About
The Center for Public Management (CPM) partners with public sector organizations in Oklahoma to improve services through customized training, program support, and operational solutions. Backed by the University of Oklahoma, the Center delivers affordable, high‑quality learning, leadership development, workforce strategies, and media services to strengthen organizational performance and community impact.
Quick Stats
The Challenge
CPM faced a challenge familiar to many Learning and Development teams: How do you develop busy managers when they don’t have hours to spend in training?
Their prior leadership programs often required four to five hours in a single session—a tough ask for managers already juggling full workloads and day-to-day demands.
CPM needed a practical way to identify where managers could improve and then help them build those skills—without adding another major time commitment to their schedules.
Why They Chose Joyntly
The Joyntly platform offered CPM a simple way to both assess and develop its managers. Managers could receive feedback about their strengths and growth opportunities, then receive personalized action items to practice on the job to improve their growth areas.
“The University of Oklahoma’s Center for Public Management was initially drawn to Joyntly’s platform because of the manageable time commitment required for participation,” said Ben Heffington, Learning & Development Administrator at CPM.
Flexibility was important, too. The CPM team liked that they could focus development on the leadership skills most relevant to the organization, while easily tailoring each manager’s development to his or her unique learning needs.
CPM also valued the partnership with the Joyntly team.
It was clear this was not only a practical approach, but also a flexible solution that aligned well with the realities of our workplace.
The Solution
Managers completed a behavioral assessment to better understand their own strengths and development opportunities for targeted leadership skills.
Their results then shaped what came next: personalized action items delivered to their inbox each week. They practiced actions on-the-job, strengthening the leadership skills most relevant to their day-to-day needs, such as coaching and developing others, managing conflict, delivering valuable feedback, and building team culture.
Instead of asking managers to spend hours consuming content, Joyntly’s platform prompted them to learn by doing, and in the moments that mattered most – with their teams.
Weekly nudges and reminders kept development top of mind without requiring managers to step away from their work. Over time, managers could build on their practice, reflect on their progress and continue strengthening the behaviors most relevant to them.
The Experience
For CPM, one of the biggest advantages was how easily the Joyntly experience fit into managers’ existing work.
The platform’s reminders and integration into normal workflows made it easy for participants to stay engaged without disrupting their daily responsibilities.
Managers also appreciated that they built successive skills over time. They didn’t simply receive assessment results and have to figure out what to do next on their own. Joyntly’s platform guided them through specific actions to practice for each skill and helped them track their progress along the way.
The opportunity for reflection was another benefit. Managers were prompted to reflect on what they were learning, set goals, and take ownership of their development.
The Results
Across 89 managers, CPM saw strong, sustained engagement over six months. On average, 87% of managers actively engaged with the Joyntly platform each month.
And managers weren’t just logging in. Each month, learners selected an average of 2.7 skill-based actions and practiced those actions an average of 5.3 times—putting new leadership behaviors into practice repeatedly on the job.
Joyntly’s notes feature also gave managers a place to reflect on those experiences, capture what they were learning, and track their progress as they developed new leadership behaviors.
At the organizational level, Joyntly’s dashboards made it easy for CPM to track participation and see how managers were engaging.
One of the most significant outcomes we observed was the ability to track engagement and participation in a meaningful way. The program also sparked valuable conversations across teams and different levels of leadership, creating greater alignment and shared learning opportunities.
Overall, the Joyntly platform helped CPM:
Looking Ahead
After six months of sustained engagement with Joyntly’s platform, CPM’s team is building leadership development into the flow of work. Managers are practicing skills—from coaching employees to navigating conflict and building stronger teams—that help them lead more effectively every day.
Looking ahead, CPM can build on that momentum by continuing to grow stronger managers and teams and, ultimately, support better service to the communities they serve.
