Bureaucrats, Hired Guns, Consultants
Leadership and Its Dodges at Accountability Time

By BRANDON WARD

Commissioners are the non-elected officials who are appointed by politicians to carry out the administration of government agencies. For the most part, in city government for example, the source of a Commissioner's leadership potency is the Mayor. After all, as a successful businessman turned mayor, Michael Bloomberg is keenly aware that where there is a managerial problem there must be a solution. And where there is a solution there must be an opportunity for a Commissioner/agency-improver to do the right thing: Hire the best qualified candidate; reward and promote employees based on job performance and not politics; and manage equitably in a system governed by civil service and labor laws and agreements.

Brandon L. Ward is president of the New York City Municipal Chapter of Blacks in Government, an employee advocacy group. He is a Mechanical Engineer with the Department of Transportation. He can be reached at brandonward@nycbig.com.

Commissioners also wield an awesome amount of power in determining the potency of their agency's mission-critical leadership. In most agencies these are the individuals who have the unenviable duties of being efficient, apolitical, impartial, impersonal, objective, creative, and entrepreneurial.

They are also required to follow the best management practices, maximize results, carry out the public will, promote democratic values, and, above all, be "responsive and responsible."

Mike's Mantra: Don't Screw Up

Reportedly, Mayor Bloomberg's charge to his Commissioners (at the time of their appointment) is, "It's your agency, don't mess it up." Unfortunately, some more than others have a special knack for messing things up by running amok in the civil service system and engaging in horrific management practices.

Amazingly, however, if history is any guide, chances of Mayor Bloomberg firing a Commissioner are slim and none. In fact, it is hardly a revelation to many employees that when the spit hits the fan, it is never evenly sprayed. After all, how else does one explain the soft career landing of DOT and ACS Commissioners after the Staten Island ferry crash and the death of Nixzmary Brown (who died at the hands of her stepfather), respectively?

There's an old Russian saying that describes the master-servant relationship. It goes: "I'm the boss, you're an idiot. You're the boss, I'm an idiot." For obvious and not-so obvious reasons, we play the role we play simply because of who we are.

Bureaucrats play bureaucratic roles. They are no less efficient than the consultant, but they would be out of character if they began exhibiting consultant tendencies - like being less bureaucratic.

Similarly, consultants play consultants' roles. It's not that they are smarter than the bureaucrat, but you still don't expect them to not send you a bill telling you to pay for what you already know.

In his witty, clever and quirky Sci-Fispoof, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," Douglas Adams introduces readers to a particular species of aliens called Vogans - who seem to have much in common with government officials everywhere on earth. You see, Vogans are an entire race of slow-moving pencil-pushers who love bureaucracy and do everything "by the book."

Of course, this is not the view I have of the Bloomberg administration. However, I must admit that I see Vogan tendencies in my division's leadership. Curiously, it is manifested in what I see as the leadership's sick obsession with the chain-of-command.

Where the Buck Never Stops

Bluntly speaking, this proto-militaristic management style is undemocratic and has the observed tendency to objectify everyone but the decider-in-charge (DIC). For instance, generally speaking, if a poor engineering solution is devised for a problem, it's the "consultant" or "contractor's" fault; if a seemingly unavoidable incident occurs its because "someone" neglected to inform the DIC in a timely or the appropriate manner (i.e. follow the chain of command). Hence, from this employee's chair, the tendency of the division's deciders-in-charge to minimize personal responsibility deflects it onto others by manipulating their knowledge of a problem. The inevitable results - with few exceptions - of such leadership is that subordinates are inclined to treat them with the same caution and anxiety with which a zookeeper treats a monkey with a loaded gun.

This brings me to the ready, aim, fire management mindset of the hired guns. Interestingly enough, as one who currently works for a "hired gun," the main leadership characteristic that jumps out at me is their loyalty is primarily to the person who hired them.

Not surprisingly then, they seek to control their staff and information with the express purpose of looking good to their boss. And since their professional qualifications are not the determining factor (loyalty is) for their appointment to leadership, they are generally tyrannical and tend to exhibit the self-confidence of knowing that the risk of their leadership failure or success is connected to strings not seen on the organizational chart.

Here's the thing that's laughable to me: when they find out that their ideas to "improve" or "change" the agency/division are unworkable, their reaction, at best, turns to over-reaction; at worst, they become blame-o-philes. Needless to say, such leadership schizophrenia is not necessarily limited to hired guns. Consider consultants.

Ah, Those Consultants

Interestingly enough, the quiet revolution of the Department of Education's reforms is the use of "uniquely qualified" consultants to change the bureaucratic culture of the old Board of Education. Like missionaries with guns, these agency improvers generally confuse change with improvement. After all, any machination of test scores is applauded as success.

From this observer's chair, consultants generally fail to weigh the costs and benefits of change, to consider the unintended consequences, or to worry about what an agency may need to conserve and how it might go about doing that faithfully. In other words, they spend too much time and resource on narrow-minded goals that seek to convert the mechanisms (and culture) of government to run like a private business.

The trouble is, the government is a very different thing than a privately run business. For instance, government managers cannot fire city employees at will and must persuade people (like community boards, elected officials) to support goals that are amorphous and disputable. The Mayor's plan to implement congestion pricing comes to mind.

Perhaps the elementary problem some agency improvers ignore with the notion of change is that change can be for the better or for the worse. I am convinced, after careful and critical review that some "changes" gleefully celebrated by some managers as "improvements" are nothing more than a mean-reverting phenomenon. And, oddly enough, like all mean-reverting phenomena, for some of us in government, the more things change, the more they stay the same.