings up to speed.

• A commitment from all team members to try to resolve issues one-on-one before taking it to the team leader. They adopted an “it takes two to escalate” rule for intra-team issues.

• Incorporating icebreakers into their meetings to make “getting to know each other” (a key element of sustaining trust) an on-going practice.

• Team members becoming more comfortable with giving each other constructive feedback.

• Increased emotional intelligence across all members, due to their newfound understanding of their own personality style and the styles of others (using the insights they gained from DiSC).

The growth among the leadership team was so impressive that members of the team began to spread the language to their direct reports, and we started supporting other teams in their team development efforts. Recognizing that it is impractical to have an outside consultant be the sole provider of team coaching and training, we worked with senior leadership to identify other champions that could be trained to be the agency’s internal training and facilitation team. This was a decision that ensured the concepts would be embraced far and wide throughout the agency, as it enabled us to maintain our role as executive coaches for the senior leadership team, while letting internal resources spread the ideas to the rest of the organization (with our support and guidance).

Leader Standard Work and Embracing Lean Process Management/Improvement

This client is part of a state that has embraced the principles of Lean to build more efficient, effective and accountable government. To ensure that leaders in this organization were aligned with the Lean work going on around them, we helped them establish “standard work” procedures for leaders.

As background, in Lean “standard work” represents the best, easiest, and safest way to do a job, reflecting the collective wisdom of the employees who perform the work. Standard work reduces waste and variation by identifying the most effective practices, and by encouraging everyone who does that work does it in a similar way. In many organizations, leaders think “Lean is just for the front line workers.” But we know better, and now so does our client.

To help leaders in this organization really see the power of Lean, we took them through something we call “A3 Simulation Training.” This is a Lean training program we designed specifically for government leaders. It simulates a government process that needs improvement, and during the session participants work together in groups to apply Lean tools and concepts to improve the process. We then train and coach leaders to use the Lean tools that are most applicable to leadership. For this organization, that

EXHIBIT C - 2 – BIDDER RESPONSE SHEET / 01620-BUSINESS CONSULTING SERVICES PAGE 8 consisted of six specific tasks: Tier Boards, Visual Controls, A3 Use, A3 Coaching, Huddle Meetings and Roundings.

By helping the leaders of this organization embrace Lean concepts, they have both become more effective as leaders, and they are also more aligned with the employees and teams that are working on more detailed Lean efforts to streamline work processes throughout the organization.

Delivering Results That Matter

By nearly every measure, our client’s culture of teamwork, leadership and respect has made a profound difference in employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and bottom-line performance. Here are some of the impressive results:

• 99% of respondents to the annual employee engagement survey indicated a willingness to go above and beyond the minimum required by their job description—to give their “discretionary effort”

• 93% of external customers rate their level of satisfaction with the agency as “Very Good” or “Good”

• Output is up in Accounts Payable and invoice payment cycle time has been reduced from 30 days to 2 days, resulting in both lower cost and improved customer satisfaction

As one of the mid-level managers saw it, there is much to celebrate—and share with others. She said:

“I’ve been in the public sector my entire career, which I’ve always seen as something like a glacial ridge.

You know it’s changing but you can’t really see it. But I see this agency as the ship that plows through the ice. I’ve never seen such a rate of change happen in a public section organization. And it’s exciting.

Even the private sector is looking at us, going, “Wow! Look at what they’re doing. How can we implement this in our organization?.”

And according to the agency Director, our company played an integral role in their successful journey.

He said: “[Our company] mentored us as we’ve gone from being novice leaders to true practitioners, to an organization of top-notch problem solvers who really deliver benefit to our customers. We needed to shift our focus from blaming individuals to focusing on solving problems and improving processes. And with [our company’s] help, we could actually see a tangible shift starting to take place after 6 months, after 12 months. We’re seeing more intentional actions on the part of supervisors to embrace the concepts of The Leadership Challenge, to adopt The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team, and to use the language of Everything DiSC to improve communications across the organization.”

Project 2 / Reference 2 – Organizational Development This was a 1 year project with a government agency with ~40 employees

When we met them, our client had just scored 66% on their annual employee engagement survey. For good reason, these results disappointed the agency Director. She said: “What I realized was that we really needed to invest in becoming a more cohesive team. We were an agency of strong individual performers but we really needed to come together as a team and start to build trust, have healthy conflict, drive commitment around our goals and hold one another accountable to achieve the results that we were looking to achieve.”

