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24 <br /> A summary of comments <br /> made at the April 3, 1996 Task Force meeting by <br /> Scott Gardner, District Manger for Duke Power <br /> Mr. Gardner is active in various community agencies including Orange County Communities in <br /> Schools, the Triangle United Way,the Durham Education Network, and the Hillside High <br /> School Model School program in Durham. <br /> About 10 years ago, in an effort to become more competitive in the current <br /> market, Duke Power Company began an internal assessment and organizational <br /> re-engineering process. At that time, in addition to providing basic electrical <br /> power, the company was selling electrical appliances, electrical fixtures and <br /> electrical engineering advice to homeowners and businesses. <br /> We needed to get down to the most basic purpose of our company. What <br /> was our ultimate goal? We needed a vision that would last over time. We <br /> decided to ask our end-use customers what they wanted. We knew that <br /> internally generated surveys are often structured to get the answers the service <br /> providers want to hear, so we got outside consultants to design a survey that <br /> would be objective. We asked end-use customers, employees and stockholders <br /> what they expected. What we learned from the survey was that our customers <br /> wanted two things: reliability and low prices. They wanted the lights to come <br /> on every time they flipped the switch, and they wanted the cost to be <br /> reasonable. <br /> Now we had a concise vision that was supported by all the stakeholders. But <br /> we had to find a way to stay focused on the vision. Often when a company <br /> breaks its vision down into*short-term objectives and strategies it gets distracted <br /> from its ultimate goal. It's easy to make mistakes when your focusing on short- <br /> term issues and extraneous details. At Duke, for example, we had been doing <br /> more of the same, wrong things and expecting different results. That was <br /> insanity. Once you have identified your vision, build in a process that helps you <br /> stay focused on it. <br /> Our next step in re-structuring was to develop measurable outcomes that <br /> related specifically to the vision: reliability and low prices. Then we looked at <br /> each existing process and each step within the process and asked what value does <br /> it add. If none, the step was deleted. <br /> Organization also have to consider how a decision affects all three groups of <br /> stakeholders: the users, the employees, and the stockholders, or in the case of <br /> government, the service recipient, the employees, and the taxpayer. In Duke <br /> Power's process, employee numbers declined from 22,000 to 15,000; but, <br />