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Community Action Council1991 – 1999Community Action Council provides a range of direct services for low-income communities in Fayette (Lexington) and four of the surrounding counties in Kentucky. Over the years, RKI provided a number of different kinds of services for the agency. Specifically, Steve advised a long-term developmental effort to increase organizational effectiveness and restructure the organization so that as much work as possible is accomplished through self-organizing and self-management. That work focused mainly on developing effective work groups and work teams and working more generally on communications issues. Community Action had close to 100 employees when we first started working with the agency, but grew quickly to 250 employees by 1999. That growth was one of the reasons the director asked RKI to work with the agency, as it needed to adapt structurally to its larger size. We worked directly with the executive director and senior management and with groups of employees representing all levels of the agency. We provided direct training, technical assistance, facilitation services, and organizational analysis and assessment. A good part of the effort focused on the intersection of effective communication and self-managed work teams. CommunicationsIn the area of communications, Steve began work with senior management to develop a model of effective communications within the agency. He then used the model as the basis for a day-long training delivered in small groups to all employees in the agency. A self-managed work team of agency employees eventually delivered the training program. Steve later worked with senior management to reconnect them to the training effort, to reinvigorate the underlying notions of what constitutes effective communication in the agency, and to look at ways the agency could provide reinforcement for those whose communication improved and penalties for those who persisted in communication patterns that were judged to be less than effective or had a negative impact on other employees. Self-Managed Work TeamsAt the same time that employees established a communications self-managed work team, they also established a self-managed work team on the teams process itself. That self-managed work team, or SMWT 2, had responsibility for fully developing the regulations and processes that teams would follow and would use to monitor their effectiveness. In the five years following the development of that process, over 20 self-managed work teams were established. Some of these teams addressed issues that cut across the entire agency, such as data processing, while others were highly specific, such as one that organized the agency's annual Christmas event. Over time, the agency also used the self-managed work team process to form less formal groups that are called work groups rather than teams. Typically these are short-term, have a less specific charge, have less decision-making responsibilities, and so have less of the formal apparatus of the self-managed work team. In his final year with Community Action, Steve worked with a team of consultants brought into the agency to develop a more effective evaluation system, design a strategic and long-range planning process for the agency, and address issues of diversity. Go directly to the Community Action website, www.commaction.org, for more information about the agency. 
Visit descriptions of other clients for whom we have developed work groups. |
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