The State of Michigan’s Department of Technology, Management and Budget’s (DTMB), Organizational Performance Management (OPM) enhances DTMB’s performance through a variety of services, including process improvement, strategic planning, metric planning, metric consulting, employee engagement and the management of State of Michigan policy through consulting, forms and written policy.  

Rhoda Henderson Fields spent decades as an award-winning information services account executive and sales management professional. Thanks to the Michigan Encore Executives-in-Residence program, Rhoda worked with the Department of Technology, Management and Budget’s (DTMB), Organizational Performance Management on its first-ever transformational customer satisfaction survey project.

Rhoda commented, “Traditionally, the public sector seldom looked at its internal employees and citizens as customers. It was rare to hear the words ‘service’ and ‘sales’ mentioned when addressing improvements, but that was part of my private-sector background, and I made it a part of the process.” She’s helping facilitate a change that allows employees to consider service and sales as good words for improving the customer experience, for both the internal customers (State of Michigan agencies) and external customers, the State of Michigan taxpayer.

Her private-sector experience helped Rhoda speak in terms of effective and efficient action plans that result in time savings, better use of resources and improved cost management as well as continuously improving the customer-service experience and keeping employees engaged and empowered.

After many years of working all over the country, Rhoda now finds it very satisfying to give back to her state and work within a group of public-sector professionals that truly care about the state, communities and taxpayers.

Her advice to managers interested in encore talent:

• Define goals and priorities clearly.
• Include encore workers in team meetings to engage them in your organization’s work beyond their specific project.
• Share information and ideas with the encore worker to gain a different perspective and demonstrate that you value their experience.