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Case Studies
| CLIENT: |
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United States Department of Defense |
PROJECT:
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Cross-Organizational Team Building and Culture Change |
| THE CHALLENGE: |
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In 1994, the General Accounting Office (GAO) testified
to Congress that 10 billion dollars had been spent in the
DOD Installation Restoration Program (IRP) in the prior ten
years, yet over that period only two percent of sites had
reached any stage of clean-up. Protracted delays due
to litigation and inter-agency disagreements were jeopardizing
the effectiveness of the Government’s multi-billion
dollar program to clean up environmental contamination at
military installations in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern
states, as well as, all other regions of the nation. |
| THE RESPONSE: |
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Over the past eleven years, The Management Edge, Inc.
has provided consulting, training, team building and meeting
facilitation services to managers at Navy, Air Force, Marine
Corps, Army, USEPA, and state environmental agencies to
implement “Inter-Agency Partnering”, a culture
change program intended to fundamentally transform the
environmental restoration process by creating collaborative
inter-agency teams.
A three-tiered management support structure
was designed and implemented involving managers and base
level staff. The Management Edge provided customized, targeted
training for each level.
The Management Edge consultants work
on an ongoing basis with management and base-level multi-agency
teams to help maintain progress toward a common set of program
goals, provide additional training and group interventions
as needed, and provide real-time intervention in inter-personal
conflicts. To date, The Management Edge has participated
in over a 1,000 sessions at over 100 bases. (Figures
need to be verified) |
| THE RESULT: |
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The old, inefficient, and adversarial “arms-length” regulatory
relationship has been largely replaced by a collaborative,
consensus-based approach allowing better, faster, more cost
effective, and more innovative environmental decisions. Environmental
standards are rigorously adhered to, yet by DOD’s own
estimates*, this new approach has saved dozens of
years and tens of millions of dollars, and will continue to deliver
tangible benefits for the remaining lifetime of the clean-up
program.
* For example, Air Force metrics report a 10 to 1 return on
investment in dollars spent on Inter-Agency Partnering in the
State of Florida alone. |
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