Lessons Learned in Leading Government Organizations

Speakers: Barry Bales, Jesus Garza, Audrey Selden, Kenneth Apfel

I'm Barry Bales. I'm Assistant Dean for Professional Development at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. My part of the school focuses on doing management and leadership development for government organizations. So we've been talking in this conference about leadership and about the actual teaching of leadership, and we wanted to have this session sort of blending that teaching of leadership with the actual practice of leadership. We're fortunate to have a stellar panel. I would draw your attention to the biographical information that's in your book. We have some very successful leaders represented on the panel today and representing all levels of government, at least local, state, and federal government.

The process I'd like to follow is we'd ask each of our panelists to have some comments. I'll introduce each one of them as they are getting ready to speak. I would ask that we hold our questions until the end so that we do have an opportunity to cover all the comments first. Our first speaker is going to be Jesus Garza, who is City Manager for the City of Austin. If you're looking at your biographical information you'll see that he's had experience, actually, at all levels of government and he first started his career as an administrative assistant to the City Manager in Austin in 1978. He's had experience in local government in Corpus Christi, where he was Assistant City Manager and Deputy City Manager, and he also served as Executive Director of the Texas Water Commission. At the federal level he was District Administrator for Congressman Jake Pickle. What's of real note I'd like to draw your attention to is that Governing magazine recently named Mr. Garza one of its public officials of the year for the year 2000, lauding his conciliatory, proactive management style in light of the city's rapid growth, and it states that Mr. Garza's results have been spectacular. Austin ranks among America's best- managed cities in virtually every category. We're also proud, at the LBJ School, to claim him as a graduate of the school, and with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Jesus Garza.

I really appreciate the opportunity to come visit with all of you about leadership. We were asked to touch on several basic topics. The first was the characteristics of my own style of leadership, and I want to just briefly go through some of those. Some of these are not all mine, they are things that I've learned that have worked, and then I've copied them, as any good bureaucrat would do.

The first is you have to build a great team. In a large organization-in the City of Austin we have 10,000 employees, some 27 departments-the key ingredient to leading that organization is to make sure you have the right people in the right place to help you run the organization. You have to be able to rely on your staff to get things done and trust them to get it done. You lay out the general direction and some of that detail gets carried out by them. As a leader you don't sit down and micro-manage everything, because if you did, you would never find the time to really make sure you were moving in that right direction. You'd be in the forest. In Austin, we've been recognized as a great city, as a great managed city simply because we have a great team. I've got tremendous assistant city managers, a great deputy city manager, and we've worked very well together as a team now for the seven years I've been there. And the directors, we have a tremendous professional staff. They understand hat they're doing, they understand what they need to be doing, and they by and large carry out what needs to be done from a day-to-day standpoint.

The second thing is you need to articulate a vision. You need to be able to create a cause for what it is you're trying to get done. In Austin, clearly for us, it's the issue of service. We don't operate at the City for any other reason except to provide services to the citizens, and we ought to strive to make sure that we deliver it effectively, and that we deliver it at an efficient cost, and that's basically our mission. And we do a whole variety of services, whether it's at the airport, at Austin Energy, the delivery of water services, basic services like public works. It is the delivery of services to the citizens.

In fact, when you create that vision and that cause that you get folks to follow, they then will understand what it is they're about, and it isn't about creating a large organization or about a bureaucracy or a dynasty, it's bout taking care of citizens and taking care of people. It's lead by example. In the end, you've got to be able to do some of the things you ask your folks to do, and you can't sit up in the ivory tower and not connect with the day-to-day employees, not just the directors and the assistant directors, but the folks that are actually delivering those services. You need to find the right venue to be able to go talk to them, to get to know them, find out what they're doing, and to connect with them so that they understand that you understand what they're doing is important in terms of providing those services to the citizens.

