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US Government Documents

Most of the following public domain documents were written for the US Department of the Navy Total Quality Leadership (TQL) Office around 1994. They are very well written and offer excellent guidance, although some of the terminology is now out of date. Strategic planners and managers in nonprofit and governmental organizations will find much valuable material here to adapt for their own uses. The Survey Handbook is particularly recommended for designing surveys that will form a foundation for any Balanced Scorecard implementation.


Total Quality Leadership: A Primer

by Archester Houston, Steven L. Dockstader

PRIMER.PDF 269 KB

This document is intended to provide an overview of some of the major elements of the Department of the Navy approach to total quality management, called Total Quality Leadership. The DoN TQL Primer covers the definition of TQL, the underlying philosophy, implementation roles, approach and management structure, and how the scientific method is applied to improve work processes.

From the Foreword: The change from past management practices to TQL is substantial and impacts the jobs of every person in a naval organization. Because of this, the transition to TQL must be learned, planned for, and put into place in a systematic fashion.


A Handbook for Strategic Planning

by Denise L. Wells and Linda M. Doherty

STRATPLN.PDF 270 KB

This handbook was written for Department of the Navy commanding officers, TQL coordinators, and strategic planning facilitators in response to the many questions about the strategic planning process and how it should be conducted within the DON. It is not intended to teach the intricacies of strategic planning, but is merely provided to answer process questions.

To be successful, strategic planning requires commitment on the part of three people: the leader (commanding officer) of an organization, the TQL coordinator of that organization, and a strategic planning facilitator. This handbook delineates the roles and responsibilities of each and suggests a process by which the three, together, can point the organization toward its future. Strategic Management for Senior Leaders: A Handbook for Implementation (D. L. Wells, 1996) is a companion volume to this handbook and details how organizations can deploy and implement their strategic plans.


Strategic Management for Senior Leaders: A Handbook for Implementation

by Denise Lindsey Wells

MANAGEBK.PDF 941 KB

This handbook was developed as a companion volume to A Handbook for Strategic Planning (Department of the Navy Total Quality Leadership Office Pub. No. 94-02) by Denise L. Wells and Linda M. Doherty. These handbooks were designed to assist Department of the Navy executives, commanding officers, Total Quality Leadership coordinators, and strategic planning facilitators in leading the strategic management process. Although the intended audience is the Department of the Navy, the guidance is equally useful to other government agencies and to the private sector.

The guidance contained in Strategic Management for Senior Leaders was derived from lessons learned during extensive work with client organizations that were developing, deploying, and implementing strategic plans. This information was supplemented by research that included personal interviews with leaders from The Department of the Navy and other government agencies who have led strategic management efforts within their organizations.

The Foreword explains that although each organization has its own distinctive culture and mission, there are lessons learned and successful strategies common to all. This handbook was intended to bring them together so that others could apply them.


 

The Survey Handbook

by Archester Houston

SURVEYHB.PDF 74 KB

The Survey Handbook presents an overview of the activities and issues involved in developing and conducting a survey. It covers such topics as: preparing for a survey, constructing survey items, pilot testing, administration methods, analytic techniques, and sampling approaches. This handbook will not make the reader an expert in surveys. It. s primary purpose is to offer tips for writing or modifying survey items to collect useful information. It is strongly advised that professional assistance be obtained to conduct a survey, especially if a completely new survey is being developed.


The Process Improvement Notebook (PIN)

by Amy Culbertson, Archester Houston, Debbie Faast, Michael White, Monica Aguirre, and Carol Behr

PIN.PDF 491 KB& PINFORMS.PDF 254 KB

In the past, teams have struggled with how best to document process improvement efforts. What should a team charter look like? How should data about customers be recorded? Data about products and services? Quality characteristics and their measures? How should the outcome of using specific tools such as the cause-and-effect diagram be documented? What about outcome and output measures? Process measures? Information about special and common causes? Development of an implementation plan? And what about assessing team dynamics?

Answers to all these questions have come together in a single publication — The Process Improvement Notebook (or The PIN). The PIN is designed to tell the team’s process improvement story from initial actions to the improved state. It contains team activity forms and instructions on how to complete the forms. The PIN Forms Packet, available separately, contains full size, unbound copies of all forms so that they can be easily reproduced for team use.

Reviewing PIN forms when beginning a new step in the improvement process can help clarify what teams need to do to proceed. It also helps clarify what information teams should document and communicate to others. PIN forms can be used to storyboard a team’s activities, to communicate to others on the activities, and to document the team’s processes and results.


Contributed Papers

Authors, students and consultants are encouraged to contribute published or unpublished papers to this site. If you wish to contribute, please contact us! Please respect the copyrights of these papers. Some of the files are in Portable Document Format; you will have to have Adobe Acrobat Reader to read them. You can download the reader here.

A series of presentations by Dr. Otto Laskeon the relationship of human resources to strategy:

Enhancing HR Value to the CEO: Strategies for Matching Strategy to Capability(PowerPoint, 285k)

A Developmental Employee Metric for Strategy-focused Organizations (PDF, 81K)

The Corporate Readiness and Development Effectiveness Measure (PowerPoint, 111K)

The CDREM Readiness Report (PowerPoint, 102K)

Pro-Active Performance Management: How to Glean Intelligence from Predictive Analytics (Word, 73K)

Balancing Your Scorecard: Overcome Performance Management Barriers by Focusing on Capability Management (PDF, 2MB)

Balancing Your Scorecard: How to Align Personnel Capability with Business Strategy: Evaluating and Measuring Workforce Capability (Part I) (PDF, 826K)

Balancing Your Scorecard: How to Align Personnel Capability with Business Strategy: Evaluating and Measuring Workforce Capability (Part II) (PDF, 252K)

The Right Person at the Right Place: Insights into Human Capital from Developmental Theory (Nov. 2006) (PDF, 457K)

 

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