The Federal Management Playbook: Leading and Succeeding in the Public Sector
336
The Federal Management Playbook: Leading and Succeeding in the Public Sector
336eBook
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Overview
Stories of government management failures often make the headlines, but quietly much gets done as well. What makes the difference? Ira Goldstein offers wisdom about how to lead and succeed in the federal realm, even during periods when the political climate is intensely negative, based on his decades of experience as a senior executive at two major government consulting firms and as a member of the US federal government's Senior Executive Service.
The Federal Management Playbook coaches the importance of always keeping four key concepts in mind when planning for success: goals, stakeholders, resources, and time frames. Its chapters address how to effectively motivate government employees, pick the right technologies, communicate and negotiate with powerful stakeholders, manage risks, get value from contractors, foster innovation, and more. Goldstein makes lessons easy to apply by breaking each chapter’s plans into three strategic phases: create an offensive strategy, execute your plan effectively, and play a smart defense. Additional tips describe how career civil servants and political appointees can get the most from one another, advise consultants on providing value to government, and help everyone better manage ever-present oversight.
The Federal Management Playbook is a must-read for anyone working in the government realm and for students who aspire to public service.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626163812 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Georgetown University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/07/2016 |
| Series: | Public Management and Change series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Ira Goldstein is a founder and former director of Deloitte’s US Federal Practice, providing consulting and advisory services to large federal agencies and departments. He previously held the position in the federal government of the US Assistant Comptroller General and Chief Operating Officer of the US Government Accountability Office.
Read an Excerpt
The Federal Management Playbook
Leading and Succeeding in the Public Sector
By Ira Goldstein
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Georgetown University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62616-381-2
CHAPTER 1
Key Dimensions of Success
It was in the 1990s when we first began to hear that computer time and date codes were bringing us toward a potentially apocalyptic situation in the year 2000. The root cause of the looming crash was simple enough: in their push to conserve space in computer codes, an earlier generation of programmers had recorded the year in two digits rather than four. At the time, "11/10/67" clearly meant November 10, 1967 (or October 11, 1967, if you lived in Europe). The efficiency of presuming that the first two digits in the date indicated the twentieth century seemed self-evident, and across the enormous number of computer programs efficiency trumped precision. After all, most computer programmers of the 1960s and 1970s never dreamed their original work would still be running on computers in 1999 and beyond.
However, by the nineties it began to dawn on the tech community that many of those original programs were still in use and that the first two digits of the year were going to change from 19 to 20. In other words, at 12:00 a.m. on January 1, 2000, an unknown but significant percentage of the world's computers wouldn't know whether "00" was the first day of the year 2000 or the first day of a century earlier.
What would happen then? Would elevators stop abruptly at midnight on New Year's Eve? Would air traffic control systems and power grids stutter with confusion over the date? Would defense guidance systems come down? We simply didn't know. And thus began the great "Year Two Thousand" challenge (dubbed "Y2K" in digital jargon). With it came lots of thinking and planning (and spending!) aimed at protecting computer systems worldwide. Many predicted a total worldwide cost of between $300 and $600 billion.
Given public concern, as well as an understandable desire to ensure continuity, the federal government launched its Y2K initiative in 1998 to coordinate and support the review of the nation's computer programs and adjust or replace code as needed — and to do so before 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 1999. Most of the systems involved were commercially owned, making for a classic public-private partnership in which companies as well as state and local governments ultimately would play key roles.
Federal efforts began late in the decade, reflecting the limited but critical linchpin role Uncle Sam often plays in overcoming cross-sector national challenges. But, given the potential of the Y2K event as it was understood at the time, it was a prudent action and an exciting challenge. The effort involved was intensive, yet none of those involved could know whether their time, energy, and money had been worthwhile until the two-digit millennial turnover. The nation, or some parts of it, held its collective breath as the fateful evening approached. Otis Elevator executives weren't partying that night; they were on high alert. So were FAA executives, power grid operators, key members of the armed forces, and the global media.
And then came a planetary sigh of relief when the new millennium began without frozen elevators, empty bank accounts, downed planes, or darkened skylines. Those who had met the challenge of ensuring the continuity of existing systems felt they'd succeeded.
