WV Executive

We know it takes far more than a good leader to get the job done, but a team is unlikely to succeed without effective leadership. It is the leader who is charged with pulling together a group of individuals with diverse backgrounds, proficiency levels and experiences, then motivating them to accomplish a specific task-increasing profits by 10 percent, building a skyscraper, putting a man on the moon, or winning the Super Bowl.

Leadership is about people. Successful leaders build and sustain effective relationships with the members of their teams. They know what makes their teams tick, individually and collectively. They find that delicate balance between pushing and pulling their people and master the complexities and dynamics of their teams. The size and composition of the group will affect how a leader interacts with the team. Just as a good leader adjusts his or her personality, the leader also adjusts to fit the personality of the team. The larger the group gets, the harder it is to be hands-on and up-close. Here are some important aspects of leading an organization that I convey to you-aspects that have to be thought through but are assuming the mindset of the leader.

Vision. You must first have a clear understanding of where you want the organization to go. This vision will set the baseline for all that you hope to accomplish. It is the first critical step and the most important thing a leader can offer. Without a vision, you will allow others to set your priorities and you will end up having the immediacy of the task determine its importance rather than the importance of the task determine its immediacy. Refer back to the vision periodically to ensure your organization is going down the path you chose. Everyone in the organization should understand the vision.

The Mission. The mission is also important-it is the starting point. Unless you know the organization's mission, you cannot lead its people to achieve that mission. Good leaders begin with the mission and go from there. They posture to meet the specific demands of the task at hand. There are times when the mission will dictate a hands-off, leisurely approach to facilitate creativity and innovation. Conversely, there are times when the mission demands close supervision and specific direction to garner immediate action.

The Strategy. The way you take charge of an organization is important. You must have a strategy and take the time to develop a game plan before starting the job. This will guarantee you are not responding to events as they happen but rather, proactively directing the success of the organization.

Goals. Then take it one step further by setting specific goals. These will be the measures to gauge whether or not you are getting close to fulfilling your mission. You will not have all of your goals when you start-that is okay. Have a healthy degree of flexibility when you formulate your goals because they will grow and change over time as you get feedback from your team. Make sure you set goals that match your mission and are achievable.

Setting High Standards. Encourage success in your organization by setting and enforcing high standards. This will promote productivity from your people that they never knew they had. We naturally want to do well and, in many cases, if we set the bar high enough, the team will not only reach the goals but surpass them. In the military, our business can be violent and demands excellence, but whether you are in the military or running a large company, most institutions will not tolerate a big margin of error. This requires high standards even for dedicated professionals who understand that anything less than the best will cost people their lives. However, do not expect everyone to achieve your personal standards-everyone cannot be number one. Set high standards and do not apologize for them. As the leader, if you are satisfied with satisfactory, your team will be also.

As a case study, I will use these important aspects by looking at the United States Air Forces in Europe, and how its people, their ideas and their actions developed an institutional culture where the status quo is not the norm.

The Organization

This institution equates to a company with approximately 85,000 people consisting of active-duty Airmen, reservists, United States and foreign national civilian employees and dependents. We have more than 18,000 facilities valued at $3 billion. Our equipment includes aviation assets and the significant infrastructure necessary to support aviation tasks. If compared to a Fortune 500 company, this organization would rank 132nd with assets totaling more than $26.7 billion and a total annual budget of $3.15 billion. Our assets total more than those of FedEx, Nike and The New York Times combined.

Strategy Development

A fundamental shift in strategy, vision and structure is our way of life. Determining what is good entails having a way to track and measure our business practices, successes and failures. Without having a way to measure performance, how can you tell if you are meeting or exceeding standards? With this in mind, we developed and implemented a measurement system that covers a wide spectrum of important functions within the organization-readiness, quality of life, morale and welfare. Each month we review what we call our special interest programs metrics and some 23 other performance measures, covering everything from how quickly patients are attended to at our medical facilities to how many programs are available to our people for furthering their education.

The second half of our measurement program oversees the in-depth quality of life issues of our people. Two of the key areas of this program are the medical and housing measures/metrics. The medical measures ensure that we are providing and improving quality care and practices with compassion, competence and integrity. Through rehabilitation and construction of new housing and other public spaces, housing/housing maintenance programs contribute to a stronger sense of pride and community for residents. This system provides valuable insight into the health of the organization and our progress toward stated goals.

The special interest programs are intended to increase our readiness, improve our mission effectiveness and help take care of our people. They help us translate our vision, mission and goals into concrete results and institutionalize our higher standards of excellence.

Analysis

The measures and metrics for our special interest programs identify strengths and weaknesses. They provide the baseline we use to measure improvement. The metrics not only measure but drive performance through shared vision, values and accountability.

The quality indicators cover every aspect of our mission and people. They are our preferred process-management tool after evolving a number of solution types through years of application at different locations and levels. An example of some of the customer service metrics measured are below.

We wanted an accelerated deployment and implementation of tools that could easily change some of our processes and at the same time give visibility into how we were doing. Mid-level managers wanted viable additions to processes already in place, and the customers wanted to see change to old ways of doing business.

Our programs are a way of reaching out and provide another mechanism for those we lead to provide feedback. Once the team embraces the change and transformation, innovation and risk taking are generated which lead to streamlined processes, cross-talk among functional areas and greater sharing of best practices.

Programs

The special interest programs touch virtually every aspect of our team and mission-individually the basis for them is rock solid. Throughout the organization, we refocused our resources to help support implementation. In this study, we will only highlight a few of the 14 programs implemented.

