So Satisfying: Leading From the Middle in the Coast Guard

Coast Guard innovators are jazzed about their jobs because they are empowered, recognized, and get to implement their ideas. New survey results can fuel other federal innovation.

It was August 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The levees had just given way and the waters were rising. Within hours, Coast Guard helicopters and boat crews scrambled to rescue more than 30,000 citizens from rooftops and balconies across the city.

During one of the many missions, a Coast Guard pilot signaled to his rescue swimmer below that he needed to return for refueling. As the sound of the choppers blades subsided, the rescuer could hear the cries of help from a family trapped beneath the roof of their house.

There was little time. The water was already above the second story windows and rising. The rescuer tried to pull up shingles with his bare hands, only to find plywood underneath. He tried kicking through the plywood roofing but could not. He did not have the right tools for the job.

When the pilot returned, the rescuerangry, frustrated, and sad recounted the story. In an anguished voice he told the pilot: I joined the Coast Guard to save lives, not lose them! Im afraid that family drowned because I couldnt help them.

When that helicopter returned to its home base at Mobile, Alabama, about midnight that night, this rescue swimmer and some of his colleagues went to a local hardware store and bought every fire ax it had. The next morning every Coast Guard rescue swimmer on every helicopter leaving Mobile had a fire ax to rescue people trapped in their roof spaces.

The swimmer did not wait to formally request fire axes through his supervisor and official channels. He did not put in a procurement request to the storekeeper. And, he did not know, nor care, whether he would be reimbursed. Indeed, he likely could have gotten in trouble for bringing unauthorized, potentially dangerous equipment on board weight-limited helicopters. But he took the initiative.

What made him do it? What made him in effect lead from the middle? It was his clear sense of his ultimate missionsaving livesand his keen situational awareness that every hour and every day counted.

I remember this story from my deployment during Hurricane Katrina because this employee represented the culture of innovation that I had come to know in the Coast Guard. He had passion for his work and compassion for the people he was trained to save. He knew the Coast Guard expected him to use good judgment to take initiative and to innovate when the objective was clear, but normal procedures proved ineffectual. He felt empowered to act to produce good outcomes. His actions and his method of urban search and rescue helped him and his colleagues rescue dozens of citizens that week.

In the years since, my research on the Coast Guards innovation program and a survey of 170 documented Coast Guard innovators demonstrates that empowered employees who are proactive and take initiative to make improvements in the workplace not only significantly improve organizational performance, but are jazzed about their work. They have much higher job satisfaction than their peers. The research findings could provide profound insight for federal executives and managers faced with the challenge of improving, or even just sustaining, workforce productivity and organizational performance levels in the face of agency budget cuts, fixed federal salaries, and reductions in bonuses for superior performance.

What Is Innovation and How Does It Occur?

There must be a thousand definitions for and examples of innovationfrom the latest cellular technology to improving educational practices. How do we know which to apply? In his 2008 masters thesis describing the Coast Guards innovation program, Lieutenant Commander Chris Kluckhuhn of the U.S. Coast Guard Reserves uses a definition adopted from the government of New Zealand: Innovation: The creation, development, and implementation of a new product, process or service, aimed at improving efficiency, effectiveness, or competitive advantage.

Innovation may be applied to products, services, manufacturing processes, managerial processes or the design of an organization. Both the organization and employees must be engaged for innovation to occur. First, the organization must establish goals and guidelines. Then it should empower people to take risks to find the best solutions.

The survey of 170 Coast Guard innovators, including innovation award winners, graduates of the National Graduate School (NGS) masters program in quality systems management, and current and former innovation council members, revealed the following factors as most influential in enabling innovation to take place:

1| leadership support (37 percent)

2| empowerment (10 percent)

3| personal involvement (10 percent)

4| resources (8 percent)

5| a willingness to take risks (8 percent) 6| a change culture (7 percent).

Among these categories, leadership support received as many comments as did empowerment, personal involvement, resources, and culture combined.

What is necessary to create and sustain an innovative culture? The top responses included

1| leadership support (38 percent)

2| resources (13 percent)

3| recognition (13 percent)

4| open, frank feedback (often to leadership) (7 percent)

5| implementation of good ideas (7 percent) 6| motivated employees (7 percent).

