	U.S. Office of Personnel Management Message to the SENIOR EXECUTIVE SERVICE Winter 1998 Newsletter SES-98-02

NASA Lessons
in Leadership

Dear Colleagues:
I recently lost a dear friend. John Sturdivant was an inspiration to me and to all who knew him. He was the model of a fair-minded, dedicated, and visionary union leader. He will be missed by everyone who knew him and by everyone who cares about good government. It may seem unusual to have a management official paying heart-felt tribute to a labor leader, but that's the kind of admiration John inspired.

Growing Leaders:
The Seeds of
the New Competencies

SES Reinvention:
What's Happening

It also says something about our times. Management and union officials are learning that working alone simply doesn't work any more. This need to form new partnerships, search for agreement, and improve quality of service, is woven through new Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ's) for the Senior Executive Service (SES), which will be used Governmentwide, starting January 1, 1998.

In September, I announced new ECQ's for selecting Senior Executives. The "old" ECQ's were good, and many people assumed that they would serve us well for years to come. We realized, however, that some important skills were not emphasized enough. Things like customer service, the ability to build partnerships, and the need for innovation, creativity, and continual learning.

Rather than wait for our ECQ's to become dated, we took action. We changed their orientation from one of managing the workplace, functioning as if people and other resources are components to be controlled, to one that emphasizes leading--using the intelligence and spirit of people at all levels to move our Government forward.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Peter Senge says that we cannot command people to make profound systemic changes. Commanders generate compliance, not commitment. Only genuine commitment, he says, can generate the courage, imagination, patience, and perseverance needed in today's organizations. In other words, a leader's job is to light fires, not to put out fires.

The new ECQ's are designed to help us identify leaders who will successfully move Government forward. Read them. Use them to assess your own skills. Then make them a model for your own learning and growing.

Sincerely,
Janice R. Lachance
Director

Complex, competing demands. Fewer dollars. Higher customer expectations. Forging partnerships with and between former adversaries. Senior executives see dramatic changes in the job they are expected to do.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) wants to assure that the standards we use to select executives keep pace with the skills executives need to do today's work, as well as tomorrow's.

OPM Director Janice Lachance recently announced revised Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ's) for the Senior Executive Service (SES). "Our workplace is dynamic," she said. "We need executives who will drive change, not be driven by it."

The revised Executive Core Qualifications reflect this dynamism. They emphasize leadership more than managerial or technical skills.

"In the past, we did a good job of defining managerial skills, such as program development, human resources management, and budgeting," observes Curt Smith, Director of OPM's Office of Executive Resources. "These skills are important and still needed. But being a skilled manager doesn't necessarily make you a skilled leader. We need leaders who can assess the context of a situation, as well as the data. We need leaders of vision, with the ability to inspire and guide others to achieve that vision. We also need leaders who can grow other leaders throughout the organization. The new ECQ's capture these needs."

As the Government's leadership corps, all Senior Executives are required to have certain basic executive skills, called Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ's). No matter what their technical area of expertise, these executives must be able to lead people and organizations effectively.

The law requires that the executive qualifications of each new career SES appointee be certified by an independent Qualifications Review Board (QRB) based on criteria established by OPM. The QRB represents a judgement by the executive's peers that he or she is qualified to enter the executive corps. The ECQ's describe the leadership skills needed to succeed in the SES; they also reinforce the concept of an "SES corporate culture." This concept holds that the Government needs executives who can provide strategic leadership and whose commitment to public policy and administration transcends their commitment to a specific agency mission or an individual profession.

When the SES was created in 1979, OPM identified six Executive Activity Areas to select new executives Governmentwide (see box). In 1992, OPM conducted extensive research to identify the competencies needed to be an effective leader in the Federal Government. Over 10,000 Federal supervisors, managers, and executives responded to a Governmentwide survey, and their responses led OPM to identify 22 leadership competencies.

We invited a work group of SES members and personnel specialists to review the research results and advise us on how to incorporate them in the qualifications used to select new SES members. The work group recommended five Executive Core Qualifications. After consultation with Federal agencies, the ECQ's were adopted and required for all SES selections made after January 30, 1994.