You need to be supportive. One of the things in city management is that you will have, periodically, council members, members of the public, other policy leaders that will take on your staff. They'll want to take their heads off because they made a decision that they don't agree with, or they've made a call that some folks in the neighborhood may not completely agree with. The last thing you want to do as a leader is not appear to be timid in those kinds of circumstances. In fact, you need to be supportive. I'll give you an example. Not too long ago- maybe about five years ago, there was a specific individual in this city that wanted to take out one of our department heads. And I remember having a very emphatic conversation with him in the alley behind the annex where I indicated to him, "The more you advocate taking him out, the more I will champion this individual, no matter if I agree with you or not." And he couldn't understand that logic, and I said, "Because I cannot afford as the leader of this organization to have anyone in the organization believe that someone else other than me will remove department heads or remove key staff. It has to be my decision and my decision alone, not just by charter, but for the integrity of the organization."

You have to say what you mean and mean what you say. Many times folks will go out and talk about things and lay some things out, but they really don't mean it. They don't follow through; they don't walk the talk. You've got to lay out what it is you want done, you've got to mean it, you've got to follow up, you've got to follow up, and then follow up again so that people who work for you begin to understand, "Well, he really means it. This is not on his C list. This is on his A list, or this is on her A list, and we need to carry out what he's asked to do."

You need to be considerate. You know, in public service we sometimes forget to say for the folks that work for you, and they work for us long, long hours. We forget to tell them thank you. We forget to be on time to meetings. We think that we're big people because we have big positions and therefore we can abuse other people's time, and people pick up on that. They pick up on those little nuances that really, you're not very considerate, and in fact, that really damages your credibility within an organization. So you ought to be considerate of individual, because in the end, the way we get our work done as managers is through other people, and they have to be supportive of you and supportive of the objectives of the organization.

I had a marine friend of mine that used to go around saying about certain council members in Corpus Christi that the council majored on the minors. I think any good manager has to major on the majors. That is the big picture. You need to be able to not just articulate that vision, the cause that you're working for, but you need to be able to keep your eye on the ball in terms of what it is you're trying to achieve. Some managers sometimes lose sight of that and they get into all kinds of detail. I remember the stories we used to read about President Carter, that he got involved in level of detail to schedule the tennis courts at the White House. And you imagine that there are some things as a leader that you need to move beyond and just trust other folks to do, because if you do get involved in too much detail, you're going to lose sight of what it is your objectives are and where you're trying to take the organization, and you have to trust your team. You have to delegate and trust them in terms of getting those details done. In the end, details are important and I don't want to minimize those.

In terms of my experience and working in government I've had the opportunity to work with really two outstanding leaders in this community. The first is Dan Davidson, who used to be the City Manager of Austin, Texas. He left office in about '83. If any of you have known Mr. Davidson, he was the consummate professional. I would always marvel at going into meetings with Mr. Davidson with staff-it could be any staff-and he would remember their names. He was considerate enough to call them out by their first name, to shake their hand, introduce himself as if people didn't even know who he was, and the staff responded to that, and they would have walked on water for Mr. Davidson. They would have done anything he asked them to do, and it's because he connected, not just with the workforce and the department heads, he was able to really build those relationships as a manager and as a leader, and it's important to build those human relationships in order to carry out the functions of the things we do at the City of Austin. He did just a tremendous job. Te information that he was able to digest for complex issues, he'd go into meetings that you'd think somehow he was going to rely on others, and he was able to hit the high points, ask the right questions, and you just marveled at his ability to run the city and be able to lead that organization.

The next individuals-I had the great opportunity to work for Congressman Pickle just a few short months-four months-as his district administrator. I don't think I've ever seen an individual more dedicated to public service than Congressman Pickle. He did great deeds for our Central Texas, the 10th Congressional District. He understood how government worked and how people worked in government. He also understood that you needed to not just do it right, but you needed to do the right thing. In any bureaucracy you'll have folks that will tend to hide behind rules, and they'll tell you why they can't get things done. To watch Mr. Pickle-and I was basically 25, 26 at that time-not necessarily bending rules, but to do what was right and to ask that next question, to find out why the rules were as they were, and were there any flexibilities, etc., and you followed up with constituent services, and he did a tremendous job in building all kinds of networks within this district, and also within congress, be able to bring many projects to the City of Austin. I think people talk about how Dell and other things have driven our economy, and really, if you look back to the work he did with Sematech and bringing some of the funding to the University of Texas for applied research, those were the seeds of our economic development that we've been blessed with in the decade of the '90's. Mr. Pickle was very good and really a great leader and a great human being.

