1. Spring12 Vol.15 No.1
In This Issue
Chair Elect’s
Comments.................. 2
Employee Surveys:
Getting Results Through
Effective Process.......... 5
Taking the “Long View”
Is Critical to Success in
Government................ 7
The Lost Legacy of Quality
in Government............. 8
Directory of
Government Division
Leadership Team........10
The Wal-Mart Lesson:
Why Transformation in
Government Takes Time
By John Baranzelli, PE
“Why is change so difficult in government
organizations?”
I have heard this question a thousand times
during my career in the public sector and it
never ceases to amaze me. My response is
always to say, “Have you ever taken a civics
course?” By the very nature of their DNA,
government organizations are designed to
resist change. Consider the design of the U.S.
federal government—three separate but equal
branches of government. Although ingeniously
constructed to limit power, the structure of
government makes leadership difficult. It natu-
rally impedes the pace of change. There are
probably few places on earth that are less
promising for quality transformation efforts
than government organizations.
Cheer up though—there is hope. It is pos-
sible to transform your agency. It just takes
time. Consider for just a moment the story of
Sam Walton.
A few weeks ago, I visited Bentonville,
AR. Bentonville is a small city nestled in the
Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas.
It’s also home to the largest company in
the world—Wal-Mart Stores. Located in the
downtown square of Bentonville is the orig-
inal Walton’s 5&10 store that Sam Walton
founded more than 50 years ago. Today
it serves as a visitor center that shares the
Wal-Mart story with visitors from around
the world. And what a story it is. In 1951,
northwest Arkansas was far from the center
of wealth in the United States. Rural and
nearly completely isolated from the rest of
the United States, Bentonville was without
a doubt one of the most unlikely places on
earth to launch a transformation effort. Yet
Sam Walton did it.
From these humble beginnings, Walton
created a business that would one day
become the largest in the world. Along the
way he transformed the retail industry for-
ever. His five and dime thrived because
Walton understood the needs of his custom-
ers. His mission was to find ways to reduce
the prices of goods at his store to improve
the standard of life for his customers. With
this elegant philosophy, Walton eventually
built the framework for what would one
day become the world’s largest company.
Walton’s journey from that small five and
dime to America’s wealthiest man is a fas-
cinating example of the American dream
and a powerful lesson in change manage-
ment. Quality professionals would be well
served to emulate some of the simple prin-
ciples Walton used to build Wal-Mart in
their attempts to lead transformation efforts
in their own government agencies. Let’s
spend a few moments reviewing some of
those principles.
cont. on p. 3
2. Government Division 2 Spring 2012
Quality and Commitment
By Richard E. Mallory
This issue is all about quality
and commitment, and the fact that
the quality journey is not so much
about short-term initiatives, or the
latest tools, but rather about a long-
term commitment. Our lead article
uses the lessons learned in the suc-
cess of Wal-Mart to develop four
rules for implementing a quality initiative:
• Start small and keep it simple.
• Embrace mistakes and learn from failure.
• Look for opportunities in underserved areas.
• Be frugal and work hard.
Other articles speak to the importance of strategic
planning and performance measure, the use of employee
surveys to target improvement areas, and the adoption
of basic quality values to drive overall progress.
In this past year, the Government Division has
worked hard to keep the vision of quality alive by
providing webinars and articles that are motivational
and instructional. As we all know, the “problem” with
quality in government is that government has no bot-
tom line, so ineffective and inefficient agencies do not
Chair Elect’s COMMENTS
automatically go out of business. Those poor performers
often are sustained with our scarce public resources to
the same extent as excellent performers.
We also know that quality is the right way to man-
age in the public sector, but without natural incentives
it depends on those who want to do the right job
right. And hopefully that is you—the members of the
Government Division. So we want to help you to be
the sponsors of quality in government, and to promote
quality solely because it is the right thing to do, and the
only way to ensure that the public is well served.
Our programs for the coming year will be discussed
Sunday, May 20, in a special session just before the
start of the ASQ World Conference on Quality and
Improvement, in Anaheim, CA. We hope any members
will join us in that discussion, and help us to review our
progress, develop our programs, and set our goals.
As we look forward to coming newsletters and webi-
nars, we ask our members to tell us about successes
in their own organizations, and share, share, share the
good news that you come across. We need your help
and participation to make it happen.
3. Government Division 3 Spring 2012
Start small and keep it simple
Walton’s approach was based on simplicity—he was deter-
mined to control costs better than his competitors and pass the
savings onto his customers. Walton began this approach in a
small manner—in that first store in downtown Bentonville.
Eleven years would transpire before Walton opened the first
Wal-Mart store in Rogers, AR, and nearly another decade
would elapse before Wal-Mart went public in 1971. During
that time, Walton and his team focused on the success of one
store at a time. With each successful store, Walton slowly but
surely ushered in a true transformation of the retail industry.
The first supercenter opened in 1988 and by 1989, Wal-Mart
sales had grown to $26 billion. Today, Wal-Mart boasts more
than 10,000 stores that employ more than 2 million people
worldwide. Throughout this remarkable growth period, Wal-
Mart embraced the simple approach of its founder and has
focused its growth on one store at a time. There’s a moral in
Walton’s story for aspiring quality professionals.
Quality efforts often stall when the focus grows too wide.
Instead of viewing the latest quality management initiative as
a tool for improvement, the movement becomes a panacea
for all the organization’s ills. Such quality leaders imagine
that results will soar, morale will improve, the blind will see,
and the lame will walk! With such extreme proclamations,
no wonder quality management initiatives fail. Miracles
should remain in the realm of religion. Quality manage-
ment initiatives should abide by the Walton approach—start
small and keep it simple. If you’re trying to get a quality
improvement initiative off the ground, approach it in the
same manner that Walton did when launching his global
empire. Find a single area of the organization that is in need
of improvement and focus your energies on making that area
a success. Once success comes (and it will), you can begin to
branch out to other areas of the organization—but it’s impor-
tant to be patient. Use the relative anonymity of this initial
effort to incorporate the next Walton principle.
Embrace mistakes and learn from failure
Walton made lots of mistakes in those early years. Many
of the stories have become legendary. Case in point is what
Wal-Mart associates refer to as “the watermelon story.” In
1964, Walton opened his second Wal-Mart in Harrison, AR. A
man by the name of David Glass had heard about Walton’s
new approach to retail and decided to visit the grand open-
ing of the Harrison Wal-Mart to learn a bit more about the
company. He would later say that the Harrison Wal-Mart
was the “worst retail store I had ever seen.” When Glass
arrived, he observed that Walton had trucked in a huge
number of watermelons in the parking lot of the store and
had incorporated a donkey ride as well for the kids. The day
was hot and so by the time the afternoon rolled around, the
temperatures were topping 100 degrees. This caused many of
the watermelons to pop and the juices ran all over the place.
As Glass explains, “The donkeys began to do what donkeys
do and it all mixed together and ran all over the parking lot.
And when you went inside the store, the mess just continued,
having been tracked in all over the floor. Sam was a nice
fellow but I just wrote him off. It was terrible.” Twenty years
later, Wal-Mart was one of the fastest growing companies in
the world and Glass was named Wal-Mart’s president.
Part of Walton’s genius was his fearlessness and his open-
ness to try a new idea that could improve the organization.
Walton was so committed to finding new ideas that he traveled
the country visiting his stores to mine gold from the suggestions
of his associates. Some of the most iconic practices of Wal-
Mart resulted from Walton’s travels—including the concept of
the Wal-Mart greeter. As the story goes, Walton was visiting a
Wal-Mart store in Louisiana in 1980 and was surprised to see
a Wal-Mart associate standing at the door greeting customers.
Intrigued, Walton inquired and the store manager explained
that he wanted to reduce shrinkage (shoplifting) but didn’t want
to intimidate his honest customers by posting a guard at the
door. The role of the associate standing at the door was dual—
a “greeter” coming in and a “cop” going out. Walton thought
it was the best idea he’d ever heard of and less than two years
later, the greeter became an integral part of every Wal-Mart store
in the country. Walton’s willingness to try new ideas created a
culture of continuous improvement that penetrated every Wal-
Mart store in the country.
The concept of learning from mistakes is fundamental
to the philosophy of quality management, yet many quality
professionals seem to be fearful of making a misstep. While
espousing the benefits of tracking and analyzing noncon-
formities to identify root causes, they fail to adopt the same
principles in managing the quality management initiative.
New ideas are the lifeblood of continuous improvement.
Quality professionals should always be on the lookout for
new ideas that can improve their performance. Not only is
this philosophy critical to the success of your initiative, it’s
even more important to set a good example for the rest of the
organization. How can we expect employees in our agencies
to embrace a culture of continuous improvement if we do not
incorporate those concepts into our own work habits?
Set a good example for everyone in your agency and
embrace mistakes as a tool for continuous improvement.
Incorporate the Walton approach and hunt for new ideas
and new opportunities. When you find one that has a reason-
able chance of success, pull the trigger and give it a try. If it
doesn’t work, try something else. Be fearless and you will be
rewarded with improved performance.
Look for opportunities in underserved areas
1962 was a remarkable year for the retail industry. Walton
opened the first Wal-Mart, S.S. Kresge started Kmart, Dayton
Hudson opened Target, and the retail giant Woolworth
Transformation Takes Time cont.
cont. on p. 4
4. Government Division 4 Spring 2012
launched Woolco. With so many new retail companies
emerging, there was significant competition in the big cities
so Walton focused on expanding his Wal-Mart stores to the
smaller markets, which his competitors ignored. While his
competitors beat each other up for the larger markets, Walton
slowly but surely saturated the underserved and overlooked
rural markets. Before long the small-town Wal-Mart became
an American institution.
Following this strategy, Wal-Mart achieved $1 billion in
sales by 1979. It was the fastest period of growth ever seen
in the retail industry. None of this success could have been
achieved without Walton’s deliberate focus on rural America.
Had Walton decided to battle his competition for the large
markets, Wal-Mart would likely be little more than a footnote
in American history. Serving the rural markets was one of the
foundations for the ultimate success of Walton’s company.
As quality professionals, we often spend a tremendous
amount of time and energy battling organizational inertia
in our attempts to improve the agency’s core functions.
Intuitively this makes sense. After all—improvement of the
core functions of the agency is where we can provide the
greatest impact with the implementation of quality manage-
ment techniques. Unfortunately, these areas are generally the
most difficult “markets” to penetrate. Many of these functions
involve organizational “sacred cows” and include some of
the most highly sought-after jobs in the entire organization.
Our proposals for transformation can generate significant
resistance from front-line employees, managers, and execu-
tives. This bewildering mixture of pride, reticence, and ego
is extremely difficult to navigate. Many quality professionals
have watched in horror as their proposals are dashed against
the rocks of organizational resistance.
A better strategy is to model the Wal-Mart approach and
take your transformation efforts to the “rural” areas of your
organization. These places aren’t nearly as attractive, but they
are generally overlooked and underserved. While you must
engage in fairly heavy lifting to convince executives to allow
you to tinker with the agency’s mission-critical processes, get-
ting their approval to improve noncore processes may be a
fairly simple task. Instead of focusing your initiative on opera-
tions, take your approach to human resources, purchasing, or
perhaps even the mailroom.
What will happen when you venture into these under-
served “markets?” You will likely find leaders eager for help
and many underappreciated and underserved workers grate-
ful for the attention you are bringing to their work. As you
begin to serve this “rural” market, you will win converts to
your cause. Essentially you will be creating quality manage-
ment “customers” throughout the organization and word will
begin to spread. Before you know it, you’ll be grabbing the
attention of senior management and you will no longer have
to ask these executives for permission to enter this exclusive
“market”—they will be coming to you for your expertise.
Be frugal and work hard
This is undoubtedly the most important principle of all.
The work ethic of Walton and his executive team was legend-
ary. Walton was the hardest-working person in his company
and his example set the standard for everyone in the com-
pany—from the front-line employee all the way up the ladder
to the C-suite. Walton and his team met every Saturday for
business review meetings to discuss the performance of the
business and to discuss ways to improve the company. The
focus of these meetings was the control of operating costs.
Walton was relentlessly frugal in everything that he did and
he transferred those habits into his business. While other
CEOs were flying around the world in Lear jets, Walton and
his executive team flew coach. Walton’s work ethic and fru-
gal habits set an example for every employee in the company
and it translated into unmatched organizational performance.
Many years before Wal-Mart would become the largest com-
pany in the world, Walton was controlling the expenses of
his stores better than anyone else in the industry.
There’s a powerful lesson in Walton’s work ethic for all
quality professionals—there is simply no substitute for hard
work and frugality. If it is your intention to transform your
agency, then you must be prepared to put in long hours. You
must never lose site of the fact that you are highly visible as
the “quality guru” and must be prepared to set an example
for the rest of the organization to follow. Incorporate Walton’s
approach and control your costs better than any other man-
ager in the agency. Never hire expensive consultants for any
tasks that can be completed in-house. Instead of attending
costly training seminars, buy a book. This is not to suggest
that you should become frugal to the point of stinginess—just
try to view the agency’s operating budget in the same manner
as you view your own money and make good financial deci-
sions. This was one of the secrets to Wal-Mart’s success, and
Walton’s legendary work ethic is still emulated by Wal-Mart
executives today all around the world.
So if you find yourself thinking that your government agency
is perhaps the least likely place on earth to launch a successful
quality management initiative, take a moment to reflect on the
story of Sam Walton and remember that transformation takes
time. Start small and keep your approach simple. Embrace an
entrepreneurial approach to the management of your qual-
ity initiative and embrace mistakes as a tool for continuous
improvement. Most importantly—work hard and be frugal.
Regardless of where your quality journey leads you, never lose
sight of your true purpose—making the world a better place to
live. I think Sam Walton said it best many years ago:
“If we work together, we’ll lower the cost of living for
everyone … we’ll give the world an opportunity to see what
it’s like to save and have a better life.”
Alright—enough with the pep talk. Now go and do that.
John Baranzelli is currently the acting engineer of design and environment
for the Illinois Department of Transportation and is the author of the book
Making Government Great Again. He is a member of the ASQ Government
Division leadership team.
Transformation Takes Time cont.
5. Government Division 5 Spring 2012
Employee Surveys: Getting Results
Through Effective Process
by Michael DeSousa, M.A.
Sr. Consultant, CPS HR Consulting
The ability to accurately solicit and track employee
feedback has proven increasingly valuable during the cur-
rent extended period of public sector budget cutbacks,
hiring freezes, layoffs, and restructuring. Public sector human
resource professionals acknowledge that the employee sur-
vey has emerged as a tool to gauge employee opinion and
categorize that feedback for management. Web-based survey
tools especially have become an important and convenient
tool for assessing numerous workplace issues—including
levels of employee engagement, alignment of mission,
employee development, and management communications.
This article will provide a brief review of how effec-
tive an employee survey process used in a recent survey
project was, and how it ensured actionable feedback that
made a difference. The subject organization is a Northern
California public agency that engaged a consulting firm to
design and conduct its first agency-wide employee survey.
It was developed to establish a baseline of employee feed-
back to strengthen its HR and management practices. The
agency, whose name is withheld at the agency’s request,
has a relatively stable workforce of less than 100 employees
located at two work sites. The first survey was conducted in
summer 2010 and a re-survey conducted in fall 2011. The
online survey tool used included 76 scaled (five-point scale)
items requesting a level of employee agreement or disagree-
ment with statements regarding the workplace, and three
open-ended questions that invited written responses. The
2010 survey included post-survey meetings with employees
to “drill down” to the employee views represented in the sur-
vey results that were less favorable.
The 2011 survey used both the scaled survey items along
with open-ended employee comments. A side benefit was
that it resulted in a strong degree of measurable improve-
ment in employee perceptions regarding key conditions of
employment. In general, a significant number of moder-
ately unfavorable responses in 2010 had reversed course
to become more favorable in the 2011 survey. Strongest
increases in favorable responses were in dimensions such
as management communication (25%), confidence in man-
agement (29%), organizational teamwork (14%), and board
communications (24%). Some specific scaled item responses
are included in the table below to illustrate notable increases
in favorable responses from the first survey to the re-survey.
The issue then becomes: Why the improved results—good
luck or good process? I will propose this project demonstrates
good survey process in the following areas.
Dimensional focus
The original survey designed and launched in 2010 was
not a generic instrument but an assessment tool custom-
ized to meet the informational needs of the organization.
Survey item focus areas (or dimensions) were determined
based on meetings with agency management and review of
HR and management practices. It is recognized at the outset
that there are many survey dimensions that are commonly
utilized across many organizations since they touch on
areas of near universal relevance (e.g., supervisor relations,
employee training, work resources). But most organizations
Scaled Survey Item
(Five-point scale where 5.0 is strong agreement with the statement and 1.0 is strong disagreement with the statement;
3.0 is a neutral response.)
2010
Mean Score
2011
Mean Score
The forms and process used for annual employee performance evaluations are user friendly. 2.26 3.39
I believe that high job performance is rewarded at ____. 2.51 3.34
The decisions and priorities of the ____ Board of Directors are effectively communicated
throughout the entire organization.
2.52 3.54
Management clearly explains the reasons for changes and major decisions. 2.57 3.38
I am satisfied with the communications I receive from management about issues/changes
that may affect me.
2.70 3.59
Management provides clear direction on where the organization is headed. 2.82 3.66
Management delegates sufficient authority to employees to make work-related decisions. 2.84 3.78
Management demonstrates trust in employees’ ability to make routine decisions. 2.91 3.78
I am confident the results of the All Employee Survey will be used to make ____ a better place to work. 2.93 3.66
I have the opportunity to express my views and concerns to management. 3.00 3.80
I am not afraid to bring up work issues or concerns to management. 3.04 3.78
Table
cont. on p. 6
6. Government Division 6 Spring 2012
have unique issues, features, programs, or constraints that
can easily be addressed through targeted survey items within
those dimensions. Like most assessment processes, better
data tends to come from better questions or prompts.
Post-survey results confirmation
After the numerical results of the first survey were pre-
sented, the agency supported the additional step of utilizing
facilitated employee focus groups to confirm management
understanding of the survey dimensions that were least
favorable from the employee perspective. The focus groups
provided an opportunity to more deeply understand the
employee experiences or perceptions that were responsible
for lower levels of satisfaction and engagement. An illustra-
tive example may suffice here. If a cluster of survey items
making up the dimension “employee training” revealed an
agency mean score of 2.1 where 5.0 is highly favorable and
3.0 is a neutral response, you would know this may be an
area requiring more intervention. But before you run off and
start implementing “solutions,” you will need to know what
explains the low favorable scores and what the root causes
are—explanations could include:
• The agency has no budget to support training.
• Supervisors are not aware of agency training options.
• Employees cannot get time off to attend training.
• The quality of training provided is poor.
• Training curriculum is not aligned with career paths.
A “shotgun” approach to improving employee training—
pursuing many courses of action—may not address the
specific issue needing intervention. In this survey the agency
took the time to understand what the survey scores “meant”
for them with the result of a more focused path toward inter-
vention and improvement.
Shared results
With limited exception, the open sharing of survey
results is another process choice to promote best results.
In this case the agency held all employee and board brief-
ings before survey execution, and afterwards, to present
results. It posted results to the agency intranet and mod-
eled openness in management-employee communications.
Publicizing results broadly is one more way to demonstrate
top management support for the survey as a communication
channel to management and provides an impetus to follow-
up actions versus the survey ending up as one more project
report gathering dust.
Action plan
Without the clear intent to act when good data directs
you, any employee survey process is an exercise in futility.
While an employer who is ignorant of what is really going
on in the organization is bad, an employer who knows what
is deficient but still fails to act decisively is far worse—the
distinction between management ignorance and indifference.
Indeed, the standard employee survey process model posi-
tions the action plan as fundamental.
I. Planning
II. Design
III. Implementation
IV. Analysis and Communications
V. Action Plan
This public agency required, as part of the project state-
ment of work, that the consultant draft a detailed action
plan based on the consultant’s assessment of the most criti-
cal areas for action, the relative priorities of the actions, and
potential interventions that could be considered to address
less favorable results. The survey, like any substantive change
process, needs to result in something akin to a project plan.
It should include assigned tasks, timelines, resource allo-
cations, reporting accountabilities, and critical paths. The
survey’s action plan became the roadmap for a series of
agency actions to address workplace issues and to do so with
high visibility to employees. Meetings, communications, and
follow-up after the initial 2010 survey stressed the link to the
survey as the catalyst for agency action.
Re-survey
As is often noted in this publication, “you manage what
you measure.” In survey assessment this means the com-
mitment to some type of ongoing re-surveying to determine
agency performance versus the baseline established in the
initial survey. While longitudinal tracking will argue for a
strong set of survey items that you can retain over time to
allow for direct comparison, that does not mean that the sur-
vey instrument cannot, over time, add or retire some items.
Agency management in this project has reflected that they
will consider some adjustments to the survey in the next
iteration. The cycle to re-survey is often 12 to 24 months
depending on agency-specific needs. To modify the apho-
rism “measure twice and cut once,” in effective surveys, the
phrase becomes “measure once and measure again.”
Conclusion
The employee survey is a potentially potent tool for assess-
ing employee views on myriad essential workplace issues, but
the overall success of the survey depends on the conscious
adherence to principles of a strong, well-executed process.
Michael DeSousa (mdesousa@cps.ca.gov) is a senior consultant for CPS HR
Consulting in Sacramento, CA. A former HR director, training manager, and
university lecturer, his consulting work with CPS focuses on areas of employ-
ment development, organizational assessment, and change management.
Getting Results cont.
7. Government Division 7 Spring 2012
Taking the “Long View” Is Critical
to Success in Government
by Denzil Verardo
Strategic planning and performance measurement are two
foundational tools for long-range improvement in government,
and those tools provide a foundation for improvement in good
times and in bad. The author relates his career experience with
the application of these tools in two different California agen-
cies, and the positive results created even in tough times.
Many people, including academics and professionals,
feel that California government is broken. Its state agency
management is neither visionary nor operationally effective.
However, that is painting with too broad a brush. It ignores
the success that has occurred within agencies that have taken
a long view of their mission. An effective strategic plan, as
well as meaningful measures through which to assess prog-
ress, can lead to dramatic improvements that indeed seem
visionary. While this article’s case studies are in California,
the strategic plan methodology is applicable to any govern-
ment agency at the local, state, or federal level.
Today, at this moment, virtually all departments of
California government are consumed with two seemingly
contradictory issues: managing the current budget crisis
while providing the levels of service demanded by the public.
Visionary leadership—one that takes a long view—should
be measuring performance while managing toward effective
future strategies through an active strategic plan. A successful
model exists for doing just that. It has been proven within sev-
eral agencies, albeit not universally throughout government.
First, some background information on the development
and implementation of the model itself. During an earlier
economic downturn in the 1990s, California’s governmental
infrastructure could not be supported by a weakened tax
structure and resulting decline in revenues. The challenge for
agencies that relied on those dwindling dollars, one of which
was the California Department of Parks and Recreation (State
Parks), was how to cope with critically needed expansion
and maintenance of a system that a burgeoning popula-
tion demanded, while ensuring that those resources were
available for future generations. State Parks leadership had
not been known for its management efficiency, but realized
it must improve the way it conducted “business” or face
increased cuts and potential obsolescence.
The results of its effort included not only increased
efficiency and effectiveness, but internal and external
acknowledgment that Parks had became one of the best
managed and highest performing departments in California
government. After three years of effort, the department was
awarded a Malcolm Baldrige-based California Quality
Award, from the nonprofit California Council for Excellence,
as “best in class” in government. In an event not unrelated to
the positive change in business practices of the department,
the people of California then provided a large majority vote
for the largest park bond in the nation’s history.
Now we fast-forward to today’s economic crisis. Another
department, the California Department of Toxic Substances
Control was, and is, awash in data. However, as late as 2007,
that data was not aggregated in a manner that would illus-
trate the department’s actual impact on human health and
the environment. By 2010, using the model of the long view,
the department was acknowledged as a case study in good
government by the Little Hoover Commission-sponsored
Performance Management Council. It was also awarded a
California Award for Performance Excellence (formerly the
California Quality Award). So what did these departments of
government with dissimilar missions and statutory direction
have in common? An effective performance-measured strate-
gic planning process.
Figure 1 below illustrates the basic model for sustained
improvement over time by measuring current effectiveness
while achieving a compelling vision for the future. It was origi-
nally developed as a part of the 2004 California Performance
Review (CPR). The CPR was to look at all departments of gov-
ernment and make recommendations for change. One team
focused on performance management including effective stra-
tegic planning. The team looked at previous successful change
efforts, such as California State Parks, but also across the coun-
try at successful local, state, and federal efforts.
The vision portion of the model consists of developing
a realistic plan through which to conceptualize the future
while working on actual forward movement, including a new
paradigm if that is called for. There is a fine line between a
realistic, actionable vision and an unobtainable, frustrating
one. The model forces a realistic approach with real account-
ability. Like many strategic planning efforts, the vision is
developed through a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportu-
nities, and threats) analysis coupled with an “environmental
scan” of the economic, technological, political, and social
trends that affect the organization.
cont. on p. 8
VISION VALUES MISSION
STRATEGIC PLANNING
Analysis SWOT
Goals
Objectives
Strategies
PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT
Programs
Outcomes
Measures
Data Collection
Analysis
Targets
PERFORMANCE AGREEMENTS/ANNUAL PLAN
Balanced
Scorecard
Vision, Mission, and
Values Check
Environmental
Scan
Figure 1—Performance Management
8. Government Division 8 Spring 2012
Goals are determined once that analysis is complete, and
objectives and strategies are the incremental breakdown of
each goal into actionable and strategic initiatives. They are
developed to carry out the goals.
Many strategic plans fail because the effort stops at this
point, and in fact was only motivated by a desire to impress
the political leadership. However, those who want to align
the plan with actual operations next look to performance
measures. The next step is to develop performance agree-
ments with managers. An annual plan for the organization is
developed with identification of individuals who are respon-
sible for a specific objective and strategy.
Unfortunately, many governmental agencies have a
great-sounding strategic plan, but really do not have good
knowledge, based on real data, of what they are required
to do. The mission half of this model forces an assessment,
with performance measures, of current operations. Only
through that assessment and the resources necessary to carry
out required efforts can additional or redirected resources
realistically be put into the vision portion of the model. Core
programs are determined, outcomes are set for each of those
programs, measures (the vital few) are set for each outcome,
and data collected for each measure. The resulting analysis
leads to meaningful targets of improvement for the current
operation. Those measures/targets are regularly monitored by
the appropriate manager and also put in their performance
agreement and/or in the annual plan.
Another way of looking at the system is illustrated in
Figure 2.
A strategic plan and strategic planning methodology is vital
anytime. But during tough economic times, partnering a vision-
ary strategic planning process with a data-driven understanding
of mission-critical requirements is essential. And it works!
Denzil Verardo is a nationally recognized expert on organizational performance
management and has received numerous awards for his good government
efforts. He has been on the executive staffs of California state agencies through
multiple administrations and is currently a commissioner on the California
Senate Advisory Commission on Cost Control in State Government.
The Lost Legacy of Quality in Government
by Richard E. Mallory, MM, PMP, Chair-Elect
Pride in our work is a hallmark of the quality professional,
and why so many of us are zealots for the cause, in good
times and bad. Our pride comes from seeing workers and
organizations transformed, and moving from dreary, disinter-
ested, and ineffective work to environments where people are
creative, invested, and proud. That transformation depends
on implementation of the simple values of quality. Those val-
ues gain power when they are adopted into leadership and
become beacons and guides to work units, and overall busi-
ness strategy.
The often “lost legacy of quality” is the vision of a changed
organization, in which quality exists in the daily life of work-
ers and is aligned with a leadership initiative that “improves
constantly and forever the system of production and service.”
This is the legacy of Dr. W. Edwards Deming1
, that was artic-
ulated in many ways in his 14 points and seven deadly sins.
David Osborne, co-author of the 1992 classic Reinventing
Government, said Deming’s 14 points boil down to five basic
principles: “1) To rebuild their efforts around the mission
of delivering quality to the customer; 2) to measure both
work processes and results to see where problems lie; 3) to
empower employees to solve these problems by decentralizing
authority; 4) to stress prevention rather than rework; 5) to focus
on improving systems2
…”
This of course reminds us that quality does not come
about primarily through the actions of management and an
elite corps of trained professionals, but primarily through
the actions of an empowered workforce. This is somewhat
analogous to the idea of “catalytic government,” articu-
lated in Reinventing Government3
. The concept of catalytic
government was one that “steers” rather than “rows.” One
explanation offered in that book was that in the future, gov-
ernment “… will more often define its role as a catalyst and
facilitator. (It) will more often find itself in the role of defining
problems and then assembling resources for others to use
to address those problems.” The same is true of successful
organizational transformation: Leaders should steer more
than row—the power comes from the front lines, mobilized
by quality framework and tools.
The recent experience of this author is that the opposite
is often true. Many contemporary “quality” initiatives are
The“Long View”cont.
Strategic Plan
Performance
Measurement
Performance
Agreements
RESULTS
SUCCESS
Perform
ance
Im
provem
ent
Goals, Objectives,
Strategies
What We Desire
To Do or
Accomplish
What We Must
Do or
Accomplish
What We Can Do
or Accomplish –
Addresses Closing
the GAP
GAP
VISIONMISSION
ACCOUNTABILITY
Figure 2—Performance Management System
cont. on p. 9
9. Government Division 9 Spring 2012
staking their claim to quality only on the back of trained
Black Belts, Six Sigma teams, lean practice, or other so-
called “advanced” techniques. The initiative owners have
completely lost sight of building an empowered organization.
They have no clue about creating the values of quality within
their organizations in a way that profoundly affects the envi-
ronment in which most workers exist. These organizations
are often good at training and motivating managers to learn
a new game—for example, “Lean Six Sigma teams”—and
some workers favored to participate are also caught up in
the “wave” and speak the new language. Leaders believe
that complete success has been achieved because teams are
organized, changes are made, results are tabulated, and some
“wins” are achieved. Meanwhile, the majority of workers is
left behind, and think that the elite “quality geeks” have been
hit by the “Tower of Babel” and speak a language and exist in
a rarified atmosphere in which they have no stake.
A restoration of this legacy will provide a fundamental
change in the daily lives of most workers. In stark contrast,
when advanced efforts exist without a foundation of quality
values there is the constant threat that when management
loses interest in their new initiative, or when resources get
diverted to other priorities, the quality effort flat-lines. In
addition, when front-line workers are not involved, there
will be no change in organizational interaction with the
customer. The ownership and excitement of employees with
regard to the quality initiative is critical, and is often forgot-
ten or bypassed in a rush to complex and difficult practices
like Six Sigma.
While many quality values are important to organizational
transformation, there are several of these values that are the
equivalent of “gifts” from leadership, and which cannot exist
without the active nurturing and support of leadership. These
are among a small group that are foundational:
• Give every worker a view to the customer.
• Develop customer requirements and measure success
against those requirements.
• Ask everyone to do right things right the first time.
• Recognize that when error and rework occur, it is a prob-
lem of management and not of the worker.
• Allow anyone the right to challenge the process.
• Allow everyone to ask questions and to get answers to
their questions.
• Empower workplace teams to improve processes.
• Drive out fear.
While long-time quality professionals will immediately
recognize this list, it is apparent that many of our younger
and newer quality professionals do not. They may be Six
Sigma Black Belts, but may not have heard of Dr. Deming’s
14 points. For those younger professionals, a reintroduction
to the basic texts of The New Economics4
, or The Deming
Management Method5
, may be appropriate.
The Deming Management Method notes that after many
years of teaching quality in Japan, Dr. Deming added the
need to drive out fear, specifically for American managers. It
was said that in Japan, workers and managers maintained an
easy rapport, and, “If anybody had some ideas on improve-
ment, there was nothing in the world to stop him.” It was in
America that Dr. Deming observed a “tyranny of fear, of bar-
riers, of (work) quotas, and sloganeering.”
Closely related to driving out fear is “the right to ask
questions,” which was described in this author’s book,
Management Strategy: Creating Excellent Organizations6
.
“Excellent organizations realize that a great store of organiza-
tional wisdom is at the lowest levels. There must be an active
and open system of communication and decision making in
order to tap that knowledge. How well this will work will
depend on the simple matter of allowing people to ask—and
to get answers—to their questions. … Without active strate-
gies to support the effort at a high level, the voice of the
front-line worker will disappear.”
We must all recognize that the power of quality depends
on the transformation of everyone in an organization, includ-
ing both the “advanced practice” teams aligned with the
latest executive office initiative, and the front-line process
action team using more simple quality methods. To be suc-
cessful we must therefore remind the new generation of
quality professionals to not forget the quality values that are
fundamental to organizational empowerment.
Endnotes
1. As noted in The Deming Management Method, by Mary Walton,
Perigee Books, 1986.
2. From “Why Total Quality Management is Only Half a Loaf,” by
David Osborne. Governing Magazine, August 1992.
3. Reinventing Government, by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler.
The Penguin Group, 1992.
4. By W. Edwards Deming, MIT Center for Advanced Engineering
Study, 1993.
5. By Mary Walton, Perigee Books, 1986.
6. By Richard E. Mallory, Trafford Publications, 2002.
Richard E. Mallory is a senior management consultant and client services
manager for CPS Human Resources Consulting of Sacramento, CA. Mallory
specializes in performance measurement, program analysis, and organiza-
tional transformation. He specializes in government practice, and has spent
more than 25 years as a senior government executive, consultant, and per-
formance coach.
The Lost Legacy cont.
11. Government Division 11 Spring 2012
Christena Shepherd, Member Leader
Christena Shepherd retired from NASA
in 2009 after 32 years of government
service in quality assurance, and is cur-
rently working for Teledyne Brown
Engineering Inc. as a consultant to
NASA. Shepherd was a quality assur-
ance team lead, responsible for
managing the quality assurance effort for
the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC)
Propulsion Test Area, where testing is
performed for the Space Shuttle, NASA’s research and devel-
opment projects, and industry customers. She is currently
assisting the MSFC Test Laboratory in the areas of quality
assurance, safety, risk management, and outreach. Shepherd
is a member of the Huntsville, AL, ASQ Section and a mem-
ber of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
(AIAA). She enjoys art, history, genealogy, and travel.
John Iverson, Program Chair
John Iverson is a senior program man-
ager at Vangent Inc., a leading federal
service contractor. Prior to his current
position, Iverson spent eight years man-
aging quality for a number of federal
programs with the Department of Labor,
Federal Communications Commission,
and the Department of Education. Active
in ASQ, Iverson has spent the last two
years leading the development of the
Service Quality Body of Knowledge (SQBOK) to support ser-
vice quality practitioners. He is also active in PMI, serving on
the Quality Community of Practice Leadership Council.
Iverson’s goal for the Government Division is to establish
thought leadership that brings about improvement of govern-
ment services at all levels.
Kishor Desai, Member Leader
Kishor Desai is a principal consultant
and auditor for KD & Associates Inc.
Desai has been involved in management
system auditing and consulting since
1995. His area of focus is quality, envi-
ronment, health and safety, and food
safety. Desai is associated with a leading
North American-based registrar and a
member of their Advisory Board on
Management System Registration since
1995. Prior to 1995 Desai served in the public sector, work-
ing in transportation and communications, and then in
housing for the Province of Ontario. Desai is a registered pro-
fessional engineer, and RABQSA-qualified lead auditor for
quality and environmental management systems.
Karin E. Warner M.S., B.S.N., R.N., Member Leader
Karin Warner is the Continuous Process
Improvement (CPI) program director/
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt for U.S. Naval
Hospital Okinawa and the program
executive officer for the Western Pacific
Medical Alliance. In this regional role,
she works with leadership and staff of
U.S. Naval Hospitals Okinawa, Guam,
and Yokosuka to improve quality and
clinical capabilities, improve collabora-
tion across the facilities in the Western Pacific, and provide a
structure for sustainability of quality outcomes. Warner is a
senior member of ASQ and is also a DoD-certified Lean and
Six Sigma Green Belt instructor, and mentors/coaches Green
Belts and CPI teams. She holds a dual Master of Science
degree in medical-surgical nursing and nursing health policy
from the University of Maryland (1996). Her nursing and
leadership experience includes work in cardiac step-down,
neonatal intensive care and pediatric outpatient settings,
DoD legislative fellow for national and veterans health pol-
icy, education and training, emergency department, senior
nurse, director of health and wellness, primary care, and
head of quality management. She has also served as acting
officer in charge, acting director of nursing, and acting exec-
utive officer. Her assignments have taken her to the National
Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD; University of
Maryland Graduate School; Capitol Hill in the Office of
Legislative Affairs; Naval Hospital Twenty-nine Palms; Branch
Medical Clinic La Maddalena, Sardinia; and Naval Hospital
Pensacola, FL. She is the current Navy director of the Federal
Nurses Association. Warner is married, has three sons, and
her home of record is in western Pennsylvania.
Leadership Team cont.
Are you a member of the Government Division
with a few hours to spare and an interest in participat-
ing on the Government Division leadership team?
In particular, we hope to find members to help us
maintain the content on our website: asq.org/gov.
No special web building or html skills are necessary.
Contact Linda Milanowski at ASQ for more informa-
tion: lmilanowski@asq.org.
WelcomeVo l u n t e e r s
12. Submittal
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Government Division News is published quarterly by the
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