There were skeptics, of course; many suggested that Y2K was mostly hype and overblown worry in relation to the actual risk. After all, they argued, nothing much happened to any of the millions of taxpayers who had footed the hefty bill for Y2K "fixes." But Uncle Sam viewed the risk as too great, so the Y2K campaign was launched — and a massive technological project was completed. The do-nothing option was never tested.
The purpose in highlighting Y2K isn't to question the necessity of the effort. The advertised alternative — massive shutdowns of innumerable key systems — clearly was unacceptable, and in the end the lights did in fact stay on as midnight of December 31, 1999, clicked by.
In terms of the response to risk, the Y2K initiative provides a case study in effective operation and illustrates the often-essential collaborative role of the federal government. It's a good launch pad from which to introduce four characteristics, or dimensions, that are key to succeeding in the federal realm, and some frameworks that can be used to manage them.
Framework of This Book
This book provides some insights on when and how to consider and manage what I call the Four Dimensions of Success — the goals, the stakeholders, the resources, and the timeframes — and the strategies and activities a federal manager or leader can choose to maximize effective use of all four under very challenging conditions. As winning coaches (sports or otherwise) will tell you, these can be organized into Three Essential Phases of Action:
1. Create your offense
2. Execute effectively
3. Play a smart defense
Effective managers include consideration of the activities of the Four Dimensions of Success in all three phases, addressing needed changes as the program or initiative progresses through each phase of action. Throughout the book the analyses demonstrate this focus. The Dimensions are knowledge based, and define what to focus on, like a specific goal or a particular timeframe. The three strategic phases are activity based; they define how to organize and execute them. A change in one dimension, such as a change in stakeholders or resources, demands reconsideration of the others, such as goals or timeframes. The cases in each chapter illustrate the consequences of doing this integration well ... or not.
This first chapter sets the two frameworks for analysis: the Four Dimensions of Success and Three Essential Phases of Action. It opens with Y2K because it illustrates attention to all four dimensions in a multisector environment and presents an interesting challenge common to preventive programs: the ability to demonstrate goal achievement when no outcome noticeably changes. The chapter explains and expands upon the second framework used throughout the book — the three essential strategic phases of activity — and identifies core strategies and activities that generally should be included in each. It illustrates the consideration of key dimensions phase by phase. A case study on the long-term transformation of GAO illustrates the use of the phases and dimensions.
In subsequent chapters, I use cases and insights from experts in each field, as well as my own experiences, to highlight strategies and activities that are specific to the function under scrutiny, be it motivating people, designing an organization, or managing risk.
Other management themes emerge throughout the book: the value of defining and communicating your own goals clearly and often, even though they can't always prevail in the political environment; the overriding importance of people as your primary resource and communications as your principal tool (even when objectives are technical, such as in technology or procurement programs); and the positive role that a threat or crisis can play in getting focus and priority handling. But it all starts with understanding the Four Dimensions of Success and the components of each.
Four Dimensions of Success
The Y2K response illustrates the first and most critically important dimension of success: choosing and communicating the right goals. Y2K is a clear example of how beginning with a clearly described outcome — even one as seemingly mundane as "continuity" — and effectively communicating that outcome to all stakeholders can be a key to success.
Of course, the Y2K challenge faced a special public relations hurdle in that the desired result was that absolutely nothing out of the ordinary would happen. This is also why some people viewed the whole episode as anticlimactic. Those leading the charge at the federal level, however, began by making it crystal clear that the status quo was the desired result.
This focus on outcomes is a standard subject in modern performance literature and typically receives at least lip service throughout every level of government. But few truly understand the flexibility that the federal system provides to use the power of outcomes effectively. In essence, negotiating goals you can achieve also defines the terms by which success will be judged.
Explicitly defining the goals is only part of the job, however. Goals must be negotiated among competing interests and they must be communicated clearly. Too many failures in the federal realm are actually due to poor communications. To succeed you have to clearly communicate your ultimate goals — and the need for the associated spending — to the communities affected by your decisions, particularly since federal initiatives often involve a huge cast of disparate players. Y2K leadership, for example, channeled all major information and action requirements through existing networks of industry councils and associations rather than trying to dictate actions directly to businesses and states. In the federal environment, with its highly diffused power and authority, those who best communicate achievable goals by defining expected program outputs and outcomes have the greatest chance to succeed.