What works and doesn't work based on my experience. I think the first thing that any manager, any leader will tell you is you need to persevere. You need to be constant. You need to push your vision, your values, and fundamental achieving goals, recognizing that things are going to change around you, people are going to change, but you've got to be true to your values and true to where it is you want to take an organization. You have to value people. And in the end, and again, it's a theme of mine-people are what make things work within an organization like ours, and you need to continue to reinforce that with the folks that work for you, because you've got to value the human beings, in effect, that carry out the work of your city or the work of your organization.

Abraham Lincoln was an embodiment of a lot of these characteristics. I remember reading biographies about Abraham Lincoln. I think the popular theme at the time when he was elected in 1860, folks thought he was a country bumpkin, shallow, not very well schooled, and what quickly people found out was the depth of his character. To have endured during one of the most trying times of our nation's history, and to be able to hold this nation together and stay true to those values that were important for the embodiment of this nation was a tremendous asset for our country, and a great example of leadership.

What doesn't work? Don't fall prey to fads and gimmicks. That is something that the management consultants sometimes will let you-or even folks wanting to help you mold, what's the next new thing you need to do, but fads and gimmicks don't work. If you're wanting to get in shape, if you're wanting to lose weight, you understand is what you've got to do is you've got to do it a step at a time, and it takes a lot of hard work. Leadership is the same way. You've got to lay out the vision, lay out the values, be constant to it, be able to be flexible and make those changes periodically, but stay true to where you want to go, and understand that it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of communication to get things done.

Another very important ingredient is you need to be sincere about what it is you want to get done. Lack of sincerity is seen by workforce and by folks that are wanting to follow, they see it very quickly, and it's apparent, and you need to be sincere and you need to mean what you want to see happen for your organization or your specific circumstance, and it's very important for you to be sincere about what it is you're wanting to get done.

In terms of whether things can be taught in college about leadership, there's a Harvard Business Review article that appeared this month that tries to go through and characterize as how organizations go from being very good to outstanding, and they try to catalog the leadership characteristics that have helped propel them there, and I think that they pegged CEO characteristics into several categories, with the fifth category being that category that takes that organization to that next level, and they basically say it's a study in duality. It's being shy and fearless, being modest and willful, it's holding those two polar ends and being able to carry that out. The researchers were asked by several people when they presented the findings that this is something that could be learned, and in that article it goes on to say that that would trivialize some of this. This is not something that's easy to learn, but it's something that by watching how other folks are able to carry out various functions within an organization, within various business categories, that you you're able to see what works for certain leaders and pattern your own behaviors and your own efforts in terms of your organization or your specific work that you do. In other words, leadership is difficult to teach. It's something that you can learn by reading, but it's difficult to pick up a college course and just read a book and say, "Okay, I'm going to read the book; I know what it takes now to be a leader."

And I think the best example for anybody who wants to know what has worked for leaders is to read your biographies, to read the folks that you admire that have done great works in this world. I've mentioned Abraham Lincoln in terms of this country. Franklin Roosevelt is another. Martin Luther King is another. You can look at what folks have done to lead great causes, and what they did, and what worked for them, and how they were able to stay true to their mission to make things work.

One tenet that must be enforced in the classroom, and we have to get away from what happens in politics too often, is the short-term mentality. Somehow this nation has gotten into the quick fix, that I can do it from one day to the next. Many of the things that happen from a policy standpoint at the City, and I'm sure you'll hear from speakers at the state and federal level, is that you need to really look at things for the long term, the long view, what kind of investments you need to make that pay you that benefit.

