A Leadership Guide for Today's Disabilities Organizations: Overcoming Challenges and Making Change Happen

Effective, efficient, and sustainable ID/DD organizations: are they possible in today's world of dwindling resources and mounting demands for more and better services? Yes—with the practical tools and strategies in this lifeline for ID/DD leaders.

Developed by two of the most trusted authorities in the disability field, this innovative business leadership guide explains the nuts and bolts of successful change in clear and accessible terms, so any ID/DD organization can adapt and thrive in a high-pressure landscape. Managers and administrators will start with a quick self-assessment to determine how well they're meeting the most urgent challenges organizations face today. Then, with 8 highly effective approaches to change, they'll discover how to

1. develop "21st century thinking styles," so they can communicate better, solve problems faster, and align their services and supports
2. measure organizational outcomes and outputs, and use the information for reporting, monitoring, evaluation, and continuous quality improvement
3. create high-performance teams that are organized, informed, empowered, and accountable
4. employ a system of supports to address individual needs and improve outcomes for people with disabilities
5. use evidence-based practices to assist in making good clinical, managerial, and policy decisions
6. implement a performance-based evaluation and management system to strengthen effectiveness and efficiency
7. create value and enhance sustainability through real innovation, whether it's developing new approaches or reconfiguring current approaches
8. overcome resistance to change so they can successfully rewrite the future of their organization

For each approach to change, readers will get specific, down-to-earth guidance: action steps to take right now, short summaries of key takeaway points, strategies and examples from successful organizations around the world, and photocopiable Organization Self-Assessment worksheets to help them quickly prioritize their next steps.

An indispensable guide to surviving the shifting landscape of service delivery, this how-to book will help propel ID/DD organizations into the 21st century—so they can deliver high-quality, individualized services to people with disabilities.

Valerie J. Bradley, M.A., has been President of the Human Services Research Institute since its inception in 1976. She has a master's degree from the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. Ms. Bradley has directed numerous state and federal policy evaluations that have contributed to the expansion, enhancement, and responsiveness of services and supports for people with disabilities and their families. She helped to design skills standards for human services workers, conducted a study to translate the experience with decentralization in Scandinavia to an American context, is the project director of a national evaluation of self-determination, and co-directs a national project on performance measurement. She is the co-editor ofCreating Individual Supports for People with Developmental Disabilities: A Mandate for Change at Many Levels (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 1994). Ms. Bradley is the recent past chair of the President's Committee on Mental Retardation.

From 1977 to 1986, Dr. Gardner served as Director of Community Programs and then as Vice President for Community Program Development at The Kennedy Institute at The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Gardner received his doctoral degree in a dual program of American Studies and American Social History from Indiana University. He was awarded a Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Post-doctoral Fellowship in Medical Ethics at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Gardner later completed the Masters in Administrative Sciences program at The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Gardner holds faculty appointments at The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland. He has written and edited numerous publications in the field of human services. Dr. Gardner is a nationally recognized leader in the application of quality improvement methods to the field of human services. Through presentations at national conferences, in his teaching and writing, and during organizational consultations, Dr. Gardner argues that the measurement of quality must move from compliance with organizational processes to facilitating person-centered outcomes for people.

Ruth Luckasson, J.D., is Regent's Professor and Professor of Special Education and Coordinator of Mental Retardation and Severe Disabilities in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Professor Luckasson is Vice President of the American Association on Mental Retardation (AAMR). She served on former President Clinton's Committee on Mental Retardation, serves on the Litigation and Human Rights Committee of The Arc of the United States, and is the chair of the American Association on Mental Retardation's Committee on Terminology and Classification. Professor Luckasson formerly served as Chair of the American Bar Association Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law. She has published widely in the areas of legal rights of people with disabilities, people with mental retardation as defendants and victims in the criminal justice system, the definition of mental retardation, and children in special education.

Robert L. Schalock, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus at Hastings College in Nebraska and Adjunct Research Professor at the University of Kansas (Beach Center on Disabilities), University of Salamanca in Spain, Ghent University in Belgium, and Chongqing University in China. His national and international work has focused on the conceptualization, measurement, and application of the concept of quality of life and the supports paradigm. He has worked with organizations, systems, and national governments in the development and evaluation of community-based programs for people with intellectual and closely related developmental disabilities. He has published widely in the areas of program development and evaluation, quality of life, systems of supports, and evidence-based practices.

Martha E. Snell, Ph.D., is a professor in t