Patrick Adams  

Welcome to the Lean solutions podcast where we discuss business solutions to help listeners develop and implement action plans for true Lean process improvement. I am your host, Patrick Adams. Hello and welcome. Our guest today is Drew Erdman and Drew served as the chief operating officer of the state of Missouri from February 2017 to April 2021. Under two governors, he was responsible for leading the management transformation across the state of Missouri’s 16 Cabinet departments, which equates to roughly 45,000 employees. Among these enterprise reforms. We’re establishing Missouri’s first cross departmental operational excellence community, and prioritizing leadership development and skill building at all levels. Welcome to the show Drew.

Drew Erdmann

Great to be here. Thanks very much for having me on, Patrick.

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely. So when you first started with the state of Missouri back in 2017, I have to imagine that it was difficult, because I know you transitioned from the private sector. But I’m curious, what level of continuous improvement experience did these 45,000 employees have?

Drew Erdmann  

Yeah, across the enterprise, what I learned pretty rapidly, you know, starting a course with an assessment phase. And basically, there were a few departments that had some pockets of goodness, there’s one or two departments that actually did have continuous improvement or lean programs. But for the most part, let’s just say, you know, 14 out of 16 departments, nothing will start with Wow. And that’s from frontline up to leaders. Of course, there are pockets of people who may have had some individual experience, but in terms of, you know, actual departments with some programs, maybe two out of 16.

Patrick Adams  

Wow, okay. And so coming into that, what did your private sector experience look like?

Drew Erdmann  

But coming into it, I had a diverse background, had served in the federal government and then had served for over a decade as a management consultant, both for private sector and public sector organizations in the United States and overseas as well. Okay, so I came with a pretty good background in management and continuous improvement by the time I set foot in the hallways in Jefferson City, Missouri.

Patrick Adams  

Sure. Well, I have to imagine this was a huge undertaking. What was your assessment? And what was your, your and your team’s approach to introducing operational excellence to the state of Missouri government?

Drew Erdmann  

Well, you know, again, it started with that assessment. And just being very, very realistic, quite frankly, you know, you have to take people where they are, you have to meet them where they are. And for many of the leaders in the public sector, they had never been introduced to these concepts at all, many of them had never even heard of them. The majority of people hadn’t heard of a Gantt chart, as an example. And there’s, maybe we’ll get into the reasons for that when we talk about the differences between the public sector and the private sector, but pretty rapidly had to make a critical design decision, we could focus our energies on maybe one or two departments and build up goodness, and then try and scale from there, or do a broad front approach, and try and build up momentum and then push forward in that way. And we made the decision that it was going to be most important, actually, to try and do a broad front approach. It had difficulties, but there were some very, very good reasons why we did that. And I think overall, it turned out successful. Okay,

Patrick Adams  

So do you mind sharing, maybe some of those reasons? Because, you know, a lot of times people think about, you know, going to a model area starting small, and you chose a different route. So I’m curious to hear the reasons behind that. I’m sure you had good reasons. I just want to know what they were.

Drew Erdmann  

Yeah, absolutely. And so this comes back to some of the differences maybe with the private sector. Okay. And in the public sector? It’s a great question, which is, you know, looking at the pros and cons. Here’s some of the features that I was looking at. And I’ll say it didn’t articulate them publicly at the time. But it’s the underlying rationale, which is you have to accept in these public sector organizations, you know, Department of Revenue or Department of Social Services, Department of Corrections. Usually those roles have their leaders turnover pretty frequently. Also, it’s often driven by political timetables, and, and dynamics, right. So just very realistically say to yourself, Wait a second, there’s going to be turmoil or changes in these leadership positions. And coming in there were some departments in the preceding decade that had a different leader every year, every 18 months, right. So if you start to say to yourself, Wait a second, there isn’t going to be continuity at the top. It’s a bit unpredictable. Then the idea was, wait, if we’re going to build this approach, we need to build a community that’s resilient, and basically a network of practitioners a bit deeper in the organization, quite frankly. that are not so dependent on top level support. Now, of course, that’s absolutely essential. But it’s just a realistic appraisal of, if we’re in a situation where there could be turnover, significantly at the upper echelons of these organizations, and sometimes quite frequently, let’s build a community, let’s build a network. And in order to do that, you don’t want to be dependent on any one department that could be quite frankly, less resilient if it’s really dependent on only one or two leaders at

Patrick Adams  

the top. Sure. That makes sense. So really, you were focused on developing the system? And then your hope is, or was that leadership would come in and just adopt that system or support that system as churn and change happened at the executive leadership level? What was your experience with that? Did you feel like, again, you know, you, you were in that position, through under two different governors? And I’m sure lots of other changes at the executive level. Did you feel like the system that you created was accepted and supported through the different changes in leadership?

