Special Forces leaders sought to ensure long-term support from key stakeholders for their efforts to improve performance. They invited senior military officials and political leaders to Fort Bragg to watch soldiers conduct their exercises. They flew new U.S. diplomats to Fort Bragg with SEALs on board, and the SEALs explained how they could be helpful around the world by briefing the diplomats and then dramatically parachuting off the plane.
At GAO, which reports to Congress, Comptroller General Walker tailors his outreach to Capitol Hill based on the issue at hand, focusing his attention on the members with jurisdiction and greatest interest in that issue. He also ensures that GAO employees embrace new procedures by tying their compensation to their expertise, leadership, increased responsibility, and other contributions to performance.
3. Create a road map. An agency must get from "here" (its current status) to "there" (improved performance), and any good road map will encompass major phases along that route: identify performance objectives, set priorities, develop recommendations, and initiate and roll out the change program.
To define OSHA's performance improvement objectives and priorities, Joe Dear commissioned a team of respected OSHA employees, supported by outside experts, to conduct internal fact-finding and identify areas of OSHA's performance in most need of improvement and the biggest obstacles to reform.
After setting priorities, the team identified needed changes in the agency's enforcement strategy, processes, and organization, and the agency provided significant training in the new approaches and redesigns after concluding that the results would justify the costs. To ensure timely, tangible performance improvement results, the agency gave frontline compliance officers in its 65 field offices a menu of improvement opportunities, asked them to pick the ones most urgently needed, provided training in performance improvement methods, and required that the office achieve precise performance goals within eight weeks.
4. Take a comprehensive approach. Rather than focusing on just one or two elements as many agencies had done in years past, Special Forces overhauled all the elements of its operations. It introduced a new unified command of generals from each military branch, headed by a general who reported directly to the Secretary of Defense. It created a much faster, flexible, and cost-efficient procurement process. It improved its technology and weapons systems. It placed much more emphasis on recruitment standards and training. And it integrated its activities across organizational boundaries, ensuring that its operations benefit from the particular skills of its Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and other Special Operations Forces.
5. Be a leader rather than a bureaucrat. To be a true leader, an agency head must do two things: He or she must recognize the difference between what is prohibited and what simply has not been tried, and the leader must address the perception that he or she may not be committed to change. The leader must invest the personal time and energy required, commit the needed people and resources, develop the stakeholder support, and ensure the employee participation required to lead change. Rank-and-file employees may be skeptical at first, having seen change efforts come and go. But once convinced that an effort is real, they rally to its cause.
The dramatic changes achieved in the U.S. Special Forces, OSHA, and the GAO show that deep change and high performance in government are clearly achievable.
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