Government Executive - Authors - Steven L. Katz

Managing Effectively From Afar: Lessons From Anthropologists During the Pandemic

Steven L. Katz — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 05:59:00 -0500

The presidential transition and the inaugural year of the Biden-Harris administration was uniquely challenging in ways that continue today. Many political appointees, career managers and rank-and-file employees at headquarters and regional offices nationwide have been involved in the most extensive work-from-home experience in government history. Telework has created a leveling effect among these public servants at a time when the federal government is facing major mission delivery demands. The result has been that managers must find new ways to communicate and learn from others about what is going on in their agencies.

New agency heads and political appointees are experiencing the prolonged perennial risk of being in their own bubble. They are often perceived as connected to a concept of government, but not its mission in the same way as career employees see themselves. One frustrated Biden-Harris appointee expressed during the surge in the Omicron coronavirus variant that, “I’m used to mapping the org chart by hallways, offices and faces.” Similarly, as a career regulatory compliance manager observes, “without the ability to walk the halls, nod and say ‘hello,’ engage in office drop-ins, and receive a valuable ‘heads up,’ we can mistakenly assume everything is okay. That is, until an employee’s attorney, the IG, or the Hill contacts us.”

However, as former Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker during the Obama administration told The Washington Post in 2014, “I have said to my closest advisers, ‘Your job is not to tell me about something you’re concerned with, it’s to get in my face and make sure I’ve heard you. You’re not off the hook by just telling me something in passing in the hallway.” Being a government executive today requires even more contextual breadth to be well-informed, rather than allowing others to “curate” and distill the information in advance.

Technology as a Tool

Many sectors of society have been affected by the pandemic, with employees displaced from offices, classrooms, factories and other workplaces. However, for federal leaders and managers—and particularly political appointees who are often viewed as members of their own tribe—some of the most valuable parallels and insights on how to manage and communicate with employees in a remote work environment come from cultural anthropologists, especially “digital anthropologists” already using and studying technology, culture and behavior as part of their work. Anthropologist Daniel Miller, University College London, has found that existing cultural traits can result in technology enabling more informative research interviews. For example, conducting private individual interviews by webcam in the part of Italy that Miller studies resulted in learning more than he might have learned in person, possibly because the experience resembled how people speak to a priest during a confessional.

Cultural anthropologists were forced by the pandemic to evacuate from every corner of the globe, becoming cut off from the local people central to their ethnographic research. Anthropologist Katie Nelson had to cancel her own plans to return and continue research in Chiapas, Mexico. Nelson also teaches in Minnesota, and in her 2018 text “Doing Fieldwork: Methods in Cultural Anthropology” describes the immersive approach of participant observation to be “cultural anthropology’s distinctive research strategy.” Nelson also emphasizes that anthropology “helps people think in new ways about aspects of their own culture by comparing them with other cultures.” Today, the point of comparison for anthropologists and all government executives and managers is having to understand the ways that the pandemic has permeated and impacted the lives of everyone centrally involved in their work.

As a digital anthropologist, Daniel Miller is assisting many social scientists—from students who cannot yet travel, to colleagues returning home and who must regroup. Miller is using YouTube as an open forum, for example, to discuss “How to Conduct Ethnography During Social Isolation.” Deborah Lupton, an Australian social scientist at the University of New South Wales, has compiled strategies such as the crowdsourced Google doc “Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic.”

Miller’s modern use of anthropology is noteworthy because of how he incorporates the essentials of traditional participant observation research, especially the importance of listening. Similarly, some of the most experienced and respected presidentially appointed leaders and career government executives believe that listening is the most important, and often ignored, tool available to learn and understand what is going on from atop an agency, organization, or program.

The Art of Listening

John Koskinen, who served as the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service under President Obama and was deputy director for management in the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton, told me in an interview: “You have to meet with employees and listen to what they have to say. Often leaders think engaging with the workforce means talking to them, not listening and learning from them.” Koskinen added, “Just take the time to meet and listen to front line workers across the agency, and then separately with their managers. Then you'll know how the place works, what the obstacles are, and what needs to be done to make the place work better in pursuit of the agency's mission.”