The nation needs our leadership more than before, and it is the inherent responsibility of senior leaders to mentor our future leaders. Project Connect is designed to provide a forum for senior mentors to counsel and enhance the individual professional development of junior protégés on a one-on-one basis. The program has two moving parts: our "Flag Talks" prominent senior leaders and corporation chief executives visit our locations sharing their perspective on what it takes to lead today, tomorrow and into the future; and "Bright Horizons" where our junior leaders visit their company headquarters annually to shadow our senior leaders.

Safety and risk management are important to any organization. Through Project SMART (Smartly Managing Awareness, Risk and Threats) we embedded a safety culture that helped us manage our awareness of risk, actively combat the threats we face and act smartly when we see something that needs to be fixed. The program has elevated safety awareness appreciably throughout our institution with emphasis on safety programs and work-related and personal mishap prevention. Bases are sharing ideas and communicating through a focused "Monthly Safety Topics" initiative.

Our company has increased opportunities to study and explore through our libraries through our Project Wizard program. After conducting a survey within the organization, our libraries stocked reading materials as well as CDs and DVDs the members desired, increased their number of programs and improved their services. The 13 libraries in our organization are exceeding usage rates for our books and computers.

For working professionals, education is usually an additional aspiration but schedules and other events beyond their control sometimes dictate priorities and deter people from achieving these goals. Our Education Program initiatives are removing barriers to education throughout our organization and making advanced education as user-friendly as possible. Nearly 50 percent of all college courses are now taught during non-standard times, and almost 15 percent of all classes are offered outside traditional classroom locations to accommodate shift workers. The result is a 17 percent increase in enrollments since January 2004.

In our Flightline Program we examine numerous metrics that ensure we utilize our people and resources smartly and efficiently. For example, our flying schedule effectiveness rate measures how well a unit executed its weekly schedule as planned. Disruptions to the flying schedule often cause havoc in the workplace, send undesirable ripples through other agencies and adversely affect scheduled maintenance. We also look at our abort rate-the percentage of missions on the ground or in the air that have to end prematurely requiring them to be re-accomplished. This is a key indicator into aircraft reliability and the quality of maintenance performed. Overall, our flightline metrics improved 70.9 percent since January 2004.

Improving the fitness of our people through enhancing member awareness of physical fitness and healthy lifestyles is important-both are the focus of our Fitness Program. One-stop shopping at the Fitness Center for diet management, classes on practicing injury prevention, smoking cessation and physical therapy are but a few of the program's initiatives. Monthly "Organization Runs," weekly unit-scheduled physical training, work-center flex-scheduling that allows staff to workout during duty hours, are some other initiatives that get great reviews from our people.

Customer service in our organization was not necessarily bad or in need of repair, and we are aware that we are each others customers ... external and internal. The question becomes, should you strive to improve and most importantly, want to improve upon how well you are taking care of your customers? You bet! That is why we are committed to infusing our institution with a culture of excellent service and comprehensive care that exceeded the expectations of our customers. Armed with a five-day cutting edge, provocative curriculum, our Customer College asked talented customer-service professionals in our work force to put their spin on "excellence in service" and to teach it to the rest of our front-line customer providers. Exceeding our customer's expectations is a team effort, and we plan to keep raising the bar and looking for ways to take care of our customers.

Creative solutions also helped us make remarkable progress with our special interest programs and other efforts. Outstanding execution is a result of encouraging friendly competition and the breeding/sharing of good ideas. The extra attention generates new ways to do an old process and at other times spurs a completely new way of doing business altogether. Some of the ideas instituted since the programs have been quarterly newsletters and interactive games/educational tools. Results clearly indicate the organization is focused and energized on key mission enablers: readiness, development, services and quality of life.

Results

Comparing the most recent monthly performances with January 2004, the institution has come a long way in a short time. Of the 74 metrics tracked, we have improved in 50 areas. Of the 24 remaining metrics, 17 of them were above set goals and had only minor changes. Several require management attention. The following chart provides trend data across various programs since implementation.

Every company needs to rally around common goals and business practices. We wanted to concentrate on our core business of taking care of people. We realized that as the mission changed we needed to stay relevant through the change, so we provided flexibility to change key processes.

Our programs and measurement process provide a framework for streamlining workflows. We developed processes in an ongoing effort requiring proactive planning for continual optimization.

Along with taking advantage of technological and organizational changes, we took advantage of opportunities to simplify complex practices, integrate applications and open up processes for collaboration among staff and partners. What makes our organization successful is not just all of the hard work, but it is our ability to work hard together toward a common purpose-our mission. We are delivering training, resources, tools, and skills to help foster a culture of excellent customer service and personal and organizational pride. Collaboration of multi-level teams work closely to identify crucial success factors, and initiatives are treated as fully funded and staffed.

Institutions rise and fall on the quality of their leaders and management processes. Leadership can be a very complex endeavor. It does not take a rocket scientist-it takes someone smarter! The strategy and tactics of leadership require intense effort, but when figured out with a team rigorously working toward a common goal with high standards, there is not a more satisfying job. Ultimately, aligning communication, people, processes and resources drive and breed success. By ensuring measurement systems are in place to track business practices and implementation results, a company can posture itself to implement more innovative business practices as they deal with a changing global economy.

Bottom line: If you lead with proper focus and take care of your people exceptionally, the job will get done exceptionally.