Blog
We enjoy sharing our experiences through blogs posts, as we continuously seek new ways to serve our clients.
Maybe your organization’s big audacious goal involves changing technology and processes. Or perhaps you set some ambitious personal goals and are in the throes of marathon training or dieting. Whenever change is involved, some good, bad, and downright ugly emotions are bound to turn up.…
Perhaps one of the things I love most about the consulting field is the ever-expanding, creative ways that project managers and teams look to increase communication and workflow efficiency. One of my favorite tools is Kanban. Developed in the late 1940s by Taiichi Ohno of…
The Financial Information System for California, known as FI$Cal, is setting records for state IT project expenditures. But from the perspective of departments transitioning to this new technology, it’s not an IT project in the traditional sense. For these departments, success depends upon their ability…
Highlands Consulting donated five Christmas trees to the Sacramento Children’s Home this week. To make things fun, we divided into teams to decorate the trees and had an internal competition before donating them. It turns out we’re a pretty competitive group, at least when it…
During this holiday season, legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden’s words come to mind: “Seek opportunities to show you care. The smallest gestures often make the biggest difference.” Since our founding in 2002, Highlands Consulting has embraced this philosophy and made it an essential part…
All projects require learning of some kind – to work with a new team, to understand new processes, and/or to use new systems. As managers lead teams through the learning process, they can draw upon learning theories such as andragogy, constructivism, behaviorism, and cognitivism. But…
Is it conceivable to automate a 100% paper-based process in less than three months, even for a complex State environmental program? The answer is yes! This week, one of our clients at the State Water Resources Control Board (Water Board) delivered a presentation that recounted…
A few years ago, I set my sights on the California International Marathon. At that point, the longest race I’d ever done was a 5K, so getting ready in just six months seemed daunting. But I quickly realized that preparing for and running a marathon…
A network, by definition, is a group or system of interconnected people or things. In a Change Management setting, we often times create a people-based network to introduce business change to the organization. Change Networks provide many benefits, one of which is to increase adoption…
For nearly 30 years, I’ve enjoyed working in the government technology industry, focused on serving the State of California. Along the way, I’ve met and worked with hundreds of amazing consultants with business and technical expertise. In recent years, I’ve become sensitive to what our…