Bureau of Public Debt

The Bureau of Public Debt was a government agency formed in 1940 and housed within the U.S. Department of the Treasury. For over sixty years, the BPD was responsible for helping ensure the continued operation of the federal government by overseeing the complex financial exchanges involved with borrowing money from the public and managing trillions of dollars in investments.

Managing Complexity at Massive Scale

Van Zeck was appointed Deputy Commissioner at the BPD in 1987, and Commissioner in 1998—an executive role he filled for the rest of the Bureau's existence. Commissioner Zeck oversaw nearly 2,000 employees and directed the agency through changing political, economic, and technological conditions.

With decades of management experience, Zeck understood the fundamental importance of organizational culture on employee morale, employee performance, and overall organizational success.

Existing Values Framework Not Going Deep Enough

The BPD had implemented a Values Framework to help employees thoroughly understand and meet performance expectations. Employees were instructed to align their behaviors with strategically identified values to support the Bureau's mission.

With the responsibility of accurately accounting for a stream of intricate and substantial financial transactions, accountability, transparency, and ethical behavior of every member of the organization was paramount.

But the Values Framework focused on behaviors, what employees should do. It didn't address the underlying mindsets that drive those behaviors.

Seeking to Elevate Cultural Impact

In the early 2000s, Zeck and other BPD leadership were seeking ways to elevate the impact of their Values Framework program and strengthen organizational culture. They knew something was missing, a deeper foundation that would make everything else more effective.

The challenge: how to go beyond behavior modification to address what actually drives how employees see their work, their colleagues, and the people they serve.

Commissioner's Personal Discovery

Around this same time, Commissioner Zeck encountered Arbinger's book, "Leadership and Self-Deception." He immediately recognized the relevance of the Arbinger principles and the importance of cultivating an organizational culture where employees are supported in seeing and responding to the needs of others.

He learned how employee morale and work execution are inextricably connected. To deepen his own understanding of the effect an outward mindset has on employee performance, Zeck attended several Arbinger training workshops.

Zeck describes the Arbinger framework and principles as being "fundamental and foundational"—laying the groundwork for widespread and coordinated success across a complex organization.

"Two words that I've used to describe the Arbinger material ever since I was first exposed to it are fundamental and foundational. Here was the foundation on which everything else can be built. Everything else you want to do in an organization is going to be more effective or has a chance, certainly, to be a lot more effective and be leveraged, as a result of having the Arbinger material as a foundation," Van explained.

Building from the Top Down

The Commissioner was enthused by the vision of how Arbinger principles could positively impact the work of the Bureau and boost employee morale. He opted to participate in Arbinger's Train-the-Trainer course to better introduce and operationalize an outward mindset organizational culture throughout the BPD.

Under his direction, all of the Senior Executive Service (SES) leaders received training in Arbinger methodologies. As part of their professional development, the SES leaders would all later become trained as Arbinger facilitators as well.

Scaling Throughout the Organization

The implementation continued to spread as mid-level managers received Arbinger training. Eventually, over 1,500 employees at the BPD would receive training in Arbinger principles.

The Arbinger leadership framework was incorporated into the onboarding of all new employees, making it part of how people entered the organization rather than an add-on program.

Commissioner Zeck described the decision: "We realized the importance of this material in our culture and decided to make the core Arbinger workshop a required part of our new employee orientation program. We didn't decide to do that with just a snap of our fingers. We thought, is this a good thing to do? Is this meaningful, the right thing to do? And it was."

What initially started as a single executive reading Arbinger's philosophy gradually became a movement for improving work culture. The outward mindset became part of the very fabric of the BPD's organizational culture, interwoven into the day-to-day work of the entire agency.

Addressing What Drives Behavior

While the importance of value-informed behavior had already been recognized and promoted within the BPD, Arbinger's work helped to address the even deeper determinant of behavior: mindset.

This was the missing foundation. Behaviors are important, but they're driven by how people see others and their work. Change the seeing, and the behaviors follow naturally rather than requiring constant reinforcement.

As the Arbinger framework, vocabulary, and practices became widespread within the Bureau of Public Debt, the changes were met with overwhelmingly positive responses from employees at all levels.

Cultural Shift Across All Levels

Arbinger training prompted an organizational culture shift noted by executives, managers, and entry-level employees alike. Commissioner Zeck even received phone calls from outside the organization inquiring how the changes had taken place as employee performance had improved dramatically.

"Public debt was in the top 10 of say 230, 240 or so sub-components in the federal government. And the phone would ring and people would say, 'Well, what's going on? What are you doing? What's in your water? How's that happening? What's going on?'" Van recalled.

His response captured the comprehensive approach: "I would often talk to them about our attention to organizational relationships and culture, the work we've been doing, our values framework, the Arbinger material, the workshops, and, you know, all of this that we were doing. And it was just all part of a long-term process that we had in place for helping employees and ourselves included, as executives, be better at doing our jobs so that the organization can be more effective and produce a higher level of results."

Redefined Job Responsibilities and Accountability

Employees were helped to redefine their job responsibilities and take greater accountability for the impact they had on peers, supervisors, and their client contacts.

They began to recognize situations where they had been neglecting to see the full humanity of others. The increase in self-awareness helped to illuminate different ways they could choose to interact with each other, ways that would be more helpful and results-oriented.

Dramatic Federal Ranking Improvement

One clear indicator that Arbinger principles were benefiting the BPD was the dramatic increase of the Bureau's ranking in the Federal Government Best Places to Work list.

Compared to thousands of employees from 224 different agencies across the federal government, employees at the BPD reported:

• Greater satisfaction within their jobs
• More influential work execution
• Higher level of approval for their organizational culture
• Increased employee morale

After the Arbinger training, the BPD was ranked in the top 10 best places to work in the federal government for three years in a row from 2008-2010.

This wasn't a temporary bump, it was sustained excellence over multiple years, demonstrating that the culture change was real and lasting.

Foundation for Everything Else

The transformation validated Zeck's initial insight about Arbinger being "fundamental and foundational." By addressing mindset rather than just behaviors, BPD created the foundation that made everything else—their Values Framework, their performance expectations, their accountability systems—more effective.

The outward mindset became not just a program but the fabric of how nearly 2,000 employees approached their work managing trillions in federal investments. 

 Bureau of Public Debt proved that even well-intentioned values frameworks fall short when they only address behaviors without addressing the mindset driving those behaviors. When Commissioner Zeck recognized this gap and systematically trained 1,500+ employees (starting with senior leadership and incorporating training into new employee orientation), BPD jumped to top 10 ranking among 230+ federal agencies for three consecutive years. Other agencies called asking "what's in your water?" The answer: addressing the "fundamental and foundational" layer beneath behavior—how people see each other and their work. The lesson: you can have all the right values and expectations, but without addressing mindset, you're building on shaky ground. Change how people see, and behaviors follow naturally rather than requiring constant reinforcement.