This may become a trend as higher education costs and tuition increases and enrollment decreases. Cutting varsity sports may be an option administrators have to more often consider and may be an option trustees demand, while some alumni resist.
"EMU to cut 4 varsity sports at end of spring." Detroit News. 3.20.18
http://detne.ws/2GL1GbE
Some really excellent data/information here, compiled by the Center for Michigan's Bridge Magazine.
http://www.bridgemi.com/special-report/slideshow-government-facts
I thought it was just a matter of time before the in house general counsel would be called on to resign. One wonders what will be said of the MSU outside counsel and their role in this crisis.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Michigan-State-Trustee-Calls/242378
http://www.bridgemi.com/special-report/100-michigan-facts
Has been a long delayed process, but at least now they are moving ahead with discussion in the US Senate.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/01/26/senate-moves-forward-ambitious-schedule-higher-ed-act?utm_content=buffer788bc&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=IHEbuffer
AG Bill Scheutte has evidently said according to media reports that he thinks that the Boards of Trustees of University of Michigan, Wayne State and Michigan State University should not be elected but rather appointed by the Governor and subject to advice and consent of the Michigan Senate. Sounds like a good idea to me.
The other 10 public Michigan four year universities get their trustees by appointment by the Governor. This works better than have university trustees nominated by state political conventions every two years and then run statewide under partisan banners. At least with appointments their is some scrutiny by most governors and legislatures.
This would require a constitutional amendment in Michigan, which normally are very hard to get passed by voters. However, with all what is going on right now maybe voters would be more inclined to support this proposal this time.
The below proposal (published by Gongwer News Service) by a Michigan legislator is an interesting proposal and worth some debate, discussion and consideration. This would be a start toward the legislature paying a lot more to what decisions are made at public universities by board members.
Legislation set to be officially introduced next week would require the state's public universities and colleges to report legal fees to the Legislature.
Rep. Jim Runestad's (R-White Lake) upcoming bill would require of all costs incurred with any civil or criminal case, filed or anticipated, against the university or any of its officials, agents or employees, a statement said.
Those fees would include legal settlements, attorney fees, witness or other fees and court costs.
"Current events have shown the necessity of requiring information from universities on their expenditures pertaining to lawsuits," Mr. Runestad said. "Without legislative oversight universities have demonstrated they are emboldened to violate free speech rights of students as well as potentially abuse the public trust."
From Gongwer News Service, 1.29.18
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/01/29/trustees-face-pressure-resign-michigan-state-its-hard-force-out-boards?utm_content=buffer2616e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=IHEbuffer
Issues are not just with elected trustees at public universities. Many have written, including me, that we need more transparency about governance at public universities-more about what they do and don't do. Who measures their performance and effectiveness on governing issues is an important matter for higher education, governors and state legislatures to address. Be interesting for state legislature to ask every university board chair to come and present about the board's strategies on benchmarking of the board, public evaluation, transparency statements and how they plan and offer board training on their public fiduciary and policy roles at the university.
The Michigan House and the Senate require each year that each university president testify before each house's Higher Education Appropriation sub committee. Presidents generally do a very thorough and excellent job of keeping the legislators posted on their university and answer very detailed questions. In my forty plus years around the Michigan legislative /public policy process I do not recall the legislature asking board chairs to testify on a regular basis. With all that is going on with higher education funding and public concern on costs maybe it is time for the boards to testify before the legislature.
Before someone yells back at me about university constitution independence, I will remind them that the legislature has tuition restraint rules written into each year's appropriation bill. If you do not follow it you lose part or all of your state aid. So why not apply same process to the above. At least talk about it.
Congressional term limit proposals discussed in this article certainly has been the experience where there are state legislative term limits -- including Michigan. This article discuss five good policy arguments against federal term limits.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/01/18/five-reasons-to-oppose-congressional-term-limits/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=gs
Interesting discussion of federal higher education issues driving many state policy issues. Many higher education public policy issues in 2017 still unresolved this year.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Biggest-Problem-for-State/242247?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/12/26/11-leadership-books-to-read-in-2018/?utm_term=.ae047336c317
This article is very relevant to higher education boards. It is crucial to effective governing that these issues be covered as part of the boards governing obligations. These questions are a good "nudge" for higher education and non profit organizations to consider and apply.
The four questions to ask when serving on a nonprofit board
"Directors need to probe, nudge, and prod to make sure the organization achieves its full potential.
Sooner or later, you may follow in the footsteps of countless business leaders onto the board of one or more nonprofit organizations. Maybe it’s the board of a local institution you care about personally, such as a small-scale theater, public radio station, or your child’s school. It also could be a national or even global organization—an international development group, a major university, or the like.
Whatever the board, it’s an opportunity to make a difference, provided you’re prepared. Some of that opportunity stems from the growing potential of these organizations to generate social impact. Even as the cash-strapped public sector retrenches, nonprofits are poised to enjoy new sources of financial support: some $59 trillion will move from US households into other hands between 2007 and 2061, according to one estimate. Nonprofits also can leverage new sets of tools, including robust digital infrastructure.
