Board member brings unique perspective to change team

Laura White is vice president of the board for Green County’s Comprehensive Community Services (CCS), and she’s also been a CCS consumer. She attended the April 2016 NIATx Change Leader academy with colleagues from Green County. (See related story).

Laura says that attending the two-day workshop opened her eyes to the many ways the NIATx process could help her organization, especially since the CCS division recently expanded its service area to include neighboring Lafayette County.

Highlights of attending the academy for Laura included meeting peers from around the country and the variety of interactive exercises. In particular, she enjoyed the

Airplane Exercise—a hands-on activity designed to illustrate the NIATx principle of rapid-cycle change.

“It showed us how small changes do make a big difference, and why you need to collect data to document change,” notes Laura. “It also reinforced the idea of trying one small change at a time and then moving on if it doesn’t work,” she adds.

She’s also recognized that the NIATx approach can be used to improve practically any process. In fact, she’s using PDSA cycles to help welcome a new pet to her home.

Laura is looking forward to sharing the change team’s progress and NIATx tools with her fellow board members.

 “Being involved in the change project puts me in a better position to advocate for the types of consumer-focused improvements that the change team wants to make,” says Laura. ““With the recent huge changes adding Lafayette County has brought to our program, using the NIATx model will help create focus for the continuous process of growing and improving the CCS for clients and their families,” she says.