Leading Change Writing and Evaluation Strategies for the Senior Executive Service

Leading Change Writing and Evaluation Strategies for the Senior Executive Service Leading Change Writing and Evaluation Strategies for the Senior Executive Service Leading Change Writing and Evaluation Strategies for the Senior Executive Service Kathryn Troutman and The Resume Place are excited to be offering a new two-day SES Application Writing Workshop at the Federal Career Training Institute in Catonsville, MD. Click here to learn more about this class! The ability to Lead Change is a critical and exceptional executive competency. Leading Change is the first Executive Core Qualification (ECQ) that is required to write and prove in order to apply for a Senior Executive Service Application. The official definition also requires that the Leading Change examples include 6 leadership competencies: 1. Creativity and Innovation 2. External Awareness 3. Flexibility 4. Resilience 5. Strategic Thinking 6. Vision Leading Change Tips from former US Mint Director, Phillip Diehl A tip from Phillip Diehl for leading change in government agencies is that â€Å"employees have been through every change management slogan of the month and have witnessed management that have used those programs to mask other agendas. Their response to authentic change agents will range between skeptical to cynical. Theyve earned the right. â€Å"During change, workers need to know that their work has value to a customer whether internal or external. Phillip Diehl, former Director, US Mint, 1994-2000. In the classic Leading Change Fast Company article, Mint Condition, Anna Muoio wrote that â€Å"Philip Diehl knows how to make change deep-seated, far-reaching, this-feels-like-a-different-place kind of change. Coaching and Recognizing Leading Change Ideas from an Executive Coach Nicole Schultheis, Attorney, Senior Executive Services Consultant and Writer, and President of Maryland Writer’s Association talks about her experiences coaching executives in the Leading Change examples. â€Å"I write resumes for lots of lawyers and accountants, and I always ask them to tell me about the change they have been responsible for in their organizations. The phone usually goes silent at this point. ‘I don’t do change,’ they’ll say. ‘I only represent clients.’ Or ‘I’m just a policy wonk,’ or ‘I’m just an expert on [esoteric subject matter].’ No one has ever asked them to think about the changes they have catalyzed. So then I ask them to think about a time of great stress or crisis in their agency, and what role they were playing. One client remembered that, in the wake of the assassination attempt on President Reagan, he was able to negotiate the promotion and eventual passage of several changes to the federal criminal code. These were reforms that none of his predecessors had succeeded in wrangling out of Congress. In a few minutes, we realized that within his simple answer were all of the competencies that made up his ‘Leading Change’ ECQ. â€Å"A finance whiz told me that after September 11, she had to gear up for the deployment of large numbers of active duty military as well as reservists. Placing the pay information side by side, she noticed a disparity in certain accounting procedures between active duty and reservists. She leveraged that critical event into an opportunity to modernize an enormous payroll system, having vast reporting effects. No one had asked her to look at the long term effects of this reporting change, but there were plenty. Evaluating the Quality of Leading Change Achievements A successful executive accomplishment analysis technique, invented by David Letterman and used by Executive Coaches, is to develop your Top Ten List of Accomplishments. This is a list of your most proud leadership accomplishments in the last ten years. After you write your Top Ten, then map the accomplishments into the 5 ECQs: Leading Change, Leading People, Results Driven, Business Acumen, Building Coalitions. Each ECQ also encompasses 5 to 7 Leadership Competencies. For Leading Change the leadership competencies are creativity and innovation, external awareness, flexibility, resilience, strategic thinking and vision. If the example demonstrates the Leadership Competencies and truly expresses change, then we review the examples for executive level decision-making and performance. We review the accomplishment to determine if the executive experience is unusually strong as a candidate for Senior Executive Service Corps. UNUSUALLY STRONG All of Phillip Diehl’s US Mint Transformation accomplishments described in the Mint Condition article would demonstrate his ability to Lead Change. Phillip did demonstrate strategic thinking and vision, was creativity and innovative, demonstrated external awareness, was flexible, and demonstrated resilience in leading the massive changes at the US Mint – resulting in the US being named as Number 2 by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, next to Mercedes Benz. UNUSUALLY STRONG The Senior Finance Program Manager did lead change in modernizing the largest payroll system in the world for the US Military by improving accounting procedures, fairness of pay and improving reporting effects for the most complex military payroll following Sept. 11. She did demonstrate strategic thinking and vision to recognize the need for change immediately. She was resilient, persistent and flexible. She did demonstrate external awareness with the importance of solving this biggest payroll problem in history (probably). UNUSUALLY STRONG The Presidential Attorney did recognize the need for change in federal criminal code after the attempted assassination of President Reagan. He did demonstrate strategic thinking and vision by leading change in the federal criminal code, which took resilience, persistence, external awareness. This was innovative and creative in representing the reform that had never been presented or successfully accepted before Congress. Build Your Executive Leadership Case The government is changing in every department. Your ability to lead change, save money, and improve programs and services will be appreciated by all Americans. If you have unusually strong Leading Change achievements, document them in writing today. Measure them against the Leadership Competencies and build your case for a future Senior Executive Services position.