The First of Many!

WELCOME to Sound Community Services new Home Page.  Many of you commented on how difficult it has been to find some the links that were previously easy to find and have asked why we have changed the Sound Community Services Start Page.  Many of you- me included- had become quite comfortable using the Start Page to access the agency policies from the Policy page,  review new job postings at the Human Resources page or post purchase orders on the Fiscal page.  Well, what really happened was that Google decided to replace existing Google Apps (we are a Google Apps agency) Homepages with the new iGoogle page that now appears when you log on to what was our old start page.  And while this change caught us by surprise, we hope that you will find our new homepage better designed, more current and easier to use.  We welcome your suggestions for additional links or design changes that might be helpful  so please don't hesitate to send your comments and suggestions to Mike Reynolds m.reynolds@soundcommunityservices.org or me g.lawson@soundcommunityservices.org .  We hope that the new homepage will let us all do a better job of sharing information and communicating with each other.

Strategic Planing update:    We have begun strategic planning.  For those of you  new to the agency we engage in strategic planning every three years or so and this will be the third strategic plan that we have developed since the merger of First Step and Integrated Behavioral Health.  Our 2007 -- 2010 strategic plan was completed this past June with about 80% of the goals and objective completed.  This year strategic planning is led by Cindy Kirchhoff and Emily Reynolds and we are fortunate to have a volunteer facilitator John Foley from leadership Greater Hartford,  http://www.leadershipgh.org . We have included a Strategic Planning "link" on our Home Page-  please visit that page to get detailed info about this year's strategic planning  activities and to see a list of the strategic planning team.

In order to prepare for strategic planning,  Emily and Cindy asked the management team to survey program staff as to the strengths and weaknesses of the agency.  While many items that we do well were noted, it was interesting to me that many of those who responded to the survey noted that communication  within the agency was a weakness.  Even more interesting was that each time we have engaged in strategic planning in the last several years communication was noted as a weakness.  And more interesting still is the fact  as part of the last several strategic plans that were developed- including those for First Step- much time was spent on developing and implementing strategies to improve communication!

As an agency we have tried many things to improve communication: management meetings, all agency meetings, program meetings, newsletters, email accounts for all staff, program intranet  pages  etc. Despite all these efforts many staff continue to cite communication as an agency weakness.  When the results of the survey were shared during a meeting last week and Google unceremoniously erased our Start Page,  I decided that it was a good time to take another "whack" at resolving our communication conundrum. During the strategic planning meeting our very smart facilitator John Foley noted that many businesses have given up on the newsletter approach and replaced it with a weekly or biweekly e-mail updating staff on important happenings within the agency.  In thinking about his suggestion it seemed that a brief weekly electronic communication added to a re-designed home page would offer a possible solution to the communication issues that have plagued the agency.  

So what you are now reading is the very first edition of the Sound Community Services blog which resides on our newly designed Home Page. A blog is a type of website or part of a website that is usually maintained by an individual or group of individuals with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events or other material such as graphics or video entries.  Typically blogs are displayed in reverse chronological order.  The goal of a blog is to provide very current information in real time or as close to real time as possible. So, on an ongoing basis, for a least a few months, I and other members of the executive and senior senior management team will give blogging a try with the goal of improving communication within the agency.  After three months or so we will try the survey again and see if communication has improved.

And by the way, if  any of you would like to try your hand at blogging I will be happy to relinquish the computer keyboard to guest bloggers!

Be well!