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Keeping Your Best - Cindy Haworth

In our last newsletter, we spoke about succession planning for our organizations. The importance of this thoughtful approach to the future is heavy on the minds of a lot of leaders, many who themselves are planning to leave even within the next five years. A critical starting point for effective succession planning is the ability to identify, develop, and keep high potential employees. You may be grooming them for the CEO/Executive Director position, or as executive staff for other departments. We’ve noticed that many organizations believe succession planning is only for the head of the organization. Nothing could be further from the truth; succession planning needs to be accomplished across the organization. So, how do we go about identifying staff that could be considered high potential employees?

Identifying the High Potential Employee

The following are some things to consider:

Does the person enjoy learning? This person needs to have a basic curiosity that helps them find the root cause of problems and to come up with creative solutions. Openness to learning is a key factor here.
Dedication to their development – is the person motivated by the desire for continual improvement?
Willingness to take risks – will this person question things – put their neck on the line in meetings where their opinion may not be popular – do they offer candid, professionally delivered feedback?
Willingness to receive feedback – is this person open to hearing constructive feedback and willing to act on it?
Does the person have a passion for working with this population – if this isn’t there, the people who follow the person won’t develop it and others will eventually lose it
Emotional Intelligence – a key aspect – the person can get a lot done, however if they accomplish this by being a steam roller or alienating others, they’re not going to get you what you need (see above for upcoming audio conference on emotional intelligence)

An important question arises at this point. Once you’ve identified a staff as a high potential employee, do you tell them? You incur risks whether you tell them or not. If you don’t acknowledge their potential for advancement they may leave. If you do inform them of this possibility you may run the risk of alienating other employees. Our experience is that typically, high potential employees know their potential and are bright enough to see the opportunities ahead of them without being given a label.

Developing the High Potential Employee

There is a wide array of instruments available now that can provide great assistance in defining the particular development needs of an employee. Gallup offers their Clifton Strengths Finder for the cost of purchasing their book – “Now Discover Your Strengths”. Their research, (with a database of 5 million people), has demonstrated that the best leaders are those that have an awareness of their strengths and work on developing these strengths over the coarse of their career. At Human Service Connections we offer comprehensive testing on Emotional Intelligence, something we think is absolutely critical to development. This assessment, which breaks down the quality of emotional intelligence into 15 separate factors, is a great tool for identifying some of the critical but hard to quantify attributes we’re looking for. Some organizations have also used the “360 degree” assessments in which employees provide feedback on their leaders. Daniel Goleman’s research found that the opinion of employees who work for a leader were far more accurate and reliable than those of the leader’s supervisor/s. 360 degree assessments can be purchased or created. A great creative exercise and very likely a cost saving one, involves identifying the factors an organization believes are critical, then creating an assessment to capture these areas. We’ve facilitated some of these exercises and they’ve led to critical insights for the organization as their leadership team often realizes they initially don’t view leadership or critical components of it the same way. This process can be the first step in both finding the strengths and development areas for these high potential employees, and also strengthening the administrative group.

The following are some additional ideas for development:

