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15th Annual EIT Retreat
by Jeff Follman

The EIT held their 15th annual retreat from October 6th through the 8th at Fort Warden near Port Townsend. The EIT invited a few additional people for this year's discussions to add some fresh ideas including Cindy Gregovich, Tami Sadusky, Linda Braziel, Karen Long (who was unable to attend due to vacation) and myself.

There were various activities throughout the event which allowed the new folks and the EIT members to get to know each other better and to have a little fun. In one of these exercises, we learned that Frank is anxious to clean out his basement and Maureen really wants to learn how to make rock candy. Charles likes to goof off, but sometimes he forgets about it.

We spent half a day discussing the knowledge worker concept and reviewed feedback from the various focus groups. The comments and questions that came from those groups were extremely useful in allowing us to determine the required next steps. It became clear to everyone that there is still some confusion between the staff/leader qualities that have been established over several years and the new knowledge worker concept that is really an additional layer over those established qualities. Over the next several months, a “tool kit” will be created to identify needed skills and then offer training to become a successful knowledge worker.

The rest of the retreat was focused on Financial Management's strategies and how our current initiatives linked or “mapped” to those strategies. There are an amazing number of initiatives currently underway at the Financial Management level as well as at the department level. A standard format will be developed which will allow individual departments to build their own tailored versions.

Overall, it was a very effective and enjoyable retreat.