Diverting Debris and Saving Water: Innovation for the Environment
Joey Hernandez spent his DOTI Black Belt Fellowship with the street sweeping team, saving almost 26 million gallons of water and 668 staff hours in the process.
Walk the Walk to Talk the Talk
Introductory Note: In process improvement, we teach the importance of “going to the gemba”. Wade Blamer is a stand-out innovator in the City, and in particular, his innovation superpower is […]
Prompt Pay Initiative: Parks and Recreation’s Improvements
This is part two in our Prompt Payment blog series. You can read the overview post here, and learn more about the city-wide improvements that came out of that. In […]
Denver Transportation and Infrastructure Builds a New Standard for Innovation and Employee Development
What happens to black belts after they go through the week long Peak Academy black belt training? This question was posed by the Denver Public Works Executive Director Eulois Cleckley, […]
City of Denver Contractor Invoice Payments are Getting Faster, Here’s How it Started
The City of Denver occasionally receives complaints from contractors that their invoices aren’t being paid timely. Unfortunately, those complaints increased around the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020 and […]
Teamwork Makes The Dream Work: Denver’s Tax Compliance & Collection Process Project Highlights
Continuous Improvement requires continuous effort over time, patience, & empathy – teamwork.
Our First Public Service Superhero!
In July, Peak Academy launched our new Public Service Superhero training (PSSH). We ran two cohorts with a Black-Belt inspired curriculum that was modified for the online format and the […]
Front-Line Solutions: How One Employee’s Perspective Changed COVID Problem Solving
If you’ve been through process improvement training, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “go to the gemba”. Gemba comes from the Japanese term meaning “the actual place”. The idea behind this […]
Denver Parks and Recreation High Volume Recruiting
Every year, Denver Parks and Recreation (DPR) hires approximately 1,500 staff to support, run, and maintain the City of Denver’s over 200 City parks, 30 recreation centers, 30 swimming pools, […]
Bright Spot: The DSD Adopt-A-Pod Project: How The DSD Focused on Improving The Use of Existing Resources & Leveraging Outside Community Agencies to Improve Inmate Outcomes
Written by Andrew Jones, Denver Sheriffs Department (DSD) Program Administrator, Downtown Denver Detention Center – July 2020 “I have been working with the DSD and the City and County of […]
Tasty Food to the Rescue!
Have you ever been hungry? I mean, really hungry? Where nothing else seems possible until you get some food in your belly? In America before the pandemic, 11 million children […]
The Power of the Pilot
Many of us like our products to be perfect before sending them into the universe. While this can be a strength, it can also be a limiting weakness. It slows […]
How To Succeed During a Financial Crisis: Part 2 Review of The Healing Organization
In the first review I covered the story about how Jaipur Rugs employs disadvantaged “lower-caste” women in India, and their business philosophy of serving with love and compassion to restore […]
The Grittiest Generation
We have an opportunity to become The Grittiest Generation, will we take it? Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been reading the book Grit by Angela Duckworth. In it, she presents compelling research that it’s the pairing of passion and perseverance, what she calls grit, that makes a person successful.
What Government Needs Now is Performance Management, Sweet Performance Management
How do you know if you’re on track to achieve your goals? For most of us, when it comes to our personal lives, we need some type of data. You […]
How to Deliver on Lingering Action Items – 4 Tips for Success!
If you’ve spent much time with my team, you’ll know that we finish every facilitated workshop or event with a concise list of action items, owners and projected due dates. […]
