American Polity by Serow and Leadership

Readings for Mar 31

 

Serow  #40 by Robert Reich; Locked in the Cabinet  (p280)

  • Selection of subordinates
    • Billions of dollars and millions of people depend on organizations whose heads he’ll appoint
    • Needs to hurry to get his appointments through by June (Feb now) or he’ll get stuck waiting for a year
  • Criteria considered – realizes it is difficult to do as he’s not sure on the reliability of the info he gets
    • Share the Pres’ values
    • Competent and knowledgeable about policies they’ll administer
    • Good managers
  • Talks about his choices of Chief of Staff and Deputy
    • Deputy (Tom) – someone he hasn’t met and is sharp but a little discomforting; keeps one on one’s toes
    • CoS (Kitty) – worked way up from the bottom, knows Washington and politics well
  • Very busy schedule; even outside he is always on the cell phone
  • Tom and Kitty hire people to do schedule, keep Robert on schedule, etc
  • Motivated to escape his busy schedule so he makes a list of what he wants to hear about
    • Angriest letters from the public weekly
    • Complaint from dept employees
    • Bad news (big and small)
    • Anything that resembles a decent idea, even wacky ones, from anywhere
    • Anything from Pres or Congress
    • Random sample of calls or letters from people outside gov
    • “Town meetings” with dept employees … hold in DC
    • Calls and letters from executives; meet with some of them
    • Lunch meeting with small groups of dept employees (any rank, randomly chosen)
    • Meeting with conservative Repub in Congress
  • Wanders off during free time due to a meeting
    • Staff gets worried and he gets lost, though a little refreshed
    • Security finds him and brings him back to his office (the “Bubble”)
  • Town meeting with dept employees risky but he holds it anyone; thousands come
    • It goes smoothly until someone says his promise to listen to suggestions is BS
    • He calls them on it and listens to suggestions, and even grants some on the spot
    • One suggests that a determination between permanent and temporary unemployment be made sooner
  • Congress wants unemployment benefits extended past six months, but it would cost billions
    • Consider the suggestion about determining the kind of unemployment
    • Turns out it would save billions over the next five years
    • Get the idea implemented and invite the idea’s creator to the signing
    • He gets to shake the Pres hand and is awestruck that his idea went somewhere
      • Execs usually don’t listen to lower level employees

 

Serow  #41 by Robert Trattner; The 2000 Prune Book  (p295)                                                               (#41 notes credit to M. Drake)

  • Qualifications for appointed head of FEMA (Fed Emerg Mngmnt Agency) from the point of view of it head
  • Appointments
    • Plum Book – list of thousands of exec branch positions filled by appointment
      • A plum may look good on the outside but it offers no guarantee that it will satisfy
    • Prune Book – reflects on experience; appointees are tested by exec branch, legislature, press, public
  • Former Pres appointee about the exec branch: hard to get things done in Washington
  • Former member of Congress: all legis power in Congress is in ideological members; all members are political
  • Head of agency about the media: must educate media about agency, its objectives
  • Senior White House staffer about public: explain you work’s relevance to people’s lives
  • Political Consultant about public: public must want it

 

  • Leading successfully means getting something tangible done – results.
  • Pursue ends, not means.
  • Policymaking alone does not bring results.
  • The Gov Performance and Results Act (‘93) makes it is easier to evaluate whether or not there are results
  • Public, disenchanted w/government, demands results
  • If results come first, the reasons that bring talented people to seek election by a chief of state for higher office also demand intense focus.

 

  • FEMA – recommended skills and experience – good manager w/firsthand experience, background in area
    • Turn around a result of creative leadership, reinvention, outreach to customers, resolve
    • Bring senior career managers together to discuss
    • Meetings with congressional comm good; need to be refocused in order to cut multiplicity of oversight though
    • Upfront and truthful w/media