Career executives get a transition primer

With the election outcome still in doubt last week, federal executives spent two days learning skills for surviving a presidential transition. Scholars, political appointees, policymakers and career executives shared their experiences, research, opinions and plain old common-sense advice during a seminar sponsored by the Senior Executives Association. "If the team doesn't hit the ground running, a lot of time can be lost [and] the honeymoon period can dissipate," said Kathleen Buto, a career executive at the Congressional Budget Office who has also served at the Health Care Financing Administration. "In the haste, you make mistakes." Buto, who has already weathered two presidential transitions, joined two other federal agency veterans on a panel that discussed changes in political leadership. "If you can't implement the policies of your new boss, it's time for a new job," said Frank Pugliese, who retired in September from his position as commissioner of the Federal Supply Service at the General Services Administration. New political appointees may be hesitant to trust managers who served under a prior administration, panelists said, so federal managers should focus on earning the new bosses' trust. "We're not the politicians, but we know about the politics of an issue," Buto said. Career executives need to put themselves in political appointees' shoes, one panelist said. "The incoming staff really needs you, but they don't want you to know how much they need you," said W. Harrison Welford, who served on two presidential transition teams and advised President Clinton on his transition in 1992. Work hard to smooth the way for your new boss, panelists said. Provide background information, offer advice, communicate and, most importantly, interact with your new boss. "It is a terrible mistake for political appointees to just surround themselves with other political appointees," said Harriett Babbitt, deputy administrator of the Agency for International Development. "View each encounter as an opportunity to build trust between both sets of folks." In the end, the biggest assets of career executives are first-rate skills and professionalism, panelists said. "It isn't which pay system that you're under," said Harold Gracey, former chief information officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs. "It's whether or not you can do your job."