Research points out the value in action based learning. In response to this, many companies include a rotation component in this type of development. This involves the identified employing having periods of time spent in a variety of departments and locations, to achieve a broader base of information and experience regarding the organization as a whole, building more of a macro vision. Some examples from corporate America include Yahoo’s “Build a Moat” program. They didn’t like the term – hi-potential (are others then low potential?) but realized they wanted a program that would help them keep these kind of people. One person mentioned he would like to build a moat around these people so they couldn’t leave – thus the program name. This program involves rotation, leadership development training (email us if you’d like our outline of key concepts for leadership training and development) and mentorship.
Are there specific projects that can be assigned to this person that may be time limited? Starting a new residential program and you haven’t identified a project leader yet, but the state is wanting you to start supporting 50 people tomorrow? This may be a great opportunity for someone to show what they’ve got; putting systems into place, creating and stabilizing services. What if you have someone leave unexpectedly or are figuring out what to do when a department manager goes on maternity leave? Again, these can prove to be great experiences for the employee as they gain experience and hopefully receive candid feedback on their performance
Is there a dedicated, caring internal mentor that could be paired with this person? IBM has a similar program to Yahoo’s called “NextGen” which includes aspects of this component.
Can they research topic areas and present their findings to larger audiences – maybe at a board meeting or a meeting with state funders? Get this person acclimated to a variety of audiences while you expose a wider array of people to the individual.
Challenge the employee to come up with ideas for some of the longer range strategies for the organization. The right person will enjoy being asked and will work hard to come up with some creative solutions that may have been missed.
Encourage the employee to be well read. Organizations should make available periodicals pertinent to our industry such as publications by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disability as well as more business related periodicals such as Fast Company, Inc, and the Harvard Business Review – great sources of information and ideas.
When possible, send the person to conferences in our industry so they understand more of what’s going on outside your doors. A favorite, ANCOR’s spring leadership conference (American Network of Community Options and Resources – www.ancor.org) is coming up in March and it provides great leadership development sessions and opportunities for networking. If you’d like other ideas for good national conferences, let us know and we’ll get you that information. Some states also have strong statewide association conferences which provide opportunities for individuals to present breakout sessions. This allows the organization to show off its’ accomplishments while also providing the employee an opportunity to serve as a voice for the organization as well as improving the effectiveness of their communication skills.

Most of all, take an active interest in the person’s career development. Listen to them and make available to them resources you’ve found helpful. Take the time to deliver the kind and candid feedback that will both assure them that you care about their development, and motivate them to stay with your organization with the valid hope of taking on greater roles in the future. We may not have all the resources of Yahoo or IBM (okay, not even close), but we can certainly learn from how they conduct business. They take the issue of keeping high potential employees very seriously, and we need to as well if we want to maintain our growth and a competitive advantage.

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"The War for Talent"

Succession Planning and Boards Cindy Haworth

In our last newsletter we discussed the fact that only 29% of Executive Directors said they had discussed succession planning with their boards. There’s a multitude of reasons for this low percentage. At the top of the list are the day to day issues that come up and the fact that issues involving the “here and now” seem more pressing than plans for the future. There may also be a sense that the discussion might make the board uneasy or anxious or that it would be difficult and problematic to identify employees involved in a succession plan. It may also be difficult for some to envision themselves no longer at the organization they’ve given their blood, sweat and tears to and what the organization might be like after they’re gone.

However, when a great leader leaves an organization, it doesn’t fall apart. Where there’s been a great leader, there’s been time and attention paid to the fact that either by planned or unplanned means, they may not always be there and there needs to be a game plan for continuing the effective operation of the organization. Succession planning is a means to that end.

When looking at the scope of what we do, the ability to provide consistent, high quality services, in spite of significant changes that come along the way, should be at the top. Succession planning provides a strategy for making sure that level of quality occurs through development of a plan which builds “bench strength” so people within the organization can one day step up and take on more responsibilities as they become available, whether that’s the Executive Director position or other leadership positions. An effective succession plan also helps a new Executive Director to be that much more effective as programs, processes and outcomes aren’t allowed to decay. Lastly, letting an employee know that you have trust in them, want them to grow in the organization, and are committed to their development does wonders for that employee’s engagement and loyalty to the organization. People will often leave organizations when they feel there are few opportunities for growth and development or plans are not followed by any action. Succession planning lays out a plan for progress and development.

The first step toward succession planning is involving the board. Succession planning should be a joint process shared by the Executive Director and the Board. Some boards may need some development to clearly understand the process and why it’s important. Once everyone is on the same page, identifying the qualities necessary for the interim ED needs to be determined. These qualities then need to be assessed for competence in employees considered to be high potential. In some organizations, this may be an individual person or it might be a group of 2-4 people. Some organizations have liked the group approach with each person bringing their specialties and strengths to the table. This is also helpful in situations when you might have several high level, high potential employees.

Typically this person or group will work with an identified member of the board in case of emergency implementation or planned occasions when the ED is not available or has left the organization. This board member need not be the board president. It should be a board member that has a good combination of history about the organization, skills that will contribute to the consistent operation of the organization, and availability that will allow them to support the designated employee or employees if necessary.

