P&P February 2016

The Human Services Value Curve

Efficiency in Achieving Outcomes

Regulative Business Model: The focus is on serving constituents who are eligible for particular services while complying with categorical policy and program regulations. Collaborative Business Model: The focus is on supporting constituents in receiving all services for which they’re eligible by working across agency and programmatic borders. Integrative Business Model: The focus is on addressing the root causes of client needs and problems by coordinating and integrating services at an optimum level. Generative Business Model: The focus is on generating healthy communities by co-creating solutions for multi-dimensional family and socioeconomic challenges and opportunities.

Generative Business Model

Integrative Business Model

Collaborative Business Model

Outcome Frontiers

Regulative Business Model

Effectiveness in Achieving Outcomes

© The Human Services Value Curve by Antonio M. Oftelie & Leadership for a Networked World is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Based on a work at lnwprogram.org/hsvc. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at lnwprogram.org.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF LEADERSHIP

processes—building one type of strength from another. She is exploring how regulative indicators can have a generative effect. Take the example of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). “If we’re not timely, how many kids and families are waiting? It’s not the time that is measured, it’s a hungry measure.”

These challenges require adaptive leadership. It is leadership at all levels that fosters learning and experimentation over time, even amid organizational and cultural resistance. ADAPTIVE LEADERSHIP IN ACTION Consider these five fundamentals of adaptive leadership in human services: Honor the positive and build from strength Adaptive leaders acknowledge what works in their organiza- tion, and move forward from there. For Raquel Hatter, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Services, this principle applies to moving up the Human Services Value Curve. 2 With the generative model as the ultimate goal, it is easy for leaders to lose sight of the innate value of the other models. Hatter views the regula- tive state as a necessary foundation, not a lesser pass-through. If organiza- tions get it wrong, they jeopardize everything else. She is thinking about generative capacity while refining regulative 1

Ronald Heifetz, founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, developed the theory and framework of adaptive leadership. As Heifetz explains, human service leaders—all leaders—face technical and adaptive challenges. Technical challenges can be solved in short order with technology, policy, or process changes. Adaptive challenges are more deeply rooted. They require organiza- tions to venture into the unknown. The journey can cut into long-held values.

2

Harness staff power for leadership from within Adaptive leaders excel at the art of bringing differences

together within and outside of their organizations. In Michigan, where Timothy Becker, chief deputy director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, is spearheading the integration of two departments overseeing 140 health and human service programs, staff is involved in planning. Leadership is acting with intention to create a culture where staff members are encouraged to take chances in the service of better ways of working and serving. At the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, workforce development is a significant part of

Debora Morris is the managing director, Integrated Social Services, State, Provincial and Local Government at Accenture.

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Policy&Practice   February 2016