LIFE, A FULL CIRCLE? FROM WINNING THE ISPI CASE STUDY COMPETITION TO JUDGING IT! REFLECTION OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

As I started to mull about this special feature trying to decide on the structure and the tone, I decided to step away from offering a bulleted list of dos and don’ts. Instead, I decided to get personal about the impact, specifically, the effect that a series of interactions that one particular team member has had on my way of being, thinking, and doing—totally unexpected, seemingly banal bordering on irrelevance to some, and organic. I also chose to write about the various roles I have had with the International Society of Performance Improvement (ISPI) as it pertains to the case study competition and the realizations and insights I have gleaned from them.

AS A STUDENT

Our six-member doctoral student team won the ISPI Case Study Competition at the ISPI conference in Toronto. Years later, the pride of being the winning team and its lead is still present, and the multiple lessons learned are still fresh as if it were yesterday. Strangely enough, over the years, my experience with the case study competition continues to unfurl and provide me with a renewed and nuanced understanding of the field, about team compositions and contributions, determining skill sets and competency, professionalism, and commitment. The competition was pivotal, and it brought within my zone of awareness an area to which I had given little importance as a professional, but a team member, through actions, demonstrated its significance and relevance, and ever since, it has been indelibly etched in my mind. I now hold it in high regard and have tried to embody it ever since.

It was her continued and consistent presence and support, night after night, as we worked through the case till the wee hours of the morning. She would make us several rounds of coffee to keep us going, and I have forgotten the countless meals I ate at her apartment. She recognized how full my semester was and silently offered all the support she could. Her background as a professional in human resource management shone through; it was proven repeatedly and consistently through her actions. Up until then, my professional background was on the harder side of business and management: analytics, systems, setting up business units, and strategy. My experiences had shaped me to hold competency, leadership, results, and professionalism in high regard, but through this case study, she demonstrated how to hold the individual human in regard.

We came from different educational, professional, and cultural backgrounds; we were in different phases in our pursuit of a doctoral degree, yet her approach, the universality of humanity, stayed with me. It was unintentional, it was organic, it was unbiased, it was supportive, it was human! We were simply trying to put our best foot forward to see the case study through amid a full and busy semester with conflicting professional and academic priorities and commitments. These consistent, repeated moments of care and support through this journey created a fundamental shift within me, instilling an experiential understanding of what it means to truly build, execute, and drive an authentic human-centric team with leadership and organization beyond the meaningless sound bite and organizational hypocrisy. This specific experience has stayed with me over the years, and I wanted to share this moment of deep personal learning because it has deeply influenced how I now think, write, reflect, observe, lead, mentor, and teach. It is my belief that these unplanned learnings of import and experiences go well beyond losing or winning the competition. A deep heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Randa Fathy for the deep insights I have cultivated over the years from our interactions.

There have been so many lessons through the competition, areas/aspects and skills to which I had not given a thought as a professional, but their importance came hurtling through when working in a student team. The learnings were plenty, some soft and others harsh, some covert and others overt about various aspects of what it truly means to put a team together and the core components that are fundamental for a diverse team to contribute and drive results.

Given a chance, every student team should embrace the opportunity to participate in the ISPI Case Study Competition regardless of whether they are in an undergraduate or graduate program of study albeit fully recognizing that the pressures of the semester will not be in favor of the student. If possible, strive for diversity within your team composition with different cultural, educational, and professional backgrounds; it can be challenging and also rewarding. And, regardless of a win or loss, there are many invaluable lessons to be gleaned from the experience that may shape one as a practitioner, thinker, researcher, or simply as a human navigating life for the years to come.

AS A VOLUNTEER

The ISPI Case Study Competition was revived in 2024, and our first rollout was at the 2025 ISPI Conference in Florida at which Dr. Deri Draper, who led the revival, invited and worked with a client with ongoing organizational challenges to offer to student teams. The revival of the case study shed light on all the numerous behind-the-scenes tasks; follow-ups; and things that need to be completed, edited, and approvals sought!

Today, I have a new-found appreciation for Matt Donovan’s efforts, time, and patience. He is the chief learning and innovation officer at GP Strategies, and he developed and drove the case study competition during my time as a doctoral student and was the main and only point of contact for the student teams. The numerous email exchanges; his prompt responses to those SOS text messages; and the countless hours in which he participated in client interviews, inviting a distinguished panel of judges to evaluate our presentations and reports followed by a Q&A; and for his tireless support and coordination in making this an experiential study of heft and depth in our field is beyond commendable.

As this article took shape, it has unwittingly turned into a reflection of my past and the recent present, and it has brought to the surface the mostly unseen and tireless efforts of the many volunteers that make a nonprofit organization exist and thrive; to push the proverbial needle forward; and in the case of ISPI, within and for the field of performance improvement.

AS A JUDGE

It was an honor to be invited to serve as a judge for the 2025 ISPI Case Study Competition along with the distinguished Dr. Judy Hale. There were three participating teams: an undergraduate team from Turkey and two from the University of West Florida, one from the master’s program and the second from the doctoral program.

I was introduced to Alan Peshkin’s work as a doctoral student. It played a pivotal role in my capacity as a judge of the ISPI case study competition, and I found that it reminded me to be aware of my subjectivity and relinquish any predisposition I may have toward the definition of the problem, scope of the problem, design of interventions, proposed recommendations, and ramifications as I evaluated student deliverables.

The study and practice of performance improvement (PI) is a complex undertaking and, personally, a continued exercise in humility. The field is often confused and equated with other bodies of knowledge that offer specialization as a singular lens of focus to address organizational concerns and often have defined boundaries to their knowledge domains, whereas the field of PI cuts across several fields. As a judge, all of these were of personal importance, and I found myself leaning toward the following areas of consideration:

1. Client

   1. Addressing the client’s key concerns in a comprehensive manner.

   2. Presenting data, evidence, and research to substantiate, support, and report findings, best practices, and recommendations.

   3. Respecting and adhering to the terms of any signed nondisclosure agreements with the client organization.

   4. Pragmatism and ease of understanding and execution by the client.

2. Quality of deliverables

   1. Teams that exercised caution and refrained from overgeneralizations, prejudice/biases, flawed or inaccurate interpretation, and extrapolations from data or evidence.

   2. Transparency for the proposed recommendations and interventions, for example, addressing hidden costs.

   3. Alignment with ISPI standards.

3. Field of PI

   1. Does the team reflect an accurate understanding of the field of PI?

   2. Does it instill faith and trust to execute the approach of systems thinking, data-driven decision making, and integrated intervention design to address performance concerns that resides with the client?

   3. The comprehensive nature of the proposed recommendations and intervention design.

Stepping out of my role as a judge but as a life-long learner of PI, this experience has underscored, yet again, that any moment with Dr. Hale in the same room is an opportunity for monumental learning regardless of the role one is playing in the room.

On behalf of ISPI and as chair of the academic committee our vested interests are to offer enriching experiences, professional development, and witness the profound impact the field of PI has by resolving and/or attenuating performance discrepancies within the client organization.