The nature of the opportunity runs deeper, though. Our research, as well as that of others, shows that a great many nonprofit boards are underdelivering. A majority of respondents to a 2015 survey on nonprofit governance, conducted by researchers at Stanford University, said they did not believe that their fellow board members were very experienced or very engaged in their work. More than two-thirds of directors said their organization had faced one or more serious governance-related problems over the years—a finding reinforced by a survey we conducted with more than 3,000 stakeholders in the nonprofit sector, 56 percent of whom indicated that their organizations struggled with board governance.
If you know how to probe, nudge, and prod, you can help your board perform better. Doing so starts with courage. In our experience, nonprofit board members are often reluctant to contribute actively to discussions for fear that they will appear uninformed or cause an embarrassing ruckus. To be effective, you must overcome that fear. And then you must ask questions. Ask all your questions, even ones you fear might seem stupid, and keep asking them until you figure out what the smart questions are. Then demand answers to the smart questions. If you don’t get good answers to your smart questions, or if you don’t get support from your fellow board members when you ask those questions, then resign.
While many questions will be specific to your organization, there are four crucial ones that apply to all nonprofits. We’ll lay those out in this article, which builds on a model of strategic nonprofit leadership we’ve distilled our book, Engine of Impact: Essentials of Strategic Leadership in the Nonprofit Sector. As we show in the book, board effectiveness is a critical enabler of all the components that, collectively, are indispensable to the achievement of a nonprofit’s potential. Happily, it’s one that you can start helping with the moment you get on a board.
Question 1: Are we succumbing to mission creep?
Companies in the private sector have a built-in sense of focus: they exist to maximize shareholder value. Because nonprofits lack that clarity of purpose, they need a crystal-clear mission statement that can unite stakeholders with different—and often competing—goals and expectations. When a mission statement is clearly formulated, it guides decisions about which programs and projects to undertake, which to avoid, and which to exit.
In too many cases, though, nonprofits develop mission statements that are vague or too lofty. In fact, many board members do not know or fully understand their organization’s mission. When BoardSource asked nonprofit board members and CEOs to “grade your board’s performance in understanding your organization’s mission,” only 50 percent of respondents gave their board an A.
An unintended consequence of such fuzziness is mission creep, a debilitating virus that takes nonprofits far beyond their core competencies. It’s worth remembering that a fundamental axiom of strategy in the corporate sector is that more focused strategies outperform less focused ones. If a for-profit bakery decided to begin making not just bread and pastry but also tennis rackets, software, and pianos, people would raise an eyebrow. When that kind of expansion happens in the nonprofit sector, no one blinks. Often mission creep arises from a compelling funding opportunity. For example, a neighborhood after-school tutoring organization that decides to offer midnight basketball can invariably trace that decision to a top donor’s special enthusiasm for midnight basketball.
Helping an organization avoid such problems is one of the main duties of a nonprofit board. Too often, board members just accept that a nonprofit’s mission “is what it is.” Even in cases where an organization has a clear and well-focused mission statement, board members and senior staff should thoroughly review that statement every three to five years. In doing so, they will sharpen both their understanding of the mission and their commitment to maintaining it.
The board of Helen Keller International (HKI) periodically reviews its mission in this way as part of its strategic planning. According to its mission statement, HKI “saves and improves the sight and lives of the world’s most vulnerable by combating the causes and consequences of blindness, poor health and malnutrition.” (The interventions are linked; malnutrition is a leading cause of blindness.) President and CEO Kathy Spahn says the organization requires board members to visit programs in Africa and Asia at least once every three years, allowing them “to come back not only inspired and passionate about our mission, but also with a deep understanding of what is involved in executing on that mission.” That approach has paid off. When a devastating cyclone struck in Bangladesh, for example, the HKI board ensured that the organization limited its role to helping villagers reestablish home gardens and did not attempt to provide emergency food supplies. Emergency relief is not HKI’s mission or core competency.
Question 2: How is our ‘theory of change’ informing our strategy?
Board members who are used to robust strategy formulation in the private sector are often surprised by how nonprofit organizations struggle to translate their mission into a concrete plan for marshaling and deploying resources. In many cases, boards themselves are part of the problem. Only 20 percent of respondents in the BoardSource survey said that they would give an A to their board’s ability to adopt and follow a strategic plan.
One way to make the strategic conversation more concrete is to probe on a nonprofit’s “theory of change.” A theory of change is a rigorous description of exactly how an organization’s work—its portfolio of initiatives and interventions—will help achieve the given mission. Often discussed in the nonprofit world, but infrequently employed as a tool for ensuring strategic coherence, a theory of change is a step-by-step outline, ideally informed by empirical evidence, of how organizational activity will translate into impact for beneficiaries.
When reviewing any proposed activity, you should ask the executives and program officers of the nonprofit, “How does this activity align with a logical, achievable theory of change?” When you are clear on the answer to that question, you can do a better job of assessing that individual initiative. You are also better able to have a coherent conversation about big-picture strategic issues that may be rumbling beneath the surface, such as the degree to which your strategy incorporates a clear-eyed view of potential competitors and collaborators, or the sustainability of your revenue model. These are critical issues that a business leader naturally would ask about in a corporate setting but that can seem out of place unless they are integrated with a theory of change.
