By Ivy Washington, SOM’09

On October 29 through 31, more than ninety child welfare professionals from all over the country gathered in the GM Room to create plans to optimize systems in government agencies with the support of non-profits and for-profits to improve the efficiency of human services. Daniel Stein, SOM’87, co-founder of Stewards of Change, the organization that arranged this conference, attended his 20th SOM reunion in October and was delighted to be holding this third annual conference at SOM.

This year’s conference was called InterOptimability: Human Services 2.0: Preparing Child Welfare for the 21st Century. Mr. Stein’s opening remarks on Monday set the tone of thinking broadly about possibilities and about commonalities by noting the presence of representatives from disparate groups including practitioners, policy-makers, think tanks, and technology businesses.

SOM’s professors shared their thoughts with attendees at several talks during the conference. Many people noted the relevance of Prof. Bracken’s advice to reject the first frame suggested for approaching a problem. Prof. Sonnenfeld made everyone laugh with his video presentations on presidential candidates and Donald Trump in an effort to examine leadership and competition vs. collaboration when meeting the needs of children. Prof. Oster requested feedback from the group for the new Executive Management, Entrepreneurship and Leadership Institute that will be offered at SOM in the future. This program will take advantage of the new SOM curriculum in an abbreviated form to help executives look at interoperability in their institutions. Prof. Oster received ideas from the group reinforcing the plan to invite teams rather than individuals to attend the program to ensure implementation and the transfer of institutional knowledge. The group also liked the idea that these teams would be comprised of high level executives because of the importance of top leaders understanding how departments can work together and being able to reinforce the benefits of informational systems across silos.

On the final day of the conference, Dean Podolny spoke about the parallels between the work that Stewards of Change and SOM are doing. His words about integrative management, values and commitments, and creativity and discipline in approaching complex problems echoed discussions from the previous two days. Much of the conversation during the conference focused on the use of technology as potential barrier or ally rather than a solution and addressed questions about the need for human interaction in human services. A recurring theme was timeliness and how interoptimability not only leads to the best use of systems and money, but also ensures timely responses in an industry where safety is central. Throughout the conference, attendees examined how to change the way that communication about child safety takes place by shifting energy to more proactive and preventative strategies and fully integrated systems.

To learn more about Stewards of Change or to request the primer from the conference, please visit www.stewardsofchange.org.