CASE STUDY

Crow Wing County

The Opportunity

Following the 2008 Recession, one of the most beautiful counties located northeast of the Twin Cities in the state of Minnesota, Crow Wing County (CWC) faced dramatic financial challenges and were presented with opportunity to improve customer services and learn to integrate best practices. The cultural change sought by county leaders would not only power them through hard times, but support sustainable change far into the future. CWC began its partnership with Sicora Consulting in 2011 to transform the culture within their organization.

The Solution

Leaders of CWC turned to Dr. Robert Sicora’s research-based programs to provide them with the necessary tools and solutions on how to create a performance-based culture of trust needed for lasting transformation. By using Leading from the Helm as their continuous improvement model and introducing the 4 Colors of Insights model to develop better outcomes, ultimately improved customer experience, and in addition, helped create a better foundation for culture change within their organization. CWC was the first organization to fully utilize Dr. Sicora’s Leading from the Helm model and is credited in helping with early stages of development of the model.

The Outcome

Crow Wing County is a great example of how a group of leaders came together to further sere their community and transformed the way county government is delivered. By transforming the culture within their organization while building trust with a holistic approach, immediately resulted to higher levels of engagement between staff, improved customer service and greater levels of performance provided for the community that they serve. The same results helped CWC identify how much they valued relationships, working with customers, solving problems, improving customer services and being recognized for their results. In addition, these results demonstrated how managing a culture of high performance is a good return on investment (ROI). The collaboration between Sicora Consulting and Crow Wing County has been truly transformative.