Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 32, Number 11, 1 November 2015 — Looking forward, not backward [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Looking forward, not backward

We ' ve all been through performance evaluations.

V V Sometimes, they are quite adversarial. But I believe to make the Office of Hawaiian Affairs a stronger organization that we need to spend more time looking forward than through the rear-view mirror. It means we need to have a bold, new approach with the way we evaluate the only employee the board hires - the Chief Executive Officer.

As many of you may know, the board's current contract with the CEO calls for a performance evaluation to be completed by November 2015. With six months left on his current contract, there is a strong sentiment to do a performance pre\>iew rather than a performance revie w. In short, we need to work together to ensure we are doing what would get the best results for OHA. What I want to avoid most is the blame game. Some individual trustees may believe the CEO has not performed as well as they expected, while the CEO may believe he was never given the sort of specifie guidance that could be objectively measured. That sort of adversarial process benefits no one. I believe that the performance evaluation process should be constructively critical but not adversarial. We as trustees need to work with the CEO to define how our respective roles will get the best results. It should allow us to determine what changes are needed in Trustee-CEO relations to do the best job possible for you, our beneficiaries. Above all, this process should help us all understand that a trusting and open relationship between our

board and the CEO is the most effective management tool OHA ean have to address its challenges in the months ahead.

For these reasons, the board has been asked to support efforts to put a future focus on the CEO's performance appraisal. Instead of dwelling too mueh on the past six months, we must agree on some clear expectations that would allow us to measure, over the next six months, his efforts to establish strateaic direc-

tion, build his management team and lead effectively.

This would also mean figuring out how our board and the CEO ean better complement and support one another. In addition, it would mean holding ourselves accountable for making the CEO a success and ensuring he creates an environment where everyone in the agency is thriving while working toward our goals. Similarly, it would mean letting the CEO know that he needs to tell us what's not working well so we ean all chart a course of action that ean turn things around before there is a bad conclusion. Just as significant, it would mean ensuring that the CEO creates an effective succession plan that prepares at least two of his key staffers to assume larger and broader roles. Put another way, he would be expected to create a process for identifying and developing existing talent to ensure key organizational roles ean be filled with qualified internal candidates. All told, this new approach will set — for all of us — higher expectations for the benefit of our lāhui. It's the kind of new thinking that is necessary to help give our people more of what they need from OHA's top leadership. ■

LEO 'ELELE V www.oha.org/kwo | kwo@OHA.org TRUSTEE MESSSAGES ' NATiVE HAWAIIAN » NEWS l FEATURES I EVENT S

Rūbert K. Lindsey, Jr. Chair, Trustee, Hawai'i