Barry Maxwell Online Seminar
Organizational Change: EmployAbility, Inc., Bartlesville OK

Slide 1

Interviewer: Today, I am very fortunate to have with me Barry Maxwell from 
EmployAbility, Inc. in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.  Barry is going to share some of 
the things his organization has been planning and strategizing [for] moving 
individuals into customized employment outcomes.  Barry, welcome and thank you 
for joining me.  I would like you to begin by introducing the audience to your 
organization.

Barry Maxwell: Thank you, Katherine, and thank you for having me here today.  
EmployAbility, Inc. was founded in 1970 by a group of concerned parents who 
wanted some meaningful work and activities for their sons and daughters who had 
completed their public school education.  At that time in Bartlesville, there 
were very few opportunities for people with disabilities beyond their public 
school education. So, they started this agency. Like many other employment 
agencies for people with disabilities, at the time, the agency started out as a 
sheltered workshop or work activity center.  The agency primarily served people 
with developmental disabilities or mental retardation, at the time, as well as 
people with other types of disabilities such as physical or emotional 
disabilities. 

During the 1970s and most of the 1980s, the agency [provided] primarily 
sheltered workshop services.  They had a goal to train and place people in the 
community on jobs. [However] only a few people actually left the sheltered 
workshop to take jobs in the community.  In the late 1980s, a new program 
started in Oklahoma called supported employment, and the agency started 
providing supported employment services at that time.  In the beginning, the 
agency focused primarily on group placements and enclaves.  I was hired by the 
agency in 2000, and we began to focus more on individual placements. I believe 
that individual placements offer the best opportunities for growth, for 
independence, and for integration.  At the time, we decided to focus more on 
individual job placements, and that's what we have been doing at the agency ever 
since. 


Slide 2

Interviewer: Barry, could you tell us how your organization began the 
organizational change process, and how you got involved with the T-TAP project.

Barry Maxwell: We had developed a plan to expand and improve supported 
employment services that would focus more on individual placements. The State of 
Oklahoma sponsored training with Bob Lawhead from Employment Link to talk about 
workshop conversion.  About that time, the Oklahoma Developmental Disabilities 
Council was interested in funding a Workshop Conversion Grant. They began 
recruiting agencies that might be interested.  We started attending these 
meetings with our DD Council. After about a year of our board discussing whether 
or not we were going to pursue a workshop conversion grant, we decided to go 
ahead and submit a grant to do workshop conversion.  Our grant request was 
approved, and we began working on workshop conversion.

Interviewer: You said, “We decided to pursue workshop conversion grant.” Could 
you elaborate about who within your organization came together to make this 
decision?

Barry Maxwell:  It primarily was the Board of Directors, because we couldn’t 
move forward with any type of workshop conversion grant request without approval 
from our Board of Directors.  We really needed to have approval about the 
direction we were going to go in as an agency. So, when I say we were discussing 
it, it was primarily the Board of Directors and myself.  We discussed it on the 
staffing level as well, but the decision-making had to be made by the Board of 
Directors.  When the opportunity came along to apply for the T-TAP project, it 
was a natural progression for our agency.  We had already been involved with the 
workshop conversion grant, and we were focusing on individual job placements.  
However, we hadn't made the progress that we had hoped to make. And, we welcomed 
the opportunity to receive technical assistance from experts who knew how to do 
it.


Slide 3

Interviewer:  Barry, how did your organization find out about T-TAP?  Could you 
describe the process once you got involved and some of the recommendations that 
were made to you?

Barry Maxwell: We found out about T-TAP by looking on the ODEP web site. I 
frequently look there to see what grant or training opportunities are available. 
We saw the opportunity to apply to T-TAP, and we did.  

Some of the recommendations that T-TAP made for us that we are implementing 
were, one of the big ones in fact, is that our job development allocation wasn't 
what it needed to be.  We didn't have enough people doing job development. So, 
that's been one issue that we have addressed trying to get more [staff] doing 
job development.  

