January 2013—Dr. Mike Prevou, SKS President, and Mr. Mike Hower, SKS Chief Learning Officer, facilitated training for the Together We Can Initiative, a multidisciplinary healthcare team in Central Michigan involved in public health improvement. During the first engagement in 2011, SKS assisted the Central Michigan District Health Department form and launch a multi-disciplinary team from across six counties. The team was charged with improving the health of more than 196,000 people within its health district. In a 2010 County Health Rankings report, these six counties fell in the bottom half on county outcomes, and 3 of the 6 were ranked in the bottom 10 counties in the state.

Through an initial Teams of Leaders Form and Launch workshop, over 70 people from the six communities came together to identify not only the causes of the low rankings, but also the contributing factors and establish workable goals, objectives, and tasks that could be managed to produce tangible results. Over the past two years they improved their ratings, significantly raising each participating county out of the bottom 10 ranking to near the middle.

As a result of the team development approach used, learned, and practiced, they were able to come together in a common approach to problem solving. Spin-off working groups have started to show improvements in newly addressed areas. Additionally, the improved focus has helped them win more than $2 million in grants. This year’s Form and Launch workshop and Train the Trainer seminar was designed to acculturate new members and reinvigorate the team.

About SKS

SKS is a consulting firm focused on expertise development, organizational learning, and knowledge management practices and application. Our proven learning approaches produce immediate benefits by applying key experiential learning and knowledge-based strategies to improve individual, team, and organizational learning and performance.