A Passion for Leadership (27 page)

Public bureaucracies are unaccustomed to rapid or intensive change, but I think that is because they experience it so rarely. They are like out-of-shape runners called upon to compete in a 10K race. At one point, I thought that the period of rapid change at both the CIA and Texas A&M might require a subsequent period of consolidation for people to integrate and assimilate all the changes. Now I believe a rest period—a moratorium on change—is an invitation to relax and fall back into old, bad habits.

In contrast, those working for successful businesses are under constant pressure from competitors, the marketplace, and investors to continuously change and innovate; if they slow down or relax, they will no longer be successful. They cannot get tired or rest.

In the public sector, a single burst of energetic reform should be the starting point for developing a culture of dissatisfaction with the status quo and a long-term, day-in, day-out commitment to searching for better ways to serve the public—the customer. The reform leader should be ruthlessly self-critical in addressing whether he has the energy and the ideas to sustain continuing improvements and, if out of gas, he should get off the road. His change agenda should be aligned with the core values and culture of the organization and use the synergy of the two working in tandem.

M
y first leadership position was as a patrol leader in Boy Scout Troop 522 in Wichita, Kansas. Nothing develops or tests leadership skills like trying to get people to do what you ask when they don't have to—especially if they are twelve or thirteen years old and you are just a year older. My first leadership training course was in July 1959, the national junior leader training program at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. I was fifteen. That was the last formal leadership or management training I had.

The Internet and shelves in bookstores are full of books telling people how to be leaders and managers. Nearly all colleges and universities have degree programs on the subject, and many companies and government agencies offer—or require—those climbing the ladder to take such training. Yet I think too often leadership and management are treated synonymously when they are, in fact, very different.

My dictionary defines a manager as a “person charged with control or direction of an institution or business…one who handles, directs, governs or controls in action or use.” God knows, good managers are vitally important. Every enterprise—whether business, university, government agency, or other institutions—needs people with management skills: finance, marketing, logistics, human resources, information technology, planning, communications, procurement, recruitment, manufacturing, operations, and all the rest. All are endeavors requiring real skill and real competence, and all are essential to the success of any undertaking.

I believe, however, that leadership is much more than the sum of these skills, much more than managing well. The best definition of a “leader,” as described early in these pages, is “one who guides, one who shows the way.” We surely need good managers here in America, but we are desperate for leaders.

While my formal training in leadership began and ended in the summer of 1959, in reality my education in leadership has continued for the last fifty-five years. From effective bosses and bad ones, from working for so many presidents and observing countless other leaders at home and abroad, from watching multiple corporate and university executives, I have learned what makes good and even great leaders. And I have tried to distill those lessons here.

Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote to his son in 1943, “The one quality that can be developed by studious reflection and practice is the leadership of men….The idea is to get people working together…because they instinctively want to do it for you….Essentially, you must be devoted to duty, sincere, fair and cheerful.” Devotion to duty. Sincerity. Fairness. Good cheer. These are not qualities taught in school. Formal education can make someone a good manager, but it cannot make a leader, because leadership is more about the heart than the head. How does any organization teach courage, integrity, a love of people, a sense of humor, the ability to dream of a better future? How can any training program inculcate personal character and honor?

Core to leadership is the ability to relate to people—to empathize, understand, inspire, and motivate. Years ago, I read a story that during the American Revolution, General Washington was making his rounds through a camp of soldiers when one private, John Brantley, who had gotten a little drunk on stolen wine, asked Washington if he would have a drink with him. The general declined, saying, “My boy, you have no time for drinking wine.” As he began to ride away, Brantley yelled, “Damn your proud soul—you're above drinking with soldiers.” Washington turned back, saying, “Come, I will drink with you,” and a jug was passed around. As Washington rode away, Brantley called out to him, saying, “Now I'll be damned if I won't give the last drop of my heart's blood for you.” A personal touch earned loyalty unto death. That's not learned in a classroom.

