11 minutes
Where the work changes hands Almost nothing a division produces is finished by one unit. This lesson locates the seams where work moves, and names the five things that have to travel across each one.
What you’ll be able to do Identify every point where a piece of work you touch changes hands, and name the five things that must travel with it for the next unit to finish the job. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: Which description of what went wrong is most useful to the people who have to fix it? Document a next step for Where the work changes hands: Take one process you touch and count the handoffs from a person's first contact to the final answer. Write the number down, then mark the ones you had not counted before. Steps have owners; seams usually do not Almost nothing a division produces is finished by one unit. A change to a service definition passes through policy, operations, communications, language access, fiscal, contracting, data and county partners before it reaches one person's kitchen table. Each of those units has a lead, a queue and a standard for its own step. The places where the work moves between them usually have none of those things.
Those places are worth a name: seams . A seam is any point where the work, the decision or the responsibility for it changes hands — between two units in the division, between the division and a central service, between the department and a county that administers the program locally, between the division and a provider, grantee or community organization. Seams are where the delay lives, where the same question gets asked a second time, and where an access arrangement somebody carefully set up quietly disappears.
The useful move is not to ask each unit whether it did its part. Most of the time, every unit did. The useful move is to count the seams, and then ask what is supposed to travel across each one. Five things usually have to. It is rare for all five to make it.
The five things that should travel The decision and the reason for it, not only the document it produced. The next unit cannot apply a rule well when it has to work backward to the problem the rule was meant to solve.
What the person has already told us, so nobody asks them for the same information a second or third time.
The access and language arrangements already in place: the format a person reads, the interpreter already booked, the contact method that works, the extra time already agreed.
The clock. Which deadline is running for the person, how much of it is left, and who is holding it while the work is internal.
The name of the person who owns the next step, and the name of whoever owes the person on the other end an update.
Six kinds of seam, and what usually falls through Inside the division To a central service To another state agency To counties With Tribal Nations To providers and community partners
Policy writes it, operations applies it, communications explains it, quality watches how it lands. The most common loss here is the reason. Operations receives a rule without the problem behind it, and applies it literally in the cases nobody anticipated.
Fiscal, contracting, legal, communications, language access and technology support every division at once and see only their slice of any one request. What falls through here is the deadline and the person behind it. A routine position in a queue can be a hard date for someone waiting.
Housing, employment, education and health work reaches the same Minnesotans through different doors, different eligibility language and different records. What falls through here is the person's own account of their situation, which they end up giving again at every door.
Minnesota delivers much of its human services work through counties under state supervision. What falls through here is the practical burden. A change that costs the state a paragraph can cost a county office a new routine, retraining and a month of confused calls — and the notice often arrives after the effective date.
Coordination with Tribal Nations rests on a government-to-government relationship and on consultation requirements that this module does not interpret and does not substitute for. For anything involving Tribal Nations, Native American communities or tribal human services, the responsible offices are the Department of Human Services offices that handle tribal matters and the Office of Indian Affairs. Bring the question to them early rather than reading a general coordination practice across.
Contracts, grants, payments, reporting and program guidance all cross this seam. What falls through here is cost and timing. The same requirement and the same wait land very differently on a large organization and on a small, community-based one.
Name the seam you already own What you can change You control what leaves your step: what you attach, what you write down, who you name as the next contact, and whether the person on the other end hears anything while they wait.
What to watch for Do not treat a handoff as finished when the work leaves your queue. Sent is not received, and received is not usable.
Your next step Before your next handoff leaves your desk, attach the five things and name the next owner by name, not by unit.
Language for the map Step
A piece of work with an owner, a queue and a standard. Steps are usually well managed and well measured.
Seam
The point where work, a decision or responsibility changes hands. Rarely owned by anyone, which is exactly why problems collect there.
The wait
The time between one unit finishing and the next one starting. Nearly invisible inside the organization, completely visible to the person waiting.
The repeat ask
Any moment a person is asked for information they have already given. A reliable sign that something did not travel across a seam.
Diffused accountability
Every unit did its part correctly and the result still failed the person. The steps were owned; the seam was not.
I did not really mind that it took time. I minded that for six weeks nobody could tell me who had it.
Composite perspective of a person waiting on a decision, illustrative Carry this forward A handoff is any point where the work, the decision or the responsibility for it moves to a different person, unit, agency or partner. Most processes have more of them than anyone has counted.
Five things have to travel across a handoff: the decision and the reason for it, what the person has already told us, the access and language arrangements already in place, the clock that is running for the person, and the name of whoever owns the next step and the next message.
Steps have owners, queues and standards. Seams usually have none of the three, which is why a process can be fully staffed at every step and still fail between them.
Counting the seams is the fastest way to find the delay, the repeat question and the missing notice before anyone is stopped by them.
A scenario about a service change that reached the people affected after it took effect, and a knowledge check on what does and does not cross a seam.
Take one process you touch and count the handoffs from a person's first contact to the final answer. Write the number down, then mark the ones you had not counted before.
Browse and download only. Course notes are not typed or saved on this page.
Reset this lesson
Course overview Next lesson Carry this into practice Most public-service work fails between two units rather than inside one. Four lessons on the seams where work changes hands, ending with a handoff map you fill in for one real process you touch.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
