Team—I want to take this time to provide feedback on the recent command climate survey in which I asked you to participate.
First, I appreciate all of you that took the time and made the effort to provide input to this survey. Our team submitted an impressive total of 628 comments, and I have read every one of them. Here is a breakdown of the subject areas addressed in your comments listed in order from most number of comments to least. Some of your comments addressed more than one subject area. The last line reflects 60 comments that were very general in nature and did not fit into one of the subject areas.
Rank/Subject -- Count (% of Total Comments)
1. Leadership -- 397 (63.2%)
2. Facilities -- 108 (17.2%)
3. IT -- 74 (11.8%)
4. Training -- 51 (8.1%)
5. HR -- 43 (6.8%)
6. Telework -- 41 (6.5%)
7. EEO -- 36 (5.7%)
8. CWS -- 29 (4.6%)
9. Fitness -- 20 (3.2%)
10. Contracting -- 13 (2.1%)
11. Financial -- 7 (1.1%)
12. Logistics -- 6 (1.0%)
13. Equipment -- 4 (0.6%)
14. Safety -- 4 (0.6%)
15. Security -- 3 (0.5%)
16. Legal -- 2 (0.3%)
17. PAO -- 2 (0.3%)
18. Deployment -- 1 (0.2%)
19. Library -- 1 (0.2%)
20. N/A 60 ----- -----
As you can see, leadership is by far the most prominent issue on your minds, so I will address it first in this message. In the coming weeks, I will send additional messages with feedback on the remaining topic areas in the order above. I will communicate these both by email and on this blog.
I look forward to more comments and dialogue on this feedback, and ask that you use the blog so that everyone can participate in the discussion.
With respect to leadership, you can see that 63% (397 of 628) of the survey comments addressed this area. Of the 397 comments in this area, 73 were positively-slanted, 224 were negatively-slanted, and 100 were neutral, meaning the comments were general in nature or provided suggestions that I could not tell whether the person meant to be positive or negative.
Here are some examples of your comments, along with my thoughts. I will discuss these more in depth with our District leadership and, if your feedback warrants, on my blog.
On the positive side:
1. “I have the privilege of working for the best supervisor in the District ... he is fair, compassionate and cares about his people ... his word is impeccable and sincere”
2. “I've always had great boss’s here at the Corps!”
3. “I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with my immediate supervisor. I feel highly respected, and very much a part of the team. I trust them implicitly.”
4. “Excellent informative supervisor.”
My thoughts: I am pleased to see these comments and many like them. As I mentioned at the town halls, my command philosophy is people want to be on winning teams. Positive command climate, caring leaders, and good communications are the keys to winning teams. Comments like these with descriptive words such as ”cares,” “impeccable word,” “trust,” and “informative” echo my philosophy exactly.
All supervisors should endeavor to get comments/feedback like these from their employees.
On the negative side, some common themes emerged and I attempted to group comments accordingly:
Accountability
1. "As far as rule enforcement goes, rules only apply to those under GS-15."
2. "I want non performers not to be moved forward with us.”
3. "I work, while my partner sleeps ... actually fall's dead asleep in his cubicle, right next to the new boss, who fall asleep himself according to next person over from him. It’s very hard to stay motivated around them …”
4. “More training and support of supervisors is necessary to deal with poor performers, especially a few very clever ones who know how to use the grievance and EEO process to protect themselves against poor ratings and disciplinary action.”
5. “People who understand the system also know how to milk it. Some do. People accountability is not a management strength in this District. Those who will are overloaded, and those who won't stay around anyway and get paid the same or more.
Communications
1. “Information is NOT shared freely beyond the Command and Staff level. This continues to be a problem in the district.”
2. “Information sharing from office to office is extremely lacking! Midline managers have a tendency to not share information with subordinates.”
3. “Would be helpful if my immediate management communicated better and regularly, rather than dealing retroactively with issues as they occur.”
4. “Communication w/Branch boss is not good.”
5. “Top civilian management knows how to parrot the right words and phrases, but have not internalized the message and thus Commander's message gets lost in implementation.”
Workload Management:
1. “The stress level has become amazingly high among my co-workers as well as myself.”
2. “In general, our staff is overworked and under appreciated.”
3. “It's just too much to do, and I feel overwhelmed sometimes. I feel I could do a better job if there WASN'T so much.”
4. “Project execution is taking precedence at the cost of quality. I am constantly trying to prioritize the workload, and do my best with the amount of time given to complete my work. This often results in work that is released without being completed, or without a QC review completed.”
5. “Workload and accountability should always be checked and doubled checked. Huge workload and it all needs to be shouldered equally.”
My thoughts: I appreciate the frank feedback. Again, I point to my command philosophy--positive command climate, caring leaders, and communications are the keys to winning teams. I know that positive command climate includes dealing with poor performers -- hopefully by getting them to improve. I will specifically address this with supervisors in upcoming forums. I believe that 90% of problems, including workload management issues and employee stress, can be traced to ineffective communications. Hopefully messages such as this, my new district blog, and the section "huddles" I have held are a good start toward improving in this area. And, I look forward to the September Café Sup topic, which will be "Taking Care of People." The topic of leadership usually revolves around supervisors, but my experience has been that we all can be good "followers" as well. Communication is a two way street, and it is important that honest, professional feedback flows in both directions.
So please let the dialogue begin! My next message(s) will cover your comments on facilities, IT, and training.
Building Strong!
COL Andy Backus
