Solution spotlight

Through Performance Solutions, OSP provides state government with new approaches, ideologies and practices that help create remarkable results in a fast changing culture. Through website resources or consulting services provided by OSP, state agencies are beginning to transform. The Solution Spotlight is a place to showcase agencies that have used these solutions and excelled.

If you would like to nominate a solution to be considered as a Solution Spotlight, please complete a nomination form and return to OSP.

Our first Solution Spotlight presents the Commission of Banks leadership program. Read more to find out how this program is helping to prepare this agency for the demands it will face in the future.

COMMISSIONER OF BANKS LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

To keep ahead of the changes that have been taking place within the financial services industry, Joseph A. Smith, Jr., has instituted dramatic changes within the Office of the Commissioner of Banks (OCOB) since he became North Carolina 's Commissioner of Banks in 2002.

The Leadership Program was initiated in 2007 to build the management team's capabilities in the face of these dramatic external and internal changes. The program uses 360-degree feedback to give participants a glimpse of themselves — as seen by those who work closely with them. It then helps particpants fashion idividually tailored development plans to more fully put their strengths to work and build up any weak spots. The program's effectiveness depends on how well particpants are able to alter their leadership behaviors in noticable ways and on whether such positive changes affect the business outcomes each manager is accountable for.

OCOB has measures in place to try to capture both of these aspects of program effectiveness. Does the program work? Time will tell.

NC LEAD leadership program

NC LEAD is a customized leadership development program specifically tailored to meet the current and future leadership development needs of our state agencies' top leaders. NC LEAD is offered by the Office of State Personnel (OSP) in partnership with the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) for state government agency heads and their senior management team members.

NC LEAD is based on competencies identified by CCL experts through interviews, focus groups and surveys conducted with NC state government leaders. Each NC LEAD participant receives customized 360-degree feedback, access to a personal executive coach and online follow-up assessments. The program consists of two inter-related tracks: one for agency heads and a second for deputies and other senior staff members from the agencies.

Three to six months after the final program session, a follow-up 360-degree assessment will be administered. A written evaluation report will be written that relates the program's final outcomes to the goals and objectives that were agreed to at the beginning of the program design process.