Landesa, an organization that has worked in more than 50 countries to obtain land rights for the rural poor, consciously divides its theory of change into five discrete steps, each of which is informed by empirical evidence. Here, for example, is how it articulates the final step: “A small group of focused professionals working collaboratively with governments and other stakeholders can help to change and implement laws and policies that provide opportunity to the world’s poorest women and men.” Landesa also developed a graphical picture of its theory of change that uses arrows depicting causality to delineate specific goals, activities, outcomes, and impact.
For Landesa, as for most organizations, the process of developing and obtaining stakeholder agreement on its theory of change has been as important as the end product. Tim Hanstad, former president and CEO of Landesa, who is now a special adviser to the organization, explains: “Some of our richest discussions as an organization—with management, staff, board members, and donors—have occurred during the process of developing . . . our theory of change. . . . We are forced to ask ourselves as a group, ‘What evidence do we have that our intervention will bring about the intended results?’” Landesa not only has a sound theory of change; it also uses that tool. “We have an internal process—called the Project Life Cycle process—that requires every new project concept and design to be justified by our theory of change,” Hanstad says.
Question 3: How are we evaluating our impact?
Corporate boards enjoy the benefit of a range of financial metrics, including a company’s share price, to help them evaluate their performance. Without them, nonprofit boards unsurprisingly tend to fall short in this area: in the 2015 BoardSource survey, for example, only 13 percent of respondents gave their board an A for monitoring organizational performance and impact, and 38 percent gave their board a C or worse.
If you are serious about helping your nonprofit achieve its mission, you need to insist on regular impact measurement, not as a pro forma obligation but as part of a dynamic feedback loop that helps drive organizational strategy. Far from being a mere box to tick, evaluation can drive a virtuous cycle in which an organization tests its theory of change and strategy and then improves its programs in response to what it learns.
In recent years, randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—studies that test an intervention against a counterfactual case in which it is not in effect—have emerged as a powerful way to demonstrate whether a nonprofit intervention actually works. Boards should encourage this approach. Pratham, an organization that works to improve learning outcomes among children in India, has embraced RCTs with the full support of its directors. Over a 12-year period, the organization completed 11 such evaluations. “The RCT process is expensive, but the value is enormous because it builds internal capacity,” said Madhav Chavan, Pratham’s founder. “After we started doing the RCTs, our entire organization started understanding data much better, and we acquired down the line a better understanding of how to think of impact.” Through its investment in this approach, Pratham has shown a definitive, causal link between its program and the impact on beneficiaries—and in turn this has helped unlock millions of dollars in funding.
Question 4: Do we have the right ‘fuel’ to drive our organization?
A nonprofit is more than its mission, strategy, and impact. It’s also a living, breathing organism that requires “fuel”—great people, an effective organization, sufficient funding, and the like—to operate. As a nonprofit board member, you need to check your organization’s “fuel gauges” on a regular basis.
This should start with a clear-eyed view of the board itself. Significant mismatches between a nonprofit’s mission and the composition of its board are common. An egregious example arose on the board of an international poverty-alleviation organization that, for more nearly a decade, consisted only of a handful of the founders’ childhood friends, all of whom were based in the United States and none of whom had any substantive experience or relevant professional expertise in international poverty alleviation. How could such a board operate as anything other than a rubber stamp for the decisions of the organization’s executives?
If you find yourself on a board like this, you have a duty to speak up, and to vote with your feet if you don’t see progress. You may be surprised at the receptiveness of your fellow directors, whose time is valuable and who may be harboring similar feelings but remaining quiet out of politeness or habit. As you work through these issues, heed the venerable principle of the three Ws: work, wisdom, and wealth. You and your fellow board members should ask, “Do we have members who offer their time, energy, and insight to committee work, fund-raising events, outreach to donors, and the like? Do we have members whose special talent or area of expertise will help us achieve our mission? And do we have members who can and will support the organization financially?” While this last topic may be uncomfortable, helping your organization to raise money—whether through direct giving, providing introductions to prospective donors, or continually examining your organization’s overall approach to fund-raising—is the only way to sustain its impact.
Keeping an eye on the fuel gauge also means regularly asking at board meetings, “Does our organization have the people needed to achieve our mission?” Board members have a special duty to insist on both paying highly effective executives appropriately, so they can be retained, and ensuring that underperforming employees move on. The latter is an area where nonprofits particularly struggle. In our Stanford survey, only about half of nonprofit executives, staff, and board members agreed with the assertion that underperforming employees “do not stay for long in my organization.” But as every manager in the for-profit sector knows, removing laggards, when done responsibly, not only improves organizational efficiency but sends a powerful signal about organizational values.
Serving on a nonprofit board in the years ahead represents an extraordinary opportunity for impact on society, and on the nonprofit itself. But if you want to be an effective strategic leader, you can’t settle for a regimen of reading board books and showing up for quarterly meetings. You must engage fully on your organization’s mission; seize opportunities to observe frontline work; and, at each board meeting, take every chance to confront the big, long-term issues by asking tough questions. The best quip that we ever heard on this subject conveys a vital truth: “I have no objection to a good discussion breaking out in the middle of a board meeting.”"
About the author(s)
William F. Meehan III is the Lafayette Partners Lecturer in Strategic Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a director emeritus of McKinsey & Company. Kim Starkey Jonker is president and CEO of King Philanthropies and a lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Meehan and Jonker are coauthors of Engine of Impact: Essentials of Strategic Leadership in the Nonprofit Sector (Stanford Business Books, November 2017).
