DOE’S MCCONNELL APPOINTS DEPUTIES, ROLLS OUT STREAMLINING INITIATIVES

Assistant Secretary Hopes to Fill High-Level Management Void

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
06/08/12

Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Chuck McConnell appointed two new deputies this week, formally filling a senior-level leadership void in the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and kicking off a new management strategy that aims to bridge the gap between headquarters and its field offices using corporate techniques. In a June 4 memo to FE employees, McConnell announced the appointment of National Energy Technology Laboratory Deputy Director Scott Klara to serve in FE’s No. 2 position as principal deputy assistant secretary. He also positioned Serena McIlwain, who has worked on detail at FE from the Department of Energy’s Office of Human Capital, as chief operating officer on a four-month detail. “FE will be undergoing a series of organizational changes in the coming months and today I am pleased to announce the initial steps with the following two critical leadership building blocks,” McConnell said in the memo. Both officials started their new assignments this week, he said.

The positioning of Klara and McIlwain comes as McConnell continues to roll out his new ‘One FE’ agenda that aims to unite FE headquarters, NETL and its field offices under a “seamless operation,” McConnell said in an interview with GHG Monitor this week. “ ‘One FE’ has been a regular and routine theme since shortly after I took this job,” he said. “Whether it is the coal program, the oil and gas program, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or NETL, we want to leverage the strength of the whole and not just see everything as the sum of parts that are cobbled together.” McConnell said the goal of the initiative is to unite all of FE’s entities—many of which face an omnipresent organizational and cultural divide—under the same mindset and goals. He said that when he first arrived at DOE in May 2011, FE’s different operations appeared to be operating in separate “silos.” “It’s not uncommon across organizations. If you don’t have a structure and management principles that are all for the collective goal of the enterprise, then you’re likely to be operating in silos,” he said. “My first impression was that each of the individual silos were functioning well, but perhaps not as integrated across the enterprise with strategic goals [as it could be].” 

Klara’s Appointment Meant to Further Unite HQ, NETL

Some of those strategic goals could be achieved with the appointment of Klara—who will be based in Pittsburgh and split time between NETL headquarters there and the Forrestal building in Washington, according to McConnell. “Because of his significant experience at both the FE HQ and NETL organizations, Scott will drive FE toward an effective and seamless ‘One FE’ operational structure,” McConnell outlined in the memo. Klara will continue to be integrated within NETL Director Anthony Cugini’s leadership team while also reporting to McConnell, helping “maintain a strong presence with the NETL leadership team” and overseeing the day-to-day operational direction of FE’s programs out of Washington, according to the assistant secretary.

McConnell said keeping Klara deeply rooted in NETL is essential to helping advance the goal of unity and ‘One FE.’ “It’s important for any headquarters enterprise to understand the strength of local management and decision-making,” he said.

McIlwain to Propel BRAVO Initiative

McIlwain, on the other hand, will help lay the groundwork for another cornerstone of McConnell’s FE strategy, centered on what he is calling the Business Review Assessment for a Vital Organization (BRAVO) Initiative. That program will rely heavily on efficiency strategies pioneered by various corporations in order to streamline FE’s operations, organization and personnel, McConnell said. “We are at the very beginning of the BRAVO transformation and having the right people in the right jobs, with teamwork and the mission as priority is the key element to effective leadership,” McConnell, who has a business background, said in the memo.

The initiative in particular will follow the ‘Six Sigma’ strategy pioneered by General Electric in the 1990s that will train people to identify and root out problems and inefficiencies via quantitative analyses, according to McConnell. He said FE leadership will begin assessing the organization of the office within the next few months and will and eventually begin implementing programs to root out inefficiencies. “This BRAVO acronym is a moniker for bringing into our organization a whole process of lean ‘Six Sigma’ productivity and sustainability initiatives to be able to assess, execute and derive the gain and value from an organization. It’s a more disciplined and methodical approach to initiating changes and driving results,” McConnell said in the interview. “It is focused on work processes that currently exist and how they can be better and having right people in right jobs. It’s aimed at organizational effectiveness enterprise-wide so that we’re not duplicating activities in each of those silos but that we’re able to take an enterprise-wide view of how we can apply our resources most effectively.”

This cycle of “constant review” is aimed at slimming down FE to be more efficient at a time of tightening budgets, McConnell said. In its February 13 budget request to Congress, the Obama Administration aimed to cut Fossil Energy R&D’s budget by more than 20 percent. While it appears that Congress is likely to restore most of that funding close to current levels, McConnell said belt tightening is still a personal goal. “As you look forward, one of the responsibilities of leadership is to read the signposts and milestones of the journey that you’ve been on and where you anticipate where it will go,” he said. “In terms of budgets and programmatic development, I think it’s important that you’re constantly assessing your organization for effectiveness and mindful of the fact that budget pressures are going to ask you do more with less. That means that you have to be as effective and efficient as you possibly can be.”

FE Leadership Void Filled, For Now

The appointments of Klara and McIlwain to FE’s No. 2 and 3 slots represent the first time that all the office’s highest leadership positions have been held simultaneously in more than a year, helping fill a high-level leadership void that has long been pertinent. When McConnell was named chief operating officer in May 2011, it left him, in FE’s third-highest position, as the top-ranking official in the office. Within its top post alone, FE has seen four assistant secretaries in as many years, leading to what many have said to be a leadership vacuum within the office. McConnell said he hopes those days are over. “[The new hires] are going to give Fossil a foundation for a long-term integrated management team that will serve the organization well for years to come,” he said.