Good afternoon. My name is Sarah and I will be your conference operator for today. At this time I would like to welcome everybody to the Talking Operations webinar. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After the speaker’s remarks there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, you can press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to our host, Ms. Jocelyn Bauer. You may begin your conference. Hello. Welcome to a special talking operations. This is the first of a three-part course on traffic signal program management. Today's webinar is focused on defining organizational missions, values, goals and objectives. I will begin a brief introduction to the environment before turning the session over to our instructor. Be advised that are over is being recorded. The format will be a little bit different than previous webinars. Instead of several presentations you will have one instructor who I will introduce shortly. It will also be more interactive. There will be several audience pools during the webinar and the instructor will pause a few times. So, if you think the question , while the instructor is presented, please type it into the chat area. Will during the webinar, if you think of a question, type into -- type it into the chat box. Make sure you send your question to everybody rather than just the presenters. The instructor will stop at certain points to answer questions. The operator will provide instructions on how to ask questions over the phone line during the sessions. A file containing the audio and video of this webinar will be posted within the next week. I will type of address into the chat box shortly. Attendees will be notified of the availability of the seminar. We encourage you to direct others that were not able to attend to access the recording online. Presentation used today is available in the file download box on the left-hand side of the screen. To download a file, will it click the button that says download and save to my computer. At this time, I would like to introduce the instructor. Mr. Lawrence Marcus has over 25 years of traffic engineer, planning and operations. He has extensive experience in local and regional government reservation, program and project management and training facilities. Mr. Marcus has been an adjunct professor at George Washington University for 15 years and is currently the vice chair --. He previously oversaw traffic operations for the city of Rockville. Will Larry, feel free to start when you are ready. Thank you. Good afternoon everybody. As you can see, this is a first of a three-part series that I will be discussing with the group. This part defines organizational mission goals, values, goals and objectives. So, I guess to add or subtract a little credibility, if you will on my background. This webinar is focused on operator's of traffic signal division. I have both management background area in that and also more general program management background. Hopefully, those are why I was asked to help with this group. As we get to the purpose of the webinar, you can see, first and foremost, this is a target. Adding or spec to be on the technical duties that each of you have. And, within that, understanding roles and responsibilities. We will look at it internally. What you work with on a daily basis and certainly we understand that it is not one-size-fits-all if you will. Also, externally. As you are working with the public and stakeholders, etc., what your roles and responsibilities are. Based on that, just work with you to improve your success by better understanding what those internal and external stakeholder needs are. And then help you map out a transparent system of mission statement values goals and objectives. Then, and the later sessions we will be discussing more of the program management strategies to help you be successful. This is a quick slide that shows the connection of this first session with the other two. And, technically, call it and talk one to a and B. The next to focus on organizational structure in management. Specifically, will as far as the learning outcomes are concerned, we get into understanding and defining your organization's purpose within the government agency and community, as I described. Recognizing your holster and formulating a path forward beyond mission statement, goals, etc. Identifying major stakeholders and identifying the needs of our mission and values, goals, and objectives. Before I go any further, I would like to quickly pull this group. So, I can target the type of discussion based on your background. And, just a bit of background as you go through that process. At the recent ITE session, the audience was public sector. Ready within state, county, municipal leaders. Again, a majority or division chiefs, but their education, generally speaking, was all on the technical side. That is why they targeted this session. If I can confirm that with this group through a series of questions, following that logic, if you will. The first being, how many of you have an engineering or quantitative background? Specific to your education? If you can answer that question. I will roll through the -- the. How many of you are now managers? Confirming the advertisement and who we have on the line. And then, the logical follow-up question, of that, how many of you actually have management training. You have a technical background, have been successful, moved up into a management role, and, now, do you have tools to be successful as a