This kind of information is important for us to have as we follow the NAFTA negotiations. A Mexican company creating thousands of jobs in the USA. This info from the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Institute:
"Everyone in the US knows Sara Lee. Few know it's owned by Bimbo, a Mexican company. Rassini is also creating thousands of jobs in the US & those communities don't know it's a Mexican company. We need to have these conversations in local news outlets to inform."
Dear Colleagues,
In recent weeks, there have been growing indications that the House Committee on Education and the Workforce is preparing to introduce and mark-up a comprehensive bill to reauthorize the Higher Education Act (HEA). Committee staff has been meeting with association representatives, including AASCU staff, to broadly discuss their framework and hear our concerns.
These meetings, while certainly welcome and much appreciated, have not been particularly fruitful in shaping a bill that improves on current law. As a reminder, as of 2015, the HEA no longer sunsets as it did over the decades since its inception, and its reauthorization is not legally necessary for programs authorized under current law to continue. Without the threat of program termination, a discretionary reauthorization like this one should be judged against the baseline of existing programs to see which version better delivers on the promise of access and opportunity for students and families. Based on what little is known to date, we unfortunately suspect that current law, with all of its shortcomings, may be significantly preferable to the coming House bill.
We have heard that the legislation will be introduced this Friday, December 1st, and that the Committee mark-up will take place on Thursday, December 7th. The speed with which the Committee apparently intends to modify and approve such a significant revision of the law—a mere six days from the unveiling to Committee approval—is itself a problem in that it prevents observers (and many Committee members) from understanding and analyzing the bill’s intended and unintended effects. We have been told that the exact timeline may change, but that the Committee does intend to mark-up a bill before the end of this calendar year.
The following is a “semi-official” summary of the bill’s possible provisions. The descriptions are intended to cast as positive a light on the changes the Committee may intend to make to current law, most of which won’t be fully known until the actual text of the legislation is released. Based on this very tentative summary, we are concerned that the bill could cut important benefits—SEOG, in-school student loan subsidies, caps and limitations for loan availability, redefining full-time eligibility for aid to 15 credits, and TRIO changes, to name a few. We are concerned that it will dilute what aid remains available by expanding eligibility of new providers (presumably coding boot camps and other short-term for-profit players), and eliminating critical distinctions between non-profit colleges and universities and for-profit companies. This latter change would not only diminish the value of legitimate academic credentials by comingling vastly different types of institutions, it would also potentially diminish available university funding under other titles or other federal laws by rendering for-profits eligible for programs for which they are currently ineligible. In addition, there are indications that some of the changes amorphously described as improvements may in fact introduce risk-sharing for institutions of higher education, significantly expand the federal government’s role in mandating academic policy, and alter accreditation in problematic ways.
We are sharing this information only to advise you that a House bill is imminent and may move quickly. It is important to note that the information we have is unconfirmed and that the official draft may look different from the current descriptions. In addition, little is known about changes to other titles of the HEA. We will share additional information with you as we learn more.
A Deal that Works for America’s Students
The Committee’s Higher Education Act reforms will Promote Innovation, Access, and Completion by:
The Committee’s Higher Education Act reforms will Simplify and Improve Student Aid by:
The Committee’s Higher Education Act reforms will Empower Students and Families to Make Informed Decisions by:
The Committee’s Higher Education Act reforms will Ensure Strong Accountability and a Limited Federal Role by:
All sectors of higher education needs to closely follow the US House Education and Workforce Committee as it gets presented the Republican members of the committee reauthorization bill.
The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) has issued the following update:
House GOP HEA Update
"The Republican Members of the U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee are likely to introduce, as early as tomorrow, their version of a Higher Education Act (HEA) reauthorization bill. A markup on this legislation could also come as early as next week. Inside Higher Ed reported summary information on the bill. Specific policy provisions that we expect to be included in this legislation are:
The Congressional committee action on the so called tax reform bills is causing lots of concern and resulting lobbying in the higher education community and in the state and local government tax community. Important to watch as this gets debated. The tough work now starts on committee and floor amendments over the coming weeks.
The following was written by the American Association of State Colleges and University on 11.30.17:
Senate GOP Tax Proposal
"On November 16, the Senate Finance Committee passed the Senate Republicans' version of tax cut legislation by a vote of 14—12 and released the bill's score. On Tuesday, the Senate Budget Committee reported out the tax bill, and it is currently being considered by the full Senate. As a reminder, the bill proposes to, among other things:
FAFSA and FSA Updates
The past two weeks have produced several newsworthy items with respect to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) Office of Federal Student Aid's (FSA) role in supporting student aid programs and servicing Federal student loans. First, FSA Chief Operating Officer (COO) Dr. Wayne Johnson announced a Next Generation Financial Services Environment blueprint for his organization. The blueprint is designed to modernize the technological and operational aspects of FSA that support Federal student aid programs. The blueprint calls for consolidating different ED-operated student aid websites, piloting the ability of students to access Pell and loan funds above tuition and fees through an ED provided financial structure (as opposed to existing debit card arrangements with colleges and universities) and improving Federal student loan servicing. As part of this announcement, ED also unveiled a new mobile FAFSA application that would be available in the spring.
