An increasing number of public-sector organizations – including city, county and state governments – are driving to create high-performance cultures. That’s the word from Caroline Fisher, founder and president of the Vail, Colorado-based Fisher Consulting Group.

Fisher, a member of the Denison Consulting Network, specializes in organizational effectiveness; group alignment; organizational direction setting; and corporate culture development.

“In the past few years, we have seen a strong trend emerging in the public sector – a recognition that efficient, business-like performance is absolutely essential, and that organizational culture makes a huge difference,” she said.

Why the new focus on organizational culture? Here are some key factors contributing to the trend, according to Fisher:

In many areas, tax revenues have not grown, or even have decreased. Public entities face significant pressure to do more with less.

Increasingly, public-sector organizations are competing with businesses for outstanding talent. There is an increasing awareness that having a strong organizational culture is a powerful tool for recruiting, retaining, and developing talent.

Consumers no longer tolerate mediocre performance, whether they’re dealing with a business or a city government. Increasingly, consumers of public services understand that they have a choice. For example – if necessary – they can relocate.

“Baby boomers” are moving into positions of higher authority in public-sector organizations. They’re less likely than their predecessors to accept the status quo, and more likely to drive for change.

In her consulting work, Fisher’s public-sector clients have included Eagle County, Colorado; the State of Michigan; the Town of Vail, Colorado; the City of Jackson, Wyoming; the State of Colorado; the State of Oklahoma; the Economic Development Council, Eagle, Colorado; and Aurora (Colorado) Public Schools.

A group of experienced business consultants and coaches is helping organizations worldwide experience the benefits of the tools and services provided by Denison Consulting. Members of the Denison Consulting Network are strong advocates for measuring and transforming organizational culture. To review profiles of these improvement advocates, click here.

On the advocacy front - Brian Tolle, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based consultant and Internet blogger - recently advocated for the use of Denison tools in a high-profile acquisition. In his July 27, 2007 blog, Tolle wrote about the cultural-integration challenges that were faced in the merger of Proctor & Gamble and Gillette. His view is that the combination of the two firms would have benefited from the use of the Denison Organizational Culture Survey.

Tolle is a leadership development consultant and founder of The Tolle Group. In his blog, he wrote:

"I don't know of a better tool and process to use than the Denison Organizational Survey. I recently attended a Denison workshop to learn more…and I came away very impressed…by the way companies, in a variety of situations, could benefit from Denison's research and surveys…I particularly like the comprehensive nature of this cultural model…and that Denison has statistically proven its link to bottom-line business performance."

Read his blog “Next Time Call Me”.

Denison researchers are conducting a longitudinal study to investigate the developmental changes over time among leaders at the Defense Logistics Agency. The study includes over 600 leaders who took the Denison Leadership Development Survey (DLDS) at two points in time from 2005 to 2007. The analysis compares the differences over time that occurred in a group of new supervisors who completed a two-year supervisor certification program including coaching to interpret results, goal-setting and the development of action plans with the differences over time that occurred in a group of upper-level supervisors who did not participate in the certification program.

Last year, Denison Consulting ran a DOCS project for the Toledo Zoo in partnership with a doctoral seminar on Motivation and Morale led by Dr. Jennifer Gillespie at Bowling Green State University. The course took on a “service-learning” flavor as the students, with Denison’s support, acted as consultants-in-training to the Zoo. One of the students in the seminar, Kristine Hoover (who happens to be an Instructor for the Department of Management at BGSU), wrote a case study and instructional module about the experience. Her write-up was accepted for the 2007 North American Case Research Association. The study is also scheduled to be published in the Case Research Journal. Visit Kristine’s presentation for more details.

At SIOP’s Leading Edge Consortium this October, Denison Consulting will present some exciting research co-authored by Dr. Dan Denison and Dr. Lindsey Kotrba that explores the link between organizational culture and innovation. The presentation will highlight the theoretical link between culture and innovation and will present results from a new study that utilized two samples to link the Denison model of organizational culture to two different indicators of an organizations ability to innovate. In brief, the externally focused culture traits were shown to be particularly important predictors of outcome-oriented indicators of innovation. Practical implications and real world examples will also be highlighted. The focus of this year’s consortium is on enabling innovation in organizations and features an impressive line-up of distinguished speakers. We are happy to be a part of it and hope to see you there!

