VISION 2020/PLANNING AND QUALITY TEAM

Background

In November, 1999, following two years of interactions with staff and stakeholders, Director Pat Cannon issued an invitation to form the Vision 2020 Process Design Team as a means to begin the agency ' s long-range strategic thinking, visioning and planning process in order to improve the lives of blind persons as it looks toward the year 2020 and beyond. 

At that time, Director Cannon stated his vision for MCB' s future: " Someday it will be said that Michigan is a great place for blind people to live, learn, work, raise a family, and enjoy life because:

1.  An excellent array of rehabilitation and education services are fully accessible to blind people,

2.  Blind people in Michigan believe in themselves and their capacity to achieve excellence,

3.  The state's general population believes in the abilities of blind people and understands what blindness is and what it is not, and

4.   Michigan employers understand, believe in, and hire people who are blind."

The first step in this journey was the initiation of the Vision 2020 Process Design Team, a representative group whose goal was to develop, with the assistance of a professional planning facilitator, a process that would ultimately involve all staff, commissioners, consumers and stakeholders in reviewing and/or revising our planning process.  In January, 2000, the twelve member team was announced.

In 2002, the Vision 2020 Process Design Team and the Expanded Manager's Group was combined to form the new Planning and Quality (PAQ) team. This group reviewed the total input received earlier and created six Focus Design Teams to address a multitude of issues and ideas generated throughout the process.  The six Focus Design Teams were named: Structure and Administrative Placement; Technology; Resources (fiscal and human); Image and Identity; Partnerships and Collaborations; and Services Design.

The charge to MCB ' s Planning and Quality Team was to:

1.      Think creatively and boldly in designing customer responsive systems, feeling free to take risks to bring MCB to where it has never been before.

2.      To go forward to develop and implement innovative systems and services using the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) pilot testing model.

3.      To create all recommendations in the context of the four strategic initiatives of visioning, learning, quality and planning combined with a focus on the future in context of "Tilting Strategies and Values." (See Tilting Strategies and Values.)

In 2003, when the Michigan Commission for the Blind was transferred to the new Department of Labor and Economic Growth (DLEG), the PAQ team developed its Long Range Plan, which follows.  Beginning in 2004, the Long Range Plan evolved into an annual Action Plan, developed to align with the Governor's and the DLEG's Action Plans.  By 2006, the six Focus Design Teams had been restructured to become four teams:  Services Delivery, Image and Identity, Resources and Structure, and Technology.