Not everyone was pleased. "You had the optimistic types, the young aggressive employees, who were jumping for joy," explains Kellen. "Then you had the sceptical crowd, saying: 'Uh-huh, where have we heard this before?'" The organizational and architecture design was done by the true believers; the sceptics critiqued and honed the plans. "The goal," Kellen says, "was to give everyone a voice."
It was a tortuous process, largely because Kellen eschewed cookie-cutter solutions in favour of a more agile organizational design built around idiosyncrasies. "It drove HR nuts," he says. "But we worked through it." Four years in, IT has shifted. "Now we're very focused on the future," he says.
Behen of Washtenaw County took an even more drastic approach. When he became IT director, he fired everyone on his staff of 45. Half left for good; the rest applied for 34 jobs with new descriptions. The idea was to get the most qualified, enthusiastic people on board. Behen attracted outside talent by offering salaries comparable to private-sector ones and selling the value of public service. By 2004, "it really started clicking. We started expanding services to local units of government," says Behen. "Because we had a top-notch IT department, I could go out as CIO and start working on big, innovative projects."
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