Across the Great Divide

Jeff Johnson: Burning Down the House.

Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson reports that he looks "pretty manly in a hard hat," and it's probably true — there was only one direction his look could go.

But Johnson isn't really promoting his manliness with his blog. He's promoting himself as a populist of the Pawlenty ilk. That is, you rail against wasteful spending on "frills" while you advocate cutting spending that benefits the very people you're appealing to.

Johnson's target this week is landscaping around the county's garbage burner. And I mean, dude, planting trees around a garbage burner — isn't that lipstick on a pig?

The county turns waste into energy for downtown Minneapolis buildings — something the commissioner agrees is a good idea. But to make it practical, the burner has to be near downtown. And the burner just got a lot closer to the center of attention with the new Twins stadium next door, with lots of new residences, and before long, with the convergence of several commuter rail lines.

If you stop and think about it, you might want the area to look presentable if it's visited by people from around the state and seen nationwide during baseball telecasts. Like it or not, it's going to represent the county.

It's not clear whether Johnson objects to the location of the new greenery, the cost or the specific allocation of dollars to beautification (you know beauty ain't manly). But it is clear that he wants to be seen as a regular guy who will kick around in the garbage but who hates waste.

Let's give Johnson a little credit. His blog is reasonably well-written, and I'm all for elected officials speaking directly and with some spunk to constituents.

But personally, I'd prefer a commissioner who thought constructively about what government ought to accomplish, suggested ways it could be more effective and solicited my ideas about how he could do his job on my behalf. If I were a commissioner or worked for the county, I'd like a leader who respected my work, supported my decisions and let me know directly when he didn't think my performance measured up.

None of that is in the GOP playbook, though. It's bomb-throwing time, baby.

Where Were the Inaugural Day Storm Troopers?

Today I attended a ceremony honoring police department members who'd received promotions. One of them was my brother Paul who was named Commander.

If you went by stereotypes, he wasn't the type you'd expect to become a cop, let alone be successful at it. Much too nice a guy, too quiet, too non-Bob-Fletcher-like, for those at you following at home in Minnesota.

In his remarks, the Grand Junction Police Chief talked a lot about the importance of values-based  leadership in police service. How the scowling hard asses with chips on their shoulders and metaphorical six-shooters on their hips might make good movies, but they didn't make very good police officers in a world that calls for planning, teamwork and distributed decision making.

We work in chaos, he said. We're always trying to catch up.

But he remarked how earlier in the week, two million people had poured into Washington, DC. He mentioned the "peaceful transition of power" as everyone else has, but he added an interesting detail.

As far as he had been able to determine, law enforcement officers had handled this massive event and its tremendous security requirements and not found it necessary to arrest a single person.

Sure, the Obama inaugural was a different kind of event than the Republican National Convention. But do you suppose the stakes were any lower?  Did no anarchists, terrorists, skinheads or race haters head for Washington that day? Were the logistics easier than in St. Paul?

I don't know. But I'm willing to bet there were more people like my brother making decisions over the last several months, and fewer Cowboy Bobs.

What Petters Values.

Just months before being arrested for massive financial fraud, Tom Petters told a Carlson Business School audience about encountering the core values of a dotcom company he was thinking about acquiring.

Nick Coleman gave an account of how Petters admired the high-sounding words that were plastered all over the company, including the mens room.

"I thought, 'I have to plagiarize these,'" Petters said, according to a transcript of his talk. "'I've got to take them.'"

There it is. Core values, plagiarized from a bathroom.

Under the influence of flu-like symptoms, I tried to track down that transcript for some light reading. The best I could do was this recording.

It's amusing to think of a corrupt businessman off-handedly plagiarizing his core values, but it turns out Coleman doesn't tell the story the way Petters told it.

Petters went on to describe his meeting with the company's CEO, who had the values statement hung in his office.

"Who wrote that? It's phenomenal," Petters said.

"Oh, that. I don't know who wrote it."

Petters then claims to have walked out shortly after, cutting off a planned two-day due diligence. He offers the story up as proof of his own authenticity and ability to detect a phony — "You gotta mean what you say."

It's the setup for the Petters Company values, which he proceeds to breeze through in a barely coherent fashion. 

Integrity. That's not something that we want to try to aspire to. I tell people... There's some of these things you want people to aspire to. You want to "hire to aspire." But um build on connections and relationships. You can't survive without 'em... without trust you really can't do anything. People shake your hand and tell you they're gonna do something. People make mistakes. People in this world we're living in right now, it's tough. Agility. We move very fast...

Keeping moving may have been what Petters did best. Here's a page from the company magazine that says more about his values [click to enlarge].

Change the World, Just not Me.

[In Leading Change: The Argument for Values-Based Leadership Professor James] O'Toole examines a number of cases in which a potentially beneficial institutional change was resisted and finds that the resistance occurs when a group perceives the change will challenge its "power, prestige, position, and satisfaction with who they are, that they believe, and what they cherish." [...] He asserts: "The major factor in our resistance to change is the desire not to have the will of others forced on us."
— How to Change the World, David Bornstein

This insight seems to apply to increasing taxes, regulating business, reforming schools, reducing oil consumption, bringing democracy to Iraq or cleaning up the environment.

Although Bornstein is not writing specifically about progressives, his insights certainly apply to those of us who expect obviously beneficial ideas to prevail on their own merits. Overcoming resistance to change requires a process, not just an argument.

Throughout history, even those who supported a "good change" may have continued to make an exception in their own, virtuous, case — arguing for abolition and owning slaves or decrying global warming from the seat of an SUV.

