Last post of the year

This is my last blog post of the calendar year, unless something fantabulous comes up next week!

Special recognition goes to Brenda Moss and Dave Hall who are both officially retiring at the end of this month. We're pleased that both have agreed to continue working for us on a part time basis during their retirement.

I wish every staff member a Merry Christmas or Happy Holiday, whichever you celebrate. I look forward to an exciting 2010. Thanks for a great 2009!

What do we do in those leadership team meetings?

The IPS Leadership Team is composed of each of the agency directors, the managers in the central office (Ron Loewen, Judie Martin, Paul Bowman, and Susan Robertson)and the two assistant vice presidents. That's a total of 12 individuals.

We have regular communication throughout the year, but we meet formally four times per year. So, what do we do in these "secret" meetings? Well, it turns out they are not secret at all. The minutes from every meeting are posted on our Intranet site.

Here's the agenda from the last meeting. See something interest? Go check it out! Help make sure our meetings are not "secret" by learning what your leadership team is spending its time on.

Supervisor Survey Results: Final Blog

Thought I would share the highlights of the supervisor survey results. We're making progress, but still have room for improvements.





Check out the complete survey results page on the IPS Intranet.

Graphic of Strategic Plan

The Business Processes Strategic Planning Team did a great job of graphically displaying our strategic planning process. There is the UT plan, the IPS plan, each of the agency plans, several interagency programmatic teams and several Institute-wide internal process teams. You can review all the team status reports as well as the original strategic plans on the IPS Intranet site.


Thanks to the BP team! I thought I would share.

IPS Budget Update - Message sent 12/9

If you’ve been following the news, I’m sure you’ve heard a good bit lately about the status of the state and university budgets. I’m providing an update on the IPS budget as it relates to our three line items.

We had a budget cut this year in our state appropriation and we are anticipating a 3.4% cut in next year’s state appropriations. Our local appropriations have fluctuated with those of local governments. Our grants, contracts and fees also have seen significant decreases. We have been fortunate to receive ARRA funds in the form of “maintenance of efforts” that basically restored our state appropriation in the form of “one-time” funds. We also have received a number of ARRA state and federal grants through competitive bids.

What does all this mean? In spite of all our efforts, we have had to make a few lay-offs. We have lost five full-time employees over the last eighteen months (four in CIS and one in LEIC). These were all difficult, but necessary for us to keep our budget balanced. We also have held a number of positions open as they have become vacant. We have 192 full time positions and 169 of them are filled today. We have continued to fill critical positions and those funded by new or extended grants and contracts. In order to provide all the services that our customers expect, we need to fill all our positions. We simply cannot.

The IPS leadership team is working hard to make long-term budget projections. We will have ARRA funds to carry a number of positions and projects through June 2011. The economy is beginning to make a slow recovery and so will our local appropriations and fees. We are making every effort to balance our budgets without making additional lay-offs. It is difficult. Training resources and out of state travel have been significantly curtailed. Each agency management team is making the decisions that work best for their agency.

What does the future hold? We’re making our best guess on revenues and all possible funding alternatives. We’re reviewing all services and how we deliver them. We are delaying some purchases. We are continuing to focus on efficiency and effectiveness. We appreciate all the efforts of each staff member to help us through these difficult times. Special thanks to the directors and those responsible for budgeting for leaving no stone unturned. But most especially, thanks to those in the field with our customers every day. You provide the services that our customers need in these very difficult times. They are counting on you and we know we can count on you as well.

I will keep you updated as we move forward in our budget planning process. Let me know if you have additional questions.

Supervisor Survey Results: Feedback

Yes, we really read all the comments on the supervisors' survey and we take them seriously. Here's a sampling of what we heard this year.

Many positive:


"My supervisor is a breath of fresh air! He works closely with me and listens to my concerns as well as my suggestions and/or "hints" to keep him on track with our employees and board members. Makes my job enjoyable."

"Unlike most managers I've had, ******* is incredibly willing to be the "bad guy." She isn't afraid of listening to my concerns or working with me to address these concerns. I also find her incredibly fair when it comes to addressing concerns. She is neither afraid of telling me how I can change my behavior to better work processes/relations, nor of taking the responsibility as a manager to establish and enforce changes in departmental behavior/work flow that increase efficiency. I find ******* very happy to work with people at their own levels. Specifically, I am very motivated and responsible and don't need to be prompted to get my work done."

"Please do not disregard my ratings above, as is common in survey analysis when the highest scores are awarded, as this is a truthful analysis and evaluation. ***** deserves the highest of ratings, across the board. She is a dream supervisor. I truly appreciate her support."

"He has closed the gap between the staff and management in our organization. He is open and honest and has high expectations for us and himself. He is direct with suggestions and constructive criticism, but he also gives praise and support where it is needed."

"Very organized and clear. Has the greatest work ethic I've ever seen."

And, some not as positive:

"He has a poor work ethic."

"Very supportive and receptive, down to earth, and willing to help if asked. The only suggestions I have are that he needs to work on his organization and time management skills, so tasks aren't left to the last moment, often creating stressful situations for himself and his employees."

"Management at IPS is relatively ineffective and doesn't seem to have experience in team or confidence-building. This is not directly related to my boss, it's an observation in general. Communication needs to be improved on all levels."

"Unfortunately, his disposition is to micromanage which comes across as very disrespectful of people's talents and capabilities."

Continue to give us feedback. We read, we listen and we respond. No change happens over night, but is a continuous experience. I value your feedback.