The ECQ's were acclaimed as a significant improvement over the old Activity Areas. Over time, we noted that Qualifications Review Boards were turning down more cases citing weak evidence of "Strategic Vision." It prompted us to take a closer look at the ECQ's.

As we explored the ECQ's, executives reported needing new skills to meet changing demands. We asked OPM's Personnel Resources and Development Center (PRDC) to advise us on how to proceed. The request was well-timed, because the Center was in the midst of a long-term research program to identify the competencies that are needed for high performance leaders. The program included an updated literature review; a high performance indicators study with Federal representatives from 17 agencies; data from private sector competency models, including corporate models used by Fortune 100 companies; and focus group participation (see sidebar).

This comprehensive research validated the original competencies identified in 1991, and redefined most of them. In addition, five new competencies were identified:

Leadership competencies serve as the foundation for the assessment and development of current and future leaders who will drive an organization's overall performance.

Further discussions with Federal executives and others indicated that a new, more proactive approach to leadership was needed. That led to the development of the 1997 revised ECQ's.

Several agencies adopted the new qualifications immediately. The new ECQ's are required for all SES vacancies and Candidate Development Programs announced after December 31, 1997.

The Guide to SES Qualifications has been revised to reflect the new ECQ's and will be available January 1998. The Guide tells how to apply for an SES job and gives well-written examples of accomplishments demonstrating each ECQ.

We conduct free briefings for SES applicants on the SES application process and the new ECQ's, offering sessions at OPM on a regular basis. The workshops provide practical guidance on:

Sessions are designed for GS-14 and GS-15 level employees whose career goal is the SES. They are designed and presented by senior executives and our Office of Executive Resources staff. No registration is necessary -- interested participants may just show up. Briefings will be held in OPM's Conference Center, room 1350, at 1900 E Street NW, Washington, D.C. from 9:00 - 11:30 am on:

SES candidates may use the new ECQ's as a template to design Individual Development Plans. An individual can assess her or his strengths in each ECQ, then seek out new assignments, lateral job changes, or training to broaden and build new leadership skills.

For Federal agencies, the 27 competencies that make up the ECQ's also establish good criteria for succession planning for new leaders.

In keeping with their role in developing the competencies of managers and executives, the Federal Executive Institute (FEI) and Management Development Centers are already focusing on assessing and describing their courses against the revised core qualifications.

Executives who are already in the SES should use the new ECQ's to identify their own strengths and skills to develop, seeking out opportunities for continual learning and preparing to meet demands of today and tomorrow.

We will encourage agencies to incorporate the new ECQ's into executives' performance plans. The ECQ's will also be incorporated into recertification criteria, should there be another recertification cycle in 2000. The criteria used to evaluate nominees for the Presidential Rank Awards program will also be adapted to make sure that career executives chosen for this high honor emulate the characteristics reflected in the ECQ's.

OPM staff are available to provide more information and assistance regarding the new ECQ's.

On July 4th, a spacecraft hurtled into the Martian atmosphere. It was a direct trajectory from Earth to Mars, a journey of over 300 million miles, landing within a 10- or 20-mile circle of its destination.

It was the second largest media event in the history of this country (behind O.J. Simpson in the big chase). It captivated the American public, and generated 500 million hits on our Web site. It seemed like a single event, but it really wasn't. It was a signal that things had radically changed at NASA.

When I joined NASA in 1992, I questioned our priorities. I worried that we hadn't connected with our customer, the American people. Some wondered why I was concerned. The NASA budget had doubled from 1983 to 1992, a sure mark of success in Washington.

"The problem," I told them, "is that the American public is worried about the huge deficits. Unless we in Government show them that we can do our job with less money, we're not going to have a space program." We had brilliant people, but our system was designed for the Cold War, not the future direction of this country.

We had a series of town hall meetings in cities around the country and asked people what they wanted from their space program. The public was trying to understand why we have a space program. The shuttle was going up and down and they didn't know why.

