Speeches & Articles

Remarks of U.S. Consul General Henry V. Jardine
to the Calcutta Management Association
On U.S. Department of State Management Planning

March, 21 2006

CALCUTTA -- Mr. Somnath Goswami, members of the Calcutta Management Association, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me here today to speak a little on the issue of management.  Having served in government for my professional career, first in the military and now in the Department of State, my perspective on management in the work place is different in many respects from that of the private sector.  In the private sector, there is the persistent pressure of the profit margin; in the public sector the focus is more on service as an end result in itself.  Often there are few if any quantitative measures of performance for us in the public sector, unless it is a measure of how much taxpayer money we have spent.  Some may argue that our success in the diplomatic community is measured only by how many enjoyable cocktail receptions we host. 

However, diplomacy as we all know serves a critical role in relations between countries and people and some effort needs to be made to determine the effectiveness of our various offices and organization as a whole. 

Given the difficulty in assessing performance and defining priorities in an environment that offers fewer quantifiable measures, I thought I would reflect a little on how the U.S. Department of State in general, and we at the Consulate in particular, manage our personnel, resources and operations.   This may offer insights to the audiences on different approaches to management and leadership in the U.S. public sector.

A key element of management is identifying priority goals and objectives and linking the required resources to meet those goals and objectives.  In the Department of State, we have an annual process of generating a five-year plan for projecting what we wish to accomplish and how we plan to achieve our goals.

The Department as a whole develops its plan from inputs received from the various domestic bureaus and offices, which, in turn, gain inputs from the many overseas posts.  The process works in both a top-down and bottom-up manner.  The State Department identifies key goals that the subordinate offices draw from and in turn those subordinate offices will identify critical local issues that support the overarching Department goals. In the introduction to the Joint Department of State/USAID Strategic Plan for 2004 to 2009, Secretary of State Dr. Condoleeza Rice outlined the key elements and objectives in our planning process when she wrote:

I am pleased to submit the Strategic Plan of the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for fiscal years 2004 to 2009. Our organizations share a noble mission: to create a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international
community.  . .

Our close collaboration will ensure that our foreign policy and development programs are fully aligned to advance the National Security Strategy of the United States, which President Bush issued in 2002. The National Security Strategy recognizes that diplomacy and development assistance are critically important tools for building a safer, freer, better world.

The employees of the Department of State and USAID serving here at home and in our 260 diplomatic missions in 163 countries around the world are responsible for carrying out this Strategic Plan with the highest degree of integrity and professionalism.
With the Strategic Plan as our guide, the men and women of the Department of State and USAID will work to strengthen the global coalition against terrorism and help to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction . . . 

We will help American businesses succeed in foreign markets and help developing countries create conditions for investment and trade that can lift millions out of poverty. We will promote international respect for human rights and support new democracies. We will work to ensure that America remains at the forefront of international humanitarian relief efforts and the worldwide fight against infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS. We will forge partnerships throughout the world to combat international crime, including the illegal trade in drugs and the appalling business of trafficking in persons.

We will work to modernize and deepen our alliances and friendships around the globe, build cooperative relationships with former foes, and strive to bring peaceful ends to conflicts in troubled regions. We will assist American travelers and help to keep our homeland safe, even as we work to maintain the openness that gives our democracy its dynamism and attracts international tourists, scientists, scholars, immigrants, and businesspeople to our shores.

The wide scope of our tasks reflects the breadth of our mission. To perform it well, we must set priorities, and this Strategic Plan does just that. It lays out our foreign policy and development assistance priorities in the coming years, and by doing so, it promotes an organizational culture within the Department of State and USAID that values effectiveness and accountability . . .

As you can see from the Secretary’s remarks, the Department has several broad categories by which it defines its mission goals, such as:

1.   Achieve Peace and Security, which involves issues of Regional Stability, Counter Terrorism, Homeland Security, etc.

2.  Advance Sustainable Development and Global Interests, to include, Democracy and Human Rights, Economic Prosperity and Security, Social and Environmental issues.

3.  Promote International Understanding, which involves Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

4.  Strengthen Diplomacy and Program Capabilities – which means resource and management related issues.

From these four broad categories and the various sub-headings, the offices and Embassies in the Department of State then focus on their relevant issues. 

As an example, looking at the work that the U.S. Mission does here in India, we also draw from the Department’s guidance while recognizing the relevant local conditions and create a Mission Performance Plan for defining our priorities.

We look at the broad category of “Achieve Peace and Security” and the relevant elements, such as Regional Stability or Counter Terrorism and develop strategies for those areas.  To support Regional Stability, we would look at ways to cooperate with the Government of India or other governments in this region, maybe through training, funding of programs, exchanges of experts, etc. that we could help in this area.  The recent COPE-India joint-air force training exercise at Kalaikunda would be an example of this effort. 

The same is true in Counter Terrorism, sharing information, expertise or training can be approaches to supporting the ongoing counterterrorism work here in India.

In advancing “Sustainable Development and Global Interests” we fund organizations doing poverty alleviation, health care, environmental preservation and a host of other programs.  For instance, in eastern India the USG is funding over $800,000 in programs related to prevention of trafficking in persons.  In India as a whole, we are providing $37 million dollars to help fight HIV/AIDS.

To “Promote International Understanding” we have an aggressive public diplomacy program that runs numerous public events, discussions, hosts speakers, funds research and arranges exchange programs between the U.S. and India.  Programs like the Fulbright Scholarship is an example.  Also, my coming here today and speaking is another example of our Mission’s effort to promote international understanding.

Finally, in supporting all this work, we look at our resources needs, such as determining our budget, staffing requirements and facilities upgrades.   With the growing importance of the Indo-U.S. partnership, we are already anticipating increasing our American staff by this summer and should see more growth in the years to come.

The Mission Performance Plan, which gives us effectively our marching orders as to what we hope to accomplish in the coming year, also serves as a basis for evaluating our individual performance.  The goals and objectives can only be actualized through the efforts of the many Department employees; and therefore, the Mission Plans far from being an abstraction, actually become a useful tool for measuring performance.

Every year a State Department employee in consultation with his/her supervisor identifies specific performance goals for the coming year that he/she will attempt to accomplish.  These individual goals should be reflective of the Mission goals relevant to their area of responsibility.  For instance, an employee in our public diplomacy office would likely identify performance goals that would support promotion of international understanding.  Someone in our economic office would promote sustainable development and global interests and so on. 

The employee would have specific projects to accomplish given the broad goal that they are intending to support.  As an example, to support international understanding, a public affairs officer might arrange a speaking tour; a cultural event or exchange visits between our two countries.

So, with a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of an employee, we are able to compensate for the difficulty of measuring organizational performance that I reflected upon in my opening comments.  We may not have a profit result as a quantifiable output for measuring our work but we can demonstrate the number of programs, projects and efforts that we have made in furthering our organizational goals.

At the macro level, therefore, when we look at the results of the recent highly successful visit of President Bush to India, we can see the culmination of the great work being done by the members of our Mission here in India and in the State Department.  The many agreements that were signed during the Presidential visit, in areas like science, technology, agriculture, social development, democracy and so on are the result of the work of many individuals in moving forward the overall goals of Peace and Security, Sustainable Development and Global Interests, and International Understanding. 

In closing, I would like to thank you all again for giving me an opportunity to speak about the U.S. Department of State’s planning and management process. I hope I have given you some ideas that you can use in your own professional circumstances for managing organizational goals, personnel and resources and that you can also see the way we at the Consulate, as part of the U.S. Mission in India, manage our operations. While we may not make a profit in the public sector, we do make progress.

Thank you.