Several ‘key’ leadership positions were just filled in the government over the past week or so. What was interesting is that a number of them are, if not friends, at least acquaintances. In most cases both they and the folks they are replacing are not what one would consider superior leaders.
This is not meant to be pejorative. All of them are bright, hard-working, dedicated people. But there are lots of bright, hard-working people. But to read the biographies and resumes of the senior leaders of the various agencies and departments in Washington is to review the ranks of what appears to be the most brilliant, talented, clever, and imaginative people this planet has ever known. Every one of them is gifted with multiple degrees, participation in a wide range of leadership seminars, and a raft of experiences that truly boggle the mind.
Yet the agencies and offices they oversee seem little changed from one end of their careers to another. How can this be?
There are some who would argue that this is a testimony to just how horribly broken is our government; that if these paragons of virtue and learning are unable to fix it, clearly the system is beyond salvage. The truth is more mundane.
First, the fact is that, in most cases, despite the stellar resumes, these people simply aren’t brilliant. Brighter then average? Perhaps, perhaps not. They may have a wonderful education – on paper, but that alone is rarely a mark of either intelligence or success, and even more rarely a mark of real leadership.
Second, and more importantly, despite the fact that these people often go from one agency to another, sitting on top of ever larger numbers of people and larger and larger budgets, most of the people in Washington are decidedly not very good leaders. They may be good managers; in fact, many of them are quite accomplished managers, particularly of budgetary processes and procurement programs. But, their ability to establish goals, communicate those goals, and convince people and motivate people to pursue those goals – to lead – is usually limited.
So, how did they get there?
There are a lot of elements to it, which include issues such as political appointment, quotas and the like, but all of that is window-dressing for the real reason. The fact is, it is the nature of government to select ineffective, even mediocre people. In effect, they were chosen because they ‘look better than they are.’
Now, this is not to say that these people don’t ‘look good;’ they do. They have impressive resumes, they speak well, they are well educated. But they are thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people in this country with impressive resumes. Why then do the same people keep turning up in Washington? Because that is what governments do.
Several hundred years ago an English philosopher – Thomas Hobbes – wrote a treatise on government titled “Leviathan.” It is a difficult book to read, but in it Hobbes identified the process that drives the behavior of governments (and any other large organization that has outlived its founders and settled into a condition of simple existence.) At its heart, governments – all governments – claim to do one thing: improve the life of their citizens. But for those who work within the government organism – the Leviathan – the government does in fact improve their lives, and usually more than the nominal improvement it provides to all other citizens.
More to the point, the Leviathan awards those who help the Leviathan; the more you help it, the more you benefit. The more you make government strong and secure, the more the government rewards you by promoting you, giving you more authority.
How then does this apply to people of perceived competence but de facto incompetence? Government must, in order to keep the general population quiescent, at least appear to be trying to make things better. Little real progress is necessary as long as everyone appears to be working diligently. However, at the same time, government bureaucracies recognize that their continued survival is dependent on maintaining the status quo. Dramatic changes can mean not simply that one agency receives more money, but that another loses money. The gaining agency gains more money and more power and thereby threatens other agencies. Accordingly, government agencies continually struggle for more money and authority, but with that struggling, few gain, and none lose, status quo is maintained, and the system grinds on; all at the expense of the taxpayer.
What happens if a truly capable figure takes charge of one agency? Very simply, the apple cart is upset. Agency X receives more money, more authorities, and others suffer. Power shifts. And power shifts – real change - are feared by the bureaucracies. In those cases where the government takes power from the populace, it will usually distribute it widely throughout the various bureaucracies, minimizing the amount of change within any one agency, which ensures the least infighting, and also making it that much more difficult for the power to be recovered by the people at some later date.
This has been seen in the US government over the past few years with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Some departments lost some authorities – and budget – and then further rules and regulations resulted in tighter controls over elements of DHS, the result being that DHS was less effective then initially planned and the budgets of the other agencies recovered, compensating for the “losses” to DHS. The same is true of the Director of National Intelligence, who was charged with ‘integrating’ the various elements of intelligence throughout the various departments, then was not given the real authorities to do so; more money is spent, more positions of ‘great responsibility’ are created, but no real authority was given to these new offices and the problems which motivated the creation of the office remain with little substantive change.
An excellent example of how government responds to cries for change is the Department of Energy (DOE). Created during the Carter administration, the DOE was founded to develop a comprehensive national energy policy that would break our dependence on foreign oil and lead us to a robust but sustainable energy infrastructure.
In more than 30 years since its creation it has yet to produce a comprehensive national energy policy, the DOE has enacted more constricting regulations on US energy companies, while US dependence on foreign oil has increased from 6.6 million barrels per day in 1977 to more than 10 million barrels per day today, US refining capacity has nearly stagnated and the US oil industry continues to age, non-carbon power generation (such as nuclear power) has nearly frozen in place, and the DOE budget continues to grow. To those who will point out that the DOE now must manage the US nuclear weapon arsenal, it is worth pointing out that the US nuclear arsenal has shrunk in size from well more than 20,000 to less than 5000, while spending has continued to increase and there are growing concerns about reliability. In short, the taxpayer has spent a great deal of money, “brilliant” people have moved in an out of the department, and very little that it was tasked to do has been accomplished in more than 30 years.
So, to return to our original question: Why do government organizations routinely, frequently pick mediocre leaders? The answer is an essential element of Hobbes’ political model: figures in leadership positions are chosen for a number of criteria, but the two most important are nominal experience, and ‘pragmatism,’ which in bureaucratic terms means precisely that he or she is willing to negotiate away any position. In short, they must be committed to preserving the organizations, and not be – in fact – committed to change. This doesn’t prevent changing and reorganizing to beat the band, as long as real change doesn’t take place. And that is why you can look at certain agencies in the government that go through regular and frequent reorganizations, yet the ‘folks in the trenches’ (the ones who do the real work), remain doing the same thing, often at the very same desk, though their titles may have changed and they have new bosses. Every appearance of change is provided, but there is little to no meaningful change.
Real leaders recognize certain truths about leadership. The most important is that leadership is about taking an organization ‘someplace,’ about having meaningful goals. At the same time, accomplished leaders understand that every organization must be focused to move forward. Having more than two or three goals translate quickly into having dozens of goals and then no goals. Effective leaders choose to focus on the two or three goals they wish to achieve; lesser leaders believe they can achieve many goals; and in believing so they invariably fail, and the organization remains fundamentally unchanged.
And that’s why they were chosen in the first place.
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