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To begin developing a stronger team with higher engagement, we were hired to facilitate an off-site team retreat. The team began by taking the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team Assessment. The team’s assessment resulted in low scores on all five behaviors – not an atypical outcome. We used those results to design an agenda that would really connected with the issues they were facing, and we gathered the team to dig into the results and create action plans for improving their cohesion and level of engagement.

Recognizing the importance of vulnerability-based trust, we focused a good percentage of the time helping the team open up and get issues out on the table. We guided the team through an exercise about personal histories exercise. As is often the case, members learned a lot of new things about each other. “We had people in that room who have worked together for 20 years who didn’t know very basic things about one another,” said one of the managers. This activity started to break the gridlock that existed between them.

During and after the initial session, we had the team talk about their individual styles using the language of DiSC. This helped them build a greater understanding of individual working styles. The group’s styles were pretty diverse, making it a rich discussion for participants that continues to this day. One manager noted: “People became more willing to collaborate and share what they’re doing without feeling threatened.”

While the team retreat served as the kick-off, the journey was just beginning. With some new levels of trust established, we pushed ahead using the Five Behaviors framework to help build new protocols designed to reduce the negative impact of conflict. In addition to discussing healthy and unhealthy behaviors that individuals may display during conflict, we helped the team establish new ground rules for what is acceptable and unacceptable conflict during staff meetings. The Director said: “Thanks to the guidance of [our company], people are more willing now to talk about the difficult issues in the meeting rather than gossiping about them outside of meetings.”

Over time, our coaching sessions morphed to focus less on issues related to trust and conflict, and more to topics that would increase team commitment and enable them to be better equipped to be accountable to one another. We helped the team structure daily huddles, which enabled them to stay focused and aligned on the most important issues facing the team.

Thanks to the team’s dedication and the guidance we provided, employee engagement is way up, as reflected in the survey results (shown below):

Employee Engagement Survey Item Recent Score

Improvement from initial score

My department’s goals give guidance to my work. 95% + 35% My work unit works well to solve problems and achieve common goals. 95% + 36% There is a spirit of teamwork and cooperation among the members of my work unit. 86% + 33%

I feel encouraged to share ideas to improve the way we work. 90% + 26%

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Project 1 / Reference 1 – Change Management This was a 2 year project with a government agency with ~180 employees

This government agency’s journey to become the “best-run finance department in government” has earned accolades from both the public and the private sector. The National Association of Counties took notice, awarding our client its Financial Management Achievement Award in recognition of the agency’s successful initiatives that have streamlined operations, provided value to customers, and created a work culture focused on problem-solving and respect.

Several years ago, the organization was in a different place. The group’s fundamental culture needed to shift. Where the agency was going wasn’t going to get them where they needed to be—to be the best.

There needed to be an intentional focus on resetting the culture. That’s when they reached out to us for counsel, coaching, and our expertise in organizational development and change management.

Over the course of this project, we coached the executives of this agency and helped them focus on preparing managers, supervisors, and others to be cultural enablers of leadership and respect. Early in our engagement we trained and coached all their leaders using The Leadership Challenge, the world-class leadership development framework that helps leaders master the Five Practices proven to lead to better outcomes: Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart.

As part of our coaching efforts, every leader completed the a 360-degree feedback assessment called the LPI® (Leadership Practices Inventory). We conducted 1-on-1 coaching sessions to debrief individual results, and we used group learning events to build a shared language around what it meant to be a leader in this agency.

The Director of this agency has this to say: “Having [our company] help us implement The Leadership Challenge was absolutely critical because what I’ve learned over time is that your work culture for any kind of a unit is most influenced by the supervisor or manager of that unit. We wanted to create more alignment—one culture instead of 20, depending on the supervisor—and The Leadership Challenge gave us a common purpose and understanding of what is expected of a leader in our environment. It gave us a construct that helped us achieve our vision. We couldn’t have done it without the support and strategic guidance of [our company]”

Knowing that leadership development isn’t a one-time training event—that it takes on-going practice and commitment—our client’s Executive Leadership Team took extra care to make sure everyone kept a daily focused on The Five Practices of Model, Inspire, Challenge, Enable and Encourage. We helped the group form five non-hierarchical, cross-functional teams (one for each Practice), whose charge is to promote initiatives that support extraordinary leadership behaviors throughout the workplace. By collaborating and sharing ideas with others in the organization, they continued to strengthen the agency’s culture.

Building Teams to Continue Organizational Development

Although many of the positions depended on each other, teammates often saw themselves as working more individually than collaboratively. They had a hard time sharing information. The blame game

EXHIBIT C - 2 – BIDDER RESPONSE SHEET / 01620-BUSINESS CONSULTING SERVICES PAGE 11 kicked in whenever a mistake was made, setting off finger pointing and creating grudges that literally lasted for years.