The second dimension of success is understanding the key interest groups and stakeholders, both internal and external, and communicating with them early and often. Which groups will be most influential in deciding success, and what impact will the program or activity have on them? The federal system has many players, each with its own priorities and rivalries and each with a different perspective on success, so the question remains: Who will define success, after all? The congressional staffer who wrote the legislation? The committee chairman who appropriated the money or the implementing agency? Or will it be the broader national pool of interest groups and potential customers for the program or policy?
Despite the myriad players and their individual definitions of success — or perhaps because of these different points of view and their different levels of power — successful program managers and executives must explicitly define results in a way that balances, as best as possible, the often-diverse needs of key interest groups and focuses on their real-world wants and needs.
This is certainly not easy, especially because of what I call the "poison politics" dominating the federal environment. The constant drumbeat of criticism and discord from opposition or campaigning politicians in a polarized and divided government has created a public distrustful of almost anything governmental; this is reinforced by record levels of budget uncertainty and 24/7 media and oversight reporting that frequently takes issues out of their broader contexts. When government leaders find ways to swim against this current to build coalitions around goals they can achieve, successes like those chronicled in this book seem to result.
In the Y2K example, federal agencies and individual employees worked with other governments, nonprofits, commercial companies, and consumers, all of them with different goals and incentives. Success depended as much as on orchestrating these divergent interests as it did on technical solutions. In fact, director John Koskinen deliberately kept his staff small, which helped frame the federal support and partnership role for his team rather than the more usual authority-based federal approach.
Beyond goal setting and stakeholder communications lies the challenge of defining the resources needed and deploying them effectively, the third dimension of success. The resources any effort needs to succeed involve people, processes, and technology. Specific questions must be answered: Will the right talent be available and in place? What processes are needed to roll out and manage the program effectively? Will the right technologies be used to support the program and its services? Often it is necessary to revise goals and stakeholder expectations based on the realities of limited resource availability.
The fourth dimension of success is setting timeframes, with short-term, midrange, and long-term activities and goals throughout implementation. Clear and relatively easy short-term goals can build to more complex and comprehensive changes over time. This stepwise approach can marry short-term political, organizational, or resourcing needs with ultimate outcomes.
For example, the Y2K program established different program timeframes based upon different industry and business group needs. "Y2K Action Weeks" focused the efforts of twenty-three million small businesses on systems needs in a concentrated way; "100 Days to Y2K," begun one hundred days before January 1, 2000, highlighted how some businesses got it done in fewer than one hundred days to help remaining last-minute outliers.
Figure 1.1 summarizes the Four Dimensions of Success: Goal Definition, Stakeholder Impact, Resources, and Timeframes. It's a framework I've used for over twenty years to organize and focus goals, resources, and action in a complex, highly politicized, and rapidly changing work environment.
Each of these dimensions of success has three elements to its right that must be considered: Are the goals clear, and are the three elements necessary to achieve them — inputs, outputs, and outcomes — satisfactory to meet the goal? Have key stakeholders been identified, and their expectations understood at individual, organizational, and national levels? Are adequate resources available, particularly the necessary personnel, processes, and technology? Are timeframes realistic and comfortably separated into the three elements of near-term, midrange, and long-term activities and expectations?
Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under President George W. Bush, has described these challenges:
Whether determining how to find a cure for cancer or attacking more easily quantified federal challenges like security clearance reform, it has to start with clarity of outcome goals [and] timeframes that make sense for the goals you set, addressing intelligently what the needed spend must be and who the vital stakeholders are.
The Four Dimensions and their twelve second-level elements interact dynamically as a program rolls out or an agency meets different challenges. When some elements change, as they inevitably do over time, other elements will usually need to be "rebalanced." If I don't get planned resources, the outcomes and goals must be reexamined. When the timeframe shortens, organizational stakeholders may need to be alerted because outputs are likely to be more modest.
In the short term you can report inputs, such as the level of appropriated funding, to assure stakeholders that acceptable resources have been dedicated. But at the national level it will be more important to express longer-run planned outcomes, such as protecting endangered wildlife or reducing highway mortality. In any event, each of the elements should be considered when creating strategies and plans and when measuring and reporting progress.