This group, along with the current Executive Director should meet initially as often as necessary to make sure the exchange of information is adequate to facilitate ongoing operations. All parties need to feel comfortable that if need be, they or the group could effectively continue operations without the Executive Director. Once this is established, the group can then meet once or twice a year or more to ensure the group is collectively informed in all areas (program, fiscal, hr etc) and remains on track. This forum helps the system continue to develop as information is routinely shared. In the hurriedness of our days, there is a wide variety of information that doesn’t get communicated. Systems such as this help diminish this liability. Executive Directors have felt the identification of this person or team has helped in several ways such as:

A better understanding on the part of the Board regarding the Executive Director duties as opposed to only the outcomes of the running of the organization
Increased awareness for the need to share information with identified employees and board members
Information is no longer “in just one brain” as one Exec commented
Having a sense they can take more time in the selection of their new ED, ensuring they’ve made the right choice and undergone the best search possible
Relationships with people outside the organization are critical – whether it’s funders, vendors, family members, donors or others, this system helps increase awareness of the importance of strategic relationship development between these groups and high potential employees -- in addition to the Executive Director
Increased motivation and loyalty on the part of the employees as they become cross trained, learning more of the skills that previously were the sole responsibility of the executive director

In our next installment we’ll discuss strategies for identifying these high potential employees and ways to use succession plans for leadership positions other than Executive Director.

10 Principles for Sustainable Execution Tom Schramski, PhD

Execution is a disciplined system for implementing strategic decisions in an organization. As Ram Charan has noted, it is also one of the most challenging tasks for leadership. To be sustainable, execution must be embedded in a company’s culture and lived by its leaders at all levels of the organization.

I have identified “10 Principles for Sustainable Execution”, based on the work of John Cundiff of Market Advantage, for leading prosperous organizations.

Grow Your Own Discomfort

All organizations experience a progression of conception, birth, growth, and decline. And then they do it all over again. Disrespect for this natural process leads to corporate and individual poverty. According to the “law of regressive lead”, the organization or individual best adapted to the current environment will be least adaptive to change essential for prosperity at the next level. Comfort should be discomforting.

Don’t Make Me Yawn

You, your leadership team and company must consciously work to design and redesign your identity over time, or the marketplace will fall asleep while you’re on the TV. If you have no identity or brand you will struggle to succeed in your market, irrespective of your good intentions.

Lurve The Future

Understanding the past and appreciating the present are important, but lurve (Woody Allen’s combination of “love” and “lust” in the movie Annie Hall) of the future helps you to deal with the inevitable issues associated with moving the implementation ball forward. Implementation is the opportunity to increase the velocity of success, not the barrier to it.

Shoot For The Stars (Or Shoot Yourself In the Foot)!

The mood of you and your team is critical to sustainable completion of projects, whatever the level. With alignment of intentions and ambition there are no limits, just possibilities for even more possibilities. Without aligned intentions or ambition you are likely in search of medication for your resentment and resignation. Mood management is as important as fiscal management.

Stop It Or Else!

Unconscious confidence in old habits of business behavior creates performance quicksand. To break out of this trap you have to STOP your behavior first, then CHANGE your behavior, consistent with your intention. Only then can you can START implementing a new strategic plane or project. New Year’s resolutions do not resolve the fear of taking the next step and improving performance. They often make your situation worse.

It’s Not About You (Entirely)

Successful business execution requires awareness of your personal style and consistent skill in understanding and speaking to the strengths and concerns of others. How can our individual strengths benefit our company, our team and ourselves? When do I “hand off” to someone else? Egoless yet performance- oriented behavior helps you and your teams to succeed.

Welcome Your Breakdowns

Breakdowns are inevitable, the price of experience for any team moving forward. They represent are the opportunity to reinvigorate your vision, that of your team and design constant recalibration on your organizational adventure. If your survival software continually pushes you to implement action that results in the same, recurring breakdown, then you will continue to suffer. And the market or funding source will not pay much for this self-destructive performance.

You Don’t Get There By Reading the Road Map

Implementation of decisions comes from your will and that of your teammates, not the 119 page strategic plan. The most effective teams progress with a rough topographic guide and a focus on their overriding direction. They are likely a disagreeable band of warriors with their armor in front, strong individual intentions, and a commitment to act interdependently.

