Glad to see DynCorp taking these steps and I hope they make good with their promise of ‘strengthening it’s ethics programs’. But what DynCorp really needs to focus on, is insuring they hire the right folks into positions of management. The quality of leadership out there is what will make or break your company out there. Some ethics program manager posted in a nice comfortable office at headquarters will not be an effective tool for monitoring your management.
It is a nice visual step, but the focus needs to be on the folks that will implement your ethics policies in the first place–the leaders. And if your high paid managers suck, then get rid of them. Matter of fact, get rid of the regional manager in charge of that guy as well, because obviously he didn’t care enough about company policy or doing things right to keep things in check. Remember the Sun Tzu and the 360 Concubines story I posted? Well have the courage to do what is right, and get rid of your poor managers with authority.
Send the message to your leadership that you demand excellence, and the rest will follow. You actually have to care about what is happening out in the field, dedicate the necessary resources to monitor what is going on out in the field, and correct things as quickly as possible.
But going back to leadership, I believe that companies like DynCorp should be putting the resources necessary into insuring their leaders are the best. Take care of them, support them, instill the company philosophy into them, bring them into the family and get them to the point where they care about the company. The litmus is a manager that is proud to serve the company because they believe in the company.
Speaking of doing a good job as a leader, I had an interesting conversation with the manager of a Olive Garden Italian restaurant in Boise awhile back. I noticed that his crew (wait staff, hosts, etc.) were all extremely customer service focused and totally knowledgeable of every aspect of their establishment. I was impressed, and I also tipped pretty well after getting such incredible service at this restaurant. Now Olive Garden is not a mom and pop restaurant, it is a franchise, and the menu is the same everywhere. Even the quality of food and service is mostly the same where ever you go, but some places are better than others because I believe the managers there are able to effectively rally their troops to do a good job.
Well during my conversation with this manager at OG, I asked him what he was doing to get that kind of performance from his folks and what has corporate done to support and train him. Well for one, they paid him well and they put him through a OG college of sorts. They taught him the skills necessary to do a good job as a leader and restaurant manager.
So they treated him well, and they increased his knowledge of the company and of it’s management philosophy. In the discussion we had, things like continuous improvement popped up as well as customer service and satisfaction. Things like attention to detail and the discipline to do things right over and over again, came up. The other thing that came up was the mystery diner thing.
I talked about mystery shopping in the past, as a way to get some shared reality about what is going on with your company. The OG uses mystery diners, who report back to corporate about the job performance of that manager and crew of that particular OG. Hmmm, interesting. Could a company like DynCorp use mystery employees or customers, to get some feedback about what is truly going on out in the field?
Now some of you are thinking, boy, that is kind of harsh. Well that is the point, and this practice would totally give a company the necessary information about who the true performers are in the company, and who are the dorks who are about to ruin the company. The goal would be to find managers that ‘do it right, when no one is looking’.
Besides, how else would you know if your company managers are doing the right thing out there? Could the CEO or this Ethics Program dude visit a site, and get an accurate feed on the day to day operations there with that visit? Of course not, they would get what is called a ‘dog and pony show’. Now I still think those folks need to get out there and visit with the troops to get their own shared reality, but if they want to know how their managers are doing, it will take something a little different. Nope, you want managers that will be doing things right before you get there and long after you leave.
Now the way I would use mystery employees is to hire contractors with investigative services backgrounds (there are plenty of them in this industry), and send them out to do the job you want to investigate. I would have them focus on job sites that you are getting feedback from employees. The reason why is that if an employee or contractor is actually taking the time to write into the main office hotline about poor managers, or a customer is taking the time to write in about such things, then obviously this deserves some investigation. I would also send these folks to all of the sites, just so you can get a feel for how your managers are running things.
These mystery employees are there to take notes and report, and not get compromised. If they are, get someone new out there. The point is, you want someone that will get an accurate picture of what is really going on at that site that you can trust, and not get info that is filtered or even untrue. The really crooked managers are the ones that will do anything they can to protect their little operation, and the goal is to remove this cancer from your organization.
This is a drastic move, but unless a company wants to keep dealing with management created disasters, they will have to do something that is more pro-active. The mystery employee technique is pro-active, and it will do it’s magic as soon as managers hear of the practice and the company is able to ‘adjust things’.
Plus, once it gets out that the company is actually doing such a thing, you will find that managers will be much more responsive to following policy. Nothing motivates people to do things right more than the paranoia of getting caught in the act by someone they cannot control or identify.
