Supporting Managers from Public Institutions to Implement RO Systems

Speaker A Ruth was speaking, I believe, as a manager in the government at level five, six, seven, and I have a little short story about supporting a director general at four from a consulting role. It, and the short story is this the director general, finding problems in his agency, came to a strategic planning course where there was requisite organization. He says that's scientific, my doctors will like that, come and talk. We have problems. And putting the people side together with a structure. We started just with three groups, the chronic disease, the what do you call it, the epidemiology or the contagious diseases, and the laboratory, which is very different cultures. And we just had group meetings and looked at why they were having trouble communicating. In that we drew some structure diagrams, and this happened over a period of about three years. But to show where the leverage is here, as we looked at what people were doing, even though cancer is one of the leading causes of cost and death in Canada, the highest level full time person working on the cancer file was at level two, less than one year. Using our maps of depth charts and levels, we found that there were a number of these things that were totally misplaced, and there was a chance to raise them at least one level. Because the DG was at four, there had been directors at three and managers at two. So we made a bureau of cancer at three, and we separated it from some other serious chronic diseases. Almost immediately, with a more capable person released, the federal person serving on national committees of cancer planning was able to infuse better capability, some federal money, and it started taking off. That same person, because of capability in a reorganization, was later promoted to a level four position and retained the interest in cancer file. And you can see cancer planning and what's being done nationally in Canada directly related to that intervention. So I wanted to tell that short story of how a director general with a more limited number, several hundred people, actually could improve the organizational health and the cross functional relations between his bureaus. And look at the levels. Here's another thing. There were people it's in three or hundred four people. There were several people who had gotten away, they were somehow misfits, had gotten away with murder, meaning acting out, not doing their job, absenteeism anything, and had not been managed for ten to 15 years. And with the regulations the way they are, for any manager to take on in discipline with no personnel file that's up to date, basically would give up their ability to do any other work because it was so burdensome. And by the way, we mapped out the HR processes and what it took to hire and fire and do things, I went over and showed them to Ruth. And you had someone assigned to map it out federally. That was extraordinarily difficult. Here's what we did with the Calibration sessions. We pulled the director general and let's say eight reports, and we brought in a table using capability value, the work skills and knowledge, and assessed I've forgotten the exact numbers, but basically all the managers in a 400 person shop, I would say 40 to 50 managers, a fairly thorough discussion. The only people who could talk were people who knew their work directly. In 4 hours we had assessed and assessed capability. And just for interest, we had the two assigned HR people sitting there. When it was over, we asked them. They hadn't said a thing. What do you think they said? We were gassed. They didn't miss a single problem and they didn't overlook a single talent. And we asked them the question because we had identified these four bad actors. And I asked them a question does it make a difference that nine assembled managers have discussed and made this judgment and want to take personnel action versus one manager trying to take on? He said it'll go through like that. You'll have no problems with your hearings, your discipline or anything as long as you have this amassed. Now, I was astounded at how a four hour session now granted good planning and a conceptual framework, but Joe Losas was a very, very capable DG who went on to become Adm and then left the Federal Service. I think he was above level in capability even at four. I think he was more capable than that because he had the years of deputy ministers and many people and got funding into that area while other parts of health Canada were being cut during some very draconian times. So we were doing this restructuring while it was really tough during the 90s. So I guess that's a story. It may be a fishbowl at five and six, or certainly at seven. At four, we found no interference had supported the Adm, and some of the problems you mentioned didn't seem now it took about three or four years, but I would say that the reports there were that there were substantial gains from relatively modest efforts, and it was sustained. It was three or four years. They put money into it and it was quite a bit of training. There was interpersonal skills training. There was some Myers Briggs differences. But there were also one other thing we found in government. There's a lot of interagency coordination or coordinating with a lot of non governmental associations. And what we would do, and I think we did it when we worked together, is we looked at on the committees the level of people in your own unit and what level the people were that you were working with and to see how bad the mismatch was. Well, there were some federal provincial health committees that had been going absolutely nowhere for years. I'll give you one example. The supply and doctors and doctors and nurses in Canada and we did the depth charts of the people doing this and we found that there were people at level two trying to plan out 20 years in supply and projections. We said, if this is a crisis in Canada, it has to be addressed at four and three and it has to be staffed at that level. We got it changed. It was and all the committees just started working. So the time horizon concept I have one more story. It's about the match between this level two cancer person and informing policy. This is health candidate level six and political level should be six and seven in policy, if you're going to reduce mortality from cancer and morbidity. What do we know about the incubation of cancer? How long does it take? Isn't it 1520 and more years. Exercise and diet today are going to have impacts in 20 years since we know the population numbers. They're all alive now, right? In 20 years, if you know certain exercise and diet rates, you should be able to say something about cancer, right? Or smoking rates or things like that. I was a strategic planner, so cancer planning. I said, Give me every report you've written in the last ten years. I went home and they were stacked this high. Scientists and doctors had written these reports, right? All of them were rear view mirror statistical correlation studies. You're trying to support policy, people projecting where are your projections? Where are your population projections? Where are your rates? Where are your don weigel a very bright doctor. Oh, here you go. So I can a very bright doctor. The next thing he did was to go hire the statistician and no report went out after that. Without the projections and without the projections of morbidity, mortality and the various things that cause cancer. So I would say a Jax based analysis turned enlightened in such a short time, it gave extraordinary effect.