Obama Team Can Use Some Rivals.

A history professor is not impressed by President-elect Barack Obama's purported plan to appoint a Lincoln-like "team of rivals" to his Cabinet.

There is little doubt that Abraham Lincoln was a great president. But not much of what made him great can be discerned in his appointment of a contentious, envious and often dysfunctional collection of prima donnas to his Cabinet.
— James Oakes, "Assemble team of rivals; that's what you'll get"

Oakes gives examples of how members of Lincoln's cabinet schemed, grumbled and avoided meetings in favor of private access to the President. But he doesn't make the case this was bad for the country or how it compromised Lincoln's effectiveness as a leader.

Contentious or harmonious Cabinet meetings when the President is in the room aren't the point. Arriving at wise decisions for the nation is.

One would hope that rivals would hash out their differences in front of each other and that loyalists would always bring forward harsh truths for the leader's consideration, but that's not the way it often works. Reservations are often shared privately or through back channels. Group think and personal regard can result in soft-pedaling bad news.

It still remains for the chief executive to extract the required information and insight and to weigh appropriately whatever those methods surface.

In today's Star Tribune, you only have to turn the page from this New York Times analysis to find this truncated NYT story about how the CEO at Citigroup relied on the reassurances of a small group of executives about the well-being of its large position in mortgage-related assets. But the men charged with building the business, trading and overseeing risk were all close friends.

Their trust and faith in each other apparently led to ineffective oversight of the ailing financial giant's holdings. The boss didn't ask the right questions, and no one warned him.

Of course, it was also easy to overlook the spiraling risk, when Citigroup made up to $500 million in fees from the collateralized debt obligations business in a single year.

While the sheer size of Citigroup’s C.D.O. position caused concern among some around the trading desk, most say they kept their concerns to themselves.

“I just think senior managers got addicted to the revenues and arrogant about the risks they were running,” said one person who worked in the C.D.O. group. “As long as you could grow revenues, you could keep your bonus growing.”

With the nation facing grave challenges, Obama doesn't need Kumbaya Cabinet meetings. I think he knows what he's doing here.

When Time for the Future is a Frill.

We tend to elect people based on narrow factors. A position on a key issue, political affiliation, "heroism," charisma. But even when we step back and look more expansively, we may get stuck at ideology.

What the world needs now from its leaders is systems thinkers, people capable of seeing the interrelationships in the world as they exist — and not as they fit in their predetermined categories.

By this measure, the Staggering Mavericks — whose thought processes seem untethered and whose interest in the future seems based on the past — are spectacularly unsuitable. The Hopeful President is better in terms of how he approaches problems, but as yet has not yet talked about the developing future that more and more of us can see.

In Sunday's New York Times, Michael Pollan offers an example of the creative thinking we really need from our leaders in his open letter to the next president.

[W]ith a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close.

[...]

[M]ake the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate . Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them. Let me explain.

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study.

Food, oil, health, transportation, housing, water, environment, trade, world peace — it's all there, all connected.

The typical major party politician would not touch this. (Maybe you can find me one who has — and has actually been elected to do something about it.) The framing makes the problem too large, too frightening and too antithetical to a comfortable way of life to bring this kind of discussion forward.

I have met people in various government jobs who are starting to think in these terms, but they are overwhelmed with the day to day. In this patch-the-boat era of governing, the future is a frill.

But eventually, it becomes the present.

McCain and the Myth of the Maverick.

John McCain styles himself a maverick.

Originally, "maverick" referred to an unbranded young animal separated from the herd. It became the property of whoever found and branded it.

The name came from a Texas cattle baron named Samuel Maverick who found that not branding his own livestock made it easier to claim his neighbor's calves. By this definition, the blank slate-flanked Sarah Palin certainly seems to qualify as a maverick.

But we were talking about the Maverick-in-Chief,

Depending on your age and cultural frame of reference, the word today may conjure up wild west gambler James Garner or top gun Tom Cruise.

We are supposed to believe, like them, McCain is a winking, easy-going rebel, an independent sort who scorns orthodoxy, takes risks and resists established power. In fact, all the way back to his days at Annapolis, that was McCain's self-image.

Setting aside for the moment whether McCain is an authentic maverick or simply plays one on TV, let's consider the underlying premise: that the country needs a maverick as president — and just in case, a mini-maverick to back him up.

As a square peg in a Fortune-100 hole for more than a decade, let me tell you that large corporations and hallowed institutions do need mavericks. Leaders in well-managed companies actually tolerate and even value them — at least in small doses — because a certain amount of contrarianism is a useful, creative force in an organization. The maverick spirit fights inertia, challenges conventional thinking and pushes for change.

As a manager and business owner, I found my most valuable people were usually the biggest pain in my ass.

But a maverick running the company? I don't think so. The Senate, not the Oval Office, is the right place for a John McCain.

A maverick's nature is to remain on the outside, to react against the system. Putting the maverick in charge of the system takes away his reason for being. Expecting him to build consensus contradicts his self-definition as one apart from the crowd. An executive role neuters his strengths and demands what he has little interest in or facility for doing.

Mavericks at the top don't just change organizations. They can destroy them.

It's an extremely rare person who can cede control and institute order after fighting both forever. That's the same reason entrepreneurial companies rarely rise above their founders if they hang on to the top job.

Organizations need leaders with integrity who continually challenge their people to do better. But they also need consistency and coherence from leaders who see the big picture and communicate it clearly and convincingly. They don't need leaders who swoop in at the last minute to play hero, assign blame and then ride off into the sunset before the cleanup starts. 

If you have watched John McