Excellence in Government

Federal agency plans and priorities have always been subject to significant redirection based on Presidential and Congressional election outcomes.  Seldom, however, has this political fact of life been demonstrated as dramatically as it was when Massachusetts voters unexpectedly elected Scott Brown, a virtually unknown Republican state senator, to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of long-time Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

 Costing the Democratic party its 60-vote super majority in the Senate, the Brown victory, coupled with the partisan ideological divide between the two parties, seriously diminished chances for the passage of comprehensive health insurance reform legislation, despite the fact that preliminary versions of a bill had already passed both houses of Congress and entered into the mark-up process preceding a final vote.  With 41 Republican Senators (including Brown) publicly lined up to vote against the bill, what had been the all-but-certain prospect of comprehensive health insurance reform legislation was reduced by one special-election result to a long-shot at best.

 The loss of a Democratic super majority in the Senate also sharply diminished the likelihood that the Obama administration would be able to enact two other major initiatives, education reform and energy reform, which along with health care reform were centerpieces of President Obama’s campaign platform.

 Big electoral surprises may be among the most dramatic of events that create federal policy challenges and opportunities, but they are only one of many different kinds of events that can reshape a federal agency’s planning environment virtually overnight.  Whenever control of the Presidency or both houses of Congress passes from one party to the other, it is not uncommon to hear agency executives saying, “I hope the policy pendulum doesn’t swing too far in the opposite direction based on the ideological consequences of this latest power shift.”

 Hope, however, is no substitute for an effective plan.  Agency executives often ask us, “How can we prioritize and plan when we don’t even know what will happen in the next election cycle?”  Effective planning is not dependent upon accurate political or economic forecasts.  The contingency section of a carefully thought-out strategic plan becomes most valuable precisely when forecasting is most difficult.  In an uncertain or volatile political or economic situation, contingency planning—which is really preparing for the possible but improbable—may even be a requirement for the survival of an agency or some of its operating units.

 The purpose of contingency planning is for agency executives to give full consideration to all reasonably foreseeable internal and external opportunities and challenges that could confront the agency, and to outline and agree on the trigger points and action steps the agency will initiate for each such extraordinarily good or bad set of events, should it occur.

Contingency planning puts agency executives in a much better position to deal with the unexpected by forcing them to explore scenarios other than the most probable ones.  Usually short, general in nature, and not as detailed as the basic strategic plan itself, the contingency section of a strategic plan is extremely important in the event of a crisis—such as an international financial meltdown, or if something happens that makes the agency’s basic plan invalid—such as the unexpected loss of White House or Congressional support.  If things get far better or get far worse than originally anticipated, an approach exists for dealing with the improbable situation that has actually materialized.

It is preferable to prepare contingency plans in an atmosphere of calm and reason rather than to wait for a crisis to occur and then attempt to plan under highly emotional and strained conditions.  Careful attention to the early warning signs of critically important changes in an agency’s operating environment can assist the agency in both creating and executing effective contingency plans.  Serious contingency planning can prompt an agency to develop more thorough tracking systems that monitor changes in its internal capabilities and limitations as well as in its external challenges and opportunities.

Every federal agency should revisit the contingency section of its strategic plan in light of the intensely partisan political divide between the parties, the volatile and shifting mood of the national and local electorates, and the continuing uncertainty of the national and global economies.  A “continuity of operations” plan, while important for obvious reasons, does not by itself constitute an adequate contingency plan.  Agencies should also address other possible albeit improbable upsides and downsides.  Here are some questions we have found useful for that purpose:

1. How can we build reasonable but not unlimited flexibility into our agency’s strategic plan?
2. What contingency actions would our agency take if an extraordinarily good or bad set of events were to occur?
3. How would our agency respond to specific future situations that are far better or far worse than we actually anticipate?
4.  What key indicators will trigger awareness in us of the need to re-examine the adequacy of the strategic direction our agency is currently following?
5. How will our agency monitor these indicators?
6. At what points, if any, will higher-level monitoring be triggered?
7. At what points will contingency actions be triggered?

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We know from experience that strategic planning produces a more realistic and responsive plan when an organization’s key stakeholders are seriously consulted and thoughtfully listened to in the planning process.  Therefore, whenever possible we use stakeholder feedback to help organizations focus and validate their strategic plans. 

Typically we do this by surveying a representative sample of the organization’s major stakeholders, or by interviewing them individually or in small groups, as time and resources permit.  Helping the organization’s strategic planning committee to make good use of the resulting stakeholder feedback in their planning discussions often is fairly straightforward. 

Often—but not always. 

For example, we recently facilitated a strategic planning process for a federally funded, nationally recognized community organization with a long and colorful history and two very strong-willed leaders.  As part of the process, we gathered feedback from a broad cross-section of the organization’s key stakeholders in confidential one-on-one interviews. The overwhelmingly critical feedback in these interviews made it clear to us that constituency trust and regard for the organization had eroded significantly over time.