Coupled with these Administration announcements, the Senate HELP Committee held a hearing on the need to simplify the FAFSA. As part of this hearing, HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) announced that he has been working on new legislation to simplify the FAFSA down to 15 to 25 questions. Such a proposal would be in contrast to earlier calls by Alexander to shrink the FAFSA down to 2 questions. In addition, Alexander and witnesses discussed the idea of creating an application for the Pell Grant, which would only be a few questions, separate from other types of aid."
What Governors are doing across America to change how their governments serve their citizens and do so in financially and operationally rational and effective manner is amazing and innovative. This Governor is trying many, many different innovations and creating new best practices for public administrators at the state and local level to review, evaluate and maybe implement. Again, public administration and public policy happens more frequently at the state and local levels--not at the federal level. This article is another example of the innovative and creative leadership at the state level by Governors and state public administrators. The media likes to cover whatever is the hot story of the day in Washington D.C., when they need to spend time also on what is happening at the state level to serve citizens and taxpayers. There are some great stories out there that Americans could learn from and and see positive, effective, efficient, creative governing--instead of partisan bickering and policy gridlock.
Once seen as a laggard in public administration, the state is now a leader.
BY JOHN BUNTIN | NOVEMBER 2017, Governing Magazine Online.
"Derek Young is no stranger to the C-suite. As he waits for a client in his 10th-floor corner office in downtown Nashville, he talks about his passion for culture change. One of the services he offers companies is as a motivational speaker and executive coach who charges “anywhere from one to six thousand dollars” a pop.
This morning, Young is meeting with Marcus Dodson, who manages IT operations for a large financial institution. When he arrives, Dodson updates Young on the project he is currently working on. He’s been trying to get everyone in his 250-person organization up to speed on Microsoft Excel. But the project isn’t going well. Dodson wasn’t as prepared as he had wanted to be, and as a result, the first round of reviews from participants let him know that. But then, Dodson worked to improve his presentation, and his subsequent reviews were dramatically better.
Having a coach help an executive work through challenges is common in corporate America. But Dodson doesn’t work in the private sector. He works for the state. He’s responsible for infrastructure and security at the Tennessee Department of Treasury. He’s receiving coaching through an innovative leadership development program known as LEAD Tennessee.
Why Every Mayor Should Consider Launching a Policy LabHow Tennessee's Taken the Politics Out of Renewable EnergyTennessee’s Free College Program Is Popular, But Will It Succeed?Unemployment Rate Reaches a Record Low in Tennessee
Seven years ago, Tennessee was seen as a laggard in the field of public administration. Today, it’s a leader. Gov. Bill Haslam has made improving the operations of the state government a major focus of his administration. LEAD Tennessee and other innovative programs, as well as an overall willingness to invest in training, have been attracting attention from other state governments.
In 2012, the Haslam administration took on civil service reform, overhauling the state’s antiquated hiring and promotions practices and replacing them with a pay-for-performance system. It also became the first state to appoint a so-called chief learning officer as part of a broader effort to offer new employees training opportunities to learn on the job. A year later, Haslam appointed an IBM executive, Greg Adams, to serve as the state’s first-ever chief operating officer. Adams has taken the governor’s desire to emphasize “customer-focused government” and translated it into a well-organized operating system, where heads of cabinet departments, known as commissioners, meet monthly to discuss operations and pursue opportunities for collaboration. Sub-cabinet working groups also meet regularly to address immediate problems, such as access to health care or capital for small businesses in rural areas. The state says it has eliminated more than half a billion dollars in recurring expenses as a result of its focus on better performance.
Tennessee offers a compelling example of what conservative government can deliver. With its AAA bond rating and well-funded public pension plans, low unemployment rate, rising educational achievement and an innovative program that offers two years of free community college, Republicans see Tennessee as a national model of good governance. “All our constitutionally elected officers are Republicans,” says state Sen. Jack Johnson, a co-author of the Haslam administration’s breakthrough civil service reform act. “We are a Republican-dominated state, and that plays a big role in why we are succeeding as a state.”
To be sure, not everyone is ready to applaud the Haslam administration’s reform efforts or credit it with big changes. Randy Stamps, who heads the Tennessee State Employees Association, sees a commitment to cost cutting and outsourcing that belies many of the claims made about investing in people. “They’ve trimmed down state government,” Stamps says. “When they’ve had trouble managing, their first reaction is not to try to manage it better, but to outsource it.”
Others note that it was Haslam’s predecessor, Democrat Phil Bredesen, who moved the state Medicaid program, TennCare, to managed care, initiated sweeping education reform and pushed more than 1,600 state employees to seek early retirement. Many of Haslam’s achievements have built on these earlier initiatives. However, Haslam’s legacy of improving the operations of state government is entirely his own. Those improvements, and the systems and the philosophy that undergird them, have made Tennessee a model for other states, says Leslie Scott, executive director of the National Association of State Personnel Executives. “Tennessee is the state that our other member states look to for innovation.”
In 2010, Haslam was elected governor of Tennessee. Like his predecessor, Haslam brought both business and political skills to the governor’s office. His previous job had been as mayor of Knoxville. Before that, he had been serving as president of the Pilot Corporation, which operates a chain of truck stops started by his father that is one of the largest private businesses in the country. (Haslam’s personal stake in the family business makes him one of the wealthiest elected officials in the country. Forbes currently pegs his personal net worth at $2.5 billion.)