We somehow have gotten into the habit of believing that leadership is not about values, but it's about polls, opinion polls. In my view, leadership is about an individual who can shape public opinion, who can lead the public in a certain arena, to get them to change their view and say, "That is something that we need to do." It isn't about somebody who will really regurgitate back what an opinion poll tells them they ought to do and ought not to do. We frankly don't have enough of those individuals that are serving at the various levels of government. We've gotten into too much quick fixes.

As I often joke at the City of Austin, folks like to not get involved with the nitty-gritty of dealing with citizens or dealing with some very basic issues because they tell me they have more important things to do. They're into thinking in the Wizard of Oz terms, "great thoughts." What happens is that folks that get caught up in that, while it's important to lay out a strategic plan and lay out these great visions, in the end, the proof of the pudding is in its implementation. It's working through people and getting things done. And while you may want to lay that to someone else, really the individuals that have to lead your organizations have to understand how the nuts and bolts are put together, not necessarily for them to do it themselves, but to understand how they follow up to make things happen. In the end, though, it doesn't mean that you can't through reading, can't through watching and observing, not just political, but businesses and other non-profits that you can learn what it's like to be a leader.

Barry Bales: Our third speaker is Kenneth Apfel. He joined the LBJ School faculty this spring as the Sid Richardson Chair in Public Affairs. In 1997 he was nominated by President Clinton, a nd then subsequently confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the first Commissioner of the United States Social Security Administration. This new cabinet level equivalent position was authorized by Congress in 1995. You can see from his bio that he's had a long career, a distinguished career at the federal level, from positions working in the budget office in the White House, Office of Management and Budget, Assistant Secretary for Management and Budget, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, senior staff member to Senator Bill Bradley. He's had a long career working with a number of people, a very distinguished career. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and the National Academy of Social Insurance, and we're also proud to claim him as a graduate of the LBJ School, so please help me welcome Kenneth Apfel.

Kenneth Apfel
Sid Richardson Chair in Public Affairs
Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs
The University of Texas at Austin
Former Commissioner, Social Security Administration

Well, thank you, Barry. It's great to be here today. I have now been a professor for seven hours and 15 minutes, and I think it's very fitting that my very first public appearance as a professor is at a leadership conference, because after all of the years that I spent in Washington in senior leadership capacities, when I became the commissioner of Social Security, I thought that job involved three things. I thought it involved first becoming a very key actor on the policy debate on Capital Hill and in the White House. And how do you make things happen within that world? Two, become a talking head. I've been on television and radio and media interviews probably- I don't know-a thousand times in the last three years. Three, managing a very big, very complex organization, which Social Security is. It took becoming commissioner to realize that all three of those things were really under the surface, that leadership was key and foremost in the responsibilities that I held as commissioner. So I think it's great that I'm here to talk about leadership.

At the federal level, we are at a time of transformation and a time of change, and that's not just because we're moving from Bill Clinton to George Bush. That's been going on a number of years now, technological change moving rapidly, customers' expectations changing rapidly. There is a lot of need for change, and it's fundamental. And it's as fundamental two weeks ago when President Clinton was president as it is with our new president. Fundamental change-it's real, it's in the air, it's going to happen.

Management is key in a time of status quo, and management is key in a time of change, but leadership is really key in a time of transformation. When I think about the legitimacy of our institutions-how many times have your heard in the last three months since the election, "The integrity of our institutions, the legitimacy of our institutions are at risk"? How many times have you heard that in the last three months? I've been talking about the legitimacy of our institutions ever since becoming commissioner, that our big institutions and our electoral process is clearly one of the biggest, our public schools, certainly one of the biggest, our social security system, our social insurance system, clearly one of the biggest. The legitimacy, the broad-based legitimacy of these institutions is key for the long-term sustainability of our activities. That comes from not only having the policy right, it also comes from having service delivery right, to be able to meet customer service needs. And I think we've heard customer service needs talked about from both of our panelists up until now. I think they're both key.