When you ask the American public what they want, they actually tell you. After the town hall meetings, we knew what we needed to do. The NASA budget was going to come down. We were going to spend more money on science and technology, and we would have more spacecraft flying by the end of the decade than we had in the prior 20 years, while the operations budget was reduced.

The employees, good people, were very frustrated and angry with me. I had volunteered to the President that we could cut the NASA budget. When I took over NASA, we were projected to go from $14.3 billion to close to $30 billion by the end of this decade.

In fact, we have now cut our budget 36 percent and turned back $40 billion of our 5-year plan. Our productivity went up 40 percent. We eliminated over 20 percent of the jobs at NASA, and about 50,000 contractor jobs. It was not very popular for me to say, "I'm not here to protect jobs. My job is to protect the future of this country."

In 1992, our spacecraft took decades to build, they cost billions of dollars, and we launched only two spacecraft a year. We only had two planetary spacecraft on the books.

We had worked on the International Space Station for 8 years, spent $10 billion, and didn't build one piece of hardware. In 1992, NASA had a cost growth on average of 77 percent. It was known and accepted that even if there was an overrun and even if there was a delay in the launch, if the craft worked on orbit, everything was forgiven with the contractors. Just think about the contractors having $10 billion in sales awards and an average of 12 percent profits. How do you explain that to the American people?

At the turn of the century we will be flying 14 spacecraft a year with a budget that is 36 percent less. Not only did the growth stop, but it's actually coming down, not corrected for inflation.

We're starting more new programs than we ever had in the past 10 to 20 years. The first, most important program in this series was the Mars Pathfinder. Before the Pathfinder, spacecraft cost on average $600 million. They took 8.3 years on average to develop, and we were only flying two a year.

We needed to change that. We set a 15-year goal to cut the cost of spacecraft on average by a factor of over 10 and to get the cycle time down to about 18 months. I'm happy to say that, today, it takes less than 5 years and we've gone from $600 million to under $200 million a spacecraft. We are now launching eight a year.

We used some pretty unexpected techniques to bring Pathfinder's costs down. We gave up expensive retrorockets and their soft landing and instead, bounced onto the planet like a beach ball. It worked. Instead of completely custom-designed components, the rover contains a modem that you could buy at Radio Shack.

The next argument was, "You're going to destroy science. We need big science." My contention was that we were spending too much money on operations and not enough on technology. Modern technology becomes old technology if you have a program 8 years old. For example, in the 8 years we've been developing the Space Station, computers have gone from the 386 to the 486 to the Pentium and beyond. It's shameful to say that on the Space Station we have some 386 chips, because that program was cast in concrete. That's not the way to run a program.

Another problem at NASA was that we gave people responsibility but not accountability. Everything we did had tremendous oversight. When I was in private industry, we almost didn't want to take NASA contracts because NASA would put more people on oversight than people we would have on the contract. NASA people were terrified of the reaction from the Congress, the administration, and the press.

Putting too many people on oversight took away from the accountability of those doing the job. When a failure occurred, everyone stepped back and said, "It wasn't my fault. We documented it." That's unacceptable.

We decided the way you really get costs down is to have a very simple contract. We wanted to land on Mars. We wanted it to take no more than 3 years. "You've got a quarter of a billion dollars for the whole program," we told the contractor. "Don't come back for another nickel. If you're late or you overrun, we'll cancel the contract. Put the right amount of money in up front."

I also implemented contracts with our managers. In the past, NASA didn't define the program up front, and everyone was protected. If you didn't write it down and you didn't put your signature to it, you couldn't be held accountable.

We created the program commitment agreement. Before we could start a program, it had to be peer-reviewed in the agency, not by anyone outside. I wanted no outside experts. I'm tired of hired guns who have no commitments.

If one associate administrator wanted to start a program, the proposal had to be reviewed by his or her peers, which is the toughest review of all. The executive had to defend that proposal, certify that the program was ready to start, and be prepared to sign a performance contract.

