Trust

It's easy to trust someone or something when the stakes are low. For example, that the coupon that Borders sent to your email is going to work at the store. If it doesn't work then I miss the opportunity for 10% off. A nuisance, but really low stakes. It usually works, and Borders builds up a stock of credibility with me as a consumer.

This is the background for the story of what happened to me yesterday. I left work a little late (15 minutes), and needed to pick up my kids all the way across town. I usually take Route 7 the whole way and get there in about 1.5 hours (I know don't get me started on that one). But I left late, it is the last week before Christmas and my route takes me past the biggest mall in the area. In short, it was a perfect storm for me picking my kiddos up late. So I've really been using the Google navigation service, Latitude, a lot lately. It is nice to just see how long it is likely to take me to get home. But on Monday when Latitude told me to take a little deviation from my regular route I trusted it which resulted in shaving 10 minutes off of my travel time. Not too bad. Cha-ching in the Google trust account.

Yesterday, I turned on Latitude as I was leaving work. It started me on my regular course, West on Route 7. But then a minute later it was telling me to make a U-turn and head West on Rt. 7. I was stopped at a red light so I looked ahead to see where it was taking me. I assumed it would drop me onto 395 West. The proposed route was to 395, but not West. It wanted me to go East, towards DC.

So here is the big moment. How much credibility has Google built up in my consumer account? Apparently enough for me to trust them and drive in the opposite direction that I thought was right. This is kind of funny, but the car ahead of me, and the car behind me did exactly the same thing I did at that moment. I could see the woman ahead of me had Latitude running on her phone on her dashboard. I assume that the car behind me was too because all three of us did the exact same thing at precisely the same time.

Instead of taking 395 West, I hopped on 395 East. Latitude wanted me to get exit at Glebe road. Google was right, Glebe road had no traffic on it, because the exit ramp was closed for some reason. There was a squad car at the top and bottom of the ramp and I couldn't take it. Thus when I went past it, I thought, "Uh oh, I'm probably in trouble now."

Latitude rerouted me immediately. My new route was only 3 minutes longer and directed me to the GW Parkway, to the outer loop, the toll road and eventually home, at which I arrived at the regular time I typically arrive.

I think it is easy to trust something when the stakes are low, but when they are high, picking your kids up on-time, that is when it is hard to trust something. I trusted Google this time and they didn't let me down. They built up even more credibility in my consumer account and I would be inclined to take other leaps of trust with them in the future.

This is why they give away things like Google Maps, Latitude, Blogger, GMail and many other things. So that you will trust them more. Sure it helps to drive traffic to their revenue generating services like search, YouTube, Android and Picasa. But more importantly, when they make a play for something like GoogleTV, people who trust the Goog will go for it. I don't know that I'm there yet, but they just got a big deposit in their trust account with me yesterday.

Performance Plans

First as a Division, the decision was made to standardize the Performance Plans. This is a good idea because, my feeling is that most people were working of of their old performance plans that have just gone unchanged over time. So each time a new person was hired some effort was poured in to create a performance plan that was reasonable for the position to be filled. The problem is that they weren't adjusted every year and that people in the same branch with identical positions likely have very different performance plans, especially if they were hired more than 2 years apart.

Thus the decision was made to standardize the performance plans within the division. This was such a good idea that the decision was made to actually standardize them for the entire office. This is reasonable because everyone who works in OIT will generally have the same basic elements, but they can be tailored to the actual position and grade.

Thus everyone has a Civil Rights element. Everyone also has a Leadership, Mission Support, Communications, Customer Service, and COR/COTR. My part was to help shape the COR/COTR element. For the standard I really spent some time focusing on the parts that everyone must do regardless of the situation. So, everyone must keep his or her certification current. Everyone must complete the financial disclosure, so that we can avoid organizational conflicts of interest. Everyone must keep a copy of his or her designation letter. Background Investigations are initiated for new contract personnel. Review invoices etc.

I also worked to make the standards objective. ACMIS is the system that we use to track required training and certifications. Most of the rest is paper or records that should be easily produced. The next part for me was to assemble the pieces for what "Exceeds" that standard. I wrote in aspects of the work like chairing technical evaluation panels, developing work statements, mentoring more junior acquisition personnel and debriefing unsuccessful bidders.

Anyway, I found this to be a very satisfying experience because for everyone in my office, here is one part of your performance in which it is completely objective, or at least as objective as anything can be.

Performance Evaluations Don't Need to be Stressful

I had a real slow-down on posting new and interesting messages up here because I was on a detail for 8 weeks. This was a great experience for me. My detail began the last week of fiscal year 10 and ran through the first seven weeks of FY 2011. I specifically asked for this time frame because I wanted to have a very specific experience. I wanted to lead the performance evaluations for the new branch we had started.