As mayor of Knoxville, Haslam operated in a system with nonpartisan elections. “I could’ve told you who the Republicans and Democrats were, but our votes didn’t break down that way,” he says today. As governor, though, political affiliation matters. Haslam became the first Republican governor with Republican majorities -- supermajorities at that -- in both chambers since Reconstruction. That put him in a position to make big legislative changes if he could maintain the support of Republicans in the legislature. If he lost that support, his agenda would be at risk. In Tennessee, a simple majority of lawmakers can override a governor’s veto.
Gov. Bill Halsam has made improving the operations of the state government a major focus of his administration. (AP)
When he took over the reins of power, Haslam chose his moves carefully. His first focus was on education, in part because he believed that improving it was the best way to raise incomes. But he also saw there was momentum there. Under his predecessor, Tennessee had enacted a series of reforms that made it one of two states to receive Race to the Top funding for education reforms. Education would become the defining feature of Haslam’s two terms as governor. He brought in a former Teach for America executive to run the Department of Education. He also championed legislation that created a state school district with the power to take over failing schools. In 2014, the legislature passed Haslam’s Tennessee Promise Scholarship Act, which gave high school graduates access to two years of free community or technical college.
While education was the high-profile agenda, Haslam was also determined to improve the way state government worked. In moving from Knoxville to the state Capitol in Nashville, Haslam realized he faced big new management challenges. State government was a $37-billion-a-year enterprise that employed over 40,000 workers. It was, Haslam says, “like going from Double-A baseball to the major leagues. It’s the same game, but it was a lot bigger and faster.”
To get a handle on how state government was working, he had the commissioners of his 23 departments conduct top-to-bottom reviews, looking for issues that stood in the way of efficient operations. One of the people involved in the review was Rebecca Hunter, the state’s new human resources commissioner. At the end of the process, Hunter says, “every single cabinet member came back and said, ‘We have to do something about the antiquated employment practices if we’re going to move forward.’”
The Haslam administration’s response was the Tennessee Excellence, Accountability and Management Act. Passed in 2012, the TEAM Act swept away the old civil service system, in which seniority was the most important qualification for hiring and retention. Under TEAM, agencies were given the leeway to do their own hiring and more easily discipline or even terminate existing employees, and it changed the way the state evaluated its workforce. The TEAM Act also eliminated the old system of occasional across-the-board raises, replacing it with a pay-for-performance system whereby employees were rated on a scale from “unacceptable” to “outstanding.”
The TEAM Act was an important step in the Haslam administration’s push to restructure operations. And therein lay a problem for Haslam. As governor, he had so many responsibilities, such as dealing with legislation, recruiting companies to come to Tennessee and dealing with the federal government. “I spend a lot of time in Washington arguing about what’s going to happen to Medicaid,” says Haslam. “I don’t spend nearly as much time [on operations] as I would if I was a CEO running the business.”
So he looked for an operational solution. In the summer of 2013, he created the new position of state COO and hired Adams. Haslam then instructed his cabinet members to run operational issues past Adams rather than bringing them to him.
In the HR department, which was not centralized, Hunter followed a similar strategy. Instead of being the department that handled problems, she worked on a plan so that departments would call her before they made decisions about structural or personnel changes. The idea was to help them make sound decisions rather than call her for help “because it didn’t work as well as they had hoped it would.”
Adams also brought discipline to the state’s push for customer-focused government. One of the Haslam administration’s first initiatives had been to set up just such an office. The underlying idea was to get government to stop thinking like a monopoly and to start seeing residents as customers. “Nobody has to live in Tennessee,” Haslam says. “You can say, ‘I can move my business, I can move my family, to Kentucky or Georgia or Utah.’”
As part of its reform efforts, Tennessee appointed the first-ever state chief learning officer, Trish Holliday, as well as its first chief operating officer, Greg Adams. (Kristina Krug)
To emphasize the importance of the new focus, Adams began holding monthly customer-focused government cabinet meetings that brought commissioners together to discuss operational issues. Greg Gonzales, the state’s top bank regulator, says the cabinet meetings “have taken coordination to a whole new level.”
As a case in point, Gonzales cites the recent development of a comprehensive state disaster recovery plan. Initially, he says, the plan envisioned almost no role for his department. However, when he talked with the head of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, the two men realized that ensuring access to cash would be critical to a successful emergency response. The result was that last year Gonzales’ department created and ran the first disaster recovery exercise for financial institutions in the state’s history. This year, it expanded the exercise to consider a cyberattack and include federal partners and over 100 financial institutions throughout Tennessee. “That’s the kind of coordination and pulling departments together that I think has been pretty unique,” says Gonzales. “We’ve never done anything like this in state government -- at least in my 31 years.”
In his book Good to Great, management consultant Jim Collins writes about something he calls “the flywheel effect.” It’s a metaphor he uses to describe the tremendous power that exists in the continued improvement and delivery of results. It’s something Adams thinks is happening now in Tennessee. The governor sets his priorities. Departments then enumerate operational goals and strategic initiatives that are tracked by metrics. Take tourism. One operational goal of the Department of Tourist Development is to increase tourist revenue from $19 billion to $20 billion over the course of the year. The strategic initiative is to do it by attracting more European tourists. These goals and initiatives can then be written into individual employees’ performance plans. By tying pay to performance, the TEAM Act encourages employees to excel in meeting these goals.