Drew Erdmann  

Yeah, great question. And I should say that we actively involved the senior leaders in the development of this, and I want to be clear about this. You’re not forcing anyone, so to speak, you know, active partnership, but it’s also a realistic appraisal. And I do want to stress this, Patrick, which is just, it’s a very realistic phrase, I think this is true in the private sector, public sector, we had some awesome, fantastic champions and advocates and leaders, they tended to be those with a private sector background, or, for example, we had one who had experiences of marine etc, people with more diverse backgrounds, private sector, they tended to be champions, others needed to learn. And also very pragmatically, you can’t expect every senior leader to fully embrace changes that maybe they hadn’t seen or experienced in 20 or 30 years. So, we were actively engaged in trying to co create and build this community. We also want to stress that, you know, the approach was kind of a T shaped approach meeting, there are certain expectations for every department. But then where there was success, or where it went deeper, we went deep to drive as far and as fast as possible. And that usually was tied to oftentimes the most supportive leaders as well. So I don’t want to disassociate that. Yeah. But what we also did was, we had to kind of jumpstart things with a massive infusion of basic training and capability building. Okay, so and this is at all levels, because, quite frankly, if you have a significant number of people who have never used a Gantt chart before, or have never used data in making decisions before, don’t know the basics of project management, let alone getting to some more advanced concepts, you need to do some of that big significant investment to get people you know, whet their appetite, get them excited, celebrate success. And then we also did significant investment in terms of building up a group or a cadre of people with Greenbelt capabilities and having them begin working on projects. Again, that is, you know, very, very practical, do learn, do learn from each other, build a community. And in some places it took off in other departments, it took a little slower for those roots to get settled. But it’s a very, very practical approach.

Patrick Adams  

Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. And you and I talked a little bit about the approach when we were at the state of Nebraska summit this last year, and I heard you mentioned green belt that was going to be my next question when it came to training? What did you guys choose? What do you know, what were any lean concepts involved? It sounds like some project management. And then obviously, I’m hearing some Six Sigma type stuff. Was there anything specifically topic wise, that you felt was needed to be stressed? Outside of the project management piece? Again, great question. And,

Drew Erdmann  

and we did start with some of the real basics, which were basics of project management. Also, a white belt equivalent, you know, kind of sampling of core concepts, okay, five, why’s, you know, etc. And we also wanted to introduce performance measures. This was also tied up to other parts of state government tied to our budget. But that was also one of our levers so to speak, was getting people to think through their programs and say, Wait a second, the really basic thing of what are we doing here? What’s our objective? How do we measure it? What’s our current state? What’s our aspirational state? Also getting people to ask the question of, well, how do others do it? Know how other state organizations do it or how does the private sector do what we’re doing? So that was also a major push, for example, on performance measures and that That’s something that on each one of those we talked about, we developed actually tailored locally grown training. Okay, some of it was delivered in person, some of it, including at the end, obviously, because of the COVID challenges remotely. But we also then had a number of people through partnership with Dartmouth, their Tuck School, and their Thayer School have some, you know, remote Greenbelt training, and also Ohio State University as well, different programs. So we contracted to have some specific programs to jumpstart that more advanced training of people in every department who would have green belt capabilities.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, so important. What level of coaching did you provide to the green belts in the white belts that were going through the program?

Drew Erdmann  

Yeah, I think this is a, this is definitely one of the learnings. We were trying to move pretty fast. And I think that what we learned from that is, in some cases, you want to go slow to go fast. 

Patrick Adams  

That’s such an important point, right there.

Drew Erdmann  

Yeah. Right. And so I think that what one of the big lessons we learned was, at first, actually, with a number of the green belts, and not just in terms of mentorship, it was actually the the selection of the people who are getting the training, we would differ, you know, and this goes to deferring to the local leaders to choose the people for the training, quite frankly, in some cases, they’re you absolutely the right people, right mindset, right will right roll, they were going to get the support. In other cases, departments, quite frankly, used, oh, there’s this training, we’re going to use that as almost a reward and recognition for someone. And they weren’t necessarily thinking, you know, quite frankly, the leaders weren’t thinking in terms of how this person will use the training, it’s more like this person has been good. Let’s give them additional. Okay, we did learn to be much more focused on thinking through things like, what’s the follow on what’s the project, let’s make sure that this isn’t just a classroom experience, let’s make sure that there’s, you know, ongoing. And I should note that, for example, Ohio State, when we were working with Ohio State, they would provide ongoing coaching through the duration of the project. And the training, for example.

