Finish: Getting CX Projects All the Way to the Citizen

Session Description

Across federal, state, and local government, customer experience (CX) initiatives launch with energy and good intent – then quietly stall. The press release goes out, the project charter gets signed, the kickoff meeting fills the room – and months later, the citizen still hasn’t felt a difference. Every stalled improvement is a broken promise to the citizen – and a missed chance to rebuild trust in government.

In his forthcoming book, “Finish: Why Smart Organizations Spin – and How to Finally Get Things Done”, Craig Szelestowski explores why so many government CX projects never reach the citizen, and what to do about it. Drawing on 500+ public-sector engagements, this practical session reveals the patterns that kill CX work mid-stream: scope drift, competing priorities, leadership turnover, fading sponsorship, and the silent killer – and a set of five shifts that overcome them.

Attendees will leave with a clear framework to spot stalled CX work in their own organizations, restart it without starting over, protect the people doing the work, and – most importantly – deliver the change the citizen was promised.

Learning Objectives

1. Identify the Tax on Slow Work, and five of the most common reasons government CX initiatives stall before reaching citizens.
2. Apply a practical framework for planning CX work to avoid the “tax on slow work”.
3. Protect project teams from avoidable churn, overload, and loss of momentum.
4. Translate stalled improvement efforts into concrete next steps that rebuild trust through delivery.

Presenter Information

Craig Szelestowski is an award-winning expert on the application of CX/Lean/Agile/Human Systems to both knowledge/project-based work and to more high-volume transactional work in the public sector. As a public servant then founder of Lean Agility Inc. he reduced wait times by up to 95%, increased capacity by up to 200% and dramatically increased engagement using virtual approaches. He is the Director of Lean programs at the Telfer Centre for Executive Leadership at the University of Ottawa.