MHCC’s Culture of Excellence geared to all employees

Mt. Hood’s People’s Strategies Council held another introductory session on Wednesday afternoon to tell MHCC employees about the college’s ongoing Culture of Excellence training.

The Council has set 12 such meetings this school year, trying to reach everyone who works at the college.

“Our goal is to reach 100 percent of the employees at Mt. Hood Community College because this is an initiative that is for every employee. It’s not (just for) any one group,” said Paul Wild, co-chairman of the Council.

“The idea is that we’re all in this together, we’re all trying to do the best job we can (and) how can we create the conditions that allow all of us to be as effective as we can working here at Mt. Hood Community College so that we can serve our students, serve the community, and serve our partners as effectively as possible?” said Wild.

After wrapping up overview sessions for all college employees, Wild plans to create workshops designed to make the four standards of the Culture of Excellence a workplace reality.

The four standards are:

“Together, we are with you from start to finish. Together, we practice the platinum rule – treat others as they wish to be treated. Together, we are always looking to do things better. Together, we hold ourselves accountable.”

Wild said the underlying idea is to have everyone look at their place of work and find out what the standards mean to them and how performance can be improved in order to get closer to reaching those goals.

“Can you figure out what it is that allows you to meet that standard, what gets in the way – stops you from being able to meet that standard? And, therefore, what can we do to help you be able to achieve the best that you can in those situations?” he said.

Wild gave an example for the first standard. “As an organization, we’re very well organized vertically – we’ve got work units and we all know what we’re doing and we’re all very good at that, but the thing is, students, employees, and community members deal with us horizontally,” he said. “They move (horizontally) through the organization, and so where we sometimes have trouble meeting the standards is in that transition.”

Eventually, the goal is to cultivate improvements and good habits, then spread them across the campus.

“There are always places within the organization that do a great job already. So, how do we figure out what a best practice is, and then how do we make that best practice common throughout the whole organization so we all just kind of raise our game?” Wild said.

It’s up to employees to come up with their own metrics of how they measure success, based on the progress of working towards the standards, he said.

“We are working really hard to make sure that we’re as effective as possible in how we do our jobs so we can meet the mission of the college,” said Wild.

He hopes to reach 100 percent of the roughly 1,200 people employed at MHCC with the principles of the Culture of Excellence. “We want to make it that folks want to come (to training), but in order for there to be change, one essentially needs to be committed to it,” he said.

Wild said the true purpose of the four standards is to continuously strive to reach them – and not to hound employees. “It’s not punitive; this is all aspirational. We got standards, we’ll never meet the standard, but we’re always trying to do better.”