Scope of Work:

Tennessee's Department of Personnel (DOP) received a mandate to establish a statewide management and executive development curriculum with the objective of "doing more with less" in terms of Tennessee's investment in training.  This centralized approach was viewed as essential to achieving greater quality and consistency per training dollar.

Through competitive bid involving more than 80 finalists, all five of the courses Sterling Institute submitted won their place in the statewide curriculum.  This included two executive seminars, Executive Leadership and Strategic Management and Change, and three seminars for managers and supervisors, Building Effective Teams, Managing Employee Performance and Effective Communication.

Sterling Institute consulted with Commissioners and executive staff of several key agencies to identify how to plan the implementation of the seminars and focus their presentation on the critical issues they were facing.  Some of the seminars were designed to give participants confidential feedback from their employees on our Management Practices Survey, Leadership Practices Survey or Development Review Guide.  We compiled data from these instruments for purposes of organizational analysis and needs assessment.

Accomplishments:

Over 1,000 state employees participated in one or more seminars and all were exceptionally well-received.  We were especially pleased to have exceeded the expectations of our agency-customers by: 1) tailoring the seminars to address their unique issues and circumstances; and 2) enabling them to choose between participating in sessions with managers from various other agencies, or in sessions comprised of managers from only their own agency.