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Reframing the Conversation on Management

Part 3 of 4

Metrics not Anecdotes

Another thing some of you may have heard me talk about a lot is, that to continue to improve the management in the State Department -- we have to rely on metrics and not anecdotes. We're always going to be on the losing end if we rely on anecdotes. For every anecdote of good service, I can give you an anecdote of bad service. And anecdotes don't do a thing for us on the Hill.

What we need to do is to have some concrete metrics to show that we're managing the taxpayer dollars efficiently, and that we're providing quality service to our employees. And that's the way you control the conversation on management: you have real facts, rather than anecdotes.

Think of Toyota, for example. Part of Toyota's success is their reliance on metrics. If you look on their factory floors, they've got charts that identify the productivity of each employee on the factory floor. And so, every employee knows how they are racking and stacking compared to every other employee. That public scrutiny forces them to continually improve their productivity. They don't want to be the one who’s always the worst, who's not producing as many widgets, or whatever, as the person next to them. And also, then, Toyota uses those metrics in terms of benefits and rewards for their employees.

And think of Weight Watchers. One of the reasons Weight Watchers is so successful, is because you disclose what your weight is and what your goals are. I want to lose 20 pounds. Everyone in your Weight Watchers group watches to make sure that you lose those 20 pounds. There's a lot of peer pressure to lose -- those 20 pounds. Metrics work.

What we need to think about in the State Department is the use of metrics to be able to compare the effectiveness of embassies and consulates. Right now, we say that we can't possibly compare the work in Tokyo with the work in Buenos Aires. Well, I think you can. And we need to start doing that. We need to have some commonly understood metrics so we can evaluate whether a post is working well or not.

If Buenos Aires is processing with peak efficiency, and they've got the metrics to prove it, if I were in a nearby post, and didn't have metrics as good as Buenos Aires, I'd be asking myself why aren't we performing as well as Buenos Aires? Or, is there some way that we can get Buenos Aires to do our processing for us?

And those are the sorts of things we need to be looking for -- areas of excellence. We need to have report cards for people so we can have some targets to use to focus on continuous improvement.

I started this exercise in the A Bureau. I figured that if I was going to be pushing this with our management officers around the world, I needed to try it at home first. And so, I started talking about performance metrics with the folks in the A Bureau, and there was lots of polite nodding of heads. And I realized very quickly that some didn't understand what I was talking about.

They were nodding because they thought that's what I wanted, but they didn't know -- whoa, what is he talking about? And so, I started meeting with each of the office directors in the A Bureau individually, because I wanted to sit down and give them individualized attention to explain what I meant by metrics. And what the things we should be measuring are? How do we know whether we're doing a good job?

And I told them that I wanted them to come into the meeting with a chart. I wanted them to identify the services they provide, who the customers of those services were, how they knew whether they were doing a good job in those services, what the barriers to doing a good job in those services were, and what their action plan was for overcoming those barriers.

Well, I had a variety of reactions from the office directors, as I probably mentioned. Some came in with charts and graphs, and lots of metrics, and they were happy to brag about the sorts of metrics that they had, and they could demonstrate through facts how they had been steadily improving over the years.

The other extreme was, one of our office directors came in with a huff and said, "I don't know why I'm doing this. I don't provide any services." And I said, "Well, that's interesting, because we're a service bureau. And if you're not providing services, I think I've found a way we can cut some costs."

Well, that got the director’s attention. "Ohhhhh, well, I do provide services, but I really don't have any customers." And I said, "Well, I think we're back at square one. If you're providing services for which there are no customers, we probably don't need those services. So we should cut your office." And then the director started taking it seriously. Because I was serious. If we don't need your services, we'll get rid of them. We'll use the resources some place else in the bureau."

Customer-Driven versus Management Imposed

We have wonderful people who work very hard and who tell the field with great fanfare, Look at this wonderful new service we're providing to you." And the field collectively replies, "We don't need it." Or "We can't use that service, because the way you're providing it doesn't meet our needs."

