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 THQ DEPARTMENT HEADS discuss ways of facilitating the territorial vision statement at a recent retreat held at Crestmont College. |
BY JAMIE EHRL –
In response to the territorial vision statement, “Vision 2000 and Beyond,” monthly department heads meetings began to focus on moving THQ toward its critical function of resourcing and facilitating vision implementation throughout the territory. This culminated in an all-day retreat held at Crestmont College on November 20, 2000 with the following goal in mind:
Develop a mission statement to further facilitate the THQ vision statement and begin the process of formulating specific action steps to carry out that mission.
Under the leadership of Colonel Phil Needham and thanks to consultant Major Terry Camsey’s (R) facilitation of the retreat, the THQ department heads met this goal through extensive group work focusing on the following major areas: 1) Structures (staff issues); 2) Systems (process issues); 3) Supervisors ( management issues); and 4) Skills (behavioral and job skills issues). Camsey began the day by stating, “A map is useless if you don’t know where you are going. And a map is useless if you don’t where you are.” The metaphor of a map beautifully illustrates that while goal-setting is important, it is equally important to assess the current situation and determine where our starting point is, where we are coming from.
Working in groups, the department heads identified four issues critical to our essential functions of facilitating and resourcing the field as it moves toward vision implementation:
* Turf protection must give way to networking through intentional steps to develop interdepartmental trust and to build morale.
* Isolated, incremental decision-making must be supplanted by master-planning and effective strategizing.
* Arbitrariness and inconsistency must be abandoned in favor of consistency, delegation and accountability.
* Parochial “silo” thinking must the replaced by throwing open the doors to invite creative collaboration and open exchange of ideas not only at THQ, but throughout the territory.
At the December meeting, department heads began the work of identifying specific steps that must be taken if we are to successfully accomplish the re-orienting of THQ to focus on vision-realization. That work will continue! And we promise: future New Frontier updates will keep readers abreast of our progress.
Skeptics, beware! Change is on the horizon…and THQ is decisively approaching it.
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