Improving the Performance of Government Employees: A Manager's Guide - Hardcover

Liff, Stewart

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814416225 ISBN 13: 9780814416228

Publisher: AMACOM, 2011

Synopsis

In light of an increasingly tumultuous political landscape, the success, efficiency, and performance of government employees and departments is more critical than ever before. With over thirty years of experience working for the federal government, author Stewart Liff shares firsthand knowledge about the key to improving a government team’s performance results: understanding how different management systems perform individually and interact with one another. Improving the Performance of Government Employees helps readers do this by examining the roles and challenges of structural and technical systems, information and decision-making processes, rewards systems, and human capital management to provide managers the necessary blueprint for substantial improvement within every facet of government work. You’ll learn how to deliver consistent messages to all employees, hold others accountable through clear expectations and measurable goals, and work with a strong leadership team to maintain, adjust, and improve all procedures.Including real-world government case studies demonstrating dramatic change, this must-have, inspirational guidebook teaches government leaders to optimize their team’s performance--and provide the best possible service to the public.

About this title

About the Author

STEWART LIFF began his career with the federal government in 1974. He is a winner of the President's Council on Management Improvement Award and the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Service. His books include Managing Government Employees (978-0-8144-0887-2).

From the Back Cover

With the economy in rough straits, government agencies are finally being held accountable for results, both by powerful legislation and by public demand and scrutiny. But whipping your department into shape won’t happen overnight, and you’ll need powerful tools and expert advice to start the transformation. Thankfully, Stewart Liff, the leading expert on government employment and human resources issues, has created this practical guide to show you how to find motivation where there was none; streamline ungainly processes; eliminate wastes of time, money, and effort; and achieve the kind of results usually reserved for cream-of-the-crop private-sector organizations.

The author shows how to analyze your agency or department’s functions across six interconnected systems that encompass people, processes, structures, technology, and more, and shares his renowned Performance Dashboard and Balanced Scorecard metrics for quantifying results, identifying opportunities, and driving sustained excellence—all without missing a minute of serving your clients and constituents.

From recruiting and deploying top talent to rewarding and recognizing high performers, from eliminating redundancies to handling performance challenges and problems, Improving the Performance of Government Employees will help you redefine and recast your organization with an eye toward proactive service and growth while making your department an energizing and positive place to work.

Praise for Stewart Liff’s Managing Government Employees:

“An extraordinarily credible endeavor.…a ‘must-read’ for those contemplating entering management.” — Graziadio Business Report

“Provides many great tactics, case studies, and stories that debunk common perceptions that government managers have of the government’s personnel system. . . . Required reading for all supervisors in government.” — GovLeaders.org

Praise for Stewart Liff’s The Complete Guide to Hiring and Firing Government Employees:

“Liff’s new book tosses aside the typical esoteric discourse on civil service reform and hunkers down into the weeds of current law to help managers figure out how to hire the best workers and get rid of the worst, now — not in some utopian, imaginary world of the future.” — Government Executive

From the Inside Flap

Getting the most out of employees in government offices is one of the legendary management challenges. With an emphasis, it seems, on protocols and processes rather than on results, government offices have often been regarded (often correctly) as bastions of mediocrity, havens for sub­standard performers, and places where rule number one was cover your. . .self.

Fortunately, there are strategies you can use to help recruit, train, retain, motivate, and reward excellent employees, along with holding them accountable for their department’s successes and failures.

Stewart Liff looks at government processes as being built around six major systems, separate entities with interdependent needs and purposes. From simple adjustments to major overhauls, no reimagining of a performance model should be undertaken without understanding the roles of:

• Organizational systems. How critical is your department’s organizational framework, and how does it dictate and shape everything the department does? How can you optimize it?

• Technical systems. What processes occur in your agency and who owns them? How do you indentify, quantify, and leverage their value? How do you give employees what they need without tearing everything down first?

• Structural systems. Where does your “local” organization fit within the larger government structure, and who should be doing what? What do you need to know about working with other agencies, contractors, and so forth?

• Decision-making and information systems. How do you know what to measure; where to acquire information and how to interpret it; how to use the Performance Dashboard and Balanced Scorecard; and how to present, share, and use the data?

• The people system. How can you attract and train the best people, create a dynamic appraisal system, manage individual and group performance, and even deal with poor performers?

• Rewards and recognition and renewal systems. How do you design and align powerful, results-focused plans that directly and consistently motivate and acknowledge superior performance? How do you redirect excellent outcomes toward continued innovation and creativity?

The author also provides numerous on-site examples of process and results improvement from a variety of government settings and discusses at length the different challenges (and many similarities) between performance issues at the local, regional, state, and federal government levels.

With increased scrutiny on performance, efficiency, transparency, and results, government managers and supervisors across the country need a resource to help them build the dynamic programs and concrete results their constituents demand. Stewart Liff has answered that call with Improving the Performance of Government Employees.

Stewart Liff is the author of Managing Government Employees and The Complete Guide to Hiring and Firing Government Employees. During a career of more than 32 years, he has held several senior government positions, including heading HR efforts at the Veterans Benefits Administration, where he served more than 13,000 personnel. Mr. Liff is CEO of Stewart Liff & Associates, Inc., in Santa Clarita, California.

Edition details

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814416225
• ISBN 13: 9780814416228
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240