Clear to us—but far from clear to the organization’s two strong leaders, both of whom jointly dominated the strategic planning committee with which we were working. 

During an initial feedback meeting with the committee, the two leaders and a few other committee members roundly dismissed the unflattering stakeholder feedback, their emotions alternately reflecting disbelief, bewilderment and anger.  Anticipating this type of reaction, we had begun the meeting with what we expected would be helpful guidance on how to make constructive use of others’ perceptions even when they differ sharply from your own. 

For example, we encouraged the planning committee members to try to “understand” any stakeholder criticism they regarded as clearly false by considering whether the source may be uninformed or misinformed about the matter in question or may have an agenda which conflicts with that of their organization, and to avoid becoming anxious or defensive by acknowledging at least the possibility of some element of truth in any other seemingly unwarranted criticism. 

We also encouraged them to determine the actionable elements in any vague-sounding criticism by asking clarifying questions to obtain specifics and improve their understanding of the feedback, and to recognize genuine problems without over-stating them by frankly acknowledging the merits of any criticism they believe to be justified. 

Despite this guidance and much to our dissatisfaction, the initial feedback meeting had been filled with angry defensiveness.  However, two-thirds of the way through the meeting and very much to our satisfaction, one of the more influential committee members repeated our initial guidance almost word-for-word (offering it as her take on how to make the process work). 

Then she strongly urged the committee to reconsider how they were dealing with the negative stakeholder feedback.  Her comments, because they came from a member of the strategic planning committee, triggered a thoughtful committee discussion about how much additional reflection it would take for them to convert the troubling feedback into reasonable and believable issue statements that could serve as a basis for constructive action

The result was a committee consensus to schedule as many follow-up meetings as necessary to frame stakeholder-driven issues.  Several meetings later, nearing completion of this issue-framing, we received an unexpected phone call from the organization’s forceful leader, who said: “I just want to thank you – we need this!” 

That was when we knew we had turned the corner and were headed for home in the “straightforward” stakeholder feedback phase of our strategic planning assignment. 

Lessons Learned:

(1) Provide a strategic planning committee with clear and well thought-out guidance on how to interpret, understand and make use of critical feedback before presenting the committee with critical feedback from their organization’s stakeholders.

(2) Establish an atmosphere in strategic planning committee meetings that allows everyone to feel safe participating openly and actively in discussions, even when strong-willed and dominant organizational leaders are present.

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There is no universally agreed upon definition of this rather lofty sounding term.  In management theory and practice, organizational excellence usually refers to the highest possible rating (or range of ratings) when an organization is evaluated qualitatively using a survey, inventory or scorecard made up of process and outcome criteria someone has decided constitute organizational ”best practices.”   However, there is no established theoretical foundation or reliable empirical support for translating the results of these organizational “quality” assessments into a coherent and defensible strategic planning process or strategic management philosophy.

A more practical and useful way of thinking about organizational excellence, from our organization consulting perspective, is embodied in a concept often referred to as “organizational effectiveness”.   In practice, organizational effectiveness is defined as how well an organization does at achieving the outcomes it intends or is required to produce.   We believe this goal-achievement approach to organizational assessment is  more realistic and more accurate than the criteria-scorecard approach.  The former balances customer and non customer “stakeholder” interests, as does the excellence approach.  Unlike the latter, however, the effectiveness approach does not impose a one-size-fits-all set of process and outcome “benchmarks” on the assessment of organizational “quality” or the evaluation of organizational performance.

Accordingly, our conception of organizational excellence is organizational effectiveness as defined above.  Therefore the posts that we contribute to this “organizational excellence” blog will always come from the pragmatic and developmental perspective of organizational effectiveness.

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A common fallacy among organizational leaders is the mistaken belief that increasingly complicated organizational problems require increasingly complicated decision support systems.  Planning in today’s turbulent environment is certainly the most important task facing top management in any organization.  However, what is necessary to help organizations cope with conditions of increasing uncertainty is a hands-on planning approach that offers a clear conceptual framework and a collaborative process of deliberation for viewing and dealing with all the salient aspects of reality.

 This is not intended to deny the value of technical experts and highly sophisticated management science tools in various aspects of the planning process.  It is, however, intended to try to place the use of these experts and tools in proper perspective.  Even world famous “gurus” and computerized simulations depend upon accurate specification of the overriding goals and constraints within which the organization must operate.  A collaborative process of deliberation is the only way to specify these goals and constraints accurately and completely.   

Furthermore, the genuine commitment of all employees must be developed, if even the most senior manager’s plan is to have any hope of being executed.  Experts and computers cannot be substituted for collaborative problem solving and integrative decision-making.  It is the underlying thinking, questioning, discussing, understanding and deciding processes, the human elements of planning, that are essential to any successful attempt to exert conscious control over the long-term course of an organization.

Click here for more information on effective strategic planning.