Date/Time: Thursday, May 3 | 2:25 - 3:40PM

Speakers: Micah Phillips, Bellevue Parks & Recreation & Julie Cross, Bellevue Parks & Recreation

Category: Leadership/Personnel

Description: Do you or your agency struggle with the concept or practice of innovation? In this session, participants will learn ways to engage staff in new and different processes, to connect and collaborate with each other, to take risks and see themselves as innovators. City of Bellevue staff were challenged by their City Manager to practice innovation at all levels of the organization. What’s Next Bellevue! was created by a group of employees from different departments who were inspired by the challenge. The program offered a platform for people to share and be recognized for their new or “different ways of doing things” ideas and a way for the organization to select an idea to work on together. Ultimately people realized they were partners in innovation. Come learn about this easy to create What’s Next…! program and suggestions on how you can tailor it to your organization.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn to engage staff in new and different processes by removing barriers
  
  
• Learn to connect and collaborate with staff by promoting transparency
  
  
• Learn to save money and time by taking risks and trying something new

Speaker: Micah Phillips coordinates the City of Bellevue's Performance Program. Before holding this position, he was the Management Fellow in Bellevue's City Manager's Office, where he did a wide variety of management and organizational culture projects, including serving as the lead for the What's Next Bellevue innovation team. He received a Master's of Public Administration from the University of Washington Evans School, worked in a food bank in Capitol Hill in Seattle, and was a teacher for seven years including two years in Seoul, South Korea, and two years in Peace Corps in Sichuan Province, China. He's from Columbia, Missouri, lives with his wife in Seattle, and is a big fan of all things Mizzou Tiger football-especially alumni that play for the Seattle Seahawks.

Julie Cross coordinates the City of Bellevue's parks department Customer Service, HPO and Process Improvement trainings. She has been in this role for 11 years and loves the ever-changing dynamic of the parks department. She served on the pilot program What's Next Bellevue innovation team, lead of the Efficiencies team within Parks and overall department liaison for trying new or different ways of doing things.