Another big issue had to do with our organizational identity.  [The T-TAP] 
recommendation was that we needed to examine our organizational identity, to 
figure out who we wanted to be, what we were going to be, and what services we 
were going to provide.  That's an issue that we're currently addressing through 
some of our planning activities.  

Another recommendation made by T-TAP had to do with board development.  At that 
time, we had very few board members who were connected in the business 
community.  Many of our board members were retired.  T-TAP recommended that we 
needed to recruit board members who were currently connected with the business 
community to help us with job placement and job development. 

Interviewer:  Could you describe the process that you went through with your T-
TAP consultant to identify these recommendations.

Barry Maxwell:  The process that our T-TAP consultants used to make 
recommendations to our agency was that they came in for their initial visit. 
They spent three days with our agency, [and] they met with several different 
groups.  They met with our management team. They met with out supported 
employment team. They met with a group of front line staff. They met with a 
group of consumers. They met with a group of parents, and they met with a group 
of our board members.  [The T-TAP consultants] got a really good feel for our 
agency by doing this, and they found out exactly how our agency works [And they 
found out] where we were in the process of doing community job placements.  So, 
it was from that initial meeting that they developed their initial 
recommendations for our agency. From those initial recommendations that they 
made to our agency, they developed a technical assistance plan just for our 
agency.

Slide 4
	
Interviewer:  Barry, I know that part of the T-TAP program is to pair the 
agencies that are getting technical assistance with a mentor agency that has 
gone through the change process to facilitate customized employment outcomes.  
Could you speak to that process as to how it's been helpful to you? Would other 
organizations want to establish that kind of mentor relationship if they are 
thinking about organizational change?

Barry Maxwell: I think the idea of having a mentor agency assigned to your 
agency is great.  It's nice to be able to talk to another agency that has gone 
through a similar process to find out: What were their challenges? What were 
their issues? How did they deal with those issues? What worked for them? What 
didn't work for them?  It gives you some insight, and hopefully you don't make 
the same mistakes they did or you learn from what they did.  

With our mentor agency, we did get a chance to visit the agency for two days. I 
felt that was a very worthwhile experience to see the agency firsthand and to 
find out how they do it and some of the things that they had dealt with.  It is 
very nice to speak to someone who is going through it or has gone through it. 
You know they understand what your agency is going through, and they can relate 
to what you are going through.  That's a really nice process, but we have also 
had the opportunity to visit other agencies besides our mentor agency. That's 
been a very valuable process for us.  It is really nice to go see other 
agencies. [It allows us] to find out what they’re doing. [We learned] what is 
different that they are doing from what we're doing?  [We identified what we 
could take back] to our agency and put into practice to, hopefully, make more 
individualized placements.

Interviewer:  Could you give me an example of one piece of information that you 
took away from one of these programs that you visited?

Barry Maxwell:  Our mentor agency utilizes self-employment in a big way to help 
people who have some very significant disabilities.  While we have done some 
self-employment, we certainly learned a lot from others on how they helped 
people become employed and operate their own micro enterprises or own their own 
businesses.  We also learned about some grant opportunities that were out there 
that would help us do [the same] sort of thing.

Interviewer:  So, in general, you would recommend [working with a mentor agency] 
that it gives you an opportunity to think of alternative strategies that you 
might not have thought of yourself?

Barry Maxwell:  Absolutely, I think that you can learn something from all of the 
different organizations.  People are doing different things in different places, 
and what works for them may or may not work for you.  It's a good idea to check 
it out and see if there are some things that they're doing that you might be 
able to do. Maybe there are some things that they did that didn't work out that 
you don't want to try.

Slide 5

Interviewer:  Could you talk a little bit about other planning activities that 
EmployAbility, Inc. has implemented to impact organizational change?