That's exactly what we did with the Mars Pathfinder. "Land on Mars," I told the experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "Build a rover. Do some science. Have it done in 3 years. You are responsible for its success or failure."

It built esprit de corps. When I asked them, "What did you like best about this?" they said, "You trusted us." They knew that they had to perform and they had to deliver. If there was a failure, they were ready to accept it.

What a pleasant change. They revolutionized the way we do spacecraft designs. They revolutionized the way we procure things. They revolutionized the way we do science.

We are now taking the cycle time from 3 years down to a year and a half. Right now we have 15 planetary spacecraft under design and construction. It's a very different time. NASA is a very different place. We're designing spacecraft with balloons and aircraft that will fly in the atmospheres of other planets. We're designing drills that are robotic that could go down kilometers on Mars and search for aquifers. We're designing an aquabot that is a submarine that can go through two miles of ice on Europa, release itself and turn on a TV camera under that ice.

A lot of the people said, "You're asking us to take risks." We were afraid of taking risks before. When we launched one or two missions each year that cost billions of dollars, each mission became a holy cow and the whole agency rode on those missions. Now, we have multiple missions. Instead of using old technology, we're going to use new technology to impact the future, and failure will be tolerated.

Taking risk is very, very important. As we implement the Government Performance and Results Act, it's very important not to play it safe and set mediocre goals to assure success. You'll be able to get through hearings up on the Hill, but if you set goals that are too low, that are assured to be achieved, you'll be stealing from the American public.

You've got to set goals that have a 50 percent chance of success or failure. If you don't set tough goals, you don't grow, you don't learn, and you don't contribute. That's exactly what we're doing at NASA. We're taking some very tough goals. Our people are really beginning to understand it.

Clearly, if someone does something with malice aforethought, does something illegal and a failure occurs, they must be punished. But if someone goes out and takes on a job and pushes the boundaries, you cannot punish those people. You have to be prepared, when those failures occur, to walk in, shake their hands, and thank them for their courage. That makes an unbelievable difference and an unbelievable change.

Right now we have a situation on the Mir station. People are worried that we could have a loss of life.

The probability that the shuttle could have another major catastrophe is one part in 145. That is not terrific. The astronauts know that going into the shuttle. Years ago NASA led the American public to believe the probability was one part in a million. It is not.

We are on the space frontier, and the space frontier is dangerous. I'm proud that NASA is working with our Russian counterparts. I'm proud that we're dealing with difficult situations and showing how ingenious people can be. There is risk, and there could be major problems, but we're writing history.

If we send a human space flight mission to Mars, it will take about 3 years round-trip. If something goes wrong with the spacecraft, our astronauts cannot come back for help. If we don't get some experience in orbit where we have a controlled condition and a rescue craft to return to Earth, we're never going to learn.

We're making it as safe as humanly possible. We're taking tremendous precautions. We had a decompression. That's our biggest nightmare with the International Space Station. After the decompression of Mir resulting from collision with its supply vehicle, we are redesigning the International Space Station. It's going to be much safer because of the failure that occurred.

Some people say, "Don't send astronauts to Mars because it's too dangerous." That's crazy. We are an exploring society. We're going to press the boundaries on that Mir station. We are learning a lot. And we are gaining courage. The Russians have incredible courage and integrity in how they do things, and they're learning from us with some of our modern technology.

If you're running an organization and you go year after year after year without a failure, you are running a second-class organization that isn't setting goals that the American people want. When you have a failure, don't search for the guilty and punish them. Find out what went wrong and see how to fix it. That's when you learn, and that's what's happening on the Mir station.

Every so often you're going to be faced with these decisions, where you must put your total value system on the line. If you compromise your integrity because you want to maintain your SES position, you want to guarantee the next promotion up the SES chain, or you are afraid of being ridiculed -- if you are afraid of failure -- that's not the right way of going.

I'd like you to think about that because, in my mind, that is the essence of leadership.

Leadership has to be ready to not go along with the popular thing -- to convince the American public that we in government don't play it safe. We do the right thing. We don't irresponsibly sacrifice life or waste money, but we certainly push the boundaries and the impact our work has on the people of this country and the world for years to come.

