GovernmentExecutive.com

The IBM Center for the Business of Government has released two books that offer detailed guidance to help government executives navigate the presidential transition.

In The Operator's Manual for the New Administration, IBM presents eight areas in which newly appointed agency heads and their senior management teams should focus to learn the culture of government, familiarize themselves with jargon and use all the tools at their disposal.

By concentrating on these eight areas -- leadership, performance, people, money, contracting, technology, innovation and collaboration -- executives "make [government] work to advance policy goals and objectives," the introduction stated.

Authors Mark Abramson, Jonathan Breul, John Kamensky and G. Martin Wagner encourage executives to communicate with and engage employees using a variety of leadership styles and to articulate their strategy clearly.

"Everybody will be looking to you for how to act on the organization's mission and vision," they wrote. "A clear strategy provides a map of how you and your leadership team get to where you want to go, given constraints within your operating environment and the resources available."

The book advises executives to maintain the focus on program performance cultivated over the past eight years and look for ways to advance the use of performance measures. Once a framework for performance assessment is in place, executives can take advantage of that information to correct problems, motivate employees, plan and budget, and identify and encourage best practices, the authors noted.

"There is an old saying... 'If you don't know where you are going, you will never get there,' " they wrote. "This is truly the case of managing in government."

The authors said they intentionally did not rank the eight focus areas because executives must pay attention to each to fulfill their mission. "None can be ignored," they stated.

The IBM Center also released Getting It Done: A Guide for Government Executives, with a six point to-do list. The authors advised appointees to:

• Be careful while they are waiting to be confirmed
• Learn how things work
• Act quickly on matters that cannot wait
• Develop a vision and a focused agenda
• Assemble a leadership team
• Manage their environment, including the political aspects and relationships with stakeholders

The book also includes essays on managing relationships with everyone from Office of Management and Budget officials to union representatives to Government Accountability Office investigators.

COMMENTS

• Comments like those below that question the value of transition planning just goes to show out of touch the public is with how government works. The new administration will have somewhere around 3000 positions to fill with appointees. These "politicals" will need guidence. Attending a lesson in civics should be required of anyone voting. Charles Cook Posted October 14, 2008 3:45 PM
• Its hard to imagine that either Obama or McCain's people will have time to digest this informatinon let alone apply it since they will be spending most of their time putting out fires as the economy continues to burn. Veteran Posted October 8, 2008 12:17 PM
• As a public sector leader who believes in both transactional and servant leadership styles, these guides are needed to provide effective management of public resources and governmental agencies. The Government is always reinvesting themselves and what better way to deal with this than transactional leadership; but in the transformation we must not forget our most valuable resource, our employees. In addressing their needs during this time, leaders need to use a servant leadership style. They work together, hand in hand. Why? Transactional leadership addresses the needs of the organization, while servant leadership addresses the needs of its employees. Kenneth Bitting Posted October 8, 2008 11:31 AM