Government
Advice for the Country’s First CPO
In June 2009, President Obama made Jeff Zients the country’s first chief performance officer with a mandate to make the government run smarter and cost less. Considering that the federal government employs two million people, and that most citizens would not put “smarter” and “cost less” in the same sentence with “federal government,” he’s got some work to do.
In “Obama’s efficiency expert” (Fortune, Jia Lynn Yang, December 29, 2009), Zients observed, “What President Obama has done with the chief performance officer title is say, ‘Management matters.’” In recent testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, he said, “The test of a performance management system is whether it is used…the current approach fails this test.”
I think the test of a performance management system is how effective it is. Whether it is used is a test of leadership, which also happens to be when management matters.
I have some advice for CPO Zients: Instruct every department and agency of the federal government to integrate the Baldrige model. Demand annual Baldrige assessments. Implement strategic and action planning processes to address the opportunities for improvement. Track and post every unit’s scores. By the time Obama leaves office…
7Jan2010 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedFederal Government OFIs
Forty percent of federal employees in a recent survey agree or strongly agree that the government has a robust performance management system, compared to 64% of private sector respondents. Somebody needs to point them toward the Baldrige program. We hope that the first federal government organization to win a Baldrige Award, the VA Cooperative Studies Program in 2009, can show its peers how performance management is done.
McKinsey and Government Executive magazine recently surveyed more than 500 federal employees from dozens of agencies about key elements of organizational performance and compared the results to private-sector benchmarks. You can read a summary of the survey here. On the positive side, the survey found that federal employees are more motivated than private-sector employees, better understand the direction their organizations are going, and are more supportive of their organizations’ cultures and values.
As for opportunities for improvement (OFIs):
- 29% agree that they are consulted on issues the affect them (compared to 40% in the private sector)
- 34% agree that they operate in an open and trusting environment (49% in private sector)
- 34% agree that they are encouraged to provide honest feedback to people within the agencies (48% in private sector)
- 29%…
The City as a Baldrige System
A city is a complex system. It would make sense, then, to manage it as a system, to understand how each subsystem—transportation, energy, education, healthcare, public safety, etc.—supports a well-run and effective city system. It would make sense to coordinate these subsystems to optimize the city system. It would make sense to collaborate and innovate to reduce costs at a time when cities must cut costs, and to improve services at a time when citizens demand more of their cities.
“It is time for systemic solutions, enabled by technology, to build smarter cities that can reduce financial and human/social costs while increasing quality of life,” write Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Stanley S. Litow in a Harvard Business School working paper entitled, “Informed and Interconnected: A Manifesto for Smarter Cities” (June 15, 2009). The paper identifies eight challenges that cities face and offers examples of practices and programs that suggest possible solutions.
The authors conclude by noting that “real reform and community transformation will require that a new model be built, and built from the ground up.” I disagree. A model for community transformation already exists: the Baldrige model. It promotes systemic solutions. It…
5Oct2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedThe U.S. Army and Baldrige
The Army Communities of Excellence (ACOE) program is based on the principle that communities support people best by combining excellent services with excellent facilities in a quality environment. As the guidelines for ACOE state: “The Army community is inextricably linked to readiness; our forces train at, deploy from, are sustained by and return to—the community. Soldiers who are convinced that their leaders care about them and their families perform their mission with more confidence.”
ACOE Awards, which have been presented since 1989, are given annually to the three Army installations that score highest using the Army Performance Improvement Criteria (APIC), which are the Baldrige Criteria, as well as to special category winners that have excelled at building a high-quality environment, outstanding facilities, and superior services.
Unlike the Baldrige Award, the ACOE first-place winner receives a check for $1 million, second place gets $500,000, and third place receives $250,000. The prize money can only be used for community projects, which supports the purpose of ACOE.
Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia won first place honors in 2008. In a profile of its accomplishments, the installation stated: “APIC provides us a synchronization mechanism—often referred to as alignment—for…
29Sep2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedTransforming Politics
At The Huffington Post, Steven G. Brant talks about transforming the culture of politics in the United States and he has a place for the Baldrige program in his transformational process proposal.
The goal would be to formally build collaboration back into a legislative system wracked by partisan politics. Brant believes business would play a key role in this effort because it “knows a lot about how to get people from different cultures to work together.”
The driver of the transformation would be “a newly constituted President’s Council on Legislative Effectiveness, which would combine the spirit of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness with the organizational effectiveness principles championed by the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program.”
The Baldrige model has proven to be transformational with core values that certainly support such a Council. “Visionary leadership” and “valuing workforce members and partners” are relevant, as are “management by fact,” “societal responsibility,” and a “focus on results.” In fact, evaluating legislative effectiveness using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence would clarify the gap between current and desired legislative performance. That would give the President’s Council a good list of things to work on.
In 2007, the…
8Sep2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedServing Citizens Better
Government agencies face a difficult problem: Their customers demand services that few agencies have the resources to adequately provide. A recent McKinsey Quarterly article, “When Citizens Are Your Customers,” by Sebastien Katch and Tim Morse, described how one US federal agency struggled to balance demand at its call centers and paper-processing facilities when its employees had to juggle their time to do both. As a result, “during times of peak demand, agents answered less than three-quarters of phone calls to the agency, which also processed less than half of all paper applications within its target response time.”
Their solution? The agency used customer satisfaction data to identify the point in each area when customers went from satisfied to dissatisfied and set performance targets that reflected these breakpoints. The targets helped managers with resource allocation while raising customer satisfaction.
The City of Coral Springs, a 2007 Baldrige Award recipient, takes this a step farther. In its application summary, it states that “employees at all levels are dedicated to building relationships with customers and exceeding their expectations.” To facilitate this, the city implemented a Premier Customer Service Program that includes training, accountability, recognition, reinforcement,…
20Aug2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Only Baldrige City — So Far
In 2007, Coral Springs was the first—and to date, only—city to receive the Baldrige Award. Located on Florida’s east coast near Boca Raton and Ft. Lauderdale, Coral Springs has a population of 132,000, an annual budget of $135 million, and 770 full-time employees, 300 part-time and temporary employees, and more than 800 volunteers.
The City of Coral Springs started its journey to becoming a high-performing “municipal corporation” in 1993. In 1997, it received the Florida Governor’s Sterling Award, which it earned again in 2003. In 2006, Money magazine named it one of the Best Places to Live.
By the time it won the Baldrige Award, the City of Coral Springs could point to impressive results including:
- Receiving the Government Financial Officers Association’s Distinguished Budget award for the past 16 years
- Having its strategic planning process cited as a best practice by several organizations including the American Productivity and Quality Center
- Cutting the crime rate in half over the last ten years, boasting the lowest crime rate in the state for cities with populations between 100,000 and 499,999 and the fourth lowest crime rate in the country
- Sustaining resident satisfaction with city services in the mid- to upper…