“Just because you get on the scale doesn't mean you will lose weight."

If you talk about organizational improvement with Bill Neale, a founding partner of Denison Consulting, this is a line you will likely hear him speak. Neale’s fundamental message about both personal and organizational change is that measuring a concern or problem is only one part of the improvement process. You need an action plan, and you have to implement it, too.

With this theme in mind, Denison Consulting is launching a Web-based, action-planning tool for its client organizations in November 2007.

“It’s an ideal addition to the portfolio of tools and services we offer to diagnose and enhance organizational culture, including the Denison Organizational Culture Survey,” said Neale. “In reality – it’s what comes after the survey that makes a difference – understanding the results, and making a commitment to plan and carry out a viable action plan.”

The Denison Action Planner enables organizations to coordinate, organize, communicate and monitor all key elements of the change process. It provides a user-friendly, global workspace where team leaders, external consultants and/or internal change agents can manage and direct action plans from any location, at any time. It also affords easy collaboration and a ready exchange of ideas among all employees involved in improvement plans.

The new tool from Denison offers a wide range of capabilities. Access to the action-planning tool is controlled by secure user IDs and passwords. A home page displays action plans in which the user is involved, as well as specific details about the plans. Additional pages and functions are available for tracking crucial discussions that occur about the change process; identifying and assigning team members; defining objectives; determining areas of focus; creating action items; tracking plan implementation; and viewing a summary of the key elements of action plans.

Robust help and recommendation documentation is integrated into the tool, and is easy to use.

To arrange for a “test drive” on the Denison Action Planner, contact a Denison Client Manager or call (734) 302-4002.

How engaged are your employees? And – if they were more engaged – would the bottom-line performance of your organization improve?

These are good questions, given the booming business buzz surrounding employee engagement. In the latest news release from Denison Consulting, Daniel Denison – the company’s founding partner – offers some expert insights about employee engagement.

He says the buzz about employee engagement is important, but warns that focusing too narrowly on engagement alone is not enough.

“Employees can be happy, satisfied and engaged, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are succeeding in supporting the business goals of the organization,” said Denison. “In fact, many companies with very happy employees have failed to deliver results.”

Organizational-development research has shown that employees who feel engaged in their jobs tend to work harder and longer, take more pride in their work, and are less likely to quit vs. those who feel less engaged. But, according to Denison, the research also shows that employee engagement and satisfaction may be more a result of good performance than a cause.

“If you’re concerned about business outcomes, it makes a lot more sense to measure and manage the organization as a system,” he said. “Those factors give leaders far more leverage and are far more likely to be a cause of organizational performance than just employee engagement alone. An organization’s culture includes employee involvement and employee engagement, but also includes how the organization adapts to the business environment, focuses on its customers, implements a strategy, and builds global coordination.”

Read the article "Big Business Buzz Builds About Employee Engagement, But Expert Tells Firms to Focus on Culture, Human Capital, Bottom-line Results," written by Ken Stockton.

The 2007 racing season is over! This season's effort was scaled back from the two-car team that we ran in 2006. We ran just one car with me at the wheel. This was because the series that we ran last year, The Cooper Tires USFF2000 Championship was cancelled for 2007. So, this year we had to take a step backwards and prepare for new series, the F2000 Championship. The cars and the series are quite similar, but required some changes on the cars to get ready. The worst part was that the schedule was very different. I had my crazy travel schedule worked out for 2007 to do 4-5 of the weekends in the series that was cancelled!

So we were only able to do two of the F2000 series races www.f2000championshipseries.com. We added to that by doing 3 SCCA National races www.scca.org. This was kind of fun, because the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) races were amateur races, and this was the first time I had run amateur races in several years. This helped demonstrate one of the key principles of racing -- if you want to finish higher up in the order, race against slower cars! The first race at Mid-Ohio in July was an F2000 warm-up for us. I finished 15th and 16th. But the other three SCCA races were much easier, so I finished 6th at Road America, and then 2nd at Grattan (with the fastest race lap), and 2nd at Gingerman Raceway to a former national champion.

If you would like to hear more, let us know. I have a longer write-up called The Denison Racing Line, and we'd be glad to put you on our distribution list!