Session Description
Have you ever solved a problem only to watch it come right back? In customer experience work, we often improve a process or remove a barrier, only to see frustration pop up somewhere else.
Not all challenges are created equal. Some can be solved with existing expertise and proven approaches. Others require people to rethink assumptions, build new capabilities and relationships, and adapt together.
Join Jeannie Bowen with Your Washington and Professor Steve Page with the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy & Governance to explore the difference between technical and adaptive challenges, and how adaptive leadership can help address complex customer service issues. Drawing on research, real-world examples, and lessons from the Evans School’s Leading Public Innovation Certificate, we’ll share and practice tools for diagnosing challenges and choosing approaches that fit.
Participants will also share the challenges they’re seeing and the customer experiences they are trying to improve. You’ll leave with a practical diagnostic and a new lens for recognizing when a challenge calls for expertise—and when it calls for adaptation.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the difference between technical problems and adaptive challenges.
- Recognize when challenges are technical, adaptive, or both.
- Learn to use a practical diagnostic tool to better understand the challenge you’re facing.
- Create conditions that help people adapt and create lasting improvements in customer experience.
Presenter Information
Steve Page
Steve Page is Associate Professor and Program Director for Graduate Certificates at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. His research and teaching interests include leadership, management, collaboration, and strategy. Page’s publications explore these issues in the areas of education, health and human services, public safety, and transportation. He consults regularly to local governments and nonprofit organizations, and previously worked as a research associate at the National Center for Children in Poverty at the Columbia University School of Public Health. Page holds a Ph.D. and SM in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a BA in Political Science from Williams College.
Jeannie Bowen
Jeannie Bowen is interested in what happens in the space between policy and people—where laws, programs, and processes become real experiences for the people who use them. As a Senior Performance Advisor with Your Washington, she works across state government to improve customer experience, reduce friction, and help turn public priorities into meaningful change.
With more than 30 years in Washington state government, Jeannie brings deep practical experience in continuous improvement, human-centered design, and change management. Her work is grounded in formal training in Lean Six Sigma, LUMA Human-Centered Design, Prosci Change Management, and Leading Public Innovation through the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy & Governance.