Everybody says, "That's a Washington-driven system, and it doesn't help the posts much." We need to get away from being management-imposed, in terms of services, to being customer-driven.

One of the things I've done over the past couple of years is reach out to the private sector -- those industries that are involved in shared services, doing similar things to what our management officers do overseas. And also reaching out to some of our municipalities in the United States. Because running an embassy or running a consulate overseas is a lot like running a city. You've got your police force, you've got your school system, you've got your housing authority, you've got your transportation department. You know, it's very much like a city.

So I talked to the International City Manager's Association, and asked them, "What is the best-managed city in the United States?" Do any of you know? Phoenix, Arizona is the best-managed city in the United States. And it's gotten the award three years running. And so, I took a group of us from the A Bureau to Phoenix, to find out what makes them so good. What is it about Phoenix that sets them head and shoulders above every other municipality in the United States?

The thing that struck me about Phoenix was that they have a leadership that fosters innovation. They give people a lot of authority, but they are also aggressively focused on what the citizens want. They do a lot of focus groups with the community, finding out not only what services the city values, but also how the community wants those services delivered.

We need to focus on what our customers want. What do our employees want, and how do they want those services delivered, rather than us imposing those services on folks. Some posts have done this -- created this focus by establishing what they call, "customer advocate" in their posts.

And what these people, generally someone in the GSO section, do is keep an eye on, and keep an ear open, to what the customers are talking about. What do they like, what don't they like? They also help the management section in your post stay focused on what's really important, rather than drifting off into things that really add very little value to their customers.

Your ICASS council should be a customer focus group. They should be used as a council that will tell you what's going well at post. And are there things that you're doing that you shouldn't be doing? Are there things that you aren't doing that you should be doing? And help you set priorities at your post.

Manager of Doers versus Doers

In the management cone, for example, you might have someone who's a very successful GSO. And that person becomes the management counselor in a post, and still wants to be GSO -- wants to run the work order process, wants to get involved in all the things that are happening in GSO. Well, somebody else has that job. You don't need two GSOs. The job has changed, and your job now is to be management counselor.

You have the same thing with DCMs. You've got some DCMs, for example, that might have been a political counselor at his or her previous post, and really liked it, and was really good at it. And this DCM still wants to be the political counselor. Well, then, who's being DCM? And so, what we need to focus on, and I'm talking to this group as managers in your organizations, is to be managers of doers, and not the doers.

And as long as we're trying to be the mechanics, as long as the management counselors are trying to be the GSO, as long as the DCMs are trying to be the econ counselor, or the management counselor -- then something's not getting done. Our job, I think, is motivation, training, making sure that the people in our organizations have the tools and the skills they need to be successful in their jobs.

We need to manage their performance, and set expectations for our staffs. Don't surprise them at the last minute. Give them clear-cut goals of where you're heading, and what you're expecting of them, and what you're expecting of their organizations. And then step back and let them do their jobs. One of the things that I've always found very frustrating is having a boss who wants to tell me how to do everything.

I quit the Foreign Service and for a while I worked with the Young President's Organization. The organization had been a member-run organization where members ran the organization and could hire or fire people at will. So, every day you'd come into the office and wonder whether you had a pink slip on your desk.

One of the things I did when I took over as the executive director was that I said I have to be the one who decides on hiring and firing. You tell me what the goals are, and it's my job to accomplish those goals. If I don't accomplish those goals, you fire me. You don't fire the people who work for me.

And that's the sort of thing that I think we as managers need to think about. We shouldn't be doing the jobs of the people we supervise. We should be giving them the encouragement and the vision so that they know what the targets are.

Next: Long Term versus Short Term

Reframing the Conversation on Management

Metrics not Anecdotes

Customer-Driven versus Management Imposed

Manager of Doers versus Doers

Complete Article

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