Barry Maxwell:  Sure, I would like to talk about our Planning Grant that we 
received from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.  The planning grant, or as some 
foundations call it a capacity building grant, is a grant that you can receive 
to do planning activities that are going to strengthen your organization as a 
whole.  This has been a very worthwhile process for us.  We were approved for a 
planning grant.  [One] of the planning activities that we have done as a result 
of receiving this grant is that we have done strategic planning. We now have a 
strategic plan in place. This really is a blueprint for what we want to be, and 
how we're going to get there. That's been a very worthwhile planning activity.  

Some other activities that we've done include a focus needs assessment with a 
lot of different stakeholders.  We did focus groups with parents, consumers, 
funding agencies, employers, partners and potential partners, and perspective 
consumers and their parents.  The reason we did the focus groups was to find out 
what do our constituents need and want from us in the way of services.  By doing 
this, it has really facilitated our program planning. We've been doing this also 
as part of the grant to determine what services we are going to provide and what 
will be the relative priority of those services.  In the Reynolds grant, they 
insisted that we also visit model agencies or model sites around the 
country.  We have visited three different agencies as a result of this grant.  
Some of the other activities that we have done as part of this grant have been 
board development including strengthening our board, getting a board that's 
better connected with the community. That’s not only in the business community 
but also in the financial community that can help us with fund raising.  Other 
activities that we will be doing will be financial planning and advancement 
planning, which will result in a fund raising and a marketing plan.


Slide 6
	
Interviewer:  Barry, where would an organization look to find grant funding?  
Could you share with the audience how your organization did this and give some 
recommendations?

Barry Maxwell:  Well, there are many sources online where folks can go to 
research grant opportunities.  In our state, there is a web site called Grant 
Makers of Oklahoma that lists all the foundations in Oklahoma that make grants 
that is a great resource. GuideStar.org is also a good resource to research 
grant opportunities. Generally, they list what their priorities are; what they 
want to fund; what they’re interested in funding; and the type of grants that 
they will fund.  Some do only “bricks and mortar”, which are capital grants. 
Others only do program grants, and some do operational grants. The Reynolds 
Foundation does capital grants; but they also do planning grants, or some 
foundations call them capacity building grants.  So you just need to research 
and find the one that fits your organization and what you want to do.  In our 
particular process, we had applied to the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation for a 
planning grant. Then, shortly afterward, we submitted our request they placed a 
hold on their entire grant requests or grant programs.  They were on hold for 
about nine months; but after they released their grant programs, they started 
our review process. We were approved and were very thankful for that.


Slide 7

Interviewer:  What would you say have been your organization’s top three 
barriers to change?

Barry Maxwell: The biggest barrier that we have experienced has been [getting] 
staff buy-in [and] getting everybody on board with the mission [that] we are 
working towards.  The second biggest barrier probably has to do with our funding 
and having adequate funding to do individualized job development.  When you are 
in a transition mode as an agency [and] when you're still trying to man the 
sites that you currently have, there really is a need for additional funds to do 
that [since you are in] the transition process.  

I guess the other biggest barrier would be [increasing] the expertise of our 
staff in individualized job development and the job process.  We are addressing 
those issues, training for staff buy in [and] values, training on how to do the 
individualized job development process, bringing in additional consultants 
through the T-TAP project. [We are] visiting model agencies, seeing how other 
people are doing it, promoting our success stories and really trying to 
celebrate when we do have success stories.  

Also, the [T-TAP] training is [providing] some of the expertise. We've had 
opportunities to bring in people to do training and also to send people places 
for different training.   Funding, well that's a little tougher to crack, 
because, you know, there's just money falling off the trees. You know we are not 
going to get more money from the government, so, we're trying to increase our 
ability to do fund raising. We're writing more grants, and we're developing a 
fund raising program. So we're hoping that the additional fund raising 
will provide the funding that we need to do this.
	
Interviewer:  Could you give a few ideas regarding the fund raising activities 
that you are pursuing?

