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alk a mile in someone else's shoes," was one of my mother's favorite expressions. She said no one can be effective unless they know what the people they're dealing with think, feel, need and want.

I was reminded of that in 1992 when I switched roles from government contractor to government executive on a one-year assignment to the United Kingdom. As director of information technology products and services for the United Kingdom's Department of Inland Revenue, I was responsible for a $400 million operating budget and 2,200 British civil servants and contractors.

My main mission was to field a new corporate tax system that already was showing signs of cost and schedule overruns. I also had to instill commercial best practices into the organization, make it more responsive to the business units of Inland Revenue, and prepare it for greater public-private partnering.

When the current vendors learned a new "constable" was in town - and an American one at that - they all made appointments to visit. After a handful of those meetings, I turned to my deputy and said, "I hope I didn't act like these guys when I visited customers in the States." Yet deep in my heart, I knew I had.

What problems did an industry veteran like myself now experience as a government customer?

• Roughly 80 percent of the vendors who visited seemed to care only about their sales quotas. What they should have been seeking was the mutual benefit of their companies and my agency.
• Most vendors did very little homework about our current requirements and planned activities. One firm, notorious for its own confusing structure with overlapping responsibilities, actually complained about our not making it easy for them to understand us.
• Vendors that had contracts with us were slow to bring problems to the proper level, as if sneaking in a "potential of schedule slippage" in a weekly report was sufficient. They should have been raising issues early to correct them before they became major problems.

Like it or not, everyone had to quickly get pointed in the same direction. We needed outside contractors to meet operational and new development requirements. And they needed us to stay in business. Consequently, I had several choices.

My staff and I could complain that vendors were a necessary evil that didn't understand us and only got in our way. Spreading blame always buys a month or two of breathing room. We could micromanage the vendors and get buried in details. We could adopt a hands-off approach and assume they would do a good job. Or, we could take a long, hard look at our rights and responsibilities as a customer while creating a win-win environment for everyone. And that's exactly what we did.

To change the work environment and meet our goals, we had to start by changing people's attitudes. That involved retraining a lot of my staff members to understand private industry better and to think like customers. At the same time, we had to teach our vendors to speak our language. Our objective was to use the best talents of both sides for mutual benefit.

Within a year, our Inland Revenue staff and industry partners fielded the critical tax application Britain needed. We also established the "way forward" architecture and new business approaches for dealing with the government's taxpayer rights initiatives. In other words, mission accomplished.

Six Keys to Success

Central to our success was implementing procedures from effective government customers in the United States. Following are the six keys to being a great customer:

1. Deliver a consistent message - internally and externally - about your organization's mission and expectations.

For the Inland Revenue, plans and decisions were made from a mission perspective, not just a technology perspective. Putting the main business of the agency first helped the IT division better partner with the business end.

Bill Piatt, chief information officer for the General Services Administration, adheres to this principle of consistency of message. When he was the CIO for GSA's Public Buildings Service, Piatt always spelled out at briefings, speeches or meetings his organization's three principal goals: predictable cost, predictable schedule and predictable functionality.

2. Clearly communicate your specific messages, goals, timetables and priorities to vendors.

Major initiatives are inherently complex, even in established organizations. The complexity soars after adding strained budgets, competing interests, changing requirements, and different people and organizations.

As the senior executive, you know better than anyone does what is most important to your organization. But you must communicate those goals, standards and timetables clearly and consistently. This provides your managers a sound basis upon which to form their decisions.

This became clear to me several years ago when I was transitioning 400 employees from another contractor to my organization. When I presented the transition and start-up plan we were using at seven other locations to customers at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., one manager, Bob Frye, spoke up and insisted on changes.

Frye, now the executive director of the Air Force Standard Systems Group in Alabama, was the customer manager for IT infrastructure services at Hanscom. He saw and understood things about that environment that a new player like me could not see. Good communication made for a smooth transition.

3. Learn industry's language, especially project management fundamentals and earned value reporting.

One of the worst things that can happen is for an important and expensive project to be over budget or late. Learn the three key program management measurements and demand that they be used:

• Budgeted Cost of Work Schedule is the planned cost, by month, for the effort.
• Actual Cost of Work Performed is how much was spent during the aforementioned monthly period, and the cumulative total to date.
• Budgeted Cost of Work Performed is the dollar value of work performed.

Many customers compare only the first two measures. However, that is insufficient and often a prescription for disaster. You must go beyond just measuring costs vs. time. How? By measuring the actual earned value.

That measurement requires you to answer an important question: Of the work done this month, how much did you think it would cost to do that amount of work? It allows you to calculate schedule variance, cost variance, and estimated cost at completion. More important, the answers let you catch problems early, and take actions to minimize their damage. An excellent resource for earned-value management is Manny DeVera, director of the IT Solutions Regional Services Center within GSA's Federal Technology Service.

4. Manage the entire initiative, not just contract terms and conditions. In other words, you must pay attention to the forest and its many trees.

In a typical outsourcing initiative, the key contract component is usually a set of service levels. For example, a call center will measure the number of calls, the time it takes to answer, the percentage of problems resolved on the first call, and the average time of each call. A desktop management function measures time to install a new PC or device, time to relocate existing equipment, and the time it takes to repair a broken piece of equipment.

If you are not careful, entire organizations will be established to monitor these metrics. If penalties and incentives are part of the service-level agreements, these measures take on a life of their own. Great expense and efforts will be taken to move 95 percent attainment to 97 percent. Find out what measures are important to the customer.

5. Reward vendor performance by serving as a customer reference.

When industry performs for you, you can do more than just pay their invoice. You can win their allegiance and best efforts by praising them in writing. Vendors consider this enormously valuable since past performance is the single-most important criteria in winning new business.

6. Promote spirit, pride and passion within your organization.

We in industry take our cues from you. If something is important to you, it is to us. Likewise, if you don't care about something, we usually won't either. Fortunately, government service is easy to be passionate about because it provides countless opportunities to do work that makes a difference in people's lives. However, as an executive, you have to be a torchbearer who sets the tone for your organization and vendors.

At a recent conference, Greg Woods, chief operating officer of the Education Department's Office of Student Financial Assistance, put that role into perspective when he said, "we're not simply servicing student loans." Rather, he said, "we are helping educate the next generation of Americans."

One Step at a Time

Getting the most from your vendors is no different than getting the most from your employees or even yourself. It takes continuous thought, consideration, work and planning. But the payoffs are huge.

You can build a dynasty of success, just as many sports teams have done. All it takes is getting everyone to speak the same language, tackle the same goals and head in the same direction. Your vendors want to succeed as much as you do.

William A. Woodard is president of ACS Government Solutions Group Inc. in Rockville, Md. He has devoted most of his 30-year career to providing professional and technical services to federal agencies.