How to help them excel? In the pre-TEAM Act days, says Chief Learning Officer Trish Holliday, “there was this idea that the organization was responsible for the employee’s learning.” Holliday rejects that perspective. “To me, the organization is not responsible for the employee’s learning,” she says. Her job as CLO is to give departments customized, research-based curricula for learning that can be utilized by those motivated to move ahead.
The numbers suggest that this approach is working. Since 2013, participation in leadership training and development among the state’s 7,500 managers has more than doubled, rising from 314 in 2013 to 715 in 2017. The cumulative result over this five-year period is that the state HR department has trained 2,476 leaders in state government. Not only is that a desirable outcome, says Hunter, the HR commissioner, but it also has implications for the state’s ability to recruit high-performing employees to the state workforce. According to Hunter, research shows that the benefit new workers value most is “training and development.”
Adams believes the state’s restructured management systems and energized philosophy have begun to deliver big results. One measure he points to is the $500 million in recurring costs that the state has identified and eliminated since 2012. Groups such as the Tennessee State Employees Union are skeptical of the claims. They note that the biggest savings come from two areas -- TennCare, and corrections and parole. The $164 million savings from TennCare reflect the state’s ability to wring savings from its managed care programs. It’s an impressive achievement but, given the size of the program, not an altogether surprising one.
The other big reduction in costs is more surprising. The state says it has identified $88 million in lower spending in corrections and parole since 2012. Some of those savings have come through creative deals, including privatization arrangements whereby county jails contract with private prison providers to house state prisoners. That troubles people like Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU of Tennessee. “At the end of the day, private prison corporations answer to their shareholders,” she says. “They are not interested in saving taxpayers money.”
Union officials and even some lawmakers have also criticized the state for its approach to outsourcing. Since 2015, the state has moved ahead with ambitious plans to outsource the management and operations of state office buildings to a Chicago-based company in which Haslam reportedly had an investment. (The governor moved his assets into a blind trust in 2011.) More recent efforts to expand that push to the state’s college and university campuses led to concerns from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers about its impact on the salaries and benefits of maintenance workers.
But even critics acknowledge that overall the new operating system has yielded at least some good results. Internal promotions, for example, have risen sharply from 2,500 in 2013-2014 to 3,900 in 2016-2017. Salaries have risen significantly, too, from an average of $39,577 in 2012 to $47,267 in 2017. “We appreciate those [pay raises],” says Stamps of the state employees association. Moreover, for the 700-plus managers who have taken advantage of the state’s leadership programs -- people such as Dodson from the state Treasury Department -- the new regime has been liberating. “I grew up in Southern Kentucky, a farm guy,” Dodson says. “I get into IT, something that I love, and now I have this passion of helping people to develop and get to their personal goals [through] education and training. I have the best of both worlds.”
That’s exactly the attitude that Haslam wants to hear. “At the end of the day,” he says, “the team with the best players wins.” "
CORRECTION: A previous version of this listed Tennessee's Department of Tourist Development as the Department of Economic Development.
This is an interesting new development in state government management--a director of state operations, an equal to the position int ehe private sector of Chief Operating Officer (COO). In California it is called Secretary of Government Operations--this position was first created in 2013. It has been functioning for four years. Considering that California is 8th largest economy in the world, innovations in that state are important to observe, benchmark and see if it can be a best practice to utilize in other states. In public administration we need to be better at tracking best practices in the public square--in the state and local levels of government especially. As the saying goes, real government innovations happens at this state and local levels--not at the federal level. Not always but usually. This innovation is worth watching.
"Marybel Batjer knows how to make big moves quickly. In just five weeks in 2013, she went from being vice president of Caesars Entertainment Corporation in Las Vegas to becoming California’s first-ever secretary of the Government Operations Agency (CalGovOps). As soon as she arrived, she was given a mandate by Gov. Jerry Brown to begin a prompt overhaul in how the nation’s largest state government operates. But Batjer, who at age 62 has advised two other governors and been a Pentagon insider, knows how to move deliberately as well -- she has run the professional equivalent of a marathon or two already in her career. “You have to set yourself in a pace or cadence where you’re not trying to boil the ocean,” she says. “You’re not trying to learn the depth of everything -- but you’ve got to get on top of everything quickly.”
In her four years heading up CalGovOps, she’s tackled California’s slow-moving bureaucracy head-on by shaking up the state’s hiring practices and project management. She is redesigning a personnel system she says has been “stuck in the last century,” with individual hires taking as much as a year and employees working in walled cubicles with outdated computers. That’s completely unappealing, she says, to a generation raised online. “People who are used to everything at the tip of their thumbs on their smartphones, they walk into a state office building and they’re taken back 30 years,” Batjer says.
One way Batjer has changed the hiring process is by revamping civil service exams. More than 200 of these are now online in California, and Batjer wants to simplify things even more by consolidating exams for similar jobs offered by different state departments. She’s pushing to eliminate tests altogether for some licensed professionals, such as lawyers and doctors. And once candidates are hired, she is making sure their work environment is more responsive to the expectations of a younger generation. She has modernized employee orientation and made leadership training mandatory for supervisors.
