Guiding the Iowa Department of Corrections through a critical transition

Challenge 

Following passage of a major state government alignment bill, the Iowa Department of Corrections (DOC) was navigating the integration of eight Community-Based Corrections (CBC) districts into the department. Aligning with the CBC system, which provides supervision and rehabilitation for offenders in a community setting, expanded the DOC’s scope by ­­­bringing together institutional operations with probation, parole, and re-entry services.  

The integration, which supported the broader mission of strengthening rehabilitation and reducing recidivism across the state, also increased demands on leadership and staff. This exacerbated persistent cultural and operational challenges while straining the DOC’s organizational structure. The integration also surfaced operational risks, including fragmented accountability, inconsistent training compliance, and limited enterprise visibility into workforce capacity and performance. 

The Iowa DOC teamed with Guidehouse to address these challenges head-on, tasking us with developing a comprehensive readiness assessment and actionable recommendations for sustainable, system-wide organizational change. 

Approach 

Our team partnered with DOC leadership and the Alliance for Community and Justice Innovation (ACJI), an organization that works with public agencies to implement criminal legal system reform. We then delivered an integrated, multi-phase plan consisting of the following core components. 

Organizational change management support 

We first provided dedicated organizational change management services to support integration of the CBC districts and their processes, technology, and culture. This involved identifying stakeholders, conducting change-readiness and training-readiness assessments, and offering communications support. The assessments were informed by stakeholder interviews, department-wide surveys, and onsite visits, leading to development of a comprehensive change strategy. We also created an engagement plan that included short- and long-term communications to build consistent language across the DOC.  

Statewide culture assessment 

We engaged more than 250 staff members through interviews and focus groups as well as 186 others through an anonymous culture insights survey. This stakeholder engagement spanned the central office, all eight CBC districts, and all nine institutions within the DOC system. 

The assessment examined five core culture attributes—trust, courage, flexibility, innovation, and professional development—and applied root-cause analysis to identify gaps. Findings highlighted issues such as inconsistent leadership visibility, limited feedback loops, uneven access to training, and capacity constraints driven by understaffing and overtime demands.  

Targeted, in-person engagement was piloted within Iowa’s Fifth Judicial District, allowing our team and the ACJI to test deeper coaching, leadership engagement, and culture interventions while informing system-wide recommendations. 

Culture transformation roadmap and training 

Building on the assessment findings, we collaborated with the ACJI to develop a phased, multi-year culture transformation action plan aligned to a culture-maturity model. The roadmap outlined concrete near- and long-term actions to cultivate engagement, support DOC talent, and align policies, performance management, and communications with desired culture outcomes. 

Key deliverables included the culture transformation action plan, a culture sustainability toolkit, and a comprehensive culture training plan featuring six culture workshops aligned to the five culture attributes and delivered through a “train the trainer” model.  

Tailored to the DOC’s operating realities, the roadmap acknowledged the challenges of shift work, overtime demands, and geographic dispersion. Actions were prioritized based on feasibility, ownership, and expected impact, with each action containing clear milestones to track the DOC’s progression from an emerging culture to a dynamic culture over a three-year period. 

Leadership coaching and sustainment mechanisms 

To translate strategy into day-to-day practice, our collaborative teams provided one-on-one leadership coaching for district directors, wardens, and central office leaders. We also established sustainment mechanisms such as a change champion network, joint leadership work groups, and metrics to track progress and reinforce accountability. Sustainment tools include role-based playbooks, coaching guides, and feedback mechanisms designed to embed culture expectations into supervision, performance discussions, and daily decision-making. 

Central office organizational assessment and redesign 

As part of our detailed assessment of the DOC central office organizational structure, we reviewed more than 45 background documents, facilitated dozens of stakeholder meetings, and benchmarked the department against five peer state corrections agencies. Assessment findings identified functional gaps, capacity constraints, and risk areas related to span of control, data and analytics, grants and contracts management, change management, wellness, and training oversight. 

The future-state organizational structure we recommended would streamline functions from 10 areas into four core divisions while keeping central office staffing at approximately 2-3% of the total DOC employee headcount—­well below national benchmarks.  

The redesign also called for improved spans of control, clarified accountability, and actions for addressing longstanding functional gaps while preserving a lean central office footprint. As part of these recommendations, the Iowa DOC received funding for the new recommended positions, including a chief operating officer and additional positions for the department's research division. 

Impact 

Through this engagement, the Iowa DOC was able to adopt a clear, evidence-based set of concrete actions to strengthen culture, leadership effectiveness, and organizational readiness during this critical transformation process. 

Our work enabled the department to: 

• Successfully integrate 1,100 CBC staff members into the DOC system 
• Establish a shared, system-wide understanding of cultural strengths, challenges, and priorities 
• Equip leaders at all levels with practical tools, coaching, and training to support consistent implementation and accountability 
• Improve communication, trust, and feedback loops 
• Define a future-state central office structure that strengthens oversight, reduces risk, and aligns resources to the DOC’s expanded mission 
• Build internal capability to sustain culture and organizational change through toolkits, training curricula, performance metrics, and governance structures 

Implementation of these measures is already yielding results, with the DOC reporting 14% fewer vacancies for nursing and officer roles and a 43% reduction in officer overtime from 2025 to 2026.  

The Iowa DOC is now better-positioned to support its workforce, execute organizational change with confidence, mitigate risks, and sustain improvements that advance safety, effectiveness, and service.