The team had many of the same issues experienced by our other clients, and we had a solution for them

– a team development model that would enable them to successfully work through their struggles. We interviewed the members of the team to understand the issues and opportunities more clearly and then introduced them to the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team. We had everyone on the team take both a DiSC personality assessment and complete the Five Behaviors Team Assessment. We used the results of those assessments to plan a customized 2-day Team Retreat, where we debriefed the results and set a path forward. Using the retreat as a spring-board, we scheduled regular coaching sessions to help them layout new, more effective team procedures. Some of the outcomes from that work included:

• Improvements to their team meeting agendas and creating a “buddy system” for bringing those who missed meetings up to speed.

• A commitment from all team members to try to resolve issues one-on-one before taking it to the team leader. They adopted an “it takes two to escalate” rule for intra-team issues.

• Incorporating icebreakers into their meetings to make “getting to know each other” (a key element of sustaining trust) an on-going practice.

• Team members becoming more comfortable with giving each other constructive feedback.

• Increased emotional intelligence across all members, due to their newfound understanding of their own personality style and the styles of others (using the insights they gained from DiSC).

The growth among the leadership team was so impressive that members of the team began to spread the language to their direct reports, and we started supporting other teams in their team development efforts. Recognizing that it is impractical to have an outside consultant be the sole provider of team coaching and training, we worked with senior leadership to identify other champions that could be trained to be the agency’s internal training and facilitation team. This was a decision that ensured the concepts would be embraced far and wide throughout the agency, as it enabled us to maintain our role as executive coaches for the senior leadership team, while letting internal resources spread the ideas to the rest of the organization (with our support and guidance).

Leader Standard Work and Embracing Lean Process Management/Improvement

This client is part of a state that has embraced the principles of Lean to build more efficient, effective and accountable government. To ensure that leaders in this organization were aligned with the Lean work going on around them, we helped them establish “standard work” procedures for leaders.

As background, in Lean “standard work” represents the best, easiest, and safest way to do a job, reflecting the collective wisdom of the employees who perform the work. Standard work reduces waste and variation by identifying the most effective practices, and by encouraging everyone who does that work does it in a similar way. In many organizations, leaders think “Lean is just for the front line workers.” But we know better, and now so does our client.

To help leaders in this organization really see the power of Lean, we took them through something we call “A3 Simulation Training.” This is a Lean training program we designed specifically for government leaders. It simulates a government process that needs improvement, and during the session participants work together in groups to apply Lean tools and concepts to improve the process. We then train and coach leaders to use the Lean tools that are most applicable to leadership. For this organization, that

EXHIBIT C - 2 – BIDDER RESPONSE SHEET / 01620-BUSINESS CONSULTING SERVICES PAGE 12 consisted of six specific tasks: Tier Boards, Visual Controls, A3 Use, A3 Coaching, Huddle Meetings and Roundings.

By helping the leaders of this organization embrace Lean concepts, they have both become more effective as leaders, and they are also more aligned with the employees and teams that are working on more detailed Lean efforts to streamline work processes throughout the organization.

Delivering Results That Matter

By nearly every measure, our client’s culture of teamwork, leadership and respect has made a profound difference in employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and bottom-line performance. Here are some of the impressive results:

• 99% of respondents to the annual employee engagement survey indicated a willingness to go above and beyond the minimum required by their job description—to give their “discretionary effort”

• 93% of external customers rate their level of satisfaction with the agency as “Very Good” or “Good”

• Output is up in Accounts Payable and invoice payment cycle time has been reduced from 30 days to 2 days, resulting in both lower cost and improved customer satisfaction

As one of the mid-level managers saw it, there is much to celebrate—and share with others. She said:

“I’ve been in the public sector my entire career, which I’ve always seen as something like a glacial ridge.

You know it’s changing but you can’t really see it. But I see this agency as the ship that plows through the ice. I’ve never seen such a rate of change happen in a public section organization. And it’s exciting.

Even the private sector is looking at us, going, “Wow! Look at what they’re doing. How can we implement this in our organization?.”

And according to the agency Director, our company played an integral role in their successful journey.

He said: “[Our company] mentored us as we’ve gone from being novice leaders to true practitioners, to an organization of top-notch problem solvers who really deliver benefit to our customers. We needed to shift our focus from blaming individuals to focusing on solving problems and improving processes. And with [our company’s] help, we could actually see a tangible shift starting to take place after 6 months, after 12 months. We’re seeing more intentional actions on the part of supervisors to embrace the concepts of The Leadership Challenge, to adopt The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team, and to use the language of Everything DiSC to improve communications across the organization.”