Patrick Adams  

Nice. Very good. That’s great. So you ‘ve obviously talked a little bit about the private sector and the public sector, and you mentioned that, you know, one of the differences being senior leadership, and just how that shows that, you know, chain changes frequently in the public sector. What other differences major differences, did you see in going from the private sector to the public sector, anything else besides the the senior leadership

Drew Erdmann  

As a starting point, you know, oftentimes people create the dichotomy between the two, as if it’s a huge gap, right. And I come back to my starting point, which is that I’m a big believer that people are people, organizations or organizations, processes or processes. For the most part, there’s some qualifications to this. But for the most part, it’s not radically different between the public sector and private sector when you get to some of the topics we’re talking about. And the second proposition is what I’ve already mentioned, you know, you really need to meet people where they are. But this comes back to the assessment, what I would just notice, it was surprising to me, even with past public sector experience that he was unusual to find, you know, again, leaders who are running multi billion dollar operations, in some cases with 1000, employee 1000s of employees who, you know, hadn’t used a Gantt chart before, or didn’t really know the basics of project management fundamentals, or, you know, some of these basic concepts that in the private sector, if you had people running enterprises or facilities, they would have been introduced to they may not be masters of they may have different perspectives on but the lack of familiarity was just something that needed to tackle. And that comes back to, you know, kind of the application of those, you know, the five whys or iceberg model of really just saying like, what, what are the mindsets here? Why is that? Why would well meaning smart people? Because these are all smart, capable people, right? Why would they be operating this way? And in many cases, who’s this radical underinvestment in basic human capital? I think, you know, that’s one. And then the second part is that when you think about the public sector at times, and I’m going to focus on state, which is very different than in the military, where there’s much more structured education and formal certifications as people move through as officers or NCOs, as you know, I mean, that’s a rigorous education machine. But in the state government, you don’t have people trained to be executives. They’re subject matter experts who rise they’re good at running a prison. They’re really good as social workers. They may be good As a workforce development or higher education analyst, right, they may have expertise. Well, they rise up, but they don’t get the training of the executives. And the last thing I would note that came through, which is because of this, and just a little bit of a story, which is, you end up also, quite frankly, with some folks who aren’t really interested in continuous improvement. And just as a quick example, I once went to a department leader, and in a very introductory kind of conversation, I said, How do you know if things are working here in your department? A person has years of experience. And what she said was, well, I know things are going well, as long as I’m not getting complaints from members of the General Assembly, the legislative branch, and you just have to say to yourself, well, that’s like, the ultimate lagging indicator of anything, but also the idea, everything is good, unless I’m getting complaints. Right. And that, I think, is also a mindset that for many folks, you know, that builds up through yours, which is, Hey, as long as no one’s complaining, we must be doing okay. So that’s what we do. Let’s do what we did. Did tomorrow. So that’s a very different kind of starting point.

Patrick Adams  

So wow, I can’t even imagine that that would, that would be very difficult to overcome, especially across such a large organization

Drew Erdmann  

should stress that’s not that I chose one example, at one end of the spectrum, you know, and there’s at the other end of the spectrum, you have people who had private sector experience who absolutely energize and of course, there, there are people, you’re really committed talented public servants who are looking for the way forward, and they’re like, this is awesome. I mean, they’re committed to their jobs, they believe it, they’re mission oriented. And so then when you give them that opportunity, it’s like, you know, rocket fuel they take off,

Patrick Adams  

right? Absolutely. So there’s, and I know, there’s listeners that are both in the private world, as well as in the public world that are listening in right now. How do we bridge the gap between the private sector techniques and the government? How do we, what can we learn, you know, that that can be applied for those that are listening in?