manager as opposed to a senior technician? And then, along those lines, a perspective on your self, what percent of -- percentage of your time is focused on an engineering when you were five years into your career versus now and how are you spending your time at this pace in your career. Finally, parallel to all of that, what defines success in the eyes of your supervisor? How are you judged? I would imagine, it is how well you manage your entire group. Let me give you a second to run through those questions. Then we will push forward. I will read as I learned. I see that 60% are now managers. Management training, yes, 44%. About half have management training. I guess, when I opened it up verbally, the audio line, it would be interesting to see how many of you have an MBA type of degree, public affairs degree, or have had supplemental training through your employer. Engineering degree, 85%. Can you see that? Time is spread across. Percentage of time now focused on engineering. It varies. And then, finally, looking at what defines success in the eyes of your supervisor. Very interesting results. Resident I satisfaction. About one fourth of you. At efficiency. So much broad . 18%. Completing projects that you have been asked to do, which makes sense, 40% being the high number. Well, Sarah, if you don't mind, can you open up the audio to see if there are any questions or comments on this polling that anybody would like to add? If you have a question or comment, please press start and one on your telephone. Mark Taylor, your line is open. I think we are okay here. We are good. You can move onto the next one. There are no further questions. Okay. Thank you. Is it possible to clear the link results? Absolutely. I guess no surprises it is good to see, what defines success for you, it is covered among the different categories. They are all imported. We are somewhat on the same page. As far as how I target this discussion and the fact that, what percentage of you have technical versus management degrees. So much consistent. A bit more with the management background, which is a good thing. And certainly, as far as my presentation goes, as we go through this, and it is a webinar, but if we can make it interactive, within the restrictions that we have, to hash out some of these issues, it would be wonderful to share perspective. With that said, we will keep pushing or were to with the next group of slides. We will get through turning out, one if you will. It is specific to the purpose of your organization starting with, why your organization exists. And, it has the traditional viewpoint versus the more broad one, if you will. The purpose of this session, do you feel that it is looked upon that your organization exists to operate and maintain the traffic signal system, or, and sure that the values and goals of the ladies and jurisdiction are reflected within the city streets. My experiences are, internally, within my staff, traditionally, they pushed towards a first. We are here to keep these things running as efficiently as possible , from a system approach as well as a maintenance approach as well as the equipment you are responsible for. Very much a focus there. Will the pressure is on you I would imagine. The perspective is that it is really, certainly the first but also sure that the values, and we will get into the later, and the goals of community interest if you are reflected within the city streets. And, just a quick comment on that. The values on how you reflect values, whether that is a state, regional, local perspective in that is the way your system should operate. Focusing first, on the purpose of your organization, looking at internally demands that you have upon you. When I say internal, I mean, within your building, if you will. What does the government need from you? Just for you to reflect on that, the day to day push that you have internally. And, second question, what role do you play within your organization? We pulled that, as far as whether you are a manager, senior staff member, to your staff member. It is important to understand how that fits into roles and responsibilities. And then, within those, do you have soul or shared ownership of everything from your infrastructure to delivering wrecks and, through you are relying upon for that delivery. If you could, ask yourself those questions and notes to your self as far as how you fit within those questions. I am not pulling that formally for everyone. Secondly, and more complicated, are the external demands. It is not one sized fits all answer. And abroad question, what does a community expect from you? We will dive into that specifically over the next few slides. As far as what role you play in the community. Imagine that at the local level is more ingrained into it. Will the mobility, safety, and Friday at types of issues you are responsible for. And then, most importantly, what is the perception of your organization within that community. How important is that to you? I know you certainly have your standards of performance. Is this included in your standards of performance? I can, I think, to note to yourself, how you respond to those questions some quick subsets of that, you have the perception being by the stakeholders which we will get into as well as a different activity. Well, exploring the purpose of your organization and the demands of will external demands of the stakeholders and concern. How do the stakeholders in which are operation. I guess you can look at that in many