Wednesday, July 28: Day 4

Managing for Results III
   Performance Management in D.C.

Instructor: Steve Kelman

Key Take Away: 

• Most Common Performance Measure.  Profit/loss.
• Reference website:  www.hks.harvard.edu/visions/performance_management/index.htm

Leadership and Crisis IV

   Mt. Everest

Instructor: Dutch Leonard

Key Take Aways: 

• Errors people typically make under stress. (Called cognitive bias). 1. Give too much weigh to your own experiences. 2. Think we have more experience than we do. 3. Overconfident in your own ability. 4. Failure to notice "dis confirming evidence." i.e. you do not notice clues that are around you. 5. You become more committed to your mindset, the current strategy that you are working on or belief you have. 6. Your personal goals/image becomes part of the objective. These principles were demonstrated in two case studies -- Three Mile Island and Climbing Mount Everest. If you are involved in a stressful situation, you need to find a way to ask yourself are you exhibiting these behaviors....especially...am I do committed to the current mindset. In 3 Mile Island--they were so convinced that the error lights were wrong, they did not give the lights and the feedback they were getting the significance they should have.

Organizational Design I
   Forest Service

Instructor: Steve Kelman

Key Take Away:

• Why do we have rules/regulations, etc. 4 reasons: 1) Knowledge development and dissemination. 2) Control. 3) Coordination. 4) Motivation.

Tuesday, July 27: Day 3

Leadership and Crisis III
  Three Mile Island

Leadership and Crisis IV
  Three Mile Island

Instructor:  Dutch Leonard

Key Take Aways:

• Dealing with the Press.  The three rules:  1.  Say what you know and the basis of the knowledge.  For example, BP just informed us that 1 thousand gallons of are being leaked in the Gulf of Mexico.  Never speculate...80% of the first information you get on an incident or problem is wrong.    The press will try and get you to talk.  Don't.  State only what you know.  2.  Say what you are doing.  3.  Say what other should do (both the public and other agencies). 
• Spectrum on Events:  Normal Operations, Minor Errors, Routine Emergency, Crisis.  Routine Emergency is something like a bomb threat, house file, etc.  They are events that do happen regularly.  Routine Emergency typically can be handled with a set of checklist.  For something to be a crisis, it must be novel, very large scale, high stake, complex, and unprecedented.  When you are in a crisis mode, you need to create a new approach, innovate and improvise.  This can also be thought of as "Learn going forward." 
• Disaster Recovery.  There are 5 areas in your  portfolio that you can spend your time. 
• Pre-Event
• Advance Mitigations.
• Preparation of Response
• Preparation of Recovery
• Event
• Response
• Post-Event
• Recovery

To mature our efforts... spend your time in the pre-event activities.  Tip:  Spend time thinking deeply about advanced mitigation that could really help.  For example, Ventura County made building code changes that reduce fire risk. 

• Disaster Recovery Tips. 
• How to get money for Disaster Recovery.  Come up with proposals for work that needs to be done.  Wait until there is a disaster at your location or in the media.  Present your request as quickly after the event as possible. 
• 3 reasons that most people don't spend enough time/energy on Disaster Recovery.  1)  The event is in the future and may never happen.  2) Not something that needs to be dealt with now.  Can be delayed.  3)  It is a really horrible thing and people just don't want to think about it. 

Awesome Event.  Brian Meenan (2 star General) one of the students was in the FAA headquarters on 911.  When the decision to shut down the airspace it was the first time that had ever been done in US history. There was not a checklist of what to do.  But they were able to use other already established checklists with slight modifications  (such as order for planes to start flying in case of a Russian Attack).  It was very interesting.  


Managing for Results II
  COMPSTAT Assertive Policing, NYC

Instructor:  Steve Kelman

No take aways.