Ultimately you should get to a point where you do not need mystery employees. But even so, your mystery employees can also find those that are doing things right, and the company can actually reward those folks. Think of the look on Joe Contractor’s face when they get a bonus for outstanding leadership? Think of the impact that would have on the team at that site. They will think, ‘Gee, I should copy what Joe is doing, because obviously someone at corporate likes his style’. In essence, reward handsomely the excellent performers who truly do things right when no one is looking, and provide an example of leadership that everyone can aspire to. –Matt
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Amid Reviews, DynCorp Bolsters Ethics Practices
Security Contractor Seeks Future Work In Afghanistan
By Ellen NakashimaMonday, July 27, 2009
DynCorp International, a major government security contractor, is strengthening its ethics practices in the wake of government investigations of its programs in Afghanistan and other conflict zones.
One effort to train Afghan civilian police has drawn attention from the State Department’s inspector general following incidents of questionable management oversight, including one instance in which expatriate DynCorp employees in Afghanistan hired a teenage boy to perform a tribal dance at a company farewell party and videotaped the event.
In response to such incidents and because senior executives had been discussing such a move, DynCorp in May established a position of chief compliance officer with a specific focus on ethics, business conduct, related investigations and regulatory compliance, company spokesman Douglas Ebner said.
“We’re absolutely dedicated to a framework of governance and compliance that ensures a transparent and accountable business environment,” Ebner said. “Whether it’s misconduct, or public perception or allegations of misconduct, these can tarnish a company’s ability to work in challenging environments.”
“Don’t mistake an individual act of misconduct for a corporate failure to respond,” he added.
Falls Church-based DynCorp, the State Department’s largest contractor, is profiting from the government’s increased reliance on contractors overseas. Work in Iraq and Afghanistan alone accounted for 54 percent of the company’s revenue, which hit $3.1 billion in the fiscal year ended in April. That represented a 45 percent rise in revenue over the preceding year, according to the company’s annual report.
DynCorp has held contracts worth $1.6 billion to train Afghan police. Its performance on the current contract will be evaluated in any effort to compete in a major $345 million civilian police training bid in Afghanistan that the State Department is expected to put out in January, State Department officials said.
The Afghan police initiative is part of the Obama administration’s strategy to build up the Afghan security forces in an effort to turn back a resurgent Taliban and stabilize the country. The company has been at the center of a string of controversies stretching back to the 1990s, prompting critics to question whether DynCorp and other contractors should be performing and managing critical jobs.
This spring, the State Department inspector general began investigating whether DynCorp ignored signs of drug abuse among expatriate employees in Afghanistan. A related review into the dancing incident is “substantially completed” and “at this point, no criminal activity has been discovered,” said Douglas Welty, State Department inspector general spokesman.
Ebner said the company also had investigated the incident involving the youth, who he said was 17 when he performed a tribal dance at the party. “We took appropriate disciplinary actions as a result of what we felt was managerial poor judgment,” he said.
DynCorp fired four senior managers in Afghanistan over the party and other incidents, according to employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.
At least two videos were shot of the dancing at the farewell party in April at a DynCorp base in Kunduz, in northeastern Afghanistan, according to DynCorp employees who have seen copies. One version, according to several who have seen it, showed some 15 DynCorp personnel egging on the dancer, who came from a nearby village and was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with a long scarf tied around his waist, as he moved around a DynCorp employee sitting on a single chair in a courtyard.
“The whole event, hiring an Afghan dancer to perform for a non-Afghan audience, we felt could be seen as culturally insensitive and an example of poor judgment,” Ebner said.
The State Department informed the Afghan Ministry of Interior of the incident, according to a U.S. government official. The ministry is investigating, an official there said Sunday. “Everyone was shocked,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
The inspector general opened his probe in the wake of the March death of an American DynCorp security team leader in Kabul. Toxicology reports confirmed that the team leader died of a heroin overdose, a government official said. DynCorp declined to comment on the case.
The State Department and Pentagon inspectors general last month began a separate audit of State’s police training contract with DynCorp in Afghanistan. And the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction has launched a fresh review of State’s oversight of a $2 billion DynCorp police training contract in Iraq.
Peter W. Singer, a Brookings Institution expert on wartime contracting, said the government has turned to contractors for police training because it lacks sufficient in-house personnel. If the government had a civilian reserve corps of professionals with police training skills, for example, it could be tapped in place of private firms with their “associated oversight and legal accountability concerns.”
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Story here.