Celebrate and Learn:
Alberta awards ensure success is passed on
by Donna Cole and Paul Crookall
A key challenge for organizations today is to recognize the great work that is accomplished, and to ensure others learn from top performing individuals and teams. In 1995,Alberta’s Premier’s Award of Excellence (PAE) program was established, and the Premier has personally presented awards to 234 teams since then at an annual recognition ceremony.
The program’s goal is to recognize and promote business excellence in the Alberta public service. Through the submission process, employees learn what it takes to achieve excellence in business practices, and members of the leadership team gain experience in coaching teams and reviewing submissions. Both of these program elements help to ensure learning is shared with others.
The award criteria for the program are based on the Alberta government's mission, principles and values, on the public service vision, and the quality management principles set out by the National Quality Institute. Submissions must demonstrate excellent practices in all three criteria areas: Leadership and people; process management; and clients/stakeholders. The PAE program encourages leaders to focus on creating an environment that promotes continuous learning and the achievement of outcomes.
The PAE leadership team members receive training in business excellence to assist them with their coaching role and in their review of submissions. Each year, new members are recruited to join existing leadership team members to reinforce the principles of continuous learning and improvement. Collaboration is also supported, as the leadership team comprises members from all ministries, and submitting teams can include members who come from different ministries or outside of government.
Three of this year’s award recipients are profiled below:
ALBERTA ENVIRONMENT AIR EMISSION TRADING PROJECT
For Bill Calder, the process has come full circle. He participated on the PAE leadership team, becoming familiar with the program. Then, when he was appointed to lead the Air Emission Trading Task Force, he determined from the beginning of the project to live the business excellence principles he had learned. The team studied the award criteria, studied project management, and carefully documented all aspects of their journey.
Without much time for team building, Calder recalls, “we carefully selected on team skills, complementary skills and collaborative approaches. We sought to include representation from related projects. We agreed on a team charter on how we would work together. That included a timeline, budget and deliverables. We brought in technical expertise through training, conferences, and studying others.” The team motto: “We’re good.”
The keys, Calder observes, to leading this winning team are: “Start with the intent to excel, select a great team, bring in resources to help with both process and technical aspects, clarify the team charter and deliverables, involve stakeholders throughout, go to it, review and adjust.”
ALBERTA ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT’S INTERNATIONAL OFFICES:
BUILDING A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITIES
Shirley Kwan heads a team that runs nine international Economic Development offices, mainly in Asia/Pacific and Europe. Their efforts are key to supporting Alberta exports, and they have been remarkably successful. Kwan builds her team through communication – all nine offices get together twice a year, once in Edmonton, the other time rotating through the offices.
Kwan herself delivers common training – an important factor since most staff members are locals who have limited knowledge of Alberta. “We cover all aspects of the operations, the business plan, how to manage locally engaged staff, evaluation, and key success factors,” says Kwan. “I lead them through development of a logic model and development of a work plan.” With such a geographically spread operation, it is important to get the business processes right, build a business plan for each office, audit and follow up.
They use 15 key measures, including budget variance and client satisfaction. Trends are monitored and reported monthly and annually. “We’ve made mistakes, but we have learned to build in performance measures and a feedback loop, including monthly reports, so we can catch when things are going off track and rectify them,” Kwan advises. “The lesson I have learned is to build a solid model and get lots of buy-in from team members.”
ATCO – TYRRELL LEARNING CENTRE OF ALBERTA COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
The ATCO – Tyrrell Learning Centre was recognized for their success as a project team. Anyone who has visited the Royal Tyrrell Museum at Drumheller will have a sense of its long-term success and achievements. The Tyrrell project team built the Learning Centre to add much-needed space for museum educational programming. Building the centre helps to sustain and revitalize an internationally recognized facility. It also creates a legacy of infrastructure from a fund that honours Alberta’s Centennial.
The museum’s Dr. Bruce Naylor attributes the project’s success to the long-term commitment of team members, the close understanding they have of each other, and good working relationships. Since team membership lasts longer than individual tasks, they recruit based on character and flexibility, realizing people need to turn rapidly to new tasks and work effectively with different people.
GROWING IN EXCELLENCE
The number of awards has grown from five in the program’s first year to 43 in 2004. Continuous learning and improvement are further emphasized in the feedback reports provided to submitting teams. The reports provide the teams with input on their strengths and opportunities for improvement. The principles of business excellence are also reinforced in a number of courses such as those offered through the Alberta Government's Management Development Program.
For more information, visit the PAE website www.pao.gov.ab.ca/premier, or contact Donna Cole, Program Manager, Premier’s Award of Excellence, at 780.408.8420 or donna.cole@gov.ab.ca.
