Residents, businesses, visitors, auditors, councils, and staff  all want your local government to showcase organizational excellence and be high performing. How do you consistently provide this sought after element and reap the benefits of your investment and your reputation?

In this two-day in-person certificate program, you will learn the 8 major levers contributing to organizational performance and their need to be aligned with—and reinforce—stakeholder needs and expectations.  We will use assessments, small group exercises and discussions, individual critical thinking, and detailed action planning to establish your current state and define your approach, and plan to achieve your desired state.

LOCATION

ICMA
Kirby Conference Center
777 North Capitol Street, NE
First Floor
Washington DC 20002

Learning Objectives

Knowledge

• Explain the framework for organizational excellence and how it can be used to guide your leadership philosophy.
• Describe the organizational culture you desire and how you will achieve it (leading change with communications, collaboration, trust, etc.).
• Define how external and internal customers (and other stakeholders) will benefit from your achieving organizational excellence.
• State the “driving forces” and “restraining forces” that affect your organization’s ability to achieve organizational excellence.
• Explain the “sustainment tools” that you will use to institutionalize key elements of the framework.

Skills

• Assess your organization’s current state or progress (pain that has been reduced/eliminated and opportunity gained that still exists) against the framework.
• Determine who will be in your coalition of advocates.
• Identify which jurisdictions you will benchmark, and how and what you will focus on learning.
• Practice the conversations you will have with your senior staff and others to share your vision and win their commitment to the journey.
• Plan how you will use measures and recognition/rewards to lead the change.
• Draw a rough “strategy map” to describe the linkage between the (capacity) “enablers” you’ll invest in and the desired results.
• Create the “shell of an action plan” that embodies all the assessment, learning, and thinking you’ve gained from this micro certification program.

 Confidence

• Describe the source and degree of your personal commitment and your willingness to lead this journey to organizational excellence. 
• Present our learning from the micro certification by simulating a presentation to the council or board of supervisors, illustrating the actions you’ll be taking, and what support and commitment you need from them.

Course Schedule

Wednesday,  November 15, 2023

• What is a high-performance organization and why does it matter?
  • Organizational pain that a high-performance organization helps minimize.
  • Benefits that can come from being a high-performance organization.
• Component parts and framework.
• Barriers and critical success factors.
• Vision and strategic direction.
• Alignment of budget, annual plans, metrics, and rewards to strategy.
• Employee commitment.
  • Workforce (at all levels) knowledge, skills, and confidence. 
     

Thursday, November 16, 2023

• Measurement and metrics.
• Effectively implementing and dealing with change.
• Process to becoming a high-performing organization.
  •     Identifying your organization/department/team’s pain or “opportunity gain” (Good to Great).
  •     Is it compelling enough?
• Define organizational excellence for your setting—behavioral and results-based outcomes.
• Force field analysis—analyze driving and restraining forces.
• Guided action planning—complete detailed template.
• Accountability/check in features.
• Practice presentations on diagnosis results/action plans.

Addresses ICMA Practices for Effective Local Government Management and Leadership: [6] Strategic Leadership [7] Strategic Planning, [13] Human Resources Management and Workforce Engagement

Presenter Bio: 

Jeffrey Parks is an executive and organizational coach who focuses on helping local governments achieve organizational excellence. He has presented ICMA University workshops and micro certificate programs at international and regional conferences, facilitated veteran transition cohorts, and acted as a panelist on a virtual coaching webinar. He has provided consulting and coaching services to leaders of northern Virginia local governments, including Prince William, Fairfax, and Arlington counties and the city of Alexandria. His workshops are based on his 8-piece puzzle framework that describes organizational excellence.  His classes are interactive, contextual, applied, and leverage the knowledge and experience of the participants. Parks had a 20-year career in the U.S. Coast Guard--finishing as the director of Training, Workforce Performance Improvement, and Leader Development--where he led the creation of the first-ever core values of the Coast Guard (formed in 1790). As a senior consultant for International Management and Development Group, he consulted with directors and managers at General Electric, General Motors, Chrysler, AlliedSignal, GTE, MCI, and Siemens. In 1998, Parks established Performance Breakthroughs, Inc. (PBI) to guide organizations, teams, and individuals to excellence. His passions and expertise are in strategic and systems thinking, leadership and management development, executive and career/life coaching, improving employee commitment, change management, teams, cross-departmental communications, and measurement and evaluation, which he integrates in the framework of organizational excellence. A graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, he holds a master’s degree in education, specializing in guidance and counseling. He has coached more than 3,000 people and defused nearly 30 suicides. He is 75% fluent in Spanish and is an Eagle Scout.

Questions: Contact Nedra James at njames@icma.org