Keys To Successful Change The Mission is Key The value of mission within human service organizations can be well-defined as the course for change effort by providing focus when competing priorities that intrude on the work of the participants. The mission enables an organization to maintain continuity and directions regardless of changes that may occur within leadership. Peter Drucker (199) focuses on the mission as one of the three keys to launch innovation. For example, the Innovations in American Government awarded to used funds that were confiscated from drug dealers to start a pilot project to serve pregnant teens or parents to become nurturing parents, attain education and other skills for self-sufficiency, and expand opportunities for their children.
Outcomes Matter Public organization are finding it to be helpful to use outcomes as a way to motivate employees to help citizens to hold government agencies accountable, and assist government agencies in gaining the public’s support for their accomplishments. In regards to human service organizations, this may be challenging because of the difficulty in identifying program outcomes and because of the even more formidable task of collecting data to evaluate the outcome. Measuring the activities may have a better result than using outcomes because of the ease of measurement and also they have limited control over the outcomes.

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Change is Built on Organizational Values Successful changes occur when the mission, values, and norms of the organization serve as the foundation for the change and the point from which all new activities evolve. O’Toole (1995) suggests that it is just as absurd to talk of changing the culture of a firm into something radically different as it is to talk about manipulating your personality to become someone you are not.
Empowerment is More Than a Concert. The failure of empowerment initiatives can result from the lack of focus on the front-line staff. Larkin and Larkin (1996) further suggested that the front-line supervisors must be involved in the change since they are the opinion leaders of the organization, and have a great influence on the attitudes and behaviors of others. In human services settings, there are also examples of seeking front-line worker’s input to institute change. They can take a team management approach to implement the changes in which decision-making authority is vested in those who are most in touch with the clients’ needs and concerns. This type of involvement will allow the county to be able to smooth the transition to welfare reform. In order to fully understand how welfare reform influences the well-being of low-income families and communities, we must learn how human service organizations are affected by new social welfare policies. This report examines agency staff members’ knowledge about welfare reform, their overall views of welfare reform, their experience of its impact on their agencies, and their expectations of how it will affect them.
Attention is Focused on the Customer The state of Vermont demonstrates how to address customers concerns in a innovative program called Reparative Probation. In order for social justice to occur, a balance must be achieved between the crime victim and the offender’s acts. In this program, ordinary citizens make sentencing decision about adult criminal offenders from their community. The program board members focused on the minor crimes, than meet with offenders and victims, and help them resolve disputes, and provide opportunities for the offenders to make amends to their community. We believe most successful crime reduction policies arise from local innovation, not centrally devised responses.
Collaborate with Others Agencies Whenever Possible Due to budget decreases and the increase in public demands, agencies has successfully joined together to identify creative solutions to long-term problems. For example, two community-based organizations were the initiators of innovation when a major manufacturing closed down. They were able to find innovative job training and placement programs. Entitlement communities develop their own programs and funding priorities. However, grantees must give maximum feasible priority to activities which benefit low- and moderate-income persons.
Information Technology Works Wonders Technology has also been used to provide a greater variety of services, and many exciting programs have used technological advances to improve the quality of services. For example, the Electronic Benefits program in Minnesota, which uses commercial automatic teller machines to dispense public assistance benefits. Others has used technology to develop an cost-effective Medicaid program as well.
Leadership is Essential Perlmutter and Adams (1994) conducted a survey of executives of Family Service Agencies and noted that their leadership is practiced in a hostile environment, described as "more market driven and less mission driven" (p. 445). Austin (1997b) Management is the discipline that has flourished in bureaucratic agencies. Management is defined by Kotter as a set of process that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly. In conclusion, it is advisable to start small, or otherwise the undertaking will be too overwhelming when it comes to ventures. Starting with a pilot program offers the leaders of change an opportunity with little risk to track down problems. Many change initiatives have been permanently done away with in human service agencies. .