03/27/2015

TO: All IPS Employees
FROM: Herb Byrd
RE: Internal Feedback Responses
I greatly appreciate the work of your representatives in collecting, voicing and reviewing the organizational issues or questions many of you raised in our inaugural IPS Internal Feedback Group Meeting. I am also grateful to our IPS leadership/administrative team for the considerate responses to the issues raised.

Click here to read a compilation of the issues raised, “minutes” of the responses I gave in person at our group meeting on February 9, and additional comments from our IPS Leadership Team. Hopefully this will help to answer current questions and concerns within the Institute for Public Service. If you have additional questions or further comments, please feel free to contact your representative(s), supervisor, Executive Director, or any of us in IPS Administration.

While some of the information shared this first round was difficult to consider objectively, we have already made progress in some areas where improvement is needed. As we gain more familiarity with the process we will get better at identifying the core issues behind some of the “symptoms” we are experiencing. I am confident that together we can find solutions to anything that distracts us from achieving our very best.

As a reminder, the IPS Internal Feedback process was established to surface issues, concerns, criticisms, questions, solutions, suggested changes, potential improvements and other topics related to organizational life within our agencies, organization as a whole, or our relationship to the university system. To achieve this aim, 10 individuals in our organization have committed to:

· Meet with me two to three times per year, with a goal of expanding to a larger number of the administrative team as soon as possible.

· An initial commitment of at least two years.

· Solicit feedback from their peers via email, phone, or other personal communication related to any issues, concerns, criticisms, questions, solutions, suggested changes, potential improvements and other topics related to organizational life within our agencies, organization as a whole, or our relationship to the university system. The identity of anyone who contributes issues to each representative should be held in the strictest confidence and should be known to the representative only.

· Collect, follow up if clarification is needed, and compile the feedback received (and any the representative would add to the list), into an email that is sent to me in advance of our scheduled group meeting. The representative’s role is not to own the issues, only to communicate them to me. It is expected that any information from material submitted that could be used in any way to identify the individual submitting the question or issue would be “scrubbed”.

· Attend the meeting where we will discuss any potential organizational response.

· Communicate back to the individuals who contributed issues if additional follow-up is needed.

· Have someone keep minutes of our meeting, schedule and convene the next meeting, and send the follow-up response. This responsibility will rotate among the five “agency” groups.

My role in the process is to listen, to gather information and responses related to the issues you present, and to send the list of issues to be discussed out to the organization before our first meeting. We will set a rotation for future meeting responsibilities and identify who will send the issue list with responses following the meeting.
Thanks again for all you do in service to Tennesseans!

Herb