Case Study

Integrating Care to Restore Resident & Employee Well-being

CONTEXT: The Cost of Disconnection

Plymouth Housing is a cornerstone of Seattle’s safety net, serving 1,100 residents across 19 buildings with a $55M operating budget. However, the organization was facing a critical "silo" problem common in supportive housing. Residents navigated two conflicting systems under one roof: Property Management (enforcement) and Social Services (support).

This disconnection created friction. The "parts" of the organization were functioning, but the "relationships between the parts" were fractured. The human cost of this structural gap was severe: departments struggled to collaborate, frontline employees were experiencing high rates of violence and turnover, and residents struggled to find a cohesive path toward stability.

INTERVENTION: Systems Integration

Serving as Interim Chief of Staff during a pivotal leadership transition, I guided the organization away from these silos by implementing a Behavioral Health Integration model.

The goal was to harmonize strategy, people, and systems. We moved from a transactional model where a resident is "managed," to a transformational one, where a resident is supported by a unified team.

The Hard Systems: We co-designed a new 3-year strategic plan and implemented new organizational KPIs to ensure we weren't just setting targets, but actually hitting them. This included a new operating model that physically and operationally integrated behavioral health with housing support.

The Soft Systems: Change is cultivation. To support this structural shift, we:

  • Built enterprise leadership capabilities through a 12-week development program and coached executives to unite diverse voices around this shared purpose.

  • Improved cross-functional collaboration by implementing quarterly townhall gatherings designed as rituals of connection. We explicitly shared stories of outcomes achieved through collaboration to induce that specific behavior. By reinforcing our collective direction and creating space to connect, we humanized colleagues who were previously seen only as "the other departments."

RESULT: Metrics of Humanity

By shifting focus to the interaction between departments, we achieved outcomes that rippled across the organization:

  • Employee Safety: 40% reduction in violence experienced by frontline employees.

  • Resident Well-being: Expanded the organization's human impact, achieving a 20% increase in residents with an integrated care plan.

  • Operational Health: The new model allowed us to support 10% organizational growth while reducing front line turnover by 30%.

THE TAKEAWAY

Organizational transformation is not just about moving boxes on a chart; it is about "relational governance". When we stopped treating business units as separate entities and started treating them as a unified support system, we proved that organizational clarity directly translates to better human outcomes for all stakeholders.