Supervisor Survey Results

Each year every employee has the opportunity to evaluate his/her supervisor. So, what do we do with that information?

Hopefully you read the article in the last Exchange about our survey results. Overall, they are good. But, like all organizations, we have room for improvement.

Each agency director has had a one-on-one meeting to discuss his results and has been instructed to conduct similar meetings with each supervisor. Research tells us the number one indicator of employee satisfaction relates to the relationship with the direct supervisor. So, this is important.

What else do we do with the information? The HR Strategic Planning Team uses the data to help plan supervisor training courses for the year. And, each supervisor is expected to include additional professional development opportunities in his/her annual performance review.

So, yes, we collect information. Yes, we read it. And, yes, we use it. Thanks to everyone for participating. Keep sending suggestions!

What about MIS?

Would you throw out your MIS system if you could? Let me explain how I use it for the benefit of you and our customers.

Accountability is a buzz word in every work environment. How do we know we are achieving our mission? How can we show that we are giving the state and the university a good return on their investment in us?

We have struggled for more than a decade to determine how to best document what we do. We have settled on a variety of ways. First, we tell a lot of stories about your work. A good amount of the work we do cannot be reduced to numbers. For example, if you help a city with budget preparation or a county with a legal problem, we have not been able to determine the economic value of that assistance beyond how much it costs us to do it. So rather than reduce that type of work to numbers, we write anecdotal stories about your work and how it impacts the citizens we serve.

Second, we collect a lot of numbers! Your MIS data feed the IPS scorecard which feeds the UT scorecard. A system wide team is in the process of evaluating the scorecard data, but I don't anticipate it will change significantly. So, we do reduce a fair amount of the work we do to numbers. What was the economic impact of projects implemented? Were jobs created as a result? How many hours did participants spend in the classroom? Etc. Etc.

What else do we do with these data other than feed our scorecards? Every year each member of the board of trustees (who approves our budget and our salary plans) and the legislature (which allocates our appropriations) receives a personal statement of impact in the district he/she represents. We present the numbers and also a series of anecdotal stories. These are posted on our Internet site. Take a look at some samples if you've not seen them before.



We also use similar pieces in a variety of ways throughout the year to demonstrate the impact of the Institute for Public Service across the state. What you do matters. What you do is reported and what you do is appreciated by our stakeholders.

So, I'm not asking you to love your MIS systems. Maybe some of them can be improved and streamlined. But, I am asking you to feed them. The information is used in many, many ways and I want you to know that it is important.

Question Authority?

Yes, I really mean it. As I review the many comments received from the supervisors survey and the Baldrige Express survey, I see several mentions of "UT's bureaucracy", "IPS rules", "red tape", and "layers of approval."

There are some things we cannot change, so I don't spend a lot of energy on those. We are part of the University of Tennessee and part of the State of Tennessee. Therefore, we must comply with all state laws and university policies and procedures (although I have often challenged some of the policies and occasionally won an argument or two.) Let's accept those and move on to those things we can do something about.

We are in full control of the policies we set at IPS and at the agency level. We have too much bureaucracy in some areas. For example, someone noted in a comment that we have multiple approvals for travel reimbursements. Only ONE approval is required. The IPS central office approves NO travel reimbursements unless they require an exception to policy (and policy requires that the CBO approve exceptions), for example if an employee stayed at a hotel that costs more than the allowable rate. So, if there are too many layers of approval in your agency, that is in your agency's control to change.

Let's improve processes that are cumbersome and in our control. Let's understand those that are not in our control and learn to navigate them as efficiently as possible. We can be a more efficient and effective organization while serving our customers well.

Do I Know What You Do?

I often hear that senior leaders would be more effective if only we had walked in your shoes and knew what it was like to work in the field.

Those of you who have been around for a long time probably know this, but others might not be aware. Once upon a time I was a training consultant in middle Tennessee! At that time we had an agency called the Center for Government Training. I worked with both cities and counties in the entire middle Tennessee region conducting needs assessments, designing and delivering courses, tallying evaluations, entering MIS data, managing budgets and all the other things that go along with working in the field (similar to Gary Petree and Terri Kinloch's positions). I've held a variety of administrative positions as well including working in finance (the position that Thad Grace now holds), IT (yes, I pulled the original cables in CTAS when we installed the first network) and HR (Judie Martin's position). I know the university systems fairly well after 26 years of immersion. I have a great appreciation for all that goes on "in the field" and that's why when I speak on behalf of IPS staff, I think I can represent us all.

You might not know that Chuck Shoopman also started his career in CTAS. He worked on reapportionment (I won't mention which decade!) and then moved to the central office working on a variety of projects. He left IPS and went to TVA where he worked a number of years in the economic development division. He's well versed in city and county politics, not only in Tennessee, but across the TVA valley. He's been back at IPS about five years.

Ron Loewen was the first business manager in the first iteration of LEIC, then called SCOPE. He put the original processes in place to manage the grant and became the IPS chief business officer when the first IPS CBO retired after more than 30 years. Prior to coming to IPS, Ron worked in the audit division of UT. He knew about us before we knew about him!

Judie Martin also started her UT career in LEIC. She was a training consultant in the homeland security division and worked with law enforcement agencies across the country. Prior to her service at UT she had a full career with the Knoxville Police Department.


So, we are not so far removed from your work that we have forgotten where we came from. You may not see us as often as you want to (or maybe you do!) and you may not know what we are doing on a daily basis, but I assure you that all we do is on behalf of you, all our customers, the IPS mission, and the citizens of the State of Tennessee.