If you fundamentally don't like or respect most people, or if you think you are superior to others, chances are you won't be much of a leader—at least in a democracy like ours. Just because you are high on the organizational ladder and can tell people what to do doesn't make you a leader. Just a boss.

Unfortunately, we are living through a period when improving people's lives through institutional reform is exceedingly difficult. Most Americans these days don't see many organizations trying to make their lives easier. Indeed, they are pretty disgusted with all of the bureaucracies they see complicating their lives and with those who lead them—elected and appointed officials as well as those in charge of big organizations in the private sector. At the federal level, Congress, taken as a whole, is about as popular as head lice. Yet more than a hundred years ago, Mark Twain wrote, “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” Members of Congress focusing on parochial interests and getting reelected rather than the national interest goes back to the beginning of the Republic.

While observers like to point out (correctly, in my view) that both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have been deeply polarizing, they tend to overlook the reality that of thirteen U.S. presidents over the last eighty years only Eisenhower, Ford, and Bush 41 did not evoke deep animosity—even loathing—from partisans in the other party. At his nadir, neither Bush 43 nor Obama reached the low level of public support and disdain President Truman encountered. As I wrote in
Duty,
my own father, a small-business Republican, referred to FDR as “that damned dictator,” and I was ten before I realized Truman's first name wasn't “goddamn.”

Still, during 1947–48, at a time when politics was every bit as polarized and ugly as today, and with the Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, Truman sent historic proposals to the Hill to create the Marshall Plan, establish NATO, restructure our entire national security apparatus (the National Security Act of 1947), and provide aid to Greece and Turkey (the foundation of our containment policy toward the Soviet Union). All were enacted into law—thanks especially to the support of the Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan and the Republican congressman Richard Nixon.

During my career, our national political life was shocked by the Vietnam War and then Watergate (and Nixon's resignation), both episodes characterized by pervasive lying by public officials and resulting in a dramatic increase in public mistrust of government. In subsequent years, oil embargoes, interest rates and inflation (both above 15 percent), the Iran-contra scandal, Clinton's impeachment, going to war in Iraq based on wrong information, the Great Recession, and one scandal or failure after another have hammered home to the American people again and again the message that government is corrupt, its leaders lie, and most are incompetent.

And yet, despite all that, as in 1947–48, there were enough members of Congress during the turbulent 1990s and early years of the twenty-first century willing to reach across the aisle and work together so that essential business—such as approving budgets—was accomplished and important legislation passed, including the Clean Air Act Amendments under Bush 41, welfare reform under Clinton, legislation in 2001–2 to protect the nation against terrorism, and much more, all with significant support from both parties. That was because of a few dozen senators and representatives—I call them bridge builders—who placed the national interest above party interest in order to do the nation's business. Such people are, today, an endangered species.

Although nasty politics, self-interested members of Congress, and presidents provoking deep hostility are nothing new in American political life, the near-total refusal in recent years to reach across the aisle to achieve agreement on legislation needed to move the country forward or protect its interests
is
new—and dangerous. Moderation has become synonymous with having no principles and compromise with selling out. Failure to pass even routine budgets for government departments year after year, much less tackle tough issues like immigration, the deteriorating national infrastructure, underperforming schools, and long-term fiscal problems, represents the worst sort of dereliction of duty by our political class.

Over the last few years, between the scorched-earth tactics being used by both parties to win control of Congress and the uncompromising stance of both the hard Left and the hard Right, nothing is getting done—unless, like “reform” of the Veterans Administration, opposition would be suicidal or, in the case of the Affordable Care Act, legislation affecting every American and 15 percent of the economy is passed without a single vote from the other party. If you add to the mix two presidents who have not been much interested in investing the time and energy to forge compromises on the Hill or, facing resistance, simply gave up, we see why the government truly is in a ditch.

Volumes have been written about our national political malaise, and, admittedly, the causes and history are much more complex than I have described. But the resulting paralysis is apparent to all, and forecasts of the chances of the situation improving anytime soon vary primarily only in degrees of pessimism.