John Palguta’s distinguished 34-year career in government including in the Senior Executive Service is recognized for his knowledge and judgment about the federal civil service: “I was always amazed to see otherwise intelligent and well-meaning leaders, especially political appointees, come into a ‘new-to-them’ department or agency and immediately start to issue directives and ‘guidance’ to the career staff without ever asking them for their opinions or advice,” he told me. “The new leaders still get to call the shots regardless but talking to employees and listening to what they have to say just makes so much sense.”

The statements from these and other successful government leaders make clear that listening is a must. It is the necessary building block for establishing rapport and trust with government employees because it is a threshold requirement for people to begin speaking from their own personal perspective. As a political appointee you do not want to be one of the people described as “they don’t know what they don’t know,” though no one will say that to your face.

One of anthropologist Miller’s secrets for technology to be effective in holding “virtual meetings” is that it remains essential to observe the cultural customs of the people, including the culture of organizations, you are interviewing or speaking to. First, while it is useful to have a title, subject, or issue you wish to explore, being overly rigid, controlling, or acting authoritatively because of your position in the organizational hierarchy will prevent the disclosure and discussion important information from the perspective of employees—the very purpose of the meeting. Second, government has cultural customs that may be invisible to political appointees, and to career managers who were unaware of these before the pandemic. Again, cultural anthropology provides a useful cross-cultural comparison approach for more productive conversations and meetings in the workplace.

Pith Helmet Not Required

Anthropologist Nelson describes her experience reaching a remote fieldwork destination in northeastern Brazil traveling on the back of a motorcycle. “After several hours navigating a series of bumpy roads in blazing equatorial heat, I was relieved to arrive at the edge of the reservation …. I removed my heavy backpack from my tired, sweaty back. Upon hearing us arrive, first children and then adults slowly and shyly began to approach us. I greeted the curious onlookers and briefly explained who I was … a group of children ran to fetch the cacique (the chief/political leader).”

The takeaway from this story is that all appointees, no matter how high ranking, are outsiders to an agency and its culture too. Unless you observe the unspoken customs in the federal government culture by requesting that the agency head, the “chief,” or equivalent person give permission to government employees or a task team to meet and speak openly with you, you will be received in guarded silence. It is equally important that the agency or program head involved reports back to career employees, as appropriate, and describes what was learned and how such efforts contribute to the agency mission and effectiveness.

Additionally, as Nelson has observed as an anthropologist in both teaching and professional academic capacities, she cannot ignore human behavior and cultural patterns that are surfacing as a result of using technology. Nelson has observed that since Zoom technology is not suited to people interrupting one another, women are not being interrupted as frequently by louder or more dominant voices coming from men as occurs in meetings held in person.

Even though you will not be writing an ethnography in the same way that an anthropologist does, working from a distance, using technology more strategically and listening better to those with the information that you need are essential management abilities whether you return to the office or continue working remotely. As Craig S. Barton, a senior career government contracting official, has become more keenly aware during the pandemic, “we have to be much more intentional about how we lead and manage today, to ensure that we listen and hear what we need to be aware of and understand what is going on in our agencies.”

That is the new culture of government management.

Steven L. Katz held legal and management positions in the Senior Executive Service during the Clinton administration, served in the Clinton White House, and consulted across many agencies. He is the author of the book Lion Taming: Working Successfully With Leaders, Bosses, and Other Tough Customers. He has led training for leadership and management development across the government and possesses degrees in anthropology, history and law. He can be reached at emailkatz@yahoo.com.

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Viewpoint: How Best to Thank a Veteran? Avoid More Unjust Wars

Steven Katz — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 09:45:31 -0500

On Veterans Day, many Americans will approach a veteran to say, “thank you for your service.” (In most cases, the veteran being thanked will respond somewhat awkwardly, feeling slightly uncomfortable and undeserving, though understanding that the speaker’s heart is in the right place.) The evening news will cover the local parades; the anchors may briefly note the high rates of veteran suicides and the overburdened VA healthcare system.

By November 12, most Americans will have mentally moved on to other cares — until Memorial Day, when we will do it all again.

This year, as one of thousands of veterans who suffered moral injury in the Iraq War, I ask that in addition to the annual “thank you for your service” that you also “thank” veterans by helping us avoid waging unjust wars.