Drew Erdmann  

Yeah, I think that there are a lot of core lessons here. And I do come back to you know, starting with the proposition, whatever your team is, you know, starting with, you got to meet them where they are. I mean, I just really believe that is just a foundational principle. I think that’s true. Whatever culture, private sector, public sector, wherever you are in the world, you’ve got to kind of say, Where’s my team at? And let’s, let’s be realistic about that, let’s be empathetic about that. And let’s go on a journey together. Right. So you know, that’s number one. And I think that also, number two is, I would never underestimate the power of people who want to be empowered, right, the power of people who maybe have not had those opportunities, and now when there’s those opportunities, they can really step forward. I think that’s, you know, that cuts across organizations. The other, you know, another couple of lessons that I take away from it. One of the big unlocks for us in the state government was actually to get a great homegrown leader. Okay, not a leader who’s, you know, expert, black belt, from, you know, private sector, we went through different approaches. But what emerged was this, absolutely, you know, inspiring, you know, homegrown leader, her name is Cindy Dixon, and she runs the operational excellence community now in the state of Missouri. She had the culture, the credibility, the commitment, right. And I think that the big unlock is getting someone who could serve as the translator, and who would be credible to bridge the gap. And I think that that’s something that is, that is arguably, a universal lesson. And I can imagine some exceptions in certain situations. But this comes back to being attuned to the culture, if you’re looking for that long term acceptance, it’s great to find that homegrown leader who can bridge the gap and bring people along.

Patrick Adams  

Oh, sure. Do you got to tell us more about this operational excellence community of practitioners that you have mentioned a few times here? You know, you had 16 departments, and each one of those departments had very different missions. I mean, you had the conservation of corrections, you had economic development to public health, I mean, so many different areas that you were, you know, overseeing? And, obviously, you’re your team, but how did this community come about? And what does it look like today?

Drew Erdmann  

Yeah, great questions, Patrick. And this, this was by design, because for exactly the reasons you highlighted the work of the state government departments, and this is, you know, analogous sometimes business units as well, right, can be incredibly diverse, and quite frankly, very siloed. Right. And one of the things that we deliberately wanted to overcome come from the start is, you know, I’ve been using the word community. And this comes back to the idea that we want a resilient network or community that can withstand change, and that will support each other. So what we did from the start was a couple things. One is those requests to every department, every department had to have an operational excellence leader that would serve as their liaison. Okay, now, quite frankly, some of those were part time. Some of those were full time, some of those were voluntary. Right. Some of those were eager volunteers. So we had a mix. But that was like a starting point. And then what was deliberate was just saying, Look, recognize that the vast majority of these people have other jobs, so to speak, it’s at the start of the journey, their leaders may not fully support a full FTE involved in this effort. So what we started was, okay, let’s just work on some things together. Let’s get to know each other. Let’s take a few basic things. Let’s learn together. And so it may sound really mechanical in a way, but it was the kind of stuff of okay, what’s our website? What’s our logo? What’s our core training? Oh, how do we divide up the labor among us? And the only requirement was for the starting point for the members of his community was they do one cross department thing, we had a list of different activities. And that got people working together to begin putting together the basics, in addition to doing the basic training, in addition to getting the vast majority guy green belts, etc. So it started to build the community that way, kind of organically. By working together, there’s also quite a lot of turnover. As you know, the right people were getting identified for the right roles. We had an operating rhythm that brought the community together every month. We didn’t have meetings for the sake of meetings, but we were working on things together. So they felt you know, co creation, they were building something together. I do want to come back to you too. Once we got to the point where Cindy Dixon was leading it, that is just absolutely fantastic, as well as a credible long term public servant that everyone knew and respected. That also made a big difference in terms of building up and getting the momentum starting at first. Sure, sure.

Patrick Adams  

And really what you came into were, which I’m sure most people would resonate with is the term silo, right? There were silos between departments. And so I love that you, you, you kind of I hate to use the word force. I don’t know what the right word here is. But you, you encourage them through giving them like, Okay, just one thing you have to work across departments, you must work together on just one one item. One thing, yeah, one thing so it’s not it’s very simple, right? Seems like a simple task. I imagine that you had some challenges with any, any challenges that you could share with us, I’ll just enter the department, you know, projects and things? Well,