It has been a remarkable time to become the commissioner, given the fact that the president put on the table three years ago that we have some very major policy challenges in social security. It was also a remarkable time because we faced enormously hard service delivery challenges. How do we provide service for the American public? A real quick perspective on social security just for a couple of minutes. This is a program that is an intergenerational program. People pay their taxes today, 150 million people, to provide benefits to about 50 million Americans. Twenty six million people a year visit our offices around the country each year, 16 million phone calls a year. We send out every year a third of a billion letters a year touching the American public. We are part of the fabric of the country, this institution, a program that touches the lives of millions, but at the same time is undergoing enormous stresses in terms of service delivery, and in terms of the challenge of the baby boom generation. So it was quite a remarkable time to become commissioner.

And to me, going back to those first three things I talked about about my roles and the management roles, I thought that management role was key. Management is establishing a set of processes to ensure that we're moving forward efficiently, that we are moving forward appropriately and correctly as an institution, critically important at all times. I'll use the example of our 800 number service-to establish customer service goals and measure how our customers are looking at our 800 number service. How are we doing on wait times? How are we doing on the lag times for getting calls? Important management questions. But beyond that are the leadership challenges, which go to really establishing a process to define the future, and to try to align people with that future for the agency, and to create the consensus within the organization about where you're heading as an organization, and to get that alignment throughout, not just at the senior leadership team, not just at the senior executive team, not just at the rank and file manager level, but really at the basic level within the organization of rank and file leaders.

So there's really not a dichotomy here. I'm not trying to make a dichotomy between leadership and management. Leadership is inherent to any of our key managers, and I actually believe that leadership is a key to many of our labor folks within the Social Security Administration. But there are leadership tasks that are different and distinct from management tasks that we need to recognize and identify.

Today I'd like to talk about the leadership challenges I faced at the Social Security Administration and lessons for all of us in the public arena.

When I came to SSA in 1997, I knew I was proud to be joining an agency with one of the best management records in the Federal government. It's a very big agency, with big, visible programs and operations, and SSA has their full share of day-to-day struggles you'll find in any large organization. But, what concerned me most as Commissioner was the deeper leadership challenges, and major factors and events that were having an effect below the waterline of day- to-day issues and operations.

During my earliest months as Commissioner, I began to understand with greater clarity that SSA is an agency under stress. While we are fiercely and justly proud of the very good service we have traditionally delivered, our frontline workforce increasingly struggles to perform at those high levels and is increasingly burdened by constrained resource levels.

It's not exactly rocket science to figure out that a strained workforce makes mistakes and is forced to cut corners even though they know they should not. And citizens who experience service mistakes are going to worry more about whether the Agency is competently managed, and what that might mean about the programs more generally, and their own future security.

And there's more. There are great new service challenges ahead that would strain any good organization. The aging of America will entail huge increases in work coming in our door, with growing claims for retirement and disability benefits as well as expanded responsibilities in such areas as records management and program integrity.

As if handling workload growth of this magnitude within fiscal constraints were not enough, let's state the obvious and point out that technology is advancing and warp speed, along with customers' service expectations. Technology clearly gives us the means to give better service more efficiently. But is also means immense change in operations and infrastructure, and we have to struggle with our employees' concerns about change while customers are insisting on more, better, faster. To add one final point, again on our employees: one of the most experienced, capable, and dedicated workforces in all of government is aging fast, and we stand to lose over 50% of those valuable people in the next ten years, mostly to retirement.

Summing up, at a time when all service delivery factors are converging to demand the best performance the organization has ever produced, SSA was not in the strongest position to respond. Strong management alone will not create the direction to overcome these challenges.

In 1999 we started work on the Government Performance and Results Act strategic plan that would be due to Congress in September 2000. Prior Agency strategic plans had helped the Agency to some extent, but it was clear that much greater alignment would be needed to meet the long-term service challenges facing the Agency. I wanted the new strategic plan built on thinking from deep in the Agency, and from stakeholders outside, and we cast a wide net for opinions and ideas with employee and public focus groups, employee surveys and workshops, and stakeholder conferences.