I've worked with some of the largest corporations in America and around the world, and it is very, very different being an executive in government. It is more than a job. If you understand that you have a contract with the American people and you're there to serve all the American people, improve their lives, and give them hope, you get much more out of your experience as a government executive.

There's no amount of money that could reward me for the pleasure that I get by serving the American people. No amount of money could reward me for the joy I see in the people at NASA who work with an incredible intensity, longer hours, and tremendous output, because

They know that they're impacting the future of this country. Really relish this opportunity to serve the American people.

Developmental Experience ---
Reinvention Associate
The National Performance Review (NPR) is seeking Reinvention Associates to serve as Agency Representatives. NPR has created a vision of change and needs a corps of change-minded and talented executives to continue meeting Vice President Gore's challenge to make Government work better and cost less.

If you accept the challenge, you will be involved in an exciting, important organization that is committed to transforming the Government. You will learn the latest thinking on

organizational transformation and how best practices can be applied in your organization.
You will also improve your communications, meeting management, facilitation, and consulting skills -- talents that will benefit your home agency in its own attempts to reinvent. The benefits to your employer are significant because your agency's support is critical to your participation. Assignments are typically six months to a year long.

If you are interested, fax a resume to Joe Colantuoni at (202) 632-0390.

Dennis Center has been selected to lead the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) Western Management Development Center. OPM's Management Development Centers (MDC's) provide a unique residential, interagency environment for the systematic development of current and future leaders. The Western MDC is located in Aurora, CO, a short drive from downtown Denver.

Center has been a faculty member at the Western MDC since 1995. From 1976 to 1989, he served on the faculties of OPM's Executive Seminar Centers located in Wilmington, DE, Oak Ridge, TN, and Denver, CO. From 1990 to 1994, he was Coordinator for Academic Programs at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, VA.

Center has a BA in Asian Studies from Florida State University, and a MA in East Asian Studies and Chinese from Columbia University. He began his Federal career as an Air Force personnelist in Taiwan and Japan, and served on the faculty of the Air Force Personnel Development Center in Montgomery, AL, and as Personnel and Labor Relations Director for Defense Logistics Agency in Atlanta, GA, before joining OPM.

The Parable of the Sower tells of the varying results that occur with the same seeds. Bare ground, thorny ground and rocky ground all have their unique hazards and produce little. Only fertile ground and the right conditions of water, light, and temperature produce fruit that lasts when conditions get difficult.

While this is a story about life and the struggle of good and evil, it might as well be a story about growing leaders. In the last year, the Center for Human Resources Management, a part of the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), has had a practical research effort underwritten by 56 Federal and State agencies to examine the proper growing conditions -- how the best organizations grow leaders; how they manage succession, and develop leadership. From this research, it is evident that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has rightly started with good seed -- selecting the critical leader competencies for the future -- and they have gone about it in a wise manner.

But our findings would also show that whether the Government can actually grow a new crop of leaders -- those that demonstrably exhibit these new competencies -- will depend on what follows the sowing of good seed. These leaders are the folks who will lead the public service under difficult and changing conditions beyond the year 2000. What I find hopeful is that these competencies -- the Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ's) -- start at what I believe is the exact right place that models the best of breed in the private and public sectors. It couldn't have come at a better time.

What many, but not most, understand is that the public service is facing a time of profound change unlike anything it has seen since Woodrow Wilson. The extent and pace of this change is unlikely to abate anytime soon even though conventional thinking is always looking to the next administration to reverse course. Not this time.

The same forces that have been buffeting the private sector in the 90's are the ones that are now howling at the Federal Government door as well. To wit: the shift to knowledge organizations; the impact of technology and wide access to information; globalization of markets and mindsets; a drive for cost competitiveness and alternatives to service delivery; rising expectations from a public that shops at Nordstrom's and gets financial services from United Services Automobile Association (USAA); and a workplace that looks more and more like Charles Handy's inside-out doughnut with a shrinking core of permanent workers and a growing ring of contingent contractors, part-timers, and temporaries.