Drew Erdmann  

Well, at the start of some of these basic things, people were willing to, you know, raise their hands. And of course, there’d be the people who oftentimes it would be, hey, I’ve got the rest of my job, my boss back home doesn’t fully understand or expect the level of commitment to be as much as this, you know, things, things like that came about Sure. But I turn it around and say, I think that they’re, you know, we also use these as opportunities to celebrate successes, to learn from each other to kind of get energized about building, you know, opportunities together. And when the time came under stress, for example, under COVID, this also provided a network where people helped each other out, right. So there are certain activities where they wouldn’t have necessarily had the relationships before across departments. And also people had been used to working across departments. And so we had, under the stress of, you know, some of the COVID situations, we actually had department staff from some departments helping out other departments, like in call centers, and other things. So, it’s a broader cross department collaboration. But I would also note that, you know, very, very tactically, and can talk about some of the other activities of the community. But through building up these skills and capabilities, when the challenges hit, for example, in the COVID environment, we had to set up a call center and in literally a few days to handle all the incoming information requests related to COVID. Oh, I’m sure and at the center of putting that together was many of the people from the operational excellence community, like they were able to mobilize put together, get the right data, begin analyzing all of that kind of stuff. And if it weren’t for the investments beforehand and building up this community, and building up the skills, you know, I don’t think we could have practically done things like that very, very, very rapidly, and also kind of in a cross department way supporting, you know, the individual lead departments.

Patrick Adams  

Oh, that’s amazing. Amazing to hear that. And, you know, a lot of us don’t here, we know that there’s been a lot of things that you know, the operate operational excellence lean that our community has done, you know, through COVID It’s good to Hear those, those little tidbits and things that are happening that, you know that you wouldn’t have known otherwise? So thanks for sharing that. What are some of the other successes that the operational excellence community was able to achieve? Under your leadership?

Drew Erdmann  

Well, again, I wouldn’t put it under my leadership. I think it’s, you know, this community. That’s what’s grown. And I think the most important thing, Patrick, is that it becomes to that point is it’s not my leadership. What I mean is it continues on Yeah, this is why I’d say I left the state government, you know, basically a year ago. And what’s fantastic is that the community under Cindy Dixon’s leadership and other leaders, sure, it is continuing on and so there’s a series of things that they do, and I’m going to speak about the community aspect, not necessarily individual projects, but happy to note some of those. But the community leads a summit of operational excellence practitioners, it’s going to be its fourth this year, they did their third last year, these these bring together about 2000 people virtually, across the country, mostly Missouri, but also across the country. Awesome. They’re open to anyone who wants and also the recordings are available on their website as well. So like soap in, you know, absolutely fantastic. They run something called the Show Me challenge, which is an annual challenge for grassroots creativity, within our departments in the state government to solve problems, they pitch their ideas kind of like Shark Tank, they get through, it’s a competition. And if they win, they get meaningful amounts of cash prizes, you know, these team members, so and then that’s also celebrated, right, you know, the, you know, recognition celebration, they put out their white belt training that’s available for all state employees. It’s awesome, very, very rapidly, this has happened in the last few months, 13% of the state workforce is done, you know, it’s a big organization. But for departments, basically, four out of the 16 departments, 100% of their people have gone through white belt training, wow, there’s also such things connected to a partnership where we were building a tableau community in terms of data visualization, etc. So that, you know, standard dashboards, across departments and things like that. We went from around 22,000 23,000 views of our dashboards in the state of Missouri, this is internal, last August, a three fold increase in the use of those dashboards by January 20. To 7374 75,000 views, right. So these are some of the successes of the continued momentum, that’s at the community level, I want to stress that. And of course, then it’s down at the individual level. And I should know that you know, to inspire others, and it could be the private sector or public sector can go to the show me excellence website, that’s the name for the community. Okay, show me excellent stop mode.gov In their case studies, you know, one page case studies of successes for every single department that really bring some of the the tactical, practical, more grassroots, continuous improvement projects to life, with the illustration of what they did, and what their impact was. It’s really exciting to see.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, and it’s, it’s all free on the website.

Drew Erdmann  

It’s all free. Yeah, it’s all free and avail. It’s a government but you know, it is open to everybody again, show me excellence.mo.gov. And as I said, the videos of the past trainings, which, in past summits, they’re available there playbooks and things like that for people to use and learn from. And so it’s always been part of a broader community as well, explicitly so with other state governments, but also wanting to bring in private sector expertise, as well to have that dialogue, get stronger through it.

Patrick Adams  

Nice. And we’ll make sure that we throw that website on the show notes, as well. Drew, do you have any lessons from your experience that may be relevant to other leaders who are trying to embed continuous improvement into their organization’s culture? And this could be in the private sector, the public sector, nonprofit, I mean, anywhere? Any thoughts on that? Yeah, absolutely.