Barry Maxwell:  Well, first of all, we have hired a Development Director.  That 
position was designed to do fund raising and marketing for our agency.  We were 
able to write a grant to have the position funded for one year. We are hoping 
that after one year, this person will start to bring in more money for the 
agency.  One of the things that we are going to do is pursue more grants through 
foundations and through corporations. The big part of this is developing a major 
gifts program.  This is a fund raising stream that we have not had in the past. 
I think that most fund raising professionals and experts will tell you that 
between 70 to 80% of the money that is given in this country is given by 
individuals. [The money] is not given by corporations or foundations [but] is 
given by individuals. So we are going to start developing a more aggressive 
major gifts program.


Slide 8
	
Interviewer:  Barry, what would you perceive as your greatest success, to date, 
in your organizational change efforts?

Barry Maxwell:  I think what I would conceive to be our greatest success so far, 
is that in 2000, only 7% of the people served were in an individual job 
placements.  After we started focusing more on individual job placement, that 
number grew closer to 50% of the people placed in individual job placement. So 
that's a pretty big increase in four years.

Interviewer:  Could you elaborate as to how you think that happened? Was it the 
planning process or was it placing more focus on individual jobs?  If I were 
sitting out here listening to this, what would you say created that change?

Barry Maxwell:  I think that we did focus more on individual job placement.  The 
critical part of the process is that we talked about it every month. We talked 
about it every couple of weeks in our team meetings. We had folks targeted for 
individual job placements.  We couldn't work on everybody at the same time. So, 
we started with the people who were actively talking about moving into jobs in 
the community.  We started working with those folks who had expressed an 
interest in moving into community jobs.  We started working on it one person at 
a time. Like we've talked about before; you can't place everybody at the same 
time. You continue to focus on [one person at a time].


Slide 9

Interviewer:  In closing, what advice would you give to other agencies that are 
trying to implement organizational change at this level?

Barry Maxwell:  Well, in closing, I would recommend that agencies take the time 
to do the planning activities to spell out how they are going to get to where 
they want to be.  It's great to have a vision and a passion for what you want. 
But without a road map or plan for how to get there, sometimes you get a little 
lost in the process.  I think that happened to us somewhat. We certainly knew 
where we wanted to go and we started going. We had some success. I think once we 
went back, started planning, looking at what we were doing, and doing it in a 
more strategic way that we made more progress.  So I would say, do the planning 
activities that you need to do to make this successful. At the same time, when 
you are doing planning activities, that doesn't mean you have to wait until the 
plan is fully developed to start doing it.  I think that's a mistake too. You're 
never going to have it totally figured out. So you need to start doing it. But 
while you are doing it, start planning on how you are going to be successful.

Interviewer:
You mentioned that people shouldn't get caught up in planning.  Could you 
elaborate some on how your organization did not fall into that trap?

Barry Maxwell:  We started working on the project without doing a lot of the 
planning. Now we have to go back and do some of the planning that we probably 
should have done in the beginning.  What I was getting at is that you can't wait 
until the plan is completely finished to get started, or you may never get 
started.  You might just always be in the development of the plan. 

But, what we've done each year is set a target goal for the number of community 
job placements that we wanted to make for that year.  Our employment team 
continues to review the progress on that goal in our monthly meetings, or 
sometimes twice a month.  One of the other things is through our strategic 
planning process. We are still developing some of our targets and goals. One of 
the goals that we have set is to actually close the sheltered workshop in two 
years.  Now there are going to be working on some goals related to that. These 
include creation of the safety net, what that is going to look like, 
and how those pieces are going play into that.  

When we applied to T-TAP, we had to set a target for the number of people we 
wanted to place in individual jobs that paid minimum wage or better, but who 
were still working in sub-minimum wage employment.  At that time, we had 49 
people participating in sub-minimum wage employment.  We had a target to place 
25 of those people in a two-year period. So far, with a little over a year into 
the project, we have about eight people who have been placed. So, we are a 
little behind schedule on that one, but we are still making progress and still 
hopeful to reach that target.  So, what I am saying is just don't wait for 
all the planning to be done, before you get started or you may never get 
started.