A war is considered unjust if it is either waged without a just cause (i.e., responding to an attack or an imminent threat) or is fought in a manner that disregards the warfighting principles of military necessity, civilian distinction, proportionality or humanity. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a stark example of a preventative war that lacked a just cause, as America was not attacked by Iraq nor was there any threat of an imminent Iraqi attack on the U.S. In fact, a military attack on another state in the absence of an imminent threat is widely considered to be aggression. Conversely, the war in Afghanistan was just, as it was in direct response to the al-Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, which clearly was an act of aggression.

These warfighting rules are deeply engrained in the U.S. military. In fact, the U.S. military often accepts great risk to our own servicemembers in order to reduce harm to civilians caught in the fray. And when there are violations of these jus in bello principles, the military justice system holds us accountable.

But who should be held morally responsible for launching a preventative war, like the Iraq War, and its associated costs?

First, the price paid for the Iraq War. The war is estimated to have cost more than $2.0 trillion, with U.S. casualties including 4,400 servicemembers killed, and more than 32,000 wounded; and these are the figures before adding on the costs associated with the outgrowth war against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. There are also the hidden wounds of the war that affect thousands of veterans. The VA estimates that up to 20 percent of all servicemembers that served in Iraq have PTSD and an unknown number are struggling with moral injury. The term moral injury is relatively new, but an ageless concept that Homer described 3,000 years ago in the Greek epic poem, the Iliad. Moral injury is commonly confused with PTSD; however, it’s a distinct wound that is suffered from an unjust war. In essence, it is a betrayal of “what’s right” in our conscience and it causes guilt, shame, anger, and depression.

On most days, I struggle to cope with my personal belief that the men and women who died during the Iraq War, did so in vain, for a cause not worthy of them. Since leaving the Army, I have had the recurring dream where I am face-to-face with a surviving parent and am asked, “What was my son fighting for?” Do I lie to soothe the mourning parent or share my deepest shame that their child’s death was needless? Before I can respond, I am awake.

However, as much as many veterans have suffered, I try and maintain some perspective; the costs to Iraqi civilians and society was even greater as millions of Iraqis were forced to flee their homes and over a hundred thousand civilians were killed during the fighting, destabilizing the entire region.

Now, the lines of accountability are clear. President Bush, with the endorsement of Congress, made the decision to wage the Iraq War. But the decision wasn’t made in a vacuum; moral responsibility is diffused through the American people.

The preeminent military theorist, Carl Von Clausewitz explains in his seminal work On War that a “remarkable trinity” is required to wage war, commonly understood as the government, the military and the people. The government provides the political purpose; the military, the means; and the population, the “passion” and “will” to fight. Public sentiment, as it was in the lead-up to the Iraq War, is an essential factor in any decision to go to war.

Just before the Iraq War invasion, only 36 percent of the country believed Iraq posed an imminent threat to the U.S., yet nearly three-fourths of all Americans believed a war with Iraq was still morally justified.

At face value, our morality appears irrational.

Yet if we examine the number of Americans who believe in waging preventative wars against rising powers and squelching potential threats, these figures actually make sense. In 2003, Pew Research reported that two-thirds of Americans believed that the U.S. is justified in using military force against countries that may seriously threaten the U.S. in the future but have yet to attack us. Even in 2017, with the Iraq War follies still fresh, according to the same poll, about half of the country would still support the decision to start an unprovoked war against a possible, future threat.

And in a poll conducted this year, 70 percent of Americans favored the use of U.S. troops to take preventative military action to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, regardless of Iran’s intentions to actually use them.

Since 9/11, the American people have been emanating the “passion” and “will” required in Clausewitz’s “remarkable trinity” for our leaders to exploit and wage preventative wars.

These are troubling statistics. If this sizable portion of Americans’ viewpoint for justifying future wars is to “shoot upon suspicion,” whether it’s in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, or some other latent threat, then we will be ensuring a costly and martial future through this low threshold for conflict. As the global leader, our actions will also undermine international norms. Other states will follow our lead and view other nations through the same Hobbesian lens, attacking their own over-the-horizon threats. This will lead to more unnecessary wars, deaths, and destruction—as was the case during the frequent balance-of-power wars in 18th-century Europe.

Decisions on war and peace are ultimately made by our national leaders. But the American people are also empowered to influence our elected officials and ensure future wars are solely wars of necessity and only waged when all other options have failed.

