Building A Winning Culture In Government: A Blueprint for Delivering Success in the Public Sector (Dysfunctional Team, Local Government, Culture Change, Workplace Culture, Organization Development)

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Building a Winning Culture in Government: A Blueprint for Delivering Success in the Public Sector

ISBN: (p) 978-1-63353-764-4

BISAC POL030000 POLITICAL SCIENCE / American Government / National

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

An Increasingly Pressurized Environment

Chapter 2

The Paradigm: Leadership Is a Choice,

Not Just a Position

It Starts With Culture

Culture That Stays on Track

A Culture That Is Derailed With Bad Leadership

The Challenge of Human Capital

Being Deliberate in Building Culture

The People Behind the Activities

How to Effectively Change Behaviors

Five Key Practices to Success

Chapter 3

The Need for Leaders at Every Level

A Brief History of Leadership and Management

Everyone Leads

Chapter 4

The Operating System That Builds Effective Leaders at Every Level

The 7 Habits in Our Operating System

Given a Choice, Would People Choose to Follow You?

Habit 1—Be Proactive: Take Initiative and Responsibility

for Results

Habit 2—Begin With the End in Mind: Gain a Clear Sense

of Mission

Habit 3—Put First Things First: Focus on Getting the Right

Things Done

Habit 4—Think Win-Win: Provide Mutual Benefit by

Respectfully Seeking to Benefit Others as Well as Yourself

Habit 5—Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood:

Empathize in Order to Understand People and Their Perspectives

Habit 6—Synergize: Leverage the Gifts and Resources of

Other People

Habit 7—Sharpen the Saw: Keep Getting Better and More Capable; Never Stand Still

Putting It All Together: Installing the 7 Habits as Your Personal Operating System

The 7 Habits Operating System: Instructions for Downloading

Chapter 5

Practice 1: Lead With Purpose

Find the Voice of the Organization

Designing an Engaging Mission

Get Aligned to the Mission

Leading With Purpose: Instructions for Downloading

Chapter 6

Practice 2: Execute With Excellence

The 4 Disciplines of Execution

Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important

Discipline 2: Act on the Lead Measures

Determining Lead Measures

Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

Keeping It Going

Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability

The 4 Disciplines and Team Engagement

The 4 Disciplines Takes Flight With the U.S. Navy

Chapter 7

Practice 3: Unleash Productivity

Unleashing the Power of People

Twenty-First-Century Productivity Barriers

Productivity Problem 1

Productivity Problem 2

Productivity Problem 3

Tapping Untold Energies

Unleashing Productivity: Instructions for Downloading

Chapter 8

Practice 4: Inspire Trust

Trust—A Performance Multiplier

How to Build It: The 5 Waves of Trust

Trust Starts With Who You Are

Trust Is Strengthened by How You Act

Building Trust at Frito-Lay

Building Trust: Instructions for Downloading

Chapter 9

Practice 5: Create Intense Loyalty

Satisfaction—The Old Paradigm

Intense Loyalty—The New Paradigm

An Intense Loyalty App

Powerful Lead Measures: Fascinated People

A Loss of Productivity: Passionless People

Employee Loyalty Leads to Customer Loyalty

Moving the Middle

The Intensity Zone

Creating Intense Loyalty: Instructions for Downloading

Conclusion: The Job for You

to Do Now Starts Today

About the Authors

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction

Peter Drucker famously said, Culture eats strategy for breakfast. In doing so, he identified a phenomenon that leaders have struggled with throughout history: It is one thing to have a great strategy, but it’s quite another to accomplish it. Never has this statement been more true—or more challenging—than for today’s government organizations.

Whether operating at the federal, state, or local level, government organizations face increased media scrutiny, reduced funding, and the many challenges of moving large, multi-layered, and highly regulated organizations. It’s no surprise that many government organizations report that their employees are less engaged than ever and that leaders feel helpless to change the situation.

In many cases, employees and leaders are caught in a vicious cycle. Performance declines, scrutiny increases, and employee paralysis ensues. Repeat.

How do you break this cycle?

You change the mindset from leaders are a select few in the organization to everyone can and should be a leader. This simple, yet significant shift is key to creating an effective government organization in the twenty-first century. If every member of the organization is leading from where they are, it also allows government organizations to leverage the power of five highly effective practices:

Find the voice of the organization and connect and align accordingly (a.k.a. lead with purpose).

Execute your strategy withexcellence.

Unleash and engage people to do infinitely more than they imagined theycould.

Be the most trusted organizationpossible.

Create fervent loyalty with allstakeholders.

For years, FranklinCovey has helped government organizations employ these practices, develop leaders at every level, create results, and ignite their ultimate mission essential—a winning culture. We have worked with thousands of teams and hundreds of organizations at every level of government. Now we want to help you drive mission success by creating a winning culture of your own.

In this book we discuss the challenge and opportunity associated with building a powerful, winning culture within government and frame the paradigm of leadership at all levels. We review in some depth the five practices you need to create this culture.

Leaders are a significant leverage point for any team or organization. What the leaders say and how they behave represent an organization’s single largest opportunity for affecting change. Perhaps you are a leader with responsibility for a team, agency, or division, or perhaps you don’t have any formal direct reports. Either way, you can be a force for change, for creating engagement, and—ultimately—for getting the most important things done.

The great cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Our goal with this book is not to help you change the world. It is to help you create lasting change within your own circles of influence with the knowledge that your influence can grow over time to become truly significant. Our goal with this book is to help you change your world. We invite you to begin the journey.