Face The Market Or Face The Consequences

Too often organizations engage in exercises and training that focus on self concerns vs. those of the market place. Guess what? A magazine writer may feature you as a “progressive” company, but if you are not able to effectively respond to a market concern you have lost your way. How much is the fame and the glory worth? What bill will you pay with it? Your action must be coordinated with everyone facing the market together to execute, consistent with your vision.

V²=REV² + RISK/2

Following in the path of Einstein, it is evident that as you speed up your transactional skills (V2) you increase the probability of increasing revenue (REV2) and reducing risk (RISK/2). The old common logic of slowing down to reduce risk does not work – it increases the risk of bringing execution to a standstill and actually moving backward. The riskiest place is to stay where you are.

I welcome your feedback and questions at tom@humanserviceconnections.com

Hope Without Action is Nothing Tom Schramski

The title for this brief article comes from the slam poetry of a young woman, Hannah Davis. A bit of a 2x4 off the tongue, the point is well made that to generate sustainable hope for the future, you have to successfully implement and execute today.

Recently, I began working in an interim leadership role with a company in the real estate field. They figured that though I’m dangerous with a hammer and always sign each of the 39 disclaimer forms without reading them, I could help them through a transition period. While it’s still a tough road as of the date of this article, we have made a number of changes that have resulted in a stronger company for the future.

This experience has reaffirmed my belief in six critical elements for exposing and acting on the reality of any organization, including those in the human service field:

Element 1

Confront the fear of the unknown for all areas of the organization by sharing all critical information and insist on an understanding of expectations for performance. The task of leadership is deliver the information in an accessible and understandable fashion, and create a method for regularly reviewing expectations (vs. one annual performance appraisal).

Element 2

Focus on results and customer outcomes or “results not emotions”, as Jack Stack puts it. The more you honestly face the marketplace and measure your results, the stronger you can be at making the changes that will build a successful future. Happiness is generally an artifact of success, however you measure it.

Element 3

Appreciate the opportunity that this is the future, with a willingness to operate on the skinny branch without total assurance of success.

Element 4

Promote commitment and ownership by creating the openings for others to participate and take a leadership role. This is not leadership training class, but actively involving others in setting goals for implementation, managing resources and timelines, making adjustments and wrapping up the project.

Element 5

Understand yourself (personal style) and those of your teammates and marketplace partners. Effective organizations have not only the right people on the bus, but the right people in the right seats so they can move forward productively.

Element 6

Encourage the development of individual identity in a team context to nourish individual aspirations while creating a sense of team ambition. Contrary to some, there is an “i” in team.

The above elements are not a guarantee, but I believe success is more readily available when they are lived by the leadership of any organization.

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Getting the Right People on the Bus - Notes from the Field - Cindy Haworth, Principal HSC

We all juggle competing priorities. When you think of the most important activities your job requires, where do your hiring practices fall? Which individuals you choose to bring on board is one of the most, if not the most, important responsibilities you have. In his book “Good to Great”, Jim Collins discusses the finding that highly effective organizations view the practice of who they “bring on the bus” as secondary only to the vital task of removing unsuitable employees from their organization. Our hiring decisions have a powerful, direct impact on the culture of our organization and the lives of the individuals we support. Achieving the agency’s mission, providing inspired services to our consumers, having staff that are engaged and excited; these are all clearly influenced by the people we invite to sit in the seat next to us. When you’re trying to determine which priority on your list deserves your attention, few actions will deliver the incredible return that attracting talented, motivated staff to your organization will.

Hiring those kind of employees doesn’t happen by accident. Great hiring is the outcome of a strategic, mindful plan. Incurring the costs associated with a bad hire is never pleasant, but in these challenging economic times, establishing the wrong person in a leadership position could possibly make the difference between a program remaining viable or not. In the scope of the work we perform at Human Service Connections, we are daily addressing issues around organizational hiring practices. We thought it might be helpful to use the knowledge we’ve gleaned from our constant exposure to the job market and the current best practices related to personnel management from across the country, to share some guidance to help organizations become less likely to make bad hires. We will elaborate on this topic at a session we’re presenting at the ANCOR conference to be held in San Francisco. Though some of the tips seem like common sense, we think they are well worth discussing due to their common occurrence.