Monday, July 26: Day 2

Group Photo

68 Students...World Wide Participation

Asia:  Brunei, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Thailand

Europe:  Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland

Euro Asia:  Kazakhstan, Cyprus

Africa:  Nigeria

Australia

Americas:  USA, Barbados

Middle East:  United Arab Emirates

Varied Backgrounds

Irish Senator...Mark Daly

Mayor of Cities--China and India

6 Generals (one of the Generals was a former Thunderbird Pilot) and 1 Admiral

4 CIOs

2 CPAs

2 Legislative Staffers

NASA Manager

EU Staff

CIA, FBI

Department of Defense Staff

Leadership and Crisis I
  Shackleton in Antarctica

Leadership and Crisis II
  Shackleton in Antarctica

Instructor:  Dutch Leonard.  Awesome!

Very short summary of case study:  Ernest Shackleton was a British Explorer who sailed to the South Pole and wanted to be the first man to trek across the South Pole.  Disaster struck his 1914 expedition when its ship, Endurance, was trapped in pack ice and slowly crushed, before the ship could be landed. The ship crew survived 16 months living on an iceberg and a small island.  His leadership during this period of isolation was excellent and many lessons of leadership which can be learned.

Take aways:

• Be very clear on your mission/vision.  After his ship sunk, his mission was then to get home safely.  Great quote, "The most common form of human stupidity is forgetting what we are trying to accomplish."  Friedrich Nietzsche (German philosopher and classical philologist.)  Tip:  When meetings get off track, great question to ask is "what exactly are we trying to accomplish?"  For example, how is this helping kids be better educated. 
• Process for evaluating next step is key in crisis.  The following is the process used (generally).  0.  Establish values/goals/priorities.  1.  Notice Changing circumstance  2.  Accept Change.  3.  Design new approach.  4A.  Execute new approach.  4B.  Abandon the old approach.  (AKA you need to relinquish the hold the past has on you).  5.  Evaluate/access.  Repeat.  This process is known by many names:
• Strategic Planning Process.
• OODA.  Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.  John Boyd, Military Strategist.
• Incident Action Planning Process (IAPP)
• Best decisions evaluate multiple alternatives.  Human nature will want us to identify a way to do something and "go for it."  Be willing to take tame to evaluate three solutions and you will come up with much better decision. 

Performance Measurement for Results
  ATT Universal

Instructor:  Steve Kelman
Note, he used overhead projector & slides!  I was and still am shocked. Is this 1995?

Take aways:

• Australia and New Zealand got started with Performance Measures early.  They are a good place to look for benchmarks. 
• 4 Key Ways of Using Performance Measures:
• Performance Improvement (Learning, Feedback, Diagnosis)
• Motivation/Urgency
• Focus/Accountability
• Allocation of Resources

Sunday, July 25: Registration; Day 1

We checked into our Grad Student Apartments between 2-4 today.  These are apartments not dorm rooms.  A lot more room the the dorm room I had at Cal Poly.  My roommate is Cecile Humphrey who is from the Cabinet in Barbados.  She is very nice and I feel very lucky. 

Roger Porter kicked off our Orientation Session.  He encouraged us to capture 3 ideas from each session.  I will try and share these key ideas in the blog over the 3 week session.  The session is 68 people--45 from the US and 13 outside the US.  My 3 take aways from his session were:

• Just like at work--all of you have a work ethic.  At your time at Harvard, have a learning ethic!
• As we do case studies,  look for what was positive in the experience and what was negative.
• Roger worked in the Reagan White House.  His observation of Reagan.  He was the most comfortable man "in his own skin" of anyone he has every met!

A typical day at "school" will be:

• 7 am Breakfast
• 8 am Study Group
• 9 am Lesson 1
• 11 am Lesson 2
• 12:30 pm Lunch
• 2:00 Lesson 3
• 3:30 Reading Time
• 6:00 Dinner
• 7:30 "Free Time"  -- AKA finish up your reading time!

Harvard Senior Leaders in Government

July 25 - August 13, 2010 I will be attending Harvard's Senior Leadership in Government Course.  I have created this blog to share that experience with others.  If interested, check back to hear about what I am doing and learning!