Animal Welfare Professionals

Hi everyone- I hope if you attended Expo in NOLA last week you came away with some great takeaways/ ideas to implement for lifesaving.

My biggest AHA moment was in the session called Roots and Bones, where NACA Executive Director @Jerrica Owen CAWA  and board member @Spencer Conover went through how you can apply process mapping to every aspect of your operation to reduce waste, improve efficiency and gain manpower by moving staff and volunteers to different projects once you have streamlined your processes.

A simple idea they shared was "Ask Why 5 times to get to the root of any issue". Why is this person's dog getting out? Why does our adoption process take so long? If you answer the question, then keeping asking why with each new answer, you'll probably get to the underlying issue that is causing the problem, and you'll have a chance of actually solving it!

I know they are doing this session again at the Best Friends conference in Houston- make sure to attend. It changed the way I am approaching every process or problem I encounter!

WHAT WAS YOUR BIGGEST TAKEAWAY FROM EXPO????

#Conferences,WorkshopsandWebcasts

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Alexis Pugh
Director, Memphis Animal Services
www.memphisanimalservices.com

Organizational Management
& Pet Support Services Specialist
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I love the idea of asking 5 questions! I plan on implementing this process immediately. Thank you for sharing!

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Belinda Black
Volunteer
HOPE for Animals
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Awesome idea!! I would add that how you do this is very important. I had a new manager in my former career - not new to the org, but new to the dept - and he met with his leadership team (me and two others) to learn about our department (that was all he prefaced the meetings with). He would ask us a question and we would answer it and his only response was "Why?". We would give more information, and again, his only response was "Why?".  In hindsight, he probably did it 5 times and was probably following this method. We found it to be incredibly annoying. Now, had he prefaced our meeting with what he was going to be doing and the reasoning behind it; or if he had said more than just "Why?" each time (recognizing what we had said and building on it or wanting to dig in deeper), it would have gone much better. So, great idea as long as it's implemented well.

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Shelly Thompson
Director of Operations
Maddie's Fund
Pleasanton CA
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Thank you!!! We are very passionate about the subject and would be happy to connect again with anyone who would like to meet with us and learn more!!! 

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Jerrica Owen, CAWA
Executive Director
National Animal Care & Control Association (NACA)
jowen@nacanet.org
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