Appointees urged to listen to career civil servants
As a new presidential appointee moving into your agency job, do you value institutional knowledge and memory? Look to the career service. What about sheer ability and commitment? The best career people can match anyone in the private sector. Ability to change, adapt, learn? For many in your workforce, it's as good as anywhere. But how about entrenched attitudes, dug-in positions? No question, some career public servants have them-and not always for the wrong reasons. Loyalty and support for the new appointed boss? Usually not a problem if the boss meets them half way.
There is one certainty here. Political managers can't really run their jobs or get results without the cooperation and help of their senior professionals-whatever they may think of them.
"The assumption of every new political group coming in is that career civil servants are captives of the previous administration," says one observer. "It's easy to believe that only the folks who walked in the door with you care about accomplishing the mission of your administration. But the message to political appointees is that they are not going to get their jobs done if they don't work closely with the senior career people-and that they shouldn't assume they are the enemy within."
Okay, but isn't the government's work force still basically different from those in other sectors? The answer is mixed. In the collective, career government people have much the same profile as any other large group of employees. Skilled, ambitious achievers at one end, less gifted or imaginative stragglers at the other, most of the rest somewhere in the middle. The rules do make it considerably harder to hire, fire, or move them around. There is less mobility, certainly less turnover, in government than many appointed newcomers are accustomed to. A fast-track program is available to talented entrants, and a bonus system operates for senior careerists. But for most other people, merit cuts less ice than it does outside government when it comes to promotions, pay raises, or moves to more desirable jobs. In most cases, that means making the best of the career work force that is in place.
If all your people are extraordinary, getting extraordinary results is a lot easier. But extraordinary people are not bunched together in most organizations. You have to produce extraordinary results with ordinary people. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration did it in recent years. That's what the most successful organizations in America do every day. That's the management task.
Talent does exist, however, at every level in federal agencies. These professionals know what's going on, what has to be done, what needs fixing-and they're ready to follow good leadership. The trick is to find them, enlist them, and make a habit of listening to them.
"There was a guy who controlled budget, personnel, space, and computers," says one former political appointee. "He was great-the exemplar of professional executives in the federal service. And the organization came to know that he knew how to push my buttons. If I really had a bad idea and they had to talk me out of it, they'd send him in to do it. He saved me from some gross errors. There were other days when I said 'Nope, we're going to do it this way.' Every once in a while I was right. But it's tricky, because some people who resist and obstruct are doing it for good reason." An ability to hear what career colleagues and subordinates are saying depends on open, not closed, doors.
"My predecessor said to me, 'Be careful in the elevator. Everybody will try to talk to you about stuff. Don't talk to them,' " says a former appointee. "It seemed to me that was exactly the wrong advice-the kind your mother used to give you that was always wrong. When I first came into the agency, people had never even been on the floor where our offices were. They had to use key cards to go up and down the elevators, as if it was an armed camp. I dispensed with the key cards and invited everybody to come on up with their ideas. I said we would take them seriously, that there wouldn't be repercussions for ideas we didn't like. People took me at my word."