Introduction

Changing Outcomes

by Nancy Maxson and Marsha Katz,
The University of Montana Rural Institute

“If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got. ”

This was the title for one of the training sessions the Rural Institute’s Adult Community Services and Supports Department offered last year as part or our Rural Entrepreneurship and Self-employment Expansion Design (RESEED) project. It aptly summarizes the theme of this annual monograph, the thrust of our department’s projects, and our activities this last year. If we want different outcomes, it only makes sense to alter the routines we’ve become used to.

Sometimes rehabilitation organizations change because new policies and new opportunities present themselves. The first article in this monograph addresses just such an innovation: the Ticket to Work and Work Incentive Improvement Act of 1999. Sometimes outcomes change because agencies expand their capacity; several articles in this monograph were written by the participants in our RESEED demonstration project, where our Organizational Consultants train people with disabilities and the rehabilitation providers that serve them about self-employment as a career option. While our RESEED project expands the capacity of community rehabilitation programs, our RILLMI project (Rural Independent Living Leadership and Mentoring Initiative) offers Independent Living Centers in rural America the training in organizational development skills that will enhance their agencies’ leadership potential, and this publication includes stories from that project as well. As with all our projects, our goal is to assist the people with disabilities we serve to transform their own lives in the way they choose, to change their outcomes for the better. And so, of course, this monograph includes stories by and about some of those people who are why we do what we do.

Change rarely comes in the form of “revolution” On the contrary, we are much more likely to change one action or practice at a time, resulting in an “evolution” of our practices, and thus an evolution of our outcomes. In education we are taught that learning is possible when there is a “manageable gap” between what we know and the next step. The distance must be neither too little nor too great. If the gap between what we know and the next step is too small, there is no “stretch” involved, so no real learning occurs. This publication demonstrates how the people and organizations we worked with last year have stretched and evolved.

This year our department underwent our own changes. Our team watched and cheered as two of our own, our Director of Special Projects Cary Griffin and Organizational Consultant David Hammis, made the leap from part-time at the Rural Institute to full-time in their own consulting business. Their leaving was their leap across their own “manageable gap,” and it likewise created subsequent opportunities for the rest of our team to stretch and grow. The Rural Institute’s Training Director Richard Kiefer-O’Donnell, is now our new department head, and we have incorporated his expertise into our department’s name—we are now the Training/Adult Community Services and Supports Department at the University of Montana Rural Institute.

We had to take on new roles, learn new ways of doing things, and engage in activities that stretched each of us. This monograph is proof positive that we are succeeding at those tasks, enjoying the learning, and continuing to stretch and grow. We are all involved together as partners in doing new things in new ways, and thus achieving new outcomes. And each new outcome shows us what’s possible, and so we share these stories with you so you will know what’s possible, too.

The 2004 Training/
Adult Community Services and Supports Team

Lisa Adler
Jan Brooks
Mike Flaherty
Jennifer Grayless
Marsha Katz
Richard Kiefer-O’Donnell
Colleen Koch
Connie Lewis
Nancy Maxson
Susanne Meikle
B. Roger Shelley
Bob Snizek
Marsha Steinweden

The Rural Institute
Training/Adult Community Services and Supports
52 Corbin Hall
The University of Montana
Missoula, MT 59812-7056
(877) 243-2476 Toll Free
(406) 243-4200 TT
(406) 243-4730 Fax

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