Ridge praises public service, offers advice

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge praised public service Tuesday, offering his advice to senior government employees on how to manage, lead and transform their staff and agencies.

"Too often, I think … all the focus is on the major political leaders and the major political appointed offices," Ridge said during the annual Excellence in Government conference in Washington, which is sponsored by Government Executive and the Council for Excellence in Government. "But on a day-to-day basis … the primary reason that government can work and can work effectively is through the initiative, the intelligence and the energy [of] people like yourselves doing your tasks every day."

Ridge recounted the challenges of creating his department, which merged 22 agencies and 180,000 federal employees. When members of the Homeland Security leadership team formed the department, Ridge said, they traveled the country holding town hall-style meetings with personnel and regularly met with employees behind closed doors to keep them informed. DHS officially opened its doors in March 2003.

"If you don't have a deeply felt respect for your fellow employees, their concerns and their ideas, then respect for you and the organizational mission will not be returned," he said.

Ridge also talked about leadership in government, saying that being a good manager is highly personal and individualized, as well as rooted in fundamentals.

"I'm not a big fan of the word 'culture.' I didn't do that well in biology and maybe that's why it reminds me of something you grow in a petri dish," he said. "But I do believe that good leaders create environments where trust and teamwork are valued, performance is recognized, and people feel compelled and self-motivated every single day to do their best."

He added: "Hard leadership is vesting in the people around you. You have to enable and empower people to make decisions independent of you."

An employee at the National Archives and Records Administration questioned Ridge about preparedness.

"As an ordinary American citizen, what is it that I can do to be helpful to you and to homeland security?," she asked. "I hear the announcements of code levels of danger and I'm aware, but I'm not sure what to do about it."

Ridge advised her to develop a communications plan and ready kit for her family and to stay informed. He added that, if people want to become more involved, they can join citizens groups in their communities or become trained in handling emergency situations.

An employee at the Office of Personnel Management wanted to know what Ridge's greatest management challenge was in forming DHS.

Ridge said "the single most important challenge" the department faced was trying to convey to each employee that their commitment to doing their job better every day was "absolutely critical to the overall mission of homeland security."

"I would also tell you that turned out to be easily communicated," Ridge added. "I havesaid this to them privately and publicly. I can make an argument to you today that the men or women at the port of entry and border, or the [Transportation Security Administration] screener, or the Coast Guardsman that just boarded a high-interest vessel, what they do every single day operationally may be more important than what I do."