What?!? Yep, I said it. You might be scratching your head since Partners in Public Innovation (PPI) is a consulting firm. Is this a self-sabotaging commentary? Hang with me a little longer...
After two decades interwoven in the non-profit and public spheres, my work has overlapped with consultants within the social impact ecosystem as an independent consultant, working for a firm that does nonprofit consulting, managing consultants as a leader in local government agencies, and now working with PPI and growing my own executive coaching business. In that time, I've developed perspective on what creates change–authentic, long-lasting change.
Don't get me wrong, there are many forms of consulting out there that are useful and needed to bring in specific expertise at the right moments. However, the major change initiatives that go beyond lip service and will truly touch the lives of the people we aim to serve require more than a report that lives on a shelf, or a slide deck telling people what they’re doing wrong and what they need to fix. Consultants don't hold the answers–you do.
I learned this from a decade of managing large initiatives in urban school districts. I learned this while becoming a certified Executive Coach and witnessing the power of non-directive coaching. I learned this from observing leaders like my father, who trusted in community-driven policy solutions to build up one of the nation's largest publicly-funded early learning ecosystems.
The answers and ownership over solutions to deep and complex issues need to come from within. Not from the outside. Having inspiration, exemplars, sponsorship, and subject matter expertise are all critical parts of successful change. However, those bright and shiny talking points only have a chance of getting implemented if solutions are informed by the people who will actually be doing the work.
I participated in PPI’s Lean Leaders™ training while serving as Director of School Portfolio Planning at SFUSD. I wrote more about my project of decreasing student chronic absence in SFUSD in a previous blog post. While the Lean Leaders™ program gave me process improvement training and tools, PPI doesn’t just abandon you to your own devices after teaching the curriculum. PPI drives authentic capacity-building for participants as they coach you through applying the new tools on your own improvement project, and through the peer learning experience.
PPI talks about facilitated improvement services thusly: “We facilitate your staff to solve their own problems, providing better quality, faster, delightful services for the people you serve. Not only that, but we develop your staff along the way, so that you're better equipped to handle the next set of changes that are inevitably coming.” That’s my kind of philosophy, and the type of change that I want to be part of.
Lean Leaders™ was such a meaningful experience that when I transitioned from SFUSD to focus on leadership coaching, deepening my partnership with PPI made a lot of sense. I feel energized about sharing more of PPI’s methods and core services in the projects that I’m joining.
"The answers and ownership over solutions to deep and complex issues need to come from within. Not from the outside."
Local government leaders face many challenges–now more than ever. As a leadership coach and a PPI consultant, I believe that investing in and believing in our public sector workforce holds the key to developing resilient and impactful government leaders who can make our public systems work better for the people not just tomorrow, but in the long term.
(Karissa Yee, PPI consultant and certified executive leadership coach, has two decades in the public, nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. Karissa has a lifelong commitment to breaking down barriers to success and lifting up other leaders.)
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