So how do we change this dangerous paradigm, and get Americans to take ownership of the decision to wage war? First, we all need to examine the decision to go to war as if we had personal “skin in the game.” We should make an honest assessment of the situation and ask ourselves, “Would I send a son, daughter, or loved one to fight and die for this cause?” If the answer is no, then the war probably lacks a just cause and Americans should voice their concerns and send the message to Washington that we will not support an unnecessary war.

However, to make an informed decision, the American people should demand greater government transparency, in order to gain an accurate understanding of the threat. With the proliferation of hyper-partisan news, manipulative social media, foreign propaganda, and deep fake subversive influencing techniques, it will be increasingly difficult for the average American to distinguish scaremongering from a legitimate threat that requires a rightful military response. Therefore, we must all become more critical and even skeptical of the information presented to us.

We owe this much to the men and women who might be sent into harm’s way on our behalf. This is the “thank you” they all deserve on Veterans Day.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.

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Pol Position

Steven L. Katz — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Discovering political employees who burrow into the career ranks is hard enough, but doing something about it during a presidential transition requires leadership at a time when everyone in power is relinquishing it. It is an early lesson for the incoming Obama-Biden administration; the federal government is a huge and labyrinthine organism comprising many smaller behaviors often difficult to trace, much less govern.

This is despite the fact that Clay Johnson III, the Office of Management and Budget's deputy director for management and one of President George W. Bush's closest friends in the White House, has helped lead a smooth transition. Johnson acted well in advance -- during the primaries -- to address long-standing security clearance problems that he knew would plague an incoming administration. Will he step up to the plate against burrowing?

The time to take action against burrowers is now. The people approving and benefiting from burrowing in should be identified, enabling personnel actions reversed, and the offending parties led out of government. The Democrats coming into office should use their relationship with the outgoing Bush administration as well as their power on Capitol Hill to take action.

Burrowing in by political employees corrodes the foundation and merit principles on which a nonpartisan career service in government is built. We depend on that cadre of employees, particularly during the transition period between new presidents. Anyone who has ever experienced the beginning of a new administration knows that the real transition begins on Jan. 20. It lasts for months, and in some cases, much longer.

Unfortunately, burrowing in and the process for doing something about it, has more in common with whistleblowing than it does with a presidential transition. Similar to whistleblowing, the discovery of individuals burrowing into the career jobs from political appointments has involved reports surfacing from inside government, media coverage, and organized action by federal unions and associations -- followed by silence from the Office of Personnel Management.

Help from Congress, another partner in whistleblower cases and curbing abuse of political power, is necessary for vigorous oversight and its ability to reach directly into the practice of burrowing in and halt it. But can Congress quickly change its approach to cases involving abuses by officials with responsibility for core government operations during the Bush administration?

President Bush triggered a range of actions with his own unprecedented and improper removal of inspectors general -- all appointed by President Clinton -- at the Agriculture and Education departments and at NASA. Robert Cobb, Bush's choice as NASA inspector general, was investigated in 2007 by the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency over allegations of improper conduct and a lack of independence; yet he remains in the job. GSA Administrator Lurita Doan, fired last spring, was the subject of well-documented conflicts of interest and procurement irregularities. Special Counsel Scott Bloch remained in office for most of his five-year term despite a flurry of actions that no one believed appropriate for someone in his position. Bloch was forced out of his job by the White House in October.

In the Senate, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has jurisdiction over the issue of burrowing in, and its chairman, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., now assumes a higher profile. House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is switching committees to lead the Energy and Commerce panel, and Tom Davis, R-Va., Government Reform's ranking Republican, is retiring from Congress. As Lieberman prepares for a mass influx of political nominations for the executive branch, will he step forward with the renewed personal confidence and political trust of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to stop burrowers?

OMB's Johnson is likely the only person close enough to the president who is personally committed to leading a respectable transition effort by the Bush administration and who has a big enough presence to step up against burrowers. Burrowing is Washington inside baseball, and Johnson does his best when others are reluctant to take on challenges that are obvious to everyone. Let's see him swing one more time.

Steven L. Katz is former chief counsel to the chairman of the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. He also served in the Clinton White House Office of Presidential Personnel and as counsel to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee during the tenure of then-chairman John Glenn, D-Ohio.