We have seen the leading edge of reinvention, taken the easy hits, and done our share of downsizing, but the heavy lifting remains. Enter the need for leadership employing a new set of competencies that look suspiciously like the ECQ's.

What our research showed is that the conditions for change facing the private and public sectors were virtually the same, and even the perceptions of need were almost identical. The results of our surveys of government managers and human resources leaders matched those of the private sector -- there is strong consensus that there are far too many managers and not enough leaders to meet the critical needs we face. Or in the words of Harvard's John Kotter who has studied these issues for over 25 years, "we are over-managed and under-led." What managers do best almost sounds like a public administration textbook: they plan, budget, organize, staff, control, and problem solve. They produce predictability, consistency, and incremental change.

Leaders, on the other hand, establish direction through a vision and strategies to reach the vision; they align people through words and deeds around that vision; and then they energize and inspire people to overcome the bureaucratic, political, and resources barriers to change by addressing their human needs that are so often overlooked. Leaders produce change to a dramatic and useful degree. In doing so, they help others navigate through the shoals of great change.

Managers aren't bad and leaders good. In the post World War I era, effective management began to set the U.S. apart and bureaucracy, consistency, and control were good terms. The old ECQ's reflected some of that flavor. But what Drucker calls a "time of great change" calls for a different type of person who has a greater bent toward leadership than management with solid doses of both. The new ECQ's catch that sense well. The shift from management to visionary leadership, the emphasis on customer service, the possession of business acumen, the priorities of leading change and leading people, and focusing on results, and building coalitions are not idle editorial nuances.

This comes out of the kind of effort we have seen the private sector devote to the so- called "soft side" of their organizations. Extensive benchmarking by OPM with the top tier organizations coupled with widespread consultation has produced the kind of leader competencies that stand up well in any comparison to General Electric, Ford, Hewlett Packard, or Levi-Strauss. In fact, the NAPA report makes those comparisons.

What is worth emphasizing about these is that competencies mean something different than might be apparent. How the better organizations look at these goes well beyond performance criteria or rubrics for job applications. Competencies are about behaviors, realized values, attitudes, mindsets, results, and skills. They go as much to potential as they do to what is current. In short, the best organizations go to great lengths to describe what leadership looks like when it is walking around the office, working with others, and representing the organization to customers and partners. That's not easy work. But if it ended there, it would wind up where the previous ECQ's may have ended -- the rubber didn't exactly meet the road.

The real benchmark organizations evidence at least eight "best practices" that can be clearly seen not just in practice but in producing leaders. The seeds of leader competencies are effectively planted and cultivated in what we would refer to as a leader-centered culture. Not surprisingly, when we surveyed senior HR officials and focus groups of executives and managers, the primary barrier to growing leaders was identified as the government culture. The other barriers were identified as low priority, lack of resources, inadequate rewards for risk, limited mobility, and few role models. What does a leader-centered culture look like where real "fruit" is produced?

Creating the conditions that foster "good fruit" and overcoming barriers to developing leaders is the urgent challenge we all face. Identifying and implementing the proven best practices for developing leaders, managing their succession to the front ranks, and honestly confronting the barriers we all know are there must, in my opinion, become our top "people" priority. Successful organizations that are meeting the challenge of change are doing this. The new ECQ's are precisely the right seeds. Senior executives must now focus on the conditions that are essential to growing leaders. This is a job for leaders: leaders that are willing to serve and to grow others as their legacy to public service.

Ray Blunt is a Senior Consultant with the Center for Human Resources Management at the National Academy of Public Administration, and a coach at the Council for Excellence in Government.

