THOUGHT LEADER FORUM: 

Developing Federal Executives in the 21st Century 

April 10, 2007 

Background 

On April 10, 2007, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) convened a Thought 

Leader Forum in Washington, DC. The Forum was co-sponsored by the Departments of 

Defense and Homeland Security, and the National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration. It brought together approximately 100 leaders on the topic of executive 

development from Government, the military, academia, good-government organizations, 

and the private sector. 

The purpose of the Forum was to develop actionable ideas for improving the 

development of Senior Executives. By broadening their perspective through the 

establishment of enterprise-wide, cross-agency competencies, we hope to build for the 

long term a results-oriented, sustainable high-performance culture across Government, 

with Senior Executives as leaders and role models. In keeping with the emphasis on 

action, much of the day was set aside for small group discussion among the participants – 

seven groups in all with a trained facilitator to channel and focus the conversation, and a 

recorder to ensure that the ideas were captured for reporting out at the end of the day. 

The major action items captured by the facilitators and supported by the recorder notes 

form the basis for this report. 

In order to set the stage for the group discussions, OPM Director Linda M. Springer 

opened the Forum with brief remarks about the importance of leadership in an era of 

unprecedented challenges for Government. She was followed by two plenary sessions. 

The first session was a panel discussion entitled Executive Development Across Sectors, 

moderated by Mark Abramson of the IBM Center for the Business of Government. The 

panelists included: 

• Eric Braverman, Associate Principal, McKinsey & Company; 

• Robert Mallett, Senior Vice President for Worldwide Policy and Public Affairs, 

Pfizer, and President of the Pfizer Foundation; 

• Vice Admiral Robert Papp, Jr., Chief of Staff, U.S. Coast Guard; and 

• Ruth Whiteside, Director, Foreign Service Institute, Department of State. 

The panel provided a wide range of views on executive development as it is practiced – 

and sometimes neglected – across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. These 

views are summarized in the attached notes from the panel session. The panel was 

followed by keynote speaker Dr. Carole A. Leland, Honorary Senior Fellow, Center for 

Creative Leadership, and noted authority in the field. Her address on “What We Have 

Learned in Executive Development” is summarized by Dr. Leland herself in the 

attachment entitled, A Baker’s Dozen of Things That Are Increasingly Self-evident About 

Executive Development. 
Further background for the Forum was provided by a set of four brief “read-ahead” 

papers sent out in advance to participants: 

• Developing 21st Century Department of Defense Senior Executive Service Leaders

• Getting the “X” Into Senior Executive Service: Thoughts on Generation X and 

the Future of the SES

• Snapshot of Executive Development In the Federal Government

• 2006 Federal Human Capital Survey Executive Views 

These papers are also included in the attachments. 

Report Out from the Thought Leader Small Group Discussions 

The ideas and proposed actions from the group discussions covered the entire spectrum 

from those dealing with Governmentwide concepts and policies to those which are 

actionable at the agency or even the individual level. This brief summary captures the 

high points across this spectrum and attempts to organize the many thoughts to create a 

more coherent whole. (The summary bullets presented by each of the seven breakout 

groups at the closing session are also attached.) The many ideas generated will be 

presented to OPM Director Springer for her consideration, and are available to agencies 

across Government and all interested stakeholders as a source of possible action in 

support of more effective executive development. 

There was widespread agreement across discussion groups that the conceptual framework 

for the Senior Executive Service needs to be reexamined, since the original concept of a 

mobile, interchangeable cadre of leaders has not been realized. Can that concept be made 

viable today and in the future? Does the SES need to be broken down into component 

groups, acknowledging the need for technical specialization in some leadership positions. 

Is it desirable for all SES members to have enterprise-wide careers, and how can that be 

balanced with the need for continuity in organizations where political and/or military 

leadership is changing constantly? 

The discussion groups were nearly unanimous in asserting that, once greater unanimity 

has been achieved around the proper role of the Senior Executive in today’s Government, 

a clear mandate must be established to support the type and level of executive 

development required for SES members to play that role. To be successful, agency 

leaders, not just the Human Resources Management staff, must then embrace the 

importance of executive development, by providing the necessary resources and creating 

the expectation, through executive development plans, individual performance plans or 

other means, that executives will be continuously developed. It was even suggested by 

some of the groups that agencies be required to have their executive development 

programs certified by OPM, similar to what is already done with SES performance 

appraisal systems. 

For their part, the executives themselves must understand they must be part of a learning 

culture requiring continuous development, and role models for it in their own 
organizations. They must recognize that to be successful as SES members and fully 

support the enterprise, they need to acquire a progressively broad, diverse, and complex 

portfolio, undertaking whatever development activities are necessary to perform at an 

ever-higher level. 

