Instilling a Common Vision

In 2002, the leaders of Florida 's Turnpike Enterprise faced the challenge of establishing a sense of unity and a common base of organizational standards and measures across an unusually diverse employee population. Although the Turnpike is part of State of Florida 's Department of Transportation, less than 10 percent of the more than 4,000 employees who render service to the Turnpike's customers are State employees. The large majority receives their paychecks from one of several private sector companies with whom the Turnpike contracts to maintain the roads, operate the tollbooths and service plazas, and provide other related services. These employees have the same customers within the same transportation system but work for distinctly different employers. They are also demographically diverse and widely dispersed throughout much of Florida .

Turnpike leadership believed that a key to high performance was assuring that everyone serving Turnpike customers viewed themselves as "Turnpike Enterprise" employees with a strong attachment to the Turnpike's vision and mission, regardless of who was issuing their paycheck. To address the challenge of creating such a sense of common purpose and unity the Turnpike leadership identified two key strategies: 1) they created a Balanced Scorecard for the Turnpike Enterprise that included measuring the work environment in a consistent and repeated way with employee and customer surveys; and 2) they began investing in management development and employee training programs that cut across all of the employer organizations.

Dr. Brown was privileged to assist in these efforts by designing the employee survey. He also served as lead consultant in the administration of the survey and in the analysis and documentation of the results. Another way that Dr. Brown assisted the Turnpike was as curriculum adviser and faculty member in its first Enterprise-wide management development program. The top 100 managers within the Turnpike Enterprise participated in this weeklong program. The portions of the program taught by Dr. Brown were on the employee survey results and on management practices that serve to accelerate employee development.