Project 2 / Reference 2 – Change Management This was a 1 year project with a government agency with ~40 employees

When we met them, our client had just scored 66% on their annual employee engagement survey. For good reason, these results disappointed the agency Director. She said: “What I realized was that we really needed to invest in becoming a more cohesive team. We were an agency of strong individual performers but we really needed to come together as a team and start to build trust, have healthy conflict, drive commitment around our goals and hold one another accountable to achieve the results that we were looking to achieve.”

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To begin developing a stronger team with higher engagement, we were hired to facilitate an off-site team retreat. The team began by taking the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team Assessment. The team’s assessment resulted in low scores on all five behaviors – not an atypical outcome. We used those results to design an agenda that would really connected with the issues they were facing, and we gathered the team to dig into the results and create action plans for improving their cohesion and level of engagement.

Recognizing the importance of vulnerability-based trust, we focused a good percentage of the time helping the team open up and get issues out on the table. We guided the team through an exercise about personal histories exercise. As is often the case, members learned a lot of new things about each other. “We had people in that room who have worked together for 20 years who didn’t know very basic things about one another,” said one of the managers. This activity started to break the gridlock that existed between them.

During and after the initial session, we had the team talk about their individual styles using the language of DiSC. This helped them build a greater understanding of individual working styles. The group’s styles were pretty diverse, making it a rich discussion for participants that continues to this day. One manager noted: “People became more willing to collaborate and share what they’re doing without feeling threatened.”

While the team retreat served as the kick-off, the journey was just beginning. With some new levels of trust established, we pushed ahead using the Five Behaviors framework to help build new protocols designed to reduce the negative impact of conflict. In addition to discussing healthy and unhealthy behaviors that individuals may display during conflict, we helped the team establish new ground rules for what is acceptable and unacceptable conflict during staff meetings. The Director said: “Thanks to the guidance of [our company], people are more willing now to talk about the difficult issues in the meeting rather than gossiping about them outside of meetings.”

Over time, our coaching sessions morphed to focus less on issues related to trust and conflict, and more to topics that would increase team commitment and enable them to be better equipped to be accountable to one another. We helped the team structure daily huddles, which enabled them to stay focused and aligned on the most important issues facing the team.

Thanks to the team’s dedication and the guidance we provided, employee engagement is way up, as reflected in the survey results (shown below):

Employee Engagement Survey Item Recent Score

Improvement from initial score

My department’s goals give guidance to my work. 95% + 35% My work unit works well to solve problems and achieve common goals. 95% + 36% There is a spirit of teamwork and cooperation among the members of my work unit. 86% + 33%

I feel encouraged to share ideas to improve the way we work. 90% + 26%

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Quality Assurance (4 pages maximum) (150 points)

As a business partner to the State of Washington, we take our role seriously. You are entrusting us to help influence the behavior of your most important asset – your people. We know that when agencies build better leaders, better teams, and better cultures, the likelihood of success (however it’s measured for that particular agency) goes up. As such, we recognize that the organizational development, change management, and business analysis services we provide can have an exponential effect on an agency’s results. That means we have to offer the highest in quality as it relates to our people, our programs, and the delivery of our services.

OUR PEOPLE

Like you, our people are our greatest asset. As such, we take great care to both hire the best, and to invest in them once they are part of the team. Different members of our team play different roles, so we will address our approach to the quality assurance of people by category.

Program and curriculum designers

Because we are largely in the learning and development space, it is critical that our programs and curriculums embrace the latest in adult learning concepts. As such, the people in charge of creating those programs have deep experience and expertise in this area. Whether it’s in-person training or facilitation (remember when we used to be able to do things in-person?) or online, our people understand the importance of using different techniques to stimulate the learning process and to appeal to learners of all types. For example, some adults prefer to read to learn, others prefer to listen. Our program designers understand such nuances, and thus embed a range of learning techniques in all we do; techniques proven to be effective across different learning styles.

In hiring people to work on design, we look for two key things: an understanding of learning principles and the ability to demonstrate prior experience in creating programs that deliver results. Many of the people in this role have backgrounds in education or program design, where they learn the theory and practice of models like the instructional design process called ADDIE:

• Analysis

• Design

• Development

• Implementation

• Evaluation

ADDIE is a process that organizes and streamlines the production of our program content, providing a steady flow of feedback for continuous improvement. The State of Washington can rest assured that the people working to design the programs we offer are using proven learning techniques to do so.

