Kim's 2000 Good Things
How did One Good Thing get started?
I was hired in January 2018 with a goal to help improve FAS staff engagement, help connect staff to UCSF’s mission and purpose, and provide consistent and regular communication around FAS priorities and our impact to campus. I had a strong communications background, but I didn’t know much about Lean principles or tools. I took as many Lean classes as I could, and with the support of my PMO coach, we created the A3: Stabilizing FAS Information Flow. Part of building my A3 was identifying the root problems of why staff engagement had plateaued and creating countermeasures where communications could help. Several things we learned (“evidence”) impacted how we shaped One Good Thing:
- FAS staff wanted to learn more about what’s happening at UCSF and within FAS.
- FAS didn’t share information well across the organization.
- FAS wanted to humanize our work, but we didn’t regularly tell stories.
We took parts of what’s been working well in other campus communications and applied a “Humans of New York” style format. One Good Thing was born in January 2019. See the One Good Thing data summary to find out more about how we measure success. Having the opportunity to share the stories of our employees and the work we do in FAS is a dream job.
What’s next?
We hoped you would look forward to reading One Good Thing, have more conversations with your colleagues within FAS, and share stories of the people who inspire you. And you did! We have two changes going forward:
- We’ll be transitioning from a weekly to every other week publication schedule to make more space for new ideas to help make this the best place to work.
- We learned that email is not a good way to reach all levels of our organization, especially those who don’t work in a desk environment, so we’ll be experimenting with new ways to spread the good news and One Good Thing beyond email (see the data summary to learn more).