But perhaps the biggest change under Batjer has been in the state’s IT department, where projects have historically run over time and over budget. To combat that, CalGovOps worked with the tech advisory group Code for America to introduce a new system that launches projects in stages. Known as agile project management, the system requires departments to hit specific benchmarks prior to moving ahead, such as successfully testing a procedure before applying it statewide. It sounds obvious, but for California, it is something new. The idea, says Batjer, is to “fail fast,” so that departments can find out in a matter of weeks -- rather than years -- if an idea needs to be reworked. The new approach is being tested on the state’s 20-year-old child welfare case management system, in which the traditional long-term contracting model is being dumped in favor of multiple contracts with vendors on shorter deadlines. This change has the eyes of the tech world and has made California the “epicenter of digital government services,” according to management expert Aaron Pava.
Recently, Batjer was preparing for a speech about agile management and asked her team what stood out to them during the transition. Surprisingly, it wasn’t any particular substantive change. It was the revolution in how decisions were made. “‘You made a decision. You said “yes,” and you said “yes” fast,’” Batjer remembers them telling her. “It’s a reminder that we do really cool things in government -- we just have to give people the ability to go do it.” "
-- By Liz Farmer, Governing Magazine (online). 11.30.17
In the book "What College Trustees Need To Know", by George J. Matthews, Norman R. Smith and Bryan E. Carlson 2013, iUniverse Publisher, they write: "In the end, the success stories will be at those institutions where Presidents and their Boards believe in each other, and symbiotically work together with the genuine desire for each other's success." That is completely on point and accurate.
What is crucial to the symbiotic working relationship is the annual board self evaluation. This is not done at all institutions, however it is crucial to institution success and effective board governance.
Each year universities and colleges normally perform an evaluation of the president. Sometimes it is more comprehensive and sometimes it is more informal. The campus communities are always most attentive to what the board says in these presidential evaluations--and always debating what is not said in the evaluation. In any case the presidential evaluation is very effective and is being done and thought to be crucial to institutional success.
It is often said that everyone on a campus is evaluated by a supervisor or a constituency, except the board of trustees.
Every board should find an effective self evaluation tool and process. It should fit the culture of the institution and the board. The board should seek input from the president on content of the evaluation and about how to get campus input into the board self evaluation process.
The self evaluation needs to be about how the board works together as a group and how individual board members perform their duties and how they work with other board members.
The board self evaluation should include questions such as:
Do we effectively communicate and work with the president and her/his team? Are our communications methods with the president, the campus community and institutional constituents (alumni, donors, etc.) effective? Are we micromanaging? Do we focus on policy and not on administrative operations? Are we at cross purposeless at any time with our institutional administration and faculty? Are we asking challenging questions that are based on our understanding of our institutions culture, challenges and threats? What could we do better? What could we change? Are all the board members individually adding value to the board and the institutions and are we doing the same as a board, as a group. There a many, many more questions and concepts to add to each board self evaluation. Many will be based on the history, culture and challenges/threats facing the institution.
There should be a self evaluation process for each individual board member to complete based on their individual performance as a board members. Board members should evaluate their performance: Are you adding value to the board and the institution? Have you at any time been inappropriately "disruptive" and negative in performing your board duties? Have been effective at communicating with your fellow board members and with the President? Have you inappropriately attempted to micromanage by communicating with administrators, academics and athletic leadership, etc., without discussing your questions and issues with the board chair and the president prior to any contact with this type of leadership? Have you in addition to attending board meetings have you participated in alumni, athletic, academic, donor and community events and have you coordinated your participation thru the presidents office? Are you a financial donor to your institution? There are obviously lots and lots of the questions to ask and processes to evaluate for individual board members.
Some questions on the overall evaluation process are how do you get campus and campus constituency input into the process and the outcomes of the evaluation? Do individual board members see their colleagues self evaluations? Do they discuss them at a board meeting (open or closed)? Lots more here also to include and to discuss.
What is important is to begin the process of designing and implementing a board self evaluation tool and process. Board effectiveness and institutional success depends on you doing a board self evaluation. Start it now. We in higher education are facing tremendous challenges in the next several years. Many believe that we are losing the faith and support of federal and state policy makers, institutional donors and taxpayers. Board self evaluation can only help the institution as it works its way thru the next several challenging years.
This post is from a blog written by Lou Glazer, the head of the organization called Michigan's Future Inc..Lou Glazer and I have been colleagues over the years in state government.
In this blog Lou writes:
"And although a college education is the great equalizer in the American economy, too often the definition of what constitutes whether a student is “college material” is fraught with class considerations. According to Paul Tough , who has written extensively and brilliantly about student success, only one-quarter of college freshmen from the lower half of the economic scale will go on to finish a degree. That statistic for children of parents in the top economic quartile? Approximately 90 percent."
This blog is making the point that colleges and universities must get better, much better, at making sure that when they recruit a high school student to come to their institution that they are making a commitment to that student (and their families) that the institution will do everything to make sure the student graduates with a degree. This includes not only standard retention programs for academic performance but programs that help students adjust to their new life. This is especially true for first gen students--they need someone who they can talk to about issues that come on a campus that no one in their family can address because they never have been part of a campus community.
This a good read.