Facilitators, trainers and coaches

The people we put in front of your employees to train them or coach them are true professionals. Unlike “big box” consultancies that hire young, inexperienced personnel, we take a different approach. By the

EXHIBIT C - 2 – BIDDER RESPONSE SHEET / 01620-BUSINESS CONSULTING SERVICES PAGE 15 time someone makes it on our team as a trainer, facilitator or coach, they’ve already proven themselves.

We first require them to demonstrate their deep knowledge of the leadership, team and organizational development programs and topics we use by being certified or accredited by an authoritarian body.

Certification and accreditation has long been used as a way to ensure that a person actually knows and can actually do the things they can do. For anyone on our team that serves Washington, we can provide documentation of such certification.

Apart from proving their knowledge, we also require people to prove their effectiveness before joining the team. They do this both buy sharing their resume of experience and introducing us to previous clients they’ve served who can speak on their behalf. Before putting a coach, trainer, or facilitator in front of our clients, we always confirm that they’ve already been able to deliver results to the satisfaction of previous clients. For anyone on our team that serves Washington, we can provide documentation of such experience, and can provide references who can share the details of their interactions with them.

Senior leadership

Each member of our senior leadership has over 20 years of directly relevant experience in the services we deliver to clients. They have achieved Certifications and Accreditations in the programs we offer, making them fully capable of both advising state agencies and providing direct services, and overseeing the other members of our team who may be serving an agency. They also hold bachelors and MBA degrees in areas relevant to the services we offer from well-regarded institutions like Virginia Tech, San Diego State, and New York University.

Prior to joining the consulting world, our executives held leadership positions in industry organizations, which gave them a foundation of practical experience that we use to ensure our effectiveness as a service provider.

The references provided in our proposal have had direct interactions with our senior leaders, and can speak to both their qualifications and the quality of their character. For DES and/or any agency, we would be glad to provide many other references as well, along with a full list of our executive’s Certifications, degrees, and prior experience, giving you the confidence that they are fully qualified to perform the services to clients who utilize the DES Master Contract.

OUR PROGRAMS

Prior to launching this company in 2011, our founders already had many years of experience as practitioners in the coaching, consulting and training world. They saw first-hand the range in quality of the leadership, team development, and change management programs out there, from “home grown” programs that had little basis in research to the best-in-class programs built around data. They committed to themselves, and to our clients, that our company would only embrace the best-of-the-best, ensuring that we’d be able to delivery nothing but the highest level of quality as it relates to changing employee behavior and influencing organizational culture.

The programs we have to offer to Washington are widely recognized and praised :

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- The Leadership Challenge, based on 30+ years of research about what effective leaders actually do

- The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive team, built around the concepts in one of the most successful business management books of all times, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

- Everything DiSC, one of the most accurate personality styles instruments available based on the latest research in psychographics and computer adaptive testing

- Lean Six Sigma, the cutting edge process improvement techniques that have taken productivity and efficiency to new heights in organizations around the world

- Dare to Lead, designed using decades of research about courage and vulnerability

And our company doesn’t just dabble in these world-class programs. We are among a select few who are Certified by their original creators and/or recognized as the best in offering them globally. For example:

- For The Leadership Challenge, we are one of less than 10 firms in the U.S. authorized as a Global Training Partner

- For The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team and Everything DiSC, we are one of fewer than 30 firms that are Certified in both and recognized by the publisher as a Diamond-level provider (the highest honor available)

- For Dare to Lead, our lead facilitator is one of only 700 people around the world that was Certified directly by Dr. Brené Brown.

With us as a partner to Washington State, every agency will have access to these world-class programs that have proven their worth by delivering impressive results for some of the best organizations in the world. And with our company being Certified and/or recognized by the relevant authors and publishers, Washington State can be assured that we are uniquely qualified to deliver them for you.

OUR SERVICE DELIVERY

Our executives believe “we have to give value before we get value.” This means that our organization sets customer service and satisfaction as our highest priority. As such, we take great care to plan our engagements carefully and to collect feedback at every step along the way to course correct as needed to and to deliver the highest level of service quality.

Every agency in Washington is unique. Every agency has its own culture, its own personality, and its own set of needs. That is why when we serve an agency, we strive to really get to know the situation – the background, the players, the relevant issues. This enables us to put OUR PEOPLE and OUR PROGRAMS to work for the benefit of each agency.

Above we explained how DES can be assured of the quality of our people and our programs. But the care we put into serving customers and managing engagement brings it all together to ensure results.

At the account management level, we document engagement goals and milestones, and work with our client partners to track and report out on our progress.