REGIONAL VIEW
Education service center programs & practices
ESC Region 3 empowers staff, builds capacity through service design teams By Brenda O’Bannion and Beverly Wyatt
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The creation of service design teams at ESC Region 3 has fostered a culture that empowers employees to collaborate and do their best work together.
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n education, each school year brings new buzzwords, such as turnaround efforts, transformation, engagement, restorative practices and so forth. There is a new buzz term at ESC Region 3 (R3), and that term is “service design teams.” A byproduct of an extensive reorganization effort at R3, service design teams are creating an exciting new way to plan for and deliver services and products. The center’s service design teams began in August 2014 when all employees — both professional and auxiliary staff — were organized into seven teams, each representing a cross section of departments to ensure strong collaboration and maximum utilization of everyone’s skills and knowledge. The teams were assigned priority areas, and these areas became their team names. They are: learner performance, school improvement, financial solutions, leading technology, human resource management, communication systems and leadership capacity.
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Texas School Business JULY/AUGUST 2016
Each year, the teams produce and work to execute strategic plans for their priority areas. The plans include measurable short- and long-term objectives. Two to three designated team leads (representing both professional and auxiliary staff) are charged with ensuring their teams move forward with activities to reach their objectives. These leads receive training to facilitate the discussion, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation process of their teams’ activities. Also, each team has an assigned R3 administrator who serves as the go-to person for approving the strategic plans and clarifying issues, if needed. Since their inception, these teams have become a way of doing business, and, more impressively, they have brought a positive cultural change to the education service center. The service design team approach has cultivated new leaders within the organization and created a sense of ownership among all staff.
Says Nan Gainer, director of curriculum and instruction: “When you work as a team toward a common goal and everyone has a say in it, trust among colleagues begins to be felt.” During monthly staff days, service design teams are given a designated time to meet to monitor the progress of their plans and brainstorm new strategies and activities. The advising administrators are accessible if needed, but, for the most part, the service design teams meet as groups of coworkers charged with carrying out the business of improving R3 services. The administrators report on their teams’ progress at monthly leadership meetings.
New products and services R3’s service design teams have worked hard to address their priority areas by developing new products and services.