ways. This is external as far as they come through your formal public hearing process. Your complaint. Your suggestions. Commissions, if you will how is that handle and, is the feedback that you are receiving from that group, is that consistent with what you're hearing from the elected officials? And, internally, within your supervisors? What I heard from many others as well as my own experience has been that the absolutely get conflicting will be back and push towards different directions. The reality of that is that what you are darling trying to do, isn't best for the entire jurisdiction or corridor and it is impossible to make 100% of the people happy. How do you can -- convey that in your daily job? Now, defining the purpose of your organization as opposed to understanding it. Getting back to the internal of the government perspective. And, with that, we would say, the state more looks at the regional perspective. Regional traffic flow versus a county which maybe a quarter movement. Finally, even as a polity which may be as small-scale as access to a town center and pedestrian bicycle transit circulation through the same intersection that may not be as high priority as the other two jurisdiction. Find that and understanding those roles is important. As you can see here, just a list of , my list of the purpose of the organization. Keep in the roadway safe and efficient. You must possess the technical expertise to deliver this. Responding to the citizen requests. You Tommy which you get more of. Will implementing the elected officials initiative when possible. Certainly, managing your infrastructure and monitoring your system performance. How does that compare to the community perspective? And, the push that you get from them as far as efficient transportation infrastructure. It is somewhat consistent I would say. Certainly, they are all worried about their own backyard. Injury but children are safe within the schools owns and the infamous children and play area. Responding quickly to complaints . We certainly, those of you who have been in the field for 10+ years with this type of environment, understand how it has changed and how technology has changed from a letter that they right the takes a few days to get in and processed versus now getting the e-mail and them wanting a response by the end of the day and a solution as quickly. And, the pressure of that that is put on you. You are out there supporting the business side as well. And then, the constant conflict where he want to satisfy both protecting neighborhoods, meaning the traffic calming aspect of our jobs as well as connecting neighborhoods so they have access to the things they need. These two things directly are each important, but, it gets to a perspective of connecting one in a rather to an activity center going to another. That is not protect -- protecting the latter. Shifting now will do the organizational culture itself. This is something that is important to understand a little bit more general. I will be brief on this, somewhat. It would be interesting to get your perspective as far as what the values of the organization are and the values of your community are. When I say values, I mean, certainly, there are different perspective of whether the values are for internal are customer service oriented by your supervisor and others and the pressures you have to serve your community as well as a much more straightforward about use of safety, creating a little community. And, the pure traffic operation values that you possess. Sarah, if you could, this might be a good point to open it up to cover the first few items in any comments, suggestions that people have on what I covered so far. Up to this point. If there are any questions at this time, please press start one on your telephone keypad. There are no questions. We will keep moving. Thank you. Sarah, if you could, to up the pulling question. How does your organizational culture respond to your purpose and need? I will do that here. Thank you. This way, we can see if people are asleep or still with us. Interesting. If you can see the results of culture and its relationship, it is not a direct match, but this is a wonderful starting point. Think you will. Will now, we pushed to the next level of detail. Those are the stakeholders you work with on a daily basis. Those within your organization and those that are throughout the community. Again, internal and external stakeholders. This corresponds to the learning objective three, if you will. Identifying the internal stakeholders. I would imagine there are no surprises here on the list that I put together which is not comprehensive, but elected. Showing will first and foremost, again, this is internal, you're a look at official appointed official. Appointed could be such as, a planning commission and a lack did being certainly, your counselor, Governor, etc. I guess the fine line on the appointed is, if there are citizens on a advisory committee to you. Your senior management, the directions from that, has mentioned the transportation commission advisers in general. And then the other departments. And your relationships with those other departments. -- Being an example. Think to yourself. If you are in a jurisdiction that has a police force as well. Is that the department that you push on back and forth or are they, is it a well oiled machine. You are collecting information through your accounting and monitoring system and conveying to them where the worst speeding locations are for