The natural assumption, under these circumstances, would be that anyone with aspirations to reform a bureaucracy—at least in the federal government—would, like Don Quixote, simply be picking up a lance and tilting at a windmill. And to be sure, pessimists abound. Francis Fukuyama wrote in the September/October 2014 issue of
Foreign Affairs
that demands for more legal checks on the executive branch have reduced “the quality and effectiveness of government” and yet greater demand for government services has imposed “new mandates on the executive, which often prove difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill.” Both processes, he contends, “lead to a reduction in bureaucratic autonomy, which in turn leads to rigid, rule-bound, uncreative, and incoherent government.” Fukuyama quotes the scholar Paul Light that, “Federal employees appear to be more motivated by compensation than mission, ensnared in careers that cannot compete with business and nonprofits, troubled by the lack of resources to do their jobs, dissatisfied with the rewards for a job well done and the lack of consequences for a job done poorly, and unwilling to trust their own organizations.” Fukuyama would probably apply much of that dreary assessment to local and state employees as well.

However, after spending a lifetime in public service and working with many state and federal workers in diverse departments and agencies of government, I believe Fukuyama is wrong in the assertion they are more motivated by compensation than mission. While I agree with his description of the challenges they face, I am convinced most of those employees continue to do their jobs because they believe in the mission of their organization. And therein is the opportunity for the bureaucratic reformer.

Moreover, the picture is brighter at the state and local levels. Many states have constitutional requirements for a balanced budget, thus forcing legislatures to make tough and timely decisions, regardless of which party has control. And at both the state and the local levels, there are many experiments under way in reform and governance that hold the potential for problem solving at those levels. Also, because governors and municipal executives must deliver services directly to citizens (and voters), those holding such offices tend to be fairly pragmatic in their actions if not their ideology. If street crime skyrockets, the garbage doesn't get picked up, or snow doesn't get plowed quickly, a mayor is in trouble no matter what his or her political coloration.

I have written this book because I believe that the challenges of public service such as Fukuyama describes can be overcome by talented leaders and, most important, that solving our larger political problems is not a prerequisite for bureaucratic reform—for doing what government does better, cheaper, faster, and in a more “user-friendly” way and holding people accountable for performance both good and bad. Such optimism is uncharacteristic for me. Many years ago,
The Washington Post
called me the “Eeyore” of national security. Like A. A. Milne's character in
Winnie-the-Pooh,
I was able, the paper said, to find the darkest cloud behind every silver lining. But when it comes to changing bureaucracies for the better, I am optimistic.

A politically dysfunctional environment is not, in itself, an insurmountable impediment to bureaucratic reform. After all, there wasn't exactly a lot of reform going on before government paralysis. At all levels of government and however rancid the country's politics, the suggestions in these pages will stand the reformer in good stead wherever she sits.

However great the public's dissatisfaction with the public sector, the private sector doesn't fare much better. It's not just huge frauds like Enron (2001), WorldCom (2002), and Bernard Madoff's multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that have hurt the reputation of the business community. There have been gross management failures in big industries such as automobile manufacturing and in financial institutions, the latter—along with misguided (and often self-serving) government and political decision making—leading to the Great Recession, which reduced the household net worth of most Americans, threw millions out of work, and wrecked retirement plans for millions more.

While the media have focused on mismanagement and lawbreaking, far more widespread in business in my view has been a failure of leadership and, too often, a failure of character: arrogance, egotism, obliviousness to the fate of employees, failure to hold people accountable for behavioral or financial misdeeds, belief that high position warrants entitlement, and so much more. Regardless of one's opinion on the cause or extent of recent growth in pay disparities between executives and those who work for them, the highly negative public perception is all too real. Just as government is paralyzed by self-serving, power-hungry politicians, private sector executives are seen as equally self-serving, greedy, and believing themselves entitled to be held to a different standard of behavior from ordinary folks.