I know what you are thinking, "Who would ask for that type of assignment?" Me, that's who. The reason is quite simple, I manage people all the time. As a Program and Project Manager I I lead people to accomplish difficult objectives. However I don't have the actual authority to evaluate the performance of the people who support my programs and projects. I provide feedback to their manager and that feedback is mixed with other stuff to eventually generate the annual performance evaluation. I had often been a contributor to that evaluation but never the author of the evaluation for federal employees. Now, I can say I have.

There were 6 employees in the branch and I sought feedback from the people who were responsible for monitoring their performance over the course of the past year. I then synthesized that feedback and generated an evaluation rating. I then justified the rating for each person to the Division Director. Next, I scheduled the performance evaluation meeting with each person and shared the feedback and offered some ideas for ways to improve.

These are supposed to be difficult and stressful situations. I worked hard to take the stress out of it by making sure that everyone understood the process before we began. I think that is the key. People aren't stressed out by the performance review, people are stressed over not understanding the process. We in the federal sector don't make it easy. The process can be confusing. The different between Outstanding, Superior and Fully Successful can be confusing.

For me, I think the labels are confusing. Outstanding is higher than Superior. But look at the definition of Superior - something which is higher in a hierarchical structure of any kind. Maybe it is just me, but the method of the ratings is not intuitive and that can cause confusion which leads to stressful situations.

Anyway, I worked hard to make sure everyone knew and understood the process of the evaluation. Next time, I'll write about what I did to establish the performance plan for FY 11.

TechStat Update

Back in March I wrote about a new initiative from the CIO Council called TechStat. It was an interesting scenario because the project was clearly in trouble. It was behind schedule, over budget and still held a significant amount of risk. Flash forward 7 months and, I wouldn't say it is in the clear, but I think it is safe to say that the mood has changed.

I read this article from FCW this morning which touched on the Web-Based Supply Chain project under USDA. What they wrote is accurate. The initial plan for the project was to have a 1-time cut-over switching from the old mainframe system to the new web-based one. In order to make that happen though the data conversion aspects needed to go smoothly. They didn't, which put the project into a tough position. The business process automated by this system is a lengthy one, more than 2 years. What they chose to do was to let users close out last years and current orders with the old system but require the new orders to go into the new one. This allows the team to avoid the pain of the data conversion while realizing the value of the current investment.

I don't think WBSCM is going to be the darling of the administration, but I am pleasantly surprised by the turn of events. What is also surprising is that the project was able to make some recovery. My opinion is that when a project is under that much pressure and scrutiny it can't recover because nobody is able to make a decision; everyone is so worried about making sure that they aren't to blame that decisions that would actually help the project recover never get made. It is refreshing to see that someone is making the tough decisions that are likely to get the project to the finish line.

Let's Go to the Food Show

Yeah, it was one of those days, hard to beat. I had the opportunity to participate with the State of Maryland yesterday as they held a food show. "What is a food show?" you ask. A food show is where the Food Service Directors for school systems get together to consider new and different food items that are available to be served in the school systems.

When I say consider, I mean eat. So yes, I had some cafeteria food yesterday but it was nothing like what I ate when I was in school. I had food that was spicy, ethnic, and had tons of flavor. What I didn't have was a bunch of fat, added sugar and sodium. I did however have a lot of vitamins and fiber. So the food on the menu at the school is very different from the food of 20+ years ago.

I found it interesting to witness the process of getting some of these foods onto the lunch table. Convincing the Food Service Directors is only the first step. These food processors must also demonstrate that their foods are marketable and will be eaten by kids. Then, the Food Service Directors must consider price and figure out which food items in different classes offer the best value to the school system. It isn't a confusing process but it is a deliberate one, which is good.

Anyway, this was a great experience that provided me some visibility into the Food Distribution business in my Agency.

Hi, It's been a while

Sorry to have been quiet for so long. I participated in a detail opportunity and didn't offload any of my regular work. I was already quite busy managing 9 projects under the Special Nutrition Programs, and then add to that the acting chief of a new branch here, the Operations and Maintenance Branch. Trust me, I had a full plate. The interesting thing about this assignment was the fact that I was the acting chief during an interesting time.

I started the week before the end of the fiscal year (last week in September) and finished the week before Thanksgiving. So I was the chief for about 8 weeks. The part that made this interesting for me was that I had the opportunity to manage people during the most difficult time, annual performance reviews. I know, everyone always says how much they hate that process, and anyone who has been a manager probably complains about going through it. For me though, that was the exact experience that I asked for.

You have heard me harp on IDP's over and over again. I often say that IDP's are more than just training, they are a map to get you from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow. For me, I have the leading people, I have the communications, I need the management experience. I need to be able to answer the interview question, Have you performed annual performance reviews for government employees? Now I can answer "Yes" to that question and that helps me to stay on track, and will eventually get me onto the next stepping stone.

So I'll write more about the great experiences I had later, I just wanted to take a moment to say I'm back.