The executive director of the Oklahoma Tax Commission said when he took over the role in January 2002, he was confronted by a lethargic, fearful and broken culture at his office.

On the first day, Doug Linehan started working to change that culture.

Linehan was the guest speaker during a recent meeting of the Kingfisher Rotary Club and told of his experiences at the OTC, which employs approximately 600 people throughout 19 departments.

He said when he introduced himself to one of the OTC employees his first day on the job, the employee seemed reticent to talk to him.

“After I sat down and introduced myself to her and she found out I was truly interested in her as a person and what she did at her job, she told me that she had been at her job for 12 year and this was the first time the executive director had ever spoken to her,” Linehan said.

Linehan was shocked to hear those words, so he saw his first mission on the job was to open the lines of communication amongst all the employees.

He said the culture was that the employees felt if they were to ever see the executive director, to never establish eye contact and to keep their heads down and get away as fast as they could.

He said he saw this as the opportunity to truly transform the entire culture of the OTC.

Linehan came to the OTC with 30 years in global finance and accounting experience.

He and his wife Madeline began raising their family in Nebraska where he worked with ConAgra Foods and rose to the position of senior vice president.

The Linehans made the decision to return to Oklahoma where he led the tax operations function of Paycom.

He is a graduate of Oklahoma State University and serves on the university’s foundation board and the accounting advisory board.

Linehan said he retired early from Paycom and accepted the job at the tax commission after a chance encounter with an old friend he ran into while shopping at a grocery store.

The friend mentioned that the executive director position was open and she felt he would be an excellent choice to fill the void.

“I’ve never worked in government before, so I take a private business approach to the job,” he said.

Since Linehan has been at OTC, incentives such as pay-for-performance have been implemented and annual job reviews and discussions have created an atmosphere where open dialogue and interaction have drastically improved accountability and performance management.

“Amazingly enough, when I got there, the tax commission hadn’t truly gone through any transformation in terms of operation since it was created in 1931,” he said.

He also said some employees had never gone through a performance evaluation since they were employed.

“I’m a big believer in pay-for-performance,” Linehan said. “We had a lot of great people working there, but they had never been shown what ‘good’ looks like.

“So now at the tax commission, if you show high performance, you’re going to get bonuses, just like private businesses have done for years.”

Conversely, he added, if employees don’t meet goals and expectations, there’s generally a parting of ways.

“Our number one goal is this: everything we do should be to benefit the taxpayer, the tax preparer and the employee,” he said. “If it does not benefit one or all of those three parties, then we should not be doing it.”

Since his arrival, Linehan said the income tax account backlog is down more than 80 percent and the average wait time at the tax resource center has dropped from more than three hours when he took the job to 27 minutes.

Linehan said those numbers will continue to drop as the OTC continues to improve by growing and investing in the culture of communication and productivity incentives.

He concluded by saying that his job could be stated simply: “It’s not our money. It’s yours. I want to look you straight in the eye and tell you that I know we’re doing everything possible to spend that money as wisely as possible.”