The dominant issue that emerged from all of these discussions was that a very deep concern about the SSA's readiness for the future, and the need for a vision of service in that future. The unanimity of opinion was startling. Many could not see how the GPRA process, starting with where we are today and taking short steps towards the future, would really address the long-term challenges that we faced. Armed with a shared sense of urgency, we launched development of the 2010 Service Vision, structuring the effort differently in several respects from those of the past.

First and most important, because the stakeholder support was clearly the single most critical ingredient, the effort began with more discussions about eh future with employee groups from all levels in the Agency, and with an explicit announcement that our process to a Vision would be an open one. We continued with focus groups with customers and advocates, external stakeholder meetings, and concluded with conferences for internal stakeholders. These were designed for union representatives, senior executives, and management and employee associations to react to the drafted vision and express concerns and opinions face-to-face with the Commissioner. An Executive Steering Committee that included our union partners as full members oversee this process and the actual drafting of the Vision.

The Vision itself was different from SSA's earlier service delivery efforts. Designed to describe how the Agency will accomplish the volume of work expected in 2010, it describes service as customers will experience it in the future, the working environment as employees will experience it, an how the Agency will perform its work. It set out principles and enabler of service that explain the character and quality of service we want to provide. And, it includes as centerpiece a s et of resources and workload calculations to illustrate the magnitude of process change needed for SSA to perform effectively. Structuring the Vision around service and work kept it factual, neutral and compelling.

Even at this first stage the 2010 Service Vision is plainly a prescription for transformation, and every leader understand that transformation doesn't take place without the active support of the entire organization and the engagement of every significant stakeholder outside. The key tools are commitment, communications, and a bias for action.

SSA still has a very long way to go on this endeavor, but I believe that SSA will keep this process going long after my departure from the Agency. The 2010 Service Vision will certainly evolve under new leadership, but because it is based on the simple facts of the work we face in the years ahead, it lays the best possible foundation for that new leadership to hit the ground running.

Now to get at those insights on leadership, let me start by reminding you of the story of Scylla and the Charybdis. In Greek mythology, Scylla was a monster that devoured any prey that came within reach. She lived in a cave across a narrow strait of water from Charybdis, a whirlpool that engulfed anything that came near. The only ships to make it past were those that steered a clear course with all the crew working together. Circe told Odysseus to steer his ship carefully between them and to avoid a fight, but he defied Circe's warning, and as the story goes, Scylla had many of his men for lunch.

I told this story a lot during my time at SSA, because it makes this point perfectly; that it is a foremost task of leadership in the public service to help frame the direction of the institution, to seek alignment within and to deepen the institution's keel to stay on course and avoid pitfalls. I think this theme figured prominently in all that we accomplished at Social Security.

What is the most important element? I believe that communications is the glue that holds all of this together. Before you can balance interests you need an open and vigorous dialogue. And as much as you can possibly make it, the dialogue has to be based on the correct facts, so education and making balanced information widely available is key.

Whether of not there is a 2010 Vision in other organizations, it is absolutely certain that every leader in government will be engaged in government transformation in the next ten years. And I believe that working towards a collective long-term vision will serve to strengthen out overall efforts to strengthen our institutions.

If you have been paying attention, you will have noticed by not that I have no lofty philosophical theories on leadership. My own insights are founded in some pretty basic principles. Sometimes we tend to discount them because they are simple. Long-term change requires vision and consensus, getting alignment within and outside the organization around the fact that change is imperative and the direction it will take, consistently communication that plan and obtaining feedback, and coming through with "immediate deliverables" that moves the organization towards that collective vision.

In closing, to paraphrase Harry Truman, leadership is getting people to do what they don't want to do and liking it! Leaders can't dictate direction for very long - it takes consensus building and a lot of hard work. And a lot of communication.