Yeah. That’s right.
This photo of empty mail bins is exactly what innovation is.
Dozens of people throughout my career have asked me what innovation looks like in government.
Most of the people who ask me will also make snide comments about their perceived lack of innovation in the public sector, as they rarely see what it looks like.
Truth is that most of us—even the people who work in the industry—struggle to notice it.
43% of business owners in Jefferson County, Alabama, probably didn’t notice any change.
But for nearly a year, the people in the Revenue Department felt it.
The team worked through the business renewal process and completed a transformation in time for the state business renewal deadline.
And because of their hard work, thousands of businesses renewed their licenses on time.
In the past, October 1st would mean that every morning when the team went down to the mail room, they would walk back up to the processing center with up to 15 bins of mail.
The teams would work diligently on renewing the business licenses for months.
Yes, months.
In fact, it wouldn’t be completed until the end of February.
That meant hundreds, even thousands, of businesses were waiting to receive their new licenses only to have to perform the same process again.
Every year.
Now, the business owner can perform the renewal without writing a check and without sending it through the mail.
Simple, practical, and yet transformative.
Most of us take these kinds of changes for granted.
We don’t realize all the work that goes on behind the scenes to execute these changes.
That’s also why we don’t always do it.
As humans, we can get so caught up in our daily work that we get blinded by it.
In the book, 4DX, they call this the “whirl wind.”
The “whirl wind” of work can hold us back from making the real transformations we know need to happen.
I get caught in the whirl wind all the time. Especially at this time of year.
Pressure from the holidays, end-of-year programs, requests for the new year, and taking time off to spend with my family.
For me, if I spend an hour every day thinking about my processes, I can start to get out of the whirl wind of work and into my own transformation.
I once heard, “A good employee answers the phone all day. But a great employee stops the phone from ringing.”
Or in this case, a group of incredible employees stopped all that mail from coming in.
Interested in escaping your own whirl wind of work in 2025? Drop me a line here for a free consultation.