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Starting this week, I'm bringing you a very special series on Leaders in Government.

This executive interview series has a dual purpose: To introduce successful executives and their accomplishments and to provide you with ideas for writing the Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ) statements on Senior Executive Service applications, which you have to do well if you want to advance as a federal executive.

The five ECQs are:

• Leading Change
• Leading People
• Results-Driven
• Business Acumen
• Building Coalitions/Communication

The ECQ statements are best written with specific examples. The new format for writing ECQs, recommended by the Office of Personnel Management, is: Context, Challenge, Action, Results. That means for each ECQ statement, you must describe the context of your work environment, then a challenge you faced, then the actions you took to deal with that challenge, and finally the results of your actions.

I hope you get some good ideas for writing ECQs from this executive interview with John Marshall, and from the interviews that follow in coming weeks. You'll notice I've put notes in italicized parentheses showing how John could turn his interview with me into ECQ statements.

John Marshall

John Marshall of Waldorf, Md., is a supervisory computer specialist. He was recently promoted to head of the Enterprise Systems Department at the Office of Naval Intelligence. With more than 20 years of information systems experience in the intelligence community, he has overseen major computer initiatives both in mainframe and client/server environments. He manages an $18 million budget and supervises 35 employees. John has worked hard to reshape the way the Office of Naval Intelligence conducts business using information technology and has been recognized for this both internally as well as by outside organizations.

Q: What was your first job in government?

A: I was hired as a GS-5 database programmer ... for the intelligence community.

Q: What was the most innovative project you ever led in government?

A: (Leading Change: Context) In the summer of 1995, two colleagues and I - all computer specialists - recognized the great need to design a Universal Desktop Architecture that would share data between Unix and Windows NT based systems. (Challenge) At that time there was no commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product that worked in a mixed operating environment. Since 1995, a major challenge has been the changing available COTS products and vendors that contacted us throughout our design and development stages. (Action) We presented the architecture concept to Defense Department executives, who adopted the idea and gave it a green light. We held meetings about what we wanted among four agencies within the intelligence community. When a product became available, we worked with industry partners and performed actual testing of the architecture from January to March 1997. (Result) We rolled out this infrastructure in April 1997.

(Results Driven: Challenge) When we conceived the Universal Desktop Architecture, our ideas of what we wanted to do were not possible since COTS products could only do part of the design [in] 1996. (Action) Later on we adopted COTS products that performed the entire architecture. We spoke with industry partners who contributed to various products that came out a couple of years later. This early concept was a spiral wheel of how we wanted to share data between the Unix and Windows NT based systems. We had to change design concepts later, where we used COTS products, leveraged between Microsoft, Tektronics, and NetAppliance and worked with each industry partner because of problems during the implementation. We had to work extensively with developers and partners to resolve the bugs and thoroughly test the systems. We assumed a degree of risk by limiting the number of companies we dealt with, but by providing them a thorough understanding of what we wanted, the end result went beyond our expectations.

(Result) We took the challenge; we made a difference. I was the program manager responsible for 30 to 35 personnel who are still in the process of implementing Smart Desktop Computing now and putting it into production. Over 2,000 users are currently being served by the system in both Unix and Windows NT.

I was invited as a guest speaker in Aug. 1998 at the Advanced Information Technology initiative, a national event sponsored by Federal Computer Week. I briefed senior officials from a multitude of government agencies and commercial organizations about this project. Focal points included the return on investment, how this architecture was built and the ability to use more innovative technology because of how the architecture had been set up.

Q: What is your definition of a successful government executive?

A: One who communicates along all lines of business. One who partners with customers and industry to deliver the best service and quality product. One who involves industry partners, vendors that deliver products in a close business relationship.

Next week you can read the second part of the interview, where John talks about how he leads people. We go into specifics: awards, early morning meetings, etc. ECQs require that you write about your experiences in detail, with specifics. These executive interviews will include details that will help you recognize your experiences in leading change and leading people.

If you have an SES success story, please write me at Resume@resume-place.com. I'm always interested in learning about applications, interviews and federal job successes. Please come back next Tuesday, and don't forget to share this column with others.

Kathryn Kraemer Troutman has been the president of The Resume Place, Inc. for 27 years. Kathryn helps people get promoted and change jobs. She is the pioneer designer of the new "federal resume." She wrote and published the first book on federal resume writing and is a popular resume writing workshop leader in government.

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