Chapter 1

An Increasingly Pressurized Environment

The challenge of operating in a constantly changing system

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All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get.

–Arthur W. Jones

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As keynote speaker, Patrick was biding his time until his turn at the podium and watching the current presenter. The organization’s executive director was about ten minutes into her remarks, and the audience was engaged. Not a passive she’s the boss so we have to listen type of engagement; they were genuinely enthralled by her presentation.

Her message aligned around a single theme: the organization needed to better meet the evolving needs of its customers. Although the organization had a stellar track record and an untarnished reputation, the leaders in the room needed to deliver higher-quality services on time, every time, and at the lowest cost possible. Theirs was a competitive environment, and if they didn’t raise their performance, someone else would subvert their efforts.

In our work with clients, we’ve heard many similar presentations in many other conference rooms. The leader was dynamic, the argument was sound, and the strategy was clear. However, this wasn’t a multinational corporation or a mid-size enterprise trying to reach the next level. The leader who mesmerized her audience was in charge of a government agency.

Her insights were spot-on. She understood that they were living in a world of diminishing resources, increasing scrutiny, and uncompromising demands. She had figured out that the organization was operating in an increasingly pressurized environment, and she was passionately conveying that message so that all in attendance would see and ultimately respond to the emerging environment by thinking and acting more effectively.

The executive director explained that if they did not continue to improve, they would fall prey to a growing number of threats both within the larger government structure (internal) and outside of the government (external). From an internal perspective, other government organizations were competing with them for funding, technology, facilities, and personnel. Although these internal competitors had existed to varying degrees for years, the acceleration level was tremendous. In fact, these competitors were not competing simply for an extra employee or some additional funding; they were trying to take over her organization’s very mission. The other organizations were trying to consume them.

Simultaneously, the external environment was riddled with pitfalls. Contractors were absorbing roles that had once been considered inherently government and off-limits to outsourcing. A wide range of stakeholders—including legislators, businesses, and everyday citizens—were actively questioning and intervening in daily operations. Fueled by a 24/7 news cycle, a staggering number of cable channels, and the ubiquitous nature of the Internet, these stakeholders insisted every mistake signaled an epidemic and required sweeping changes, and that shared mission signified redundancy that needed to be wiped out. Add to these realities increased security as a result of terrorism, a less than desirable job market, and a recovering economy. The organization had never faced an environment like this before. The executive director wanted each of her 300 managers to understand that in today’s world, poor customer service in one part of the organization or a scandal in another could threaten the job of everyone in the room.

Of course, the concepts of competition, increased scrutiny, and growing pressure are not new to the public sector. Consider these examples:

A charity focused on finding a cure for cancer is not the only organization with the mission of tackling this serious health condition. In the United States, the American Cancer Society deals with different cancer types; however, separate organizations tackle specific forms of this disease such as pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, breast cancer, and children’s cancer, just to name a few. The market has been segmented, and organizations are tailoring their messages and approaches. Whether acknowledged or not, these organizations—all with a just and important mission—are pitted against each other. Potential donor pockets are only so deep. These groups must be creative, compelling, and relentless to get people’s attention and garner a slice of themarket.

A museum realizes that it is not the only game in town. Other museums are trying to attract the attention of the same patrons and visitors. Perhaps each organization has historically filled its own niche; maybe they even worked together as part of the community. However, as the environment becomes pressurized, each creeps into the other’s space. When a major traveling exhibit comes to town, museums that serve children, science buffs, historians, and art lovers all compete for the sameexhibition.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) has dealt with the pressure of FedEx and United Parcel Service (UPS) for years. A growing reliance on email and the cost of operations and employee benefits for USPS as a large federal agency exacerbate the situation. As a result, the USPS posted a loss of $25.9 billion in a three-year period (2011–2013), while experiencing a 5.9 percent decrease in mail volume.¹ These numbers suggest an erosion of USPS business, but there is more to the story. Beginning FY (Fiscal Year) 2014, USPS marketing initiatives are driving e-commerce growth and efforts to modernize operations are underway to improve deliveryeffectiveness.

You might be thinking, But those governments and nonprofits operate more like businesses. My organization is different. We don’t have FedEx breathing down our necks. We fill a vital role that is inherently government and something no one else can do. There is no competition; we are the only game in town.

We invite you to think again.

Consider the city of Sandy Springs, Georgia. Located fifteen miles north of Atlanta, Sandy Springs is a community of approximately 100,000 residents. Like similar cities, Sandy Springs provides a wide range of services to its constituents. Unlike most cities, the vast majority of Sandy Springs’ work is outsourced to private contractors. The entire town has only seven government employees, and the whole Sandy Springs operation is housed in a generic, one-story industrial park…the people you meet here work for private companies through a variety of contracts.²

If you apply for a business license in Sandy Springs, want to make a structural change to your home, or need assistance with trash collection, you will work with contractors in Boston, San Francisco, and across the pond in Coventry, England. Think this is a one-off experiment that won’t extend to your organization? Consider that the city has no long-term debt and no fleet of vehicles to maintain. While cities like Detroit and Chicago grapple with significant challenges, the first city manager of Sandy Springs, Oliver Porter, met with government leaders in Japan, Iceland, Britain, and the country of Georgia to share the Sandy Springs story. Meanwhile, the current city manager, John McDonough, is producing annual reports with the look and feel of private industry, showing an eight-year winning record and articulating a vision for the future.

Whether you work for local,