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Analysis: Winning Over Government Voters

Steven L. Katz and Paul L. Posner — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400

The new chief executive will have to campaign to first to win their votes, then their loyalty to motivate and engage them. In contrast with recent efforts by both parties to depict government and its employees as the problem, the successful campaign will have to acknowledge that it is vital for government to work, whether to save capitalism from itself during the current crisis or to move the nation to achieve its higher aspirations for education, health care and energy independence.

Winning the government vote means campaigning hard to win the votes of millions of federal, state and local government workers who, according to the Census Bureau, have among the highest voter registration and turnout percentages of all Americans -- between 70 percent and 80 percent. In the federal government alone, there are 1.9 million civilian employees (not counting postal workers). Despite campaign rhetoric against Washington, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that nine of every 10 federal workers live or work outside Washington. And beyond that, Paul C. Light of New York University has estimated that the "true size of government" is more than 15 million strong, including not only civil servants at all levels of government, military service members and postal workers, but also state and local government employees working under federal grants, nonprofit organizations and private contractors.

Together this constitutes a voting bloc larger in number than the population of many cities across America, whose members have a firsthand knowledge and a personal stake in the manner and results of how the government is run.

These are the people the next president will lead in operating a trillion-dollar global public services organization that is at the center of American life to a greater degree than ever before -- managing the economy, wars, energy, the environment, health care, Social Security, homeland security, food safety and more. They are silent participants in the electoral process, because many of them are limited by the Hatch Act from participating in key aspects of political life -- including fund-raising or even wearing a campaign button at work.

Based on what we have seen from the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns, several new strategies are central to winning the government vote necessary to reach the White House, and will be invaluable to leading from the Oval Office:

Establish and stress the importance of core values as president and chief executive that resonate with government voters.

Government voters do not want to hear and will not trust candidates' rhetoric about who is a bigger change agent. They want an honest and proactive discussion of how the next president will do the following:

Provide access to real-time working knowledge of government.
Identify key relationships across the branches of government.
Establish global partnerships.
Build from a foundation of what already exists in government.
Effectively use his experience and relationships on Capitol Hill to communicate and collaborate more effectively with Congress around core government functions and needs.

Refrain from bashing the government.

On Sept. 11, 2001, the United States government shifted immediately from the periphery of American life to its center. Both presidential nominees should have realized that this signaled two important changes for their 2008 campaigns.

Bashing the government is perceived by government voters as a negative and gratuitous attack on the very people and programs on whom America depends and who the new president must lead. Campaigning on the backs of government workers, only to lean on these same people to get the work done, is a strategy that undercuts the trust and support that a new president must win for the government to fulfill its myriad missions of public importance.

Since Sept. 11, Americans have taken the role of government more seriously and want it to act more proactively. As we have seen from the role of the Treasury Department in the recent economic bailout and the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, governmentnow is placing the federal workforce, including many new people we must hire, on the front lines of this crisis. The candidates must pledge to respect and work closely with government programs, and talk about them in real terms of what they contribute to the country.

Acknowledge that when bad politics happens to good government, the results are disastrous.

The next president will inherit a growing leadership gap between political appointees and experienced civil servants. To some extent this reflects a centralization of policy control in the White House during the past several decades, which isolates the president from his own appointees, as well as experts in the civil service. It reflects what Light calls the "thickening" of government -- the proliferation of political appointees in agencies that wall off the decision-making process from the input and influence of professionals and experts in government. At its worst, it can ensure the triumph of bad politics over good government.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others relied on their own self-fulfilling reasoning over that of career military and civil servants who had the experience and maturity to know better. The dismantling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the creation of the Homeland Security Department and the leadership of that agency by political appointees with no background in emergency preparedness preordained the inept response to Hurricane Katrina.

Even though both candidates have criticized the Bush administration, they must provide a clear view about what the executive branch can do, and underscore how government at the department and program levels can meet people's needs and protect their interests. Both candidates must emphasize their expectations of qualifications their political appointees will possess, and how they will be expected to work with experts and professionals in the agencies. It is time that we honored and re-energized the values of neutral competence in our government that Woodrow Wilson first espoused nearly 100 years ago.

Recognize the costs that must be paid to get the government we want.