Drew Erdmann  

And you know, some of that we’ve, we’ve touched upon looking for that great leader who’s going to be leading this community who has credibility. And as I said, our secret unlock was someone from within, there may be exceptions, a dynamic leader from the outside who can cross the cultural divide, but I do come back to you know, obviously, who’s going to be the person waking up and going to sleep every night really committed to building this community. And that mindset of building a community for the long haul. It’s not just about one project. It’s about building, you know, a network. The other thing that I would stress and this is for any, you know, any organization, any team, there is an element here of wash, rinse, repeat, right? You can’t be one and done. It needs to be washed, rinsed, and repeated. And then That’s to build up those habits, that’s the build up those muscles. It’s also again to bring people along, right, you know, quite frankly, sometimes just seeing it once, it doesn’t fully get embedded with someone. And just as a quick example, there is this one public servant who I worked with who had been part of a leadership academy class, I knew him very, very well. And after a few years, he was very candid with me. And he said, Drew, the first time you presented it, we did training related to performance measures and use of data for teams, because I didn’t really get it. The second year, I started to get it. And I could see how it could be applied to other teams, but not to the management of my team, because it was the third year of going through the process, and in this case, is tied to the budget cycle and budget, because it was the third time, then I you know, then the light bulbs went off. And so that’s what I also come back to, you know, you just need to be patient, you need to take people where they are, this is, you know, a very smart, very talented, well, meaning this was someone who was leaning in, it just did take, you know, a series of wraps, right. And so I do think that that’s also one of the very patient kinds of perspectives that you need in any any change program. And the flip side of it is, you know, quite frankly, you know, can’t be naive, you know, some folks won’t necessarily be supportive, some folks will learn, some folks won’t. And I always came back to the very practical perspective of, we can’t move at the pace of the slowest moving boat in this convoy. Very true, we’re gonna we’re gonna keep moving, we have a pace, we can calibrate to some extent, but in some cases, you just can’t move at the slowest boat in your convoy. And that’s just a very practical decision as well, I think that’s true across any one of, you know, private sector, public sector. And if I could just say one last thing, what I come back to is ultimately all of this and I know, Patrick, this is the core that that you have, besides, you know, it’s ultimately about mindsets about how people approach what they do every day, what’s the art of the possible, how to energize them, how to give them those opportunities, where they have a say, in controlling, creating how they work and find solutions. And that I think also translates across the public sector, private sector, never lose sight of you know, ultimately, this is about understanding and helping people shift their mindsets.

Patrick Adams  

Mm hmm. Such good advice, Drew, this has been great. I feel like we can just keep talking forever on this. And I love the connection too. Because everything that you’re talking about makes sense across again, any private public, nonprofit, I mean, it doesn’t matter. So if anyone is listening in and they’re not seeing that, just listen to this a second time or a third time, right Drew, they’ll get it one of those times. Because it does connect and I so much appreciate everything that you said today. Drew, if there’s someone who wants to reach out to you are connect with you with maybe some further questions, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Drew Erdmann  

Or the best way? Number one, people can follow me on Twitter, do a little bit of work there. And that’s true Erdman. So it’s just true urban, and then also people can reach out to me through LinkedIn. So which word and they should be able to track me down?

Patrick Adams  

Okay. And then can you just say that website one more time that you mentioned that for the state of Missouri for the community that we can access?

Drew Erdmann  

Absolutely, and really encourage people to go there it is, show me excellence, just spelled out, no dots, no dashes, period, Mo for Missouri. And then period. Gov. So show me excellence.mo.gov That will get you to the State’s website.

Patrick Adams  

Perfect. And like I said, we will put your contacts, your social media contacts, as well as the website into the show notes. So if anyone does want to go there, they can click on the link and go directly to the website, Drew again, it’s been amazing to see you again. It’s been a while since you and I have connected. So it was great to catch up and just love hearing about your journey with the state of Missouri and excited to see what’s next on your journey. And I hope to connect again in the near future to talk about some other great learnings that you’ve had at other places.

Drew Erdmann  

But thanks so much, Patrick, for the opportunity to really talk about the great work of some really fantastic public servants that often aren’t recognized. You know, they’re working behind the scenes to do great things for citizens. And it’s not just in Missouri. There’s a lot of great programs across the country. So it’s fantastic just to give a little bit of a window into public servants trying to make things better. But as he highlighted, these are transferable across any sector. People are people, organizations, organizations, processes or processes.

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely. All right. Thank you drew. Thanks so much for tuning in. into this episode of the lien solutions podcast. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe. This way you’ll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined. Please give us a review. Thank you so much

Transcribed by https://otter.ai