Saturday, December 3, 2011

Thought leaders from around metro DC came together for the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) roundtable discussion, "Ensuring Accountability: Assessing the Impact of Mission Support Programs."

The session's purpose was two-fold: (1) highlight the importance of high-performing mission-support programs to the success of both public and private sector organizations and (2) engage public and private sector leaders to obtain their perspectives on tools and strategies that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness and assess the impact of these programs.

Dan Blair, president and CEO of NAPA, made opening remarks and introduced the day's keynote speaker, John Kamensky, a senior fellow with the IBM Center for the Business of Government. Kamensky set the framework for the discussion by sharing the historical challenges of support services organizations, as well as recent developments that may hold some promise for elevating the criticality of these functions.

Hannah Sistare, NAPA Fellow, moderated the 8-member roundtable with participants from inside and outside of government, including Patrina Clark, president of Pivotal Practices Consulting LLC and former Chief Human Capital Officer at the Government Accountability Office.

During the discussion, Clark introduced a concept she named Holistic Advocacy as essential to shared services organizations successfully performing their missions and being viewed as value-add by the rest of the organization.

"The best marketing is done on behalf of an organization rather than by an organization. And, one of the most effective ways an organization can secure it's competitive advantage for the long-term is to cultivate and foster holistic advocacy – solid customer advocates, employee advocates, and third-party advocates."

According to Clark, organizations that adopt this 3-pronged strategy foster best in class talent management, or human capital, practices that support continual process improvement and enhanced customer responsiveness.

Clark published a discussion brief on the concept of holistic advocacy, and she has a book by the same title planned for a spring 2012 release. The discussion brief is available for download on her website, pivotalpractices.com.