Another version of bad politics happens when the president and Congress pledge to solve problems while providing only a symbolic glimmer of the resources required to achieve results. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is a case in point: Years of budget reductions and regulatory constraints left this thinly staffed agency a parody of what a real consumer protection agency should do. The ability of the Food and Drug Administration to monitor and inspect imported foods similarly has been compromised. We are only now learning how the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped the ball in regulating investment banks even after our trading partners in Europe implored the commission to regulate its transactions. The voluntary regulatory program left it up to the banks themselves to develop standards and to self-monitor. Not surprisingly, this never happened, leaving the entire nation and the world economy as victims.

It is tempting to promise more than we can deliver, particularly when the failures to do so only become evident on someone else's watch. The next president will have a difficult job. We have a backlog of problems that have accumulated on the federal government's doorstep, with ever more limited budgetary resources to solve them. Meanwhile, the financial crisis and economic recession exacerbate the structural budget deficit. The new president will have to be artful in making room for new priorities by making tough choices to re-examine, reform and cut back on programs that either are no longer relevant, fail to deliver on their promises or are increasingly unaffordable.

In no small respect, the federal government's ability to deliver on its promises and to provide the resources that managers need to achieve results will depend on our collective capacity to reform Social Security and Medicare, which are threatening to consume the entire federal budget during the next several decades. And ultimately, this president will have to do something that has proved to be anathema in our politics -- ask for higher taxes, by whatever language. Once the recession passes, it will become more apparent that our spending appetite has outpaced our revenue intake completely. If we fail to rebalance the budget, the current financial crisis will seem like a walk in the park.

Lead the management of government through collaboration, not shaming and blaming. The new president will be held responsible for nearly every major problem the nation faces and for the performance of the entire workforce -- both government employees and contractors. Thus it is not only appropriate but necessary that he provide energetic central leadership of agencies. Presidents Clinton and Bush each launched initiatives that focused more attention on the performance of the federal establishment. Given the growing importance of government in the daily lives of the nation, the next president should continue to spur agencies to measure performance, demand greater accountability for results and eliminate programs that fail to deliver. In doing so, however, it will be critical that the president work collaboratively both with agencies and Congress to gain support for management improvements and reforms. Strategies relying on shame alone to gain attention to problems may produce short-term gains, but will be undermined and ultimately ignored in the longer term.

Getting more value for taxpayer money is important, but it requires the entire federal community -- agencies, appropriations committees, and intergovernmental and private partners -- to be on the same page about how to define what public values will be measured, monitored and delivered. The No Child Left Behind Act is an example of a federal initiative to drive performance that became unhinged when government officials failed to bring the most important stakeholders on board in the collaborative enterprise of public education. More often than not, the federal government is a relatively minor player in the areas it is trying to influence, whether that emergency preparedness, health care delivery or housing finance. Accordingly, the new president must master the art of leading from behind and work to engage the many stakeholders whose support for reforms is critical to making real progress.

Demonstrate the value of experience as a senator to serving as chief executive.

Instead of each of the nominees pretending that he lives in a bubble in Washington and on Capitol Hill, both should demonstrate that they understand exactly why the public preferred them to gubernatorial candidates during the primary. It is because the public is reacting to the numerous problems facing the country. With the crumbling of economic cornerstones in the post-primary season and the necessity of government intervention, the public wants someone who is already on the ground in Washington.

In fact, both candidates are being given the extraordinary opportunity -- the benefit of the doubt -- to step into the role as president with virtually none of the scrutiny of their track records and competencies that would required of a prospective CEO. The public knows that as legislators, both nominees have been deliberators, not decision-makers. Voters also have learned from the four recent governors elected president -- Reagan, Carter, Clinton and George W. Bush -- that executive experience at lower levels of government does not guarantee capability as a federal chief executive.

Lead, compel and leverage people, programs and resources across government -- including federal and intergovernmental collaboration -- to solve problems.

The next president must reverse the old-fashioned hierarchical approach to tackling the nation's biggest problems, which tends to bury the government's ability to grasp, manage and attack problems deep in the bureaucracy. During the past 40 years, policy has been centralized increasingly in Washington, while the real responsibility for delivery remains at the state, local and private sector levels. While federal budgets and programs have grown, the number of civil servants actually has declined, reflecting a greater reliance on nonfederal agents to do the real heavy lifting of delivering on government promises. From the Medicaid mandates of the 1990s to No Child Left Behind, federal officials have fostered a yoke of rules and mandates where carrots and collaboration would have been more successful.