Interview problems

Make sure you have created a profile of the person you want. What specific skills does this position require? After devoting the time to determine what the requisite skills are, create those interview questions which will provide you the insight as to whether or not those skills are strength areas vital for the candidate. This process must take place. In too many instances when it comes to interviewing leadership staff, the person conducting the interview, often a top executive, is “winging” it. We often see agencies hiring a great person, but they are not the right person for the job. Sometimes we get sidetracked because someone is very personable. One study found that when a candidate made interviewers laugh, they were three times more likely to be hired. While a sense of humor is important, if we don’t have a strong belief that the person can effectively exhibit the specific skills we want, there won’t be much to laugh about.

If you are not presently using behavioral interviewing questions, you need to start. Behavioral interviewing questions are based on the premise that the predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Therefore, these types of questions will ask for specific stories that indicate a person’s actual responses to past real life events. Here are some examples of behavioral interviewing questions:

“Tell me about a time when ……. you dealt with a difficult co-worker.”

“Tell me about a time when ……. you felt like you lost your temper.”

“Tell me about a time when ……. You had trouble motivating an employee.”

If you take the time to really listen to the responses, it’s amazing what you can learn. There may be some benefit to scenario based questions, (What would you do if….), however many people will come up with an enhanced idea of how they would react to a given situation versus reflecting on a true life event.

Reference and background

How much time is spent checking the accuracy of the information provided on the resume? We’ve reviewed five separate studies that assessed the propensity for the enhancement and/or falsification of resumes. They all discovered ranges of occurrence anywhere from 34-53% of the time. The Society for Human Resource Management found that one in four candidates misrepresent educational requirements. It’s imperative that you take the time to do this background work. There are several inexpensive services that will quickly verify the educational background of a candidate. The results of these checks are often made available in just a few minutes. One to check out is: http://www.studentclearinghouse.org/dvev/dv.htm Our two best tips for strengthening your background check procedures involve conducting an education verification as well as a basic internet search on the person.

While conducting background checks for our consulting clients we have found candidates with current litigation for money laundering, sexual harassment charges and numerous incidences of enhancing resumes. While there are a wide variety of searches to choose from, a simple Google search is a great tool which may pinpoint any current or past litigation that the candidate has been a part of. We also recommend that organizations check not only the references provided, but to also touch base with the candidate’s supervisors from the last 10-15 years, if possible. This can provide some helpful additional insights, and once again, uncover some concerns that would not have been identified. Make sure you are continually expanding your network of contacts that will be helpful with some of this work. It may be difficult to get some of this valuable information from an organization unless you have established a connection with someone that works there. It’s very disheartening when we realize that an agency has offered employment to a candidate that we know to be mediocre because the organization did not do an adequate job of checking their resumes or speaking with their previous supervisors.

Other hiring problems we see are tied to break downs with key aspects of the process. When a candidate goes for weeks with no feedback after an interview, they are going to move on and apply elsewhere. If we truly believe this is one of the most important things we do, it will become a priority in our day. Too many great candidates have pulled out of a hiring process because there were several weeks between each step of the process, and there was no feedback being provided. We may say this aspect of our job is important, but our actions speak otherwise.

Some processes are searching in too small a pond. With decisions this crucial, it pays to do a broader search and not simply rely on local resources. By contracting with a search firm that knows our business and the importance of the service providers’ mission, you can establish a contingency search and find a great candidate you would not have otherwise located. If you don’t hire any of their proposed candidates, you pay nothing. The financial resources a great candidate can save and/or make for the organization over the course of their employment, more than makes up for the fee. In a retained search, the search firm takes care of the entire process from start to finish with an agreed upon contractual fee for filling the position.

It’s not all doom and gloom and not everyone is out there trying to scam us. At the same time, the work we do is too important to take unnecessary chances. Come to our session in March at the ANCOR conference to learn more about ways to firm up your hiring process, ensuring that you’re doing the optimum job possible in getting the best people on your bus.

Envisioning the Future of Supports for People with Disabilities Nancy Weiss, Co-Director, National Leadership Consortium on Developmental Disabilities

How often we wish for the kind of wisdom a crystal ball would offer. Wouldn’t life be easier if we knew on the first date where this relationship would lead, could predict our grade before we signed up for the course, or could see our children happily established in their adulthoods? What if we could see what the world of services and supports for adults with disabilities would look like a dozen years from now?

One of the things I love about working in this field is that there is discomfort in thinking about everything we did more than ten or fifteen years ago. It’s good to be uncomfortable? It can be -- in this case it means that things are constantly changing; it means we are learning from people with disabilities and their families how to do better with them, for them, and for our communities.

So, why do I cringe when I look back at my early work in support of people with disabilities? While I wasn’t doing anything awful in the first years of my career, nor did I offer the kinds of supports I would be proud to bring to people today. My first job in the field was as a direct care person in a group home for ten men with intellectual disabilities. Together, we had a great time – we cooked great meals, explored our town, went on trips to baseball games, county fairs, and just about every imaginable kind of adventure, and we all learned some important things in the process. The downside was that the power differences between “staff” and “clients” were well accepted. We were the teachers – they were the learners. Reflecting back now, I see how often those roles were reversed.

Toward the end of my time at the group home, I returned from a vacation to London, bringing back a small gift for each of the guys who lived in the home. I showed Chris the keychain of the double-decker bus that I had brought for him and, wanting to capitalize on every teaching moment, I said, “So, Chris – what’s different about this bus than the kind of buses we have in this country?” Chris took a moment. He carefully studied the bus. He turned it this way and that in his hands, glancing up at me to see if I might be trying to trick him. Finally he said, in a voice that conveyed wonder at why I would even be asking something so obvious …. “It’s smaller.”

It was among my first lessons toward understanding that teaching and learning go both ways. While the supports we offered the men who lived in that group home came from the heart, I now look back, embarrassed by the degree to which we as staff held ourselves out as being more important and more powerful than the people we supported. And today, I cannot imagine thinking that ten people who didn’t know or choose each other would be able to live the lives they wanted in a big house, all together.

So -- if few of us would brag about how much foresight we conveyed through our work in the disability field a decade and more ago, what will services and supports for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities look like ten years from now? What changes will cause us to wince in looking back from that vantage point? Acknowledging that things are changing more, not less rapidly, we can assume we will look back and wonder what we were thinking when we recall the supports we are certain are so forward-thinking today.

How do we articulate a vision for our work if we don’t know where trends will take us? Unfortunately, we don’t have a crystal ball – but if we did, what would a gaze into those murky depths tell us about the lives of people with disabilities, and the system of services that supports them, a dozen years from now?

Here are my guesses – or more accurately, my hopes – for a better future for people with disabilities and the supports we provide:

People and their families will be less willing to accept standard packages of mediocre services and will demand quality supports that help them achieve self-selected goals. We will have abandoned the hat-in-hand attitude and will understand that people with disabilities no more want or deserve lives that are tedious and lack meaning than would anyone else.
More resources will be available for people living with their families and in their own homes – rather than requiring a Medicaid Waiver when people choose to live lives of their own design, a waiver will be required to use public funds for services in traditional settings that we have already proven to be less effective, less safe, and less life-affirming.
We will do for people what they want and ask for, rather than what licensing or other standards say are needed. We will document the information that will be useful for that person rather than doing for people what needs to be documented. We will keep in mind that Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have a dream.” He did not say, “I have an annual plan, a bunch of uninspired quarterly goals, and a three-pound pile of paper that keeps track of it all.”
We will realize that you can’t give what you don’t get – we will stop expecting staff to treat the people they support as valued, respected people, who have every right to have impact on their worlds; while those same staff work within organizations that offer them so little of the same.
Society will be as unwilling to tolerate the abusive treatment of people with disabilities as they are the mistreatment of others. I hope for a day when, if information became known about substandard treatment for people with disabilities, the public would rise up with the same energy and outrage as when the abuses of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib became public. Our tolerance of a different standard betrays the degree to which people with disabilities are still inherently devalued.
We will offer an array of supports that is responsive to what people want … not a support system that still contains relics of old models just because it is hard to find the momentum to rid ourselves of inherently controlling and coercive approaches. Our support system will not be built around the ways funding is provided. In architecture there is a saying, “Form Follows Function.” It means that structures are designed in response to the ways they will be used. In our field the influencing principle has been “Form Follows Funding.” Do we think opening another group home is a good idea? No, but we’ll do it anyway if funds are available. We will rid ourselves of the ball-and-chain of traditional funding streams and celebrate when the ‘form’ of supports is directly responsive to the needs and desires of the person requesting those supports.
We will offer supports in ways that acknowledge that people have needs and interests that are interconnected. “Day providers”, “residential providers” and “employment providers” will be terms from a day bygone. We will realize that even the term, “provider” conveys a power differential – we provide; you accept gratefully. In the future, agencies will be responsive to all the needs and dreams of the people who choose to accept support from them. People need a place to live; meaningful and enjoyable things to do during the day; opportunities for accomplishment, mastery, and fun; and especially, relationships which form the lynchpin of a good life. These will be understood as essential to a person’s wholeness. People and families may choose one organization to help in all of these areas or several different organizations as they see fit.
We will pay people who work in this field salaries that reflect the value that we place on this kind of work. People will not need to work in settings that place less value on the people receiving support (such as institutions or nursing homes) in order to receive salaries that appropriately reflect the complexity and importance of this work. Direct Support Professionals would not need to work two or three jobs to receive a living wage.
It will be recognized that institutions and other highly controlled congregate settings are not good for people and they will become a thing of the past. We will once-and-for-all give up on the alluring concept of preparing people to live and work in the real world by providing training in “practice” settings. We will abandon the readiness model and remember Lou Brown’s admonition that “pre” means never. We denigrate people when we demand that they demonstrate readiness before we will “allow” them to move on. People will not be rewarded for their accomplishments by forcing them to move out of their homes in a process we euphemistically term, “graduation.” People will have the right to live their lives in homes of their choosing while the level of supports to which they have access is adjusted to assure opportunities for success.
We will finally figure out that it is not only unethical but downright illogical to respond to people’s desperate attempts to assert a degree of control over their lives by imposing greater and greater amounts of power over them. Positive behavioral approaches are only those which enhance a person’s life and are characterized by collaboration versus control. The focus of behavioral change will be much more on illumination (or understanding the meanings and purposes of behaviors from the individual’s point of view) than on elimination, or simply extinguishing a problem behavior.
We will recognize that loneliness may be the most debilitating disability of all and we’ll figure out ways to support our communities to embrace all of their members. As Norm Kunc reminds us, no one should have to earn the right to belong. We will recognize that people shouldn’t have to be like each other to be with each other[1].
We’ll have a new generation of leaders who recognize that the goal isn’t to figure out what is wrong with people and fix them, but to create and sustain organizations in which people share a vision of a better future and are empowered to continuously achieve positive change. We will develop leaders who understand how to use their gifts to help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities achieve their dreams, not the dreams and ideas of others.
We will recognize that quality of life has a whole lot more to do with personal relationships and a sense of community than it does with the ability to fold laundry, balance a checkbook, or set a proper table. We will have figured out that the promotion of choice and control over one’s own life must supersede all else.
We will take a page from Copernicus’s book. Copernicus asserted, contrary to what the world knew to be true, that it was the sun, not the earth that is at the center of the universe. The heart of our work will be in relinquishing our roles of centrality and helping the individuals we support assume their rightful places at the hub of their own universes, and supporting the discovery of the power that awaits them there.

Nancy Weiss is the Co-Director of the National Leadership Consortium on Developmental Disabilities at the University of Delaware (www.nlcdd.org). She is the former Executive Director of TASH, an international disability advocacy association. Ms. Weiss has worked in the disability field for over thirty years. The consistent theme of her work has been the promotion of disability supports that assure communities, schools, and work places that offer individuals with disabilities access to lives of meaning and impact. She can be reached at nweiss@udel.edu .

A version of this article was originally published in the Spring, 2007 issue of HopeNews, a publication of Hope House Foundation (www.hope-house.org) .

[1] Kunc, N. , in Villa, R., Thousand, J., Stainback, W. & Stainback, S . Restructuring for Caring & Effective Education. Baltimore: Paul Brookes, 1992.