Qualifications Review Board Members
July - September 1997
We wish to thank the following Senior Executive Service members who served on Qualifications Review Boards during July, August, and September 1997.		Department of Labor John Depenbrock David Ducan John Getek Judith Kramer Tali Stepp	Department of State D. Steven Mathias Linda Taglialatela
Agency for International Development Roxann A. Vandusen John Wilkinson	Department of Commerce Hayden Boyd Steven O. Goldman James Herbert John Menes Henry Misico James White	National Endowment for the Humanities James Herbert	Department of Treasury Rochelle F. Granat Ronald A. Glaser
Arms Control & Disarmament Agency Michael Rosenthal	Environmental Protection Agency Jackie L. Shipley Frederick F. Stiehl Michael Walker Richard E. Sanderson	National Transportation Safety Board Ralph Johnson
Commodity Futures Trading Commission Susan C. Ervin David A. Reed	Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Janice K. Garrison	Nuclear Regulatory Commission Irene P. Little Robert C. Pierson Philip Ting Michael J. Weber
Department of Agriculture Robert W. Young	Department of Housing & Urban Development Robert Kenison Laurence Pearl David Williamson	Small Business Administration John Larry Wilson
Department of Air Force Robert D. Bauerlein Susan A. O'Neal	International Trade Commission Robert A. Rogowsky	Social Security Administration James Fornataro Randolph Gaines Stephen C. Goss Marsha R. Rydstrom

The U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination of Janice R. Lachance as Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Sunday, November 9, by unanimous consent.

President Clinton nominated Ms. Lachance in October to the 4-year term as OPM Director. She had been serving as Acting Director since James King's departure.

"I am grateful for the President's vote of confidence, and the Senate's swift action regarding my confirmation," Ms. Lachance said. "I look forward to working with my OPM colleagues and the Federal community as we provide human resource leadership which will create the high performance workforce of the future."

In August 1993, Ms. Lachance came to OPM as Director of Communications. She served as the agency's Director of Communications and Policy from 1994 to 1996. In 1996 she was named Chief of Staff at OPM and served in that position until she was confirmed as OPM Deputy Director in August 1997. Prior to joining OPM, Ms. Lachance served as the Director of Communications and Political Affairs for the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO. She is a graduate of Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, and received her law degree from Tulane University School of Law, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

SES Reinvention: What's Happening
by Joyce Edwards
U.S. Office of Personnel Management

The Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ's) were designed to shape the development and selection of future Senior Executives. They are the standard of what we, as a Government, believe is important in our leaders. OPM's Director Janice Lachance captured the essence of that standard when she announced the new ECQ's:

"Executives will be expected to do more than exhibit strategic vision, they must direct change. They must lead people, not just manage human resources. In addition to developing and evaluating programs, they must show results. While understanding that Government is not business, they must demonstrate acumen for the business of Government."

The ECQ's are more than a tool for helping agency Executive Resources Boards and interagency Qualifications Review Boards evaluate new career executives. They are more than a guide to assist Senior Executive Service (SES) candidates develop their Individual Development Plans. They articulate the qualities all SES members should possess. As such, they are as relevant to the management of current executives as they are to the development and selection of new ones. We should ask no less of current executives than we do of future ones.

Accordingly, OPM encourages agencies to incorporate the ECQ's into their performance appraisal plans. If recertification still exists in the year 2000, we will revise the recertification criteria to reflect the themes characterized by the Executive Core Qualifications. We also plan to use the ECQ themes to revise the criteria used to evaluate Presidential Rank Award (PRA) nominations. The revised PRA criteria will be used to evaluate nominations for 1999 Presidential Rank Awards, and we will share more specifics on this in future newsletters. If you're interested in participating in a work group that will be looking at the PRA criteria, please contact me at (202) 606-1610 or email kjedward@opm.gov

After January 1, 1998, all SES vacancy announcements incorporated the vision of the SES reflected in the new Executive Core Qualifications. At the same time, OPM is implementing new guidelines to strengthen the Qualifications Review Board process, and will continue to encourage agencies to promote the importance of executive qualifications in their internal merit staffing processes. Giving the American people the service they deserve requires exceptional executives -- executives who can lead change in order to produce results; executives who are committed to public service. The new Executive Core Qualifications will be a valuable tool in developing, selecting, and managing a corps of such exceptional executives.

New Qualifications for SES Members

New Director for OPM Training Center