Components of Coast Guard Innovation

Established in 2001, the Coast Guard innovation program has a solid track record of producing significant improvements in capabilities. The program has several components, including an innovation

• staff: a small but dedicated team coordinating the innovation efforts
• council: influential members representing various directorates as a collateral responsibility
• process: developed by the innovation council to identify and promote the best initiatives
• venture capital fund: a modest fund to invest in proofs of concept, or further develop promising initiatives, and used to conduct the annual Innovation Expo
• expo: conducted annually to connect Coast Guard innovators, their program managers, leaders, executives, defense and homeland security partners, and stakeholders so they may communicate fresh ideas horizontally and vertically to improve the organization. Participation has grown from 200 at the first expo in 2001 to 2,500 at the 2010 expo. Some 28 countries have been represented.
• awards: presented annually since 2003 by the expo Commandant at the expo in the areas of operations/ readiness, science/technology, administration/ training/support, and management
• top leadership support: the innovation staff works directly for the chief of staff and co-locates the fall flag/Senior Executive Service leadership conference with the annual Innovation Expo.

The Coast Guard also has partnered with the NGS to deliver a unique masters program in Quality Systems Management. This program includes experiential learning that is applied to improve processes in such business areas as logistics, operations, finance, law, engineering, acquisition, and planning. In addition to several courses in best business practices, this 12-month program requires students to conduct a team project to address an organizational business challenge, identify improvement opportunities, implement change, and measure the impact of the change.

Students may not complete their degrees unless they can show a positive return on investment to the organization. More than 700 Coast Guard personnel have earned Quality Systems Management masters degrees in this program and have implemented team projects valued at $500 million.

Who Are Public Sector Innovators?

A lot of innovation comes from stars at the nations leading engineering and business schools. But the innovators that improve our public-sector organizations come from a wide variety of experiences, pay grades, ages, and job functions. When it comes down to it, where they came from does not matter. Its what they did. Coast Guard innovation award winners include:

• Lil, a lieutenant, started the Coast Guard partnership with the NGS, which (through 2010) has yielded 700 CG personnel with masters degrees producing projects valued at $500 million
• Jay, a warrant officer, found opportunities to improve healthcare to Coast Guard personnel and their families in remote locations through telemedicine
• Zeita and Rahshaan, both lieutenants at the time of the project, worked on an NGS team to improve small arms weapons training using lasers. They significantly improved small arms qualification scores, and reduced training costs and the environmental impact of small arms training
• Richard, a civilian medical professional and Coast Guard auxiliarist, established Coast Guard auxiliary healthcare support with more than 50 physicians, dentists, and licensed allied health credentialed providers who donated 5,600 hours of healthcare augmentation valued at $340,000
• Justin, a 20-something third-class petty officer, developed a process to use cellular phone technology to provide search areas directly to Coast Guard search units saving time and relieving crew members from navigation duties to concentrate on search efforts
• Bob, a civilian working at an information technology center, worked with a team to develop technology that added significant value to the Coast Guard common operational picture (displaying relevant information shared by more than one command) and improved USCG maritime domain awareness
• Jan, a lieutenant commander and persuasive proponent of information sharing, became the architect of the Coast Guards internationally recognized information portal
• Montgomery, a warrant officer, saved 18 months in acquisition time and more than $12 million when he helped replace a recently crashed CG helicopter using an available Defense department helicopter hull.

As the tables and figures show, Coast Guard innovators are a diverse group of people yet they share common characteristics.

According to their self-description, they are

1| highly-motivated employees (25 percent)

2| creative and open to new ideas (12 percent)

3| not afraid of failure or accepting risk (10 percent)

4| optimistic and enthusiastic (7 percent) 5| not driven by promotability (7 percent)

6| empowered (6 percent).

Coast Guard Innovation Strategy

As its innovation program evolved, the Coast Guard developed and refined a strategic approach that included soliciting, rewarding, implementing and funding, and sharing innovation. It was further supported by internal and external critical success factors, and mission and support activities.