Several of the groups further asserted that, as the Government’s Human Resources 

Management leader, OPM could serve as a catalyst for helping Government rethink and 

revitalize the major concepts, establish a mandate for development throughout the SES 

life cycle, create the broad policy framework, and work to coordinate and support 

developmental opportunities for executives across Government. This will involve 

soliciting input and winning support from stakeholders at the highest levels, including the 

agency Chief Human Capital Officers and Executive Resources Boards, and possibly the 

President’s Management Council. 

In particular, the discussion groups saw a need for some sort of central coordination of 

developmental opportunities, especially for executives with transferable, enterprise-wide 

skills and competencies. While much developmental activity will of necessity take place 

at the agency or even individual level, there may be a place for centralized, 

Governmentwide action to leverage opportunities and coordinate agency activities. 

Many specific ideas were put forth to provide impetus and structure for enhanced 

executive development in the Federal Government. As will be noted below, most of 

these ideas would be actionable at the agency or even individual level, but in some cases 

they may benefit from more centralized support. An example of the latter would be 

regulatory action by OPM to require each member of the SES to have a multi-year 

Executive Development Plan (EDP). It was also suggested that agencies might wish to 

establish an agreement or contract for each individual to sign at the time of entry into the 

SES for ongoing development and mobility, and that a standardized template could be 

developed for them to use for such agreements. 

In general, the thought leaders kept coming back to the idea of mobility, and how it could 

be promoted. Several of the groups noted that, while geographical mobility gets perhaps 

the most attention and generates the most controversy, mobility for purposes of executive 

development need not involve moves out of the commuting area or even their current 

work address. Managing mobility is never easy, but there was a sense that current 

authorities to support it may be under-used, such as the information technology exchange 

authority, which unlike the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) mobility program 

allows for exchange of personnel with the private sector. IPA assignments at the 

executive level could also be used more frequently for development opportunities for 

Federal executives in the academic or not-for-profit arenas. An even less used authority, 

that for sabbaticals, could also be a much more effective vehicle for placing executives in 

development assignments outside the outside the Federal sphere, including the private 

sector. 

It was further suggested that OPM remove one of the practical impediments for 

development by providing a temporary allocation space to the “losing” agency when one 
of its executives goes to another agency on a developmental detail. (OPM Director 

Springer recently issued a policy statement expressing OPM’s willingness to approve 

spaces on a case-by-case basis for agencies making such a request.) Another suggestion 

was that the exchange of executives across agencies or outside of Government be 

supported through a central database of developmental opportunities. (OPM already has 

an inventory of developmental assignments known as Fed LDP (Leadership Development 

Programs) which if further publicized should go a long way toward meeting this need.) It 

was even suggested that a central pool of current SES members seeking such 

opportunities be established. 

One particularly intriguing notion to emerge was that of a centralized career path for a 

small subset of executives with particularly crosscutting skills and competencies who 

would be designated as “enterprise-wide” executives. This could establish for the first 

time in actual practice a prototype for the concept of the Senior Executive as 

Governmentwide asset, and if adopted more widely could move the SES toward the 

original concept of breadth and interchangeability. At least one of the groups suggested 

that OPM use its demonstration project authority to test this or similar ideas, to the extent 

that current law might conflict with or lack explicit authority to proceed with the desired 

actions. 

The thought leaders also came up with several variations on the theme that new members 

to the SES are not initiated or acculturated into their new role in a meaningful way. 

Typically, new members of the SES are immediately thrust into an all-consuming job, 

with little fanfare, and whatever incipient sense they may have of belonging to a broader 

corps of Federal executives is lost. Something as simple as a formal induction ceremony 

might heighten the executives’ sense of belonging to something far bigger than their 

current jobs. 

Several additional ideas were expressed to strengthen the bond among Senior Executives 

and promote a sense of a broader community. These included initiatives to promote peerto-peer idea exchange, communities of practice, and networking, within and across 

agencies, and opportunities to participate in action learning teams. These ideas show 

much promise as a way to continue and build on the relationships established among the 

executives at the time of and immediate following their induction. Action learning, in 

particular, can also be incorporated as a rigorous developmental component. 

Much interest was also expressed in mentoring, coaching and role modeling programs 

(formal or informal) by and for Senior Executives. Each agency must tailor such 

programs to meet its own particular circumstances needs, with support as necessary from 

OPM. Through interagency communities of practice, agencies can compare notes and 

refine their programs to better serve the needs of their executives. The key is to strike a 

healthy balance between making these programs mandatory to give them “teeth,” without 

turning them into rigid, rote requirements. 

All of these possible activities, not to mention those additional ideas documented in the 

attached notes, generally support the concept of the SES as a distinct cadre, with a unique 
role to play in the Federal Government. In this sense they directly support the original 

notion of the SES as something separate and apart, and not just an upward extension of 

the General Schedule classification and pay scheme. While realizing and sustaining this 

vision will require a major commitment to executive development in the broadest sense, 

there was a large degree of consensus among the thought leaders that this is an 

investment worth making – for the executives themselves and for the Government and 

the Nation they serve now and in the future.