Whether the subject is terrorism, health care, housing, energy, the environment or obesity, the next president needs to emphasize leveraging people and resources across boundaries to attack and solve problems. It should be clearer today than ever before that government has to avoid creating any unnecessary new structures to solve problems before considering how this will affect the capacity of our entire system to cope. Ultimately, the president should to learn how to implement truly national, not federal, programs and policies. This entails developing policies not within tight inner circles in the White House, but collaboratively with the many players whose input and resources are vital for success. A reconstituted intergovernmental office would be a small, but potentially effective, way to institutionalize a commitment to collaboration. Trying to go it alone will get us nowhere.

Paul L. Posner is director of George Mason University's Public Administration program and president-elect of the American Society for Public Administration. Steven L. Katz is former counsel to Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, on the Governmental Affairs Committee, an adviser in the Clinton White House, and author of the book Lion Taming: Working Successfully With Leaders, Bosses and Other Tough Customers (Sourcebook Inc., 2004).

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The Lion Tamers

Steven L. Katz — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0500

But such instincts - often the very traits and qualities that make good leaders - sometimes have to be managed from the ranks before they result in a failed project or a million-dollar mistake. Employees respect action, not passivity. As the lion tamers in the office, their job is to help bosses prepare so when they leap through a hoop of fire, they get it right and it looks instinctive.

The trick is getting them to sit still, listen and work together. Four components work cohesively to make instinctive leaders tick and be approachable.

To read the full column from the January 1 issue of Government Executive magazine, click here.

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Leading the Leaders

Steven L. Katz — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Taming a seat-of-the-pants executive doesn't have to be a death-defying act.

Recently, a friend described her boss: "He's a great guy, but he just does everything by the seat of his pants." Earlier, a prominent leader addressed a conference of government executives: "As leaders, we like to operate by instinct. Our gut often tells us the right thing to do."

But such instincts-often the very traits and qualities that make good leaders-sometimes have to be managed from the ranks before they result in a failed project or a million-dollar mistake. Employees respect action, not passivity. As the lion tamers in the office, their job is to help bosses prepare so when they leap through a hoop of fire, they get it right and it looks instinctive.

The trick is getting them to sit still, listen and work together. Four components work cohesively to make instinctive leaders tick and be approachable.

Multidimensional Thinking

Some bosses have a million ideas, but no concept of the time, people or resources needed to implement them. Many people have broad interests, focus on several things at once and multitask effectively. Instinctive thinkers grasp every detail in the blink of an eye. They think in terms of multiple issues-past, present and future.

Approach: Think multidimensionally about the problems you are working on together, and be prepared to identify interrelationships among people, information and events. Divide the boss' million ideas into short, near and long term. Use your knowledge, research and contacts to shape the idea, create value and manage risk. You must also be willing to say no so they don't leap in the wrong direction and get hurt.

Adaptive Learning

Former Boston Red Sox manager Jimy Williams once said: "It takes years of practice to be able to do something instinctively." He was not far off. Adaptive learning is what makes guesses educated and decisions informed. As they learn from experience, instinctive thinkers and leaders replace old instincts with new ones.

Approach: Adaptive learners need to know how change will affect them and how to use it. Always be upfront about the possibility of change, especially if it means involving new people. If bosses are caught by surprise, their defensive instincts will take over.

Focus on Doing

If you ask leaders what makes them tick, they can tell you about experiences, but may not be as expansive about how they think. They focus on doing and learn by doing.

Approach: People who focus on doing are not afraid. When you meet them to discuss a project, do not dwell on the process of how it will get done. Instead, pull them into the strategy as quickly as possible. They should see themselves literally as executive action figures.

Upfront Behavior

These behaviors-multidimensional thinking, adaptive learning and focusing on doing-must add up to something everyone can see.

Approach: Leaders must demonstrate their instinctive speed and strength upfront because people will judge them based on what they see and hear. How does the leader, boss or customer want to be seen? If you are working for someone who is too content, insular, isolated, or invisible, help them be seen in ways that strengthen not only their effectiveness, but their dominance, territory, social standing and survival.

While you can't lead from the middle, you can lead the leaders.

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