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Creating Leadership for the
Twenty First Century
(Part 4 of 4)
Note: The article on the previous pages was excerpted from the chapter
"Creating Leadership for the Twenty-First Century," in For the People:
Can We Fix Public Service ((John D. Donahue and Joseph S. Nye Jr. eds.;
The Brookings
Institution Press, 2003). Reprinted by the kind permission of
The
Brookings Institution Press.). The numbering of these endnotes
corresponds to that used in the book.
Endnotes
29. See these reports from the General Accounting Office: "Financial
Management: Increased Attention Needed to Prevent Billions in Improper
Payments," GAO/AIMD-00-10, October 29, 1999; "Financial Management:
Billions in Improper Payments Continue to Require Attention," GAO-01-44,
October 27, 2000; "Financial Management: Improper Payments Reported in
Fiscal Year 2000 Financial Statements," GAO-02-131R, November 2, 2001; and
"Financial Management: Coordinated Approach Needed to Address the
Government's Improper Payments Problems," GAO-02-749, August 9, 2002.
30. Both bureaucratic and lean organizations have advantages and
disadvantages. Thus any effort at organizational design seeks a balance,
attempting to obtain the advantages of the bureaucratic and the lean,
while minimizing their disadvantages. The design of many government
agencies, however, is tilted strongly toward the bureaucratic and away
from the lean.
31.When Alan K. ("Scotty") Campbell left public service for the private
sector, he was immediately struck with one big difference: Business
executives have many fewer staff assistants than those in government.
Private firms are willing to delegate authority; indeed, they believe it
is essential to do so. And they do not keep a lot of extra staff around to
check up on the decisions made by their subordinates.
32. Are these effective managers much rarer in the government than in
business? Maybe not. Hogan and his colleagues "estimate that somewhere
between six and seven out of every ten managers in corporate America are
not very good as managers." Robert Hogan, Robert Raskin, and Dan Faxiini,
"The Dark Side of Charisma," in Kenneth E. Clark and Miriam B. Clark,
eds., Measures of Leadership (West Orange, N.J.: Leadership Library of
America, 1990), p. 347.
33. For examples of some particularly effective public managers, see the
winners of the Harvard University, Ford Foundation awards program for
Innovations in American Government, some of which are chronicled in John
D. Donahue, ed., Making Washington Work: Tales of Innovation in the Federal
Government (Brookings, 1999). See also Norma M. Riccucci, Unsung Heroes:
Federal Execucrats Making a Difference (Georgetown University Press,
1995); and Behn, Leadership Counts.
34. Yes. One explanation for the success of any manager--public, private,
or non-profit--is luck. This individual was lucky. Jupiter was aligned
with Mars. In fact, however, luck is recognizing it. Every one of us,
including every public manager, is lucky. The question is: Do we recognize
our luck? And, once we do, are we smart enough to exploit it?
35. Public managers have a spectrum of responsibilities. At one end of
this spectrum is the administrative chore of ensuring that the various
systems and processes of the agency function efficiently and effectively;
At the other end of the spectrum is the leadership challenge of motivating
the individuals in the agency to pursue their mission energetically and
intelligently. Public managers have responsibilities that range from
seemingly mundane administrative chores to compelling leadership.
43. Elsewhere I have argued that the profession of public management is
closer to engineering than it is to either science or art. Robert D. Behn,
"Public Management: Should It Strive to Be Art, Science, or Engineering?"
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, vol. 56, no. 1
(January 1996), pp. 91-123.
44. Why do business executives often fail when they become public
executives? Because the professional repertoire that they were explicitly
taught and that implicitly evolved reflected a different set of
circumstances. And one of the major differences in those circumstances
concerns the nature of the two sectors' stakeholders. Public managers have
to pay attention to a greater number of stakeholders with a greater
diversity of interests. Thus, when many business executives make the move
to government, they believe they can ignore many of these stakeholders;
this can quickly get them into trouble. We would not expect a great
football coach to be immediately successful in baseball. Why do we assume
that a successful business executive automatically possesses the complete
professional repertoire necessary to effectively lead a public agency and
to improve its performance?
45. Many items in a professional's repertoire are simple rules of thumb:
When this, do that. When that, do not do this. For example, take one of
the rules of thumb in baseball: Never make the first or third out at third
base. Simple enough. But if you do not understand why, if you do not
understand the causal linkage in the rule, you are apt to forget it, or to
use it in a situation for which the simple rule of thumb does not make
sense.
46. Note that the military services have created such a system of
conscious career rotation. After all, the services must develop their
leaders internally; the navy cannot recruit a vice president from
Microsoft to be the chief of naval research. Because the national Forest
Service faces the same constraint, because it too must develop its leaders
internally, it has also developed a system of career rotation. See Herbert
Kaufman, The Forest Ranger: A Study in Administrative Behavior (Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1960).
47. When mentoring subordinates, a public executive will, almost by
definition, be forced to be much more explicit about the cause-and-effect
linkages in his or her own professional repertoire.
51. For examinations of how managerial expertise and repertoire moves are
conveyed through such cases, see Stephen W. Maynard-Moody and Marisa
Kelly, "Stories Public Managers Tell about Elected Officials: Making Sense
of the Politics-Administration Dichotomy," in Barry Bozeman, ed., Public
Management: The State of the Art (Jossey-Bass, 1993), pp. 71-90; and
Michael Barzelay, The New Public Management: Improving Research and Policy
Dialogue (University of California Press, 2001).
55. In early 1970s, the Nixon and Ford administrations implemented
Management by Objectives. But what kind of objectives did the various
federal departments establish? National Journal reported that "some goals
are so vague as to appear meaningless and others are so minute they appear
picayune." For example, the Department of Energy created a number of goals
including both the vague ("Reduce energy consumption without damaging the
state of the economy") and the minute ("Help implement the 1974 Energy
Supply and Environmental Coordination Act"). For experienced public
managers, jumping through this new MBO hoop was easy. Joel Havemann,
"Executive Report: Ford Endorses 172 Goals of 'Management by Objective'
Plan," National Journal; vol. 6, no. 43 (October 26,1974), pp. 1597, 1602.
56. An explicit performance target is never precisely the same as the
mission. Most organizations can find ways to achieve their precise
performance targets and still not really accomplish their mission. At the
same time, because the mission is inherently vague, it cannot provide
specific guidance about what should be done this year, this quarter, or
this month. Consequently the manager of the organization has to repeatedly
verify that, in the process of meeting its performance targets, the agency
is also contributing to its mission. Behn, Leadership Counts, pp. 74-76.
57. Robert D. Behn. "The Psychological Barriers to Performance Management:
Or Why Isn't Everyone Jumping on the Performance-Management Bandwagon." Public Performance and Management Review, vol. 26. no. 1 (September 2002),
pp. 5-25.
58. Okay, so the Boston Red Sox have not learned this.
59. Robert D. Behn, "Branch Rickey as a Public Manager: Fulfilling the
Eight Responsibilities of Public Management." Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory, vol. 7, no. 1 January 1997), pp. 1-33.
The Brookings Institution Press
©2003.