example and in some cases even mapping that out so they are not chasing their tails will like getting only the individual calls. You can show them where the problems are. Will the Park and recreation Department. Trail related to their special events. Now, you work with them there. Certainly, the planning Department. And, many others. Again, as we start to broaden perspective on the purpose of your organization, just understanding those internal stakeholders that you need to please. The communication with these people I will be covering in the program management aspect, I believe in just working on comedic Asian with them. And, an example of that type of communication and the frustration I have heard experience and heard others on is your daily job of working with elected officials. The electorate a visual had just finished a phone call with the Park and Rec her and said, I want a water fountain put in this park by the end of the week. The park director said, you got it, I just need to run the water line to it. Then, he calls you, or she calls you and says, there's a similar request. I came out the same meeting and they have asked for a four-way stop at the following location. How quickly can we get the sign up? It is not the same answer. Because, of the warrant issues that are associated with the intersection, certainly the safety. The studies that are necessary and how do you convey that? It is not as simple. I've seen many senior traffic engineer's cheat follow into the situation where they haven't established enough credit with elected officials to providers of that dual understanding of what they can do quickly and cannot do quickly. And, understanding -- and where you have or don't have flexibility. What constraints that was on you and your ability to satisfy your supervisor versus what other apartment heads, Chiefs, are able to do. Along those lines, do you have an internally tracking system? Certainly, with citizen complaints, I would imagine most of you have such a thing. Internally, are you tracking your responsiveness to the other departments? And, working with them, are you both successful? Okay. Moving to the external stakeholders list. Now, this is illustrative. You think this is page 1 of 10 of the external stakeholders you have to deal with. Work with. Coordinate with. Satisfied. Just looking down the list, you can see the broad resonance or citizens of the jurisdiction that is employed. The advocacy groups. Certainly, will in the Washington DC area, strong neighborhood you should will and the need to be visible to them and supported the them. Build credit within. Industry rules. Following best practices and requirements, if you up. Guidance by those agencies. Depending on your level of jurisdiction. The federal agency involvement. Then, other agencies that have shared responsibilities with you could be the ownership of your ever charger versus the operation versus the maintenance of your infrastructure. And then, looking down the list as well, it branches into the school system and their use of the facility and their demands. And, the pressure it puts on you in the school zones as well as maintaining traffic flow. As we mentioned before, business owners, transit authorities, and then, pedestrian and bike advocacy. I think they are two. I will use that as a starting point. Sarah, if I can open up the line to see if there are any questions or comments so far? If you have a question or comment for this point, please press start one on your telephone keypad. The there are no questions on the queue at this time. Okay. Thank you for. We are through the straightforward aspects of this. Really, this first session is pretty direct as far as guidance. Hopefully, no surprises but more perspective on who you are there to satisfy and how you communicate with each of those. To get towards ensuring everyone is on the same page of being transparent about your purpose am of the culture that you are representing and what you can and cannot deliver, it points us towards the mission statement, if you will. Values which we covered and goals and objectives of your group. And, it poses the questions of, why have a mission statement in the first place? Do you have one? Does the statement reflect your community by you as opposed to the internal the perspective on that? Certainly, the value gets to your own work quality. Your ethics. Your community priority and how they are reflected within those bodies. As you can see, there is a polling question as well. I will let you fill that out quickly. The good news is, the majority of you do. For those that do not. We get to, why does it an organization have goals objectives and are led by the mission statement overall? In many cases, the mission statement, goals, objectives could be a subset of what you find in your master plan as far as more general guidance of mobility, accessibility, safety, protecting the environment type goals. But, they don't touch on as much. Those should reflect the values, but they don't touch on as much of how you operate your own organization and how you define success. Throughout that, jumping on my soapbox, the importance of understanding the relationship of the your broad mission statement to your goals and, from the goals that you have, objectives that help you meet the goal. If it is the goal is essentially -- something -- something such as mobility, the goal could be transportation of mobility and performance measures to each of those objectives. That you set up that criteria. But, as