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Reframing the Conversation on Management

Part 4 of 4

Long Term versus Short Term

One of the first things I did when I came to the A Bureau was to set up four major goals for the bureau. Everyone in the bureau knows what those goals are, and they know that their work needs to be contributing to those four goals, or we're going to stop doing whatever it is they’re doing.

People know what they need to accomplish. They know what their roles are in accomplishing that mission. That's our job, as managers in our organizations, to set that clear vision for the future. Those strategic goals. We need to be the ones who are looking over the hill. What are the opportunities that are down the pike in the next five years, the next ten years.

One of the things that I hear frequently is, folks say that they don't have time for things like strategic long-term planning, or innovation, or performance management. And my retort to that is, if you aren't doing it, who is? We focus on what we can accomplish in our short tour of duty, whether it's two years, three years, or four years. If it can't be accomplished during that time frame, well then, that's somebody else's problem.

And that's part of the problem in the State Department, because if you look at the budget cycle, we need to be thinking five years hence, and determining what we want to accomplish. If you aren't doing that, then you're always going to be behind the curve. You're always going to be stretching your resources to accomplish things that you're suddenly thinking of, rather than thinking ahead, planning.

We excel as an organization in fighting fires. Of course, it gets our adrenaline flowing. It pulls people together, they bond -- we eat it up. Crises can be very seductive. And like we say, we're very good at handling crises. But crises are inherently short term. How many times have you heard people say things like "Don't bother me with that. I've got a crisis now." Well, fire departments around the world have found through experience that simply fighting fires is ultimately self-defeating. There's always more combustible material than there are fire fighters.

So, what we need to do is focus on fire prevention rather than fighting fires in our organization. And that means stopping the fires before they start. And that's really the only effective long-term solution we have if we really want to make this organization a 21st century model for the rest of the world.

So what is fire prevention for management officers, and for DCMs? Part of this, like I say, is focusing on leadership. Focusing on those long-term goals. Making sure that people understand the vision of where we're heading as an organization. Making sure we use metrics to improve the system. All those things that I was talking about. I think that's our role in fire prevention.

Mentoring versus Individualistic

At the end of the day, our future is our people, and that's part of the long-term vision we need to have as an organization. We as an organization value the individual, and we don't necessarily value the organization. And I think we need to think about the organization more than we have in the past.

Some of you may have heard of the wire brushing that Deputy Secretary Armitage gave to a group of DCMs several months ago. The message was not just a message to DCMs. The message was to all of us who are leaders in our organization. What had happened was, at one of my receptions for the newly minted JO management officers, the officers had just come away from an off-site with DCMs at The Woods. What was going to be this bonding experience where you have senior people mentoring the junior people had turned into an unmitigated disaster. The JOs were telling me that they were horrified. The DCMs were very pessimistic and cynical about the future. And one DCM even said something like, "Yeah, sure, you're enthusiastic now, but we'll beat that out of you."

I was really disturbed by this. I thought, you know, these are leaders in our organization. We're sending them out to our posts to lead our embassies. And are they going to infect their embassies with some sort of negativism? You know, that's how we've gotten the sort of problems we've got nowadays. So I said something to Grant Green, and I was ranting and raving with him. And then he called Armitage, and Armitage then called in the DCMs.

And the message that Armitage gave to the DCMs -- and as I say, this wasn't just a message for the DCMs, is that you've now been chosen for leadership roles in the department. You've lost your ability to complain as a recreational activity. You have to be part of the solution. And if you don't feel as if you can be part of the solution, we've chosen the wrong person for the job.

And that's something else another JO said to me at one point. He said that he was impressed during the A-100 class, that there was a steady stream of senior people that came to talk to A-100 classes, all really impressive people. And they very eloquently stood in front of them and outlined the problems in the State Department. And then they walked away.

He said that coming from the private sector, he was horrified that we have a culture where it's perfectly acceptable for senior people in the Department of State to identify the problem, and not feel that they have any responsibility for fixing the problem. And that really is sad. That's a sad commentary on the State Department.

And so, what we need to do as leaders -- we need to embrace what Secretary Armitage said, and that is that we have an obligation as leaders in the organization to do something about our problems. That's our role. And that's what our employees are expecting of us. And if we aren't delivering on that -- if we don't feel we're up to fixing whatever the problems are in our organization, then we need to move on. We need to let other people take our places so that they can fix the organization.

Recruitment

I spend a lot of time on the junior officers who are coming into the State Department. Particularly our management folks. One of the things that I've found frustrating over the years is that we in the management cone aggressively and almost exclusively recruited political science majors to be management officers in the State Department. And we're surprised that they're not interested in management, and may not be very good at it.

And we've also historically pushed people into the management cone, and what happens then is, you've got people that are doing things they don't enjoy. They aren't providing the services very well. What that does is, it infects the management of the State Department. It also clouds the image of the management cone. And so what I've been pushing is that we need to specifically target people out there who are interested in foreign policy, and in foreign affairs, who also have an interest in management. I work for the State Department because I love foreign policy. I have a degree in international relations. But what surprised me when I came in was how much I loved management. I love being a manager and running large, complex, multi-cultural organizations overseas, and working in a foreign policy environment -- I just find it exhilarating. And when I came to this job, I asked, ‘Why aren’t we aggressively recruiting MBA grads? Why aren’t we going to schools of public administration and recruiting those folks? Why aren’t we going to municipalities and hiring some of the executives from city governments in the United States? Why aren’t we raiding Fortune 500 companies?’

And when I first started talking about this, people thought I was crazy. They said you will never get MBA grads to come into the State Department because they are all in it for the big bucks. Well, I found out, that's not true.

Most people don't think about the huge and complex infrastructure that's required around the world in very diverse environments. We send Foreign Service officers to places where the Army wouldn't send people in less than battalion strength. And we've got people out there in very primitive conditions sometimes, running what have to be first world organizations. From the very first tour, we give our management cone officers tremendous responsibilities.

My first management job in the Foreign Service, in Moscow, I supervised about 150 people, and had a budget of half a million dollars. I was fresh off the boat. And I was running an organization like that. You compare that with the sorts of responsibilities the private sector gives their newbies and there's no comparison.

So, when I talk to MBA grads, suddenly the light goes on. They think "Really! We didn't realize you had those sorts of opportunities in the State Department."

As a matter of fact, next month I'm going to be addressing a conference in Miami for the Shared Service Organization, a group of Fortune 500 companies that comes together twice a year. They've asked me to give the keynote address. This will be the second time I've done it. When I do it, I talk about our recruitment efforts in the State Department for management folks. And what I tell them at the end is, "We're trying to recruit people just like you."

What's really funny is, after I finish talking, there's a queue of people afterwards who want to talk about careers in the Foreign Service. So what I'm convinced of is that we need to do a better job of marketing ourselves to those target-rich environments, where we can find people who are interested in foreign affairs, interested in foreign policy, but are also interested in management. And I'm convinced that we can recruit them.

As a matter of fact, in this last round of Foreign Service exams, we had more people than ever before in the history of the State Department, a greater percentage of people, who were applying for management jobs.

We just got a grant from the Chapman Cox Foundation to offer the opportunity for short-term details for management officers to go work for Fortune 500 companies for a couple of months. To go work in the shared services branch of Honeywell or IBM or Disney or Kraft Foods or something like that so we can see what the private sector does in terms of delivering the sorts of services we provide.

I would love to get some management professionals from the Department to work in Phoenix for a couple of months to see why are they the best-managed city in the United States. What makes them the best-managed city and what can we learn, as another government entity, that we could implement in the State Department?

And what I am hoping is that this will create a series of acolytes and disciples of change who could then come back to the Department and fuel this culture of innovation. But I also want management folks who have been overseas to be in Phoenix, talking about careers in the State Department in management. And I bet we would steal some people. Or to Honeywell. I think if you are sitting in Morristown, New Jersey and you are sitting next to somebody who is serving in Budapest, they would say, "Whoa, I could be in Morristown or I could be in Budapest."

We have got a tremendous opportunity to sell ourselves better. But we all need to take a personal responsibility for doing that.

Maximizing Role versus Minimizing Role

When I talk to the new management team folks who come into the State Department, we've got people who were Navy commanders. We've got senior vice presidents from corporations who are coming into the State Department as junior officers. We’ve got management consultants who are now new management officers at State. We've got teachers. We've got lawyers. We've got people who have a tremendous amount of experience and expertise that we can use. And we need to be making good use of their talents at our posts.

They are part of our management talent pool even if they’re now serving as first-tour consular officers. You need somebody for the housing board? Get one of the management cone folks in there. Got a special project? Maybe a management JO would be interested in the challenge. We need to give them a better range of management opportunities early in their careers.

And then find opportunities for them to do some of our work for us. Give them a lot of extra stuff and beef up their resume and their EER. But also it helps us get our jobs done better.

Rich Armitage, when he was talking to the EAP chiefs of mission a couple months ago, gave them a challenge, which I will reiterate to you because I think it was an appropriate challenge for all of us. He said, "Take the responsibilities we give you and add 20 percent."

And that's what we all need to do. If we want to change the conversation on management, we need to have a bigger vision of what "management" encompasses in our embassies. What is GSO? What could a GSO’s responsibilities be? What are the responsibilities we give you? And then take even more responsibility. Have a big picture, a big vision of what you can be as a GSO, not what your predecessor was or what you are, but what you can be.

Conclusion

Gandhi once said, "We must be the change we seek in the world." And if we have a vision of where we want management to head in the Department, we need to mirror that management. We need to be that change. We need to embody the change that we want in the State Department.

Assistant Secretary of State for Administration William A. Eaton has
given this speech at several regional conferences for Management cone Foreign Service employees in 2004. Reproduced by GovLeaders.org with permission.