Value-Added Innovation Program Results

The results achieved by the Coast Guards innovators have improved organizational performance in all mission areas. Some additional examples include

• implementing e-learning technologies for training course delivery
• modifying equipment to allow direct communications between Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection officers during joint counter-narcotic and illegal immigration operations
• reducing the response time for congressional inquiries
• improving flight simulator training for pilots
• developing easy-to-customize generic specifications for boat repairs and overhauls
• creating an Internet portal for authorized public members to access useful Coast Guard information
• developing a budget metrics tracking system
• creating a procurement request tracking database.

The Coast Guards innovation program rewards two types of innovationindependent initiatives like the one taken to secure the fire axes, and formal initiatives such as the masters program. The NGS program formally captures the return-on-investment and value created for each team project. Note that value can be composed of three elementstime, money, and capability.

What Motivates Innovators?

What factors are influencing people to find better ways to perform their work? When researchers asked the innovators, their responses varied:

1| personal drive (29 percent)

2| to make improvements and lead productive change (23 percent)

3| to improve efficiency (16 percent)

4| to benefit the Coast Guard overall (9 percent)

5| to benefit my workplace and teammates (8 percent)

6| to fix broken processes (6 percent).

When researchers asked,What rewards are most meaningful to you as an innovator? the top responses were:

1| recognition (formal and informal) (24 percent)

2| implementation of my idea/concept (21 percent)

3| improving the organization (12 percent)

4| personal satisfaction (10 percent)

5| appreciation/thank you (7 percent)

6| promotion (6 percent).

Monetary performance awards were eighth on this list and thus did not appear to be a major motivating factor for innovators. Most of all innovators wanted recognition from peers or superiors and the satisfaction of seeing their ideas implemented.

Innovators Have Higher Job Satisfaction than Their Peers

The Coast Guard scored the highest job satisfaction ranking of any agency within the Department of Homeland Security in OPMs 2008 Federal Human Capital Survey, conducted biannually, and the Coast Guard also finished in the top 20 percent of all governmental agencies for effective leadership and empowerment; DHS overall ranked 27th of 28 for major federal departments.

The recent research included survey responses to eight identical questions on empowerment and job satisfaction from 170 Coast Guard innovators, the general Coast Guard population (based on 2010 CG Organizational Assessment Surveys), and overall federal government, DHS, and Federal Emergency Management Agency employees (based on 2010 OPM Federal Human Capital Surveys).

A 5 percent difference in response rates was determined to be statistically significant for this study. While DHS insiders expected that three to four questions would show significant differences, the CG innovators responded more positively than their Coast Guard peers to all eight questions by an average of 12.2 percent. The overall federal government responses were similar to the general Coast Guard population.

However, the response rates of Coast Guard innovators were 24 percent and 22 percent higher than DHS and the Federal Emergency Management Agency responses, respectively. Table 1 shows the results for two of the most meaningful questions asked: Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your job? Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your organization?

More than 90 percent of CG innovators surveyed said the culture of innovation encouraging employees to take initiative and risk improved performance and commitment to the CG as well as job satisfaction within it.

Implications for the Federal Leaders and Agencies

Federal executives and managers should take heed of a few recommendations from the Coast Guard research as they work to energize employees and improve job satisfaction while increasing workforce productivity in tough budgetary times.

• When supporting workforce empowerment, strong visible and personal leadership engagement is critical.
• When making hiring decisions, consider a potential employees motivation level; it may prove more important in the long run than experience.
• Investing in employees strengths and empowering them in those areas may provide a better return on investment for an agency than attempting to fill gaps in individuals overall professional portfolios.
• When rewarding and recognizing people, think carefully. Senor leader recognition of good work in front of peers, combined with their implementation of good ideas, are very meaningful to innovators, often much more so than monetary rewards.

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Table 1| Most Significant Differences in 2010 OPM Federal Human Capital Surveys

Source: Abbott, G. (2011). Improving Organizational Performance Through Innovation and Workforce Empowerment. Doctoral dissertation for the National Graduate School; Falmouth, Massachusetts.