Not every element in this framework will be equally important at any given time. Depending on the program, project, organization, or environment, different elements will be more or less pivotal to progress. But many program failures I've seen could inevitably be traced to undervaluing or ignoring one or another of these elements and the relationships among them.
Defining the Terms
At the beginning, it is important to understand and agree upon some key terms: inputs, outputs, and outcomes.
Inputs are the resources expended toward the achievement of some output. They include items such as personnel costs, administrative overhead, and the cost of consultants and contractors.
Outputs are the nuts-and-bolts "tangibles" created and delivered as a result of applying the inputs, such as additional veterans' hospital beds created, highway or rail miles built or improved, acres of national parkland purchased, navy destroyers acquired, or tax returns processed.
Outcomes are the broader improvements in some condition or social situation that are the intended result of the outputs. In relation to the examples above, these could be, respectively, healthier veterans, safer and more efficient transportation systems, improved recreational opportunities, a country safer from foreign attack, and increased tax receipts or happier taxpayers.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Federal Management Playbook by Ira Goldstein. Copyright © 2016 Georgetown University Press. Excerpted by permission of GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Foreword by Tom DavisPreface and AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Why This Book?1. Key Dimensions of Success2. Empowering Your Most Valuable Asset—Your People3. Managing the Complex New World of Technology4. Creating and Leading a Well-Designed Organization5. Communications—What’s the Good Word?6. Getting Value from Contracting7. Risk-Based Decision Making8. The Wide Wonderful World of Innovation9. Tips for Living with Oversight Organizations10. Tips for Political Appointees Managing Civil Servants11. Tips for Civil Servants “Managing” Political Appointees12. Tips for Consultants—and the Feds Who Use ThemConclusion: Four Common ThreadsAppendix: Summary of Key TakeawaysIndex About the Author
What People are Saying About This
This is one of the best books I have ever read on how to improve the operations of government. Ira Goldstein has had a forty-five year career as a senior government official in Washington and also as a senior consultant with two major consulting firms—Deloitte and Arthur Andersen. Anyone, elected officials, presidential appointees, career government executives, consultants, and even young government recruits, would benefit from reading this book in order to assist them in achieving success when working in or for the government.
Ira Goldstein is a modern day Chester Barnard offering wise insights, stories, and tips based on his years working at the highest levels of U.S. government. This book is a must read for anyone seeking to be successful in the business of government at any level.
Far too often these days, public service is denigrated. It’s easy to point to failures--failures rooted in politics as well as management--in the administration of public policies. Ira Goldstein has a different perspective in The Federal Management Playbook. Government is important. It’s not going to go away and it’s enormously complex. We’ve got to do better. We need good 'bureaucrats'--skilled, committed, experienced career officials. We also need political direction and oversight, and these days we need competent consultants and contractors. The Playbook hammers home ways and means of working together to achieve the effective and efficient execution of public policies that we want and deserve.
I have long believed that government can be a powerful force for positive change. But too often, progress is hampered by preventable breakdowns in leadership. Ira Goldstein’s blueprint for effective management — even in the face of unpredictable challenges, like budget stalemates in Congress — offers valuable guidance to fully harness the power of our talented federal workforce to improve the lives of every American.
This book offers a penetrating overview of the challenges involved in managing federal agencies during a time of challenging deficits, record polarization and rising public expectations. The book delivers numerous important insights, gleaned from the author's distinguished career as a leader in federal agencies and major consulting firms. Importantly, many of the cases covered offer positive examples of hard working senior managers achieving reform and change — a refreshing antidote to the prevailing cynicism about public service.
Far too often these days, public service is denigrated. It’s easy to point to failures—failures rooted in politics as well as management—in the administration of public policies. Ira Goldstein has a different perspective in The Federal Management Playbook. Government is important. It’s not going to go away and it’s enormously complex. We’ve got to do better. We need good 'bureaucrats'—skilled, committed, experienced career officials. We also need political direction and oversight, and these days we need competent consultants and contractors. The Playbook hammers home ways and means of working together to achieve the effective and efficient execution of public policies that we want and deserve.