that is being developed, that it may be a straw man drafted from you, but it comes from a transportation commission or an arena where there is by in beyond just your own internal group. Certainly, you want to have your internal stakeholders to have influence on that. That is what you are ultimately going to try to deliver to as well as external. Bottom line to all of this is that you have built this up through consensus and somewhat of a transparent system and does can execute and everybody is on the same page. As you go through that. This is somewhat reflective of my comments before. Just ensure that they are realistic. And that, certainly, in this environment that we are in now with the financial feasibility of implementing certain things, whether it is improvements that may sound great but not obtainable based on anything from finances to right of way to political support, that the smell test, if you will, has been conducted before locking those and. Along those lines, that they provide clear version as mentioned. Reflect the stakeholders need and help you establish your priorities and can convey that to your supervisor. I pulled this up recently from the state of Colorado as far as their goals are concerned. I thought that they were broad and pretty much spot on with the type of things we are discussing here. That's me give you a second to that those group. Generally speaking, there is safety that would hit everybody. It is probably everybody's number one priority. System quality. Function within mobility. And internal program delivery. Then, I will let you read through the specifics through each of those. Sarah, I would like to ask the group, is there anything missing within this list? Will if you have any questions or comments, -- press start one on your telephone keypad. That are no questions at this time. Okay. Thanks. Well, the last few points I want to cover in this first session have to do with creating or re-creating your own nation bodies, goals, and objectives. You can look at this as a homework assignment as the next -- for the next session. If you could, go back, take a look at what you have. And see, for those of you with mission statements, and those that have goals and objectives and performance measures, that relationship. Review them if you could from what we have discussed in this meeting. And, will cover that in the next session. Some background materials that may help you. Will won't read these two, but it is a valuable resource, I believe. The presentation slides are available after the whether. -- Recognizing the current organizations culture. Look at how that conveys the mission statement calls. Identifying and understanding the major stakeholders that you have internally and externally. And then finally, understanding the need for a mission statement, values, goals and objectives for the organization. So, that's what I had hoped to cover today. Here is the point of contact for you. If you have any questions or comments about the first session, I guess I'll try it will more time to open it up to see if there are any comments, suggestions, for me or the group. Sarah? There is a question in the chat area. Will -- their art any questions on the phone at this time. A question from Mark with regard to the city Department. Have goals, values, or objectives, or just the agency as a whole. That should be one from the highest level, but within your department, in your agency, they should be more specific ones that are targeted towards your performance. Your organizations performance. In fact, I think back to that car out a listing of delivery versus mobility and infrastructure and it shouldn't and how you execute those. That type of thing, we can cover in more detail about how to get there in the next session. Well, anything else for the good of the group? Okay. I see one or two more questions. We will give it a second and then we will close it out . It looks like one or two more people are typing in. We will give it one more minute and then we will close it up. Actually, we have enabled individual chat. These maybe people chatting to other dissidents privately. Okay. Well, hearing nothing else, thanks everybody for your time. We will connect again on the 20th. I will wrap this up with some information on the national transportation operations coalition. Here you'll see the member organizations. We encourage you to go to the website which is on the following slide it find out more about the organization. The website contains information about upcoming webcast. It also contains a webcast arcade -- archive page was lights and recordings of previous webcasts. It is a rich resource. We will have the recording and slides from today's webinar up within a week. There are also two discussion forums will you can also sign up on the website or the newsletter that is e-mailed out twice monthly. This gives you operations news as well as registration links. On this last slide, the link, go to the site, register for the next two sessions on the three-part course. It will be organizational management for signal systems part eight. That is on Tuesday, December 20 from 2 to 3, or 330. The third and last installment of this course on Thursday, December 22 from two o'clock to about 330, organizational management for signal systems, the second part. That concludes today's webinar. Thank you to the presenters as well as to all of you participating on the phone line. And, online. We hope you found this informative. Please enjoy the rest of your day.