Announcement

CMCA has been working for a long time now on our transformational plan. This is the plan that gives us the opportunity to think beyond our programmatic barriers about how to end poverty in mid-Missouri. The plan both acknowledges all of the valuable contributions we are already making to our communities and challenges us to do more. Transformation does not mean paying lip-service to the management process of the month but rather it means that we are going to change the way we do business. By increasing our communication within the agency and engaging the community outside of our agency we can change the way we all think about poverty and build activities around long term solutions.

Our five agency wide strategic commitments are as follows:
1. Engage the community to assure that all people have their basic needs met.
2. Enhance community capacity to ensure all individuals have lifelong learning opportunities.
3. Build community capacity to enhance economic and community assets.
4. Build relationships across class and race lines.
5. Develop an innovative, caring agency dedicated to being an influential leader in our communities.

My sincerest thanks to everybody that worked on this plan or covered for a colleague while they attended planning meetings or who got excited about trying a new challenge!

So we have this great plan to transform our agency, now it is time to implement the plan. Over the summer we established a Coordinating Team that will be responsible for coordinating the work and approving implementation plans of Strategy Teams. Coordinating Team members will lead the Strategy Teams which will establish baseline information about our performance targets, identify indicators of progress, create activities that will accomplish our goals, and develop work plans and budgets around those activities. Whew! That sounds like a lot of work! That is why I refer to this process as a marathon, not a sprint. This is the way we will conduct business now and we will have to figure out how to make it work. The process of including CMCA staff in decision making is critical to our success. With that, it is my pleasure to announce that the Strategy Teams have been selected.

The Coordinating Team met to discuss all of the leaders across the agency. They considered cross-agency representation, staff work load and capacity, performance, geographic dispersion, and the interests and skills of various staff to come up with diverse teams that we would like to invite to help us implement our plan. The Co-Leaders will be contacting many of you to invite you to be on a team. I hope you will seriously consider this leadership opportunity. Think about your commitment to our mission and vision and whether you can commit to this long term aspect of your job. Discuss the invitation with your supervisor to make sure they support your participation by being flexible with your schedule and balancing your workload. If you accept the invitation please mark your calendar for an orientation session from 10:00 to 2:00 on December 2.

For those of you that were not selected, please understand that many factors went into this process and that it is no reflection on your performance or commitment to the agency. In fact, in many cases your heavy involvement in other agency commitments was so impressive that we did not want to add more to your plate. Still, there will be many opportunities to include additional leaders in the implementation process. Keep an eye out for ad hoc committees and other chances to provide feedback. As always, you can contact me directly if you have ideas that should be included in the implementation process or if you are particularly interested in one of these teams.

The Strategy Team Co-Leaders:
Strategy 1: Wendi Matlick and Adam Tipton
Strategy 2: Mernell King and Joyce Davis
Strategy 3: Dianna Moore and Brandy Tallman
Strategy 4: Angela Hirsch and Melissa Chambers
Strategy 5: Anita Sanderson, Chris Macy, and Julie Kratzer