Christine Pope

To achieve organizational excellence, core management systems and processes need to be fully integrated and focused on measureable results. Measures of results should be based on customer requirements and feedback. Baldrige puts major management systems into six categories. But you shouldn’t think of them as categories. Rather picture six engaged gears that push the organization toward results. The systems/gears are: LeadershipStrategic PlanningCustomerFocus Workforce FocusOperations/Business ProcessesResults Measurement. Leadership articulates the model to all employees at all levels and reinforces the values that propel the integrated systems, such as customer focus, continuous improvement, and employee engagement and empowerment. Baldrige is as much a culture as a management approach—and what a culture it is! All hands and all brains are on deck. Pride, fellowship, and know-how grow because results are achieved and no one is a bench-sitter. Employees and the systems work together as a whole to produce exceptional results. Case in Point During my tenure with the City of Coral Springs, the city employed the Baldrige business model to create system integration and customer focus. In our case, every city worker was introduced to the model and the strategic plan at new employee orientations. Orientation covered the principles that keep professional silos at bay and job satisfaction high, including: establish and deploy vision and valuesfacilitate the development of an evidence-based strategic planset objectives, strategies and measures of progressalign resources and activity to the objectivesmonitor implementation of plansevaluate the effectiveness of plansfoster customer-focused lean processescontinuously improve through “feedback loops” that create organizational and individual learningengage in all of the above. More importantly, my city government experience with the Baldrige model informs my approach to performance management at the Department of Commerce.Applying Baldrige to the Federal Landscape Over the decades, the federal government has searched for the Holy Grail of performance management. This has proved elusive, though, because staff offices have set up performance measurement systems that are not aligned with a strategic plan, employee work plans, or process design. Instead, measures have been created by staff offices, not the folks who are on the line. What’s more, feedback on systems happened primarily when a catastrophic failure occurred; regular feedback for system improvement was an anomaly. Here’s the good news: Times are changing, and there are federal initiatives for customer focus, use of performance indicators and evaluation, employee engagement, and strategic plans that are actionable and monitored. However, if we don’t move on all these fronts through integrated systems that involve the entire workforce, the Holy Grail will remain elusive—even though Baldrige has put it in plain sight.  Check out http://www.nist.gov/baldrige to get a better view. If you have worked in a Baldrige culture, you will never want to settle for less. For a deeper dive on this topic, join me for the session “Changing Up: Integrating a Culture of Performance in Your Organization” at the Government Workforce: Learning Innovations conference.

Building a Federal Culture that Supports Results—Everywhere You Look

2024 Awards Issue - TD Magazine

Apprenticeship and internship programs set in motion robust talent pipelines.

A Test Run in Industry Work

Talent leaders know that the career ladder can be slippery for women, but women don’t have to climb alone. By actively building a community—whether that’s based on cultural similarities or shared life and professional experiences—with talent leaders’ help, women can acquire the omnichannel support they need to advance.
In this intimate conversation, Sounding Board co-founder and CEO Christine Tao and Lean In senior vice president of programs and partnerships Archana Gilravi will discuss how their cultural and career commonalities helped to shape a foundation where they could better understand leadership challenges and identify solutions that propelled them up the career ladder (despite a few slippery rungs). They will also discuss the talent leader’s role in enabling this community building facet of leadership development.
During this event, attendees will discover:

How to identify who should be on your professional sounding board
How a spirit of service can enable more effective leadership
Why leadership skill-building and support are so integral for organizational and professional success
Resources they can bring back to their organizations to build a more inclusive workplace
