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Return to Article: Gotta Move?

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  I feel that mobility of personnel aspiring to become part of the SES core is more beneficial for both technical and non-technical areas. Mobility between NASA centers enhances ones technical and overall ability to operate on a higher level. It helps one to understand things that may not be otherwise understood, if they remain at one center. If you have a technical background, moving around helps to increase your technical knowledge and expand your database of contacts.

  ARNOLD BALDWIN Posted September 20, 2007 9:58 AM
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  Why does the government always look for the drastic changes? Wouldn't a mandatory periodic professional developmental assignment be more feasible? Requiring six months of every three or five years be spent with another similar organization could provide the experience and broad overview. I agree, the Army has not fared well with changing their leaders every two years, it's much too often! Four years would be good, enough time to actually do something constructive.

  Marsha Davenport Posted September 12, 2007 7:35 AM
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  Mobility is a time tested method of providing broader experience. With improved communications and greater use of it, I suppose that technology provides an argument for avoiding mobility when the monitor tells us much of what we need to know, but I don't think there's a true substitute for immersion in different environments to more fully understand them. My bias, perhaps, comes from having been required to be mobile when first starting in the VA when even non-supervisors and non-executives were expected to be mobile in order to earn advancement. I have greater respect for those who have broader experience since they tend to understand others better as a result. A related analogy is travel. I can't think of many experiences that can substitute for that; reading is a distant second method since it only provides a vicarious experience. I don't think there's much of an argument to limiting this to "functional" vs. "technical" specialists. My stronger bias would be toward getting executives out of centralized roles so that beltway expectations don't become a standard for everyone.

  Some think they can gain expertise without experience, which is really just a request to dumb down the test so some can think they've passed.

  Patrick McKenna Posted September 4, 2007 5:45 PM
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  I would suggest caution in wishing this upon the SES corps...since if they would make the upper tier folks move, what would prevent the idea from spreading to the GS11-15 range, and then even further? And though it might work for the active duty military, if we wanted to be one of them, isn't that where would be employed? Additionally, they receive a rather hefty housing allowance should they be forced to relocate to say a Washington DC. We civil servants get NOTHING. I like the fact that my wife has an excellent job with the State of DE...I like having a house where we want to live...I like having a short commute to work everyday. That's why I picked here to live! That's not to say no one should move, but you must always do the cost-benefit analysis for your family.

  Jim Posted August 30, 2007 12:28 PM
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  Too late . . . all the SES personnel I have run into in my almost 30 years with the federal government already are insular and more concerned with their own particular needs in such a way as to outweigh any advantages that they may bring with their experiences to any agency. Like you, I am not an SES employee, just a social scientist wondering aloud.

  Tired of it all Posted August 30, 2007 9:53 AM
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  I wonder about the unintended consequences of mobility. A past NY Times article described a very mobile population of professionals in the private sector. The results of such fluidity led to an insularity of that population: they tend to live in the same neighborhoods, share the same interests among themselves, but have little interest in their current temporary community and tend to focus on finding the best (i.e., easiest job with quickest route to advancement) position for themselves rather than actually becoming an asset for the agency.

  Granted, the SES would not be as geographically mobile as this private sector professional elite class is, but the potential parallels are at the least worth pondering.

  I wonder if a highly mobile managerial elite would become insular and more concerned with their own particular needs in such a way as to outweigh the advantages of a "broader" experience base?

  I'm not an SES employee. I am just a social scientist wondering aloud.

  David Bott Posted August 29, 2007 9:53 AM
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  Au contraire--"such connections" CAN "be overrated." Ossified SESers at the EPA have kept the agency looking backward and have resisted change. They do not recognize the changed policy landscape and keep applying the solutions of their heydays to contemporary complex challenges. Protestations of their lobbyist notwithstanding (and I'm sure she will weigh in here), the SES has turned into a country club. It will function well only as the mobile corps of professional managers it was meant to be.

  Ron Elglish Posted August 29, 2007 9:19 AM
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  On one side OPM is trying to figure out how to "retain employees". The idea that mobility creates a better employee disregards the "loyalty and team cohesiveness" factors. Rank and file employees need executives that are loyal to their office and not just looking out for themselves. How many employees have invested their time and life for one agency or office? I'm not sure which Dept of Defense chief it was, but it was recent, he did not like the Military's way of rotating officer's every couple years, because you can't build a team when your team is constantly in rotation. How can you build trust with a person when you know they will not be there in a couple of years? You can't stop someone from moving if that is what they really want to do. The idea of mobility as a structural component of your business is not good.

  Jim Posted August 29, 2007 9:05 AM
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  If the government wants better leaders they need to recruit from outside of the federal workplace. Years of promoting favorites from within has lead to thought stagnation. It's more an issue of conforming to the one-thought standard than trying to improve upon it. Combine that with a lack of accountability and we end up with the federal blue bloods, a lineage that will eventually fail.

  Robert M. Posted August 29, 2007 7:50 AM
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  IT people who move around always seem to be able to deal with lots of different kinds of problems across many different platforms. This principle works with financial managers, marketing managers, operations managers, and many others. Seems as though once the basics of the necessary processes are understood, worked with and developed, moving around lets you see how they are implemented differently in various organizations. This viewpoint is portable and (generally) highly valued. Staying on in one place might even allow for some of that, if the manager or executive decides to connect gregariously with peers in local and state government and other areas of life. Well rounded can have both meanings. Learning to travel lightly and discard (heirlooms!) dilapidated things only happens when the moving van arrives. That may be the one big difference between the two sides of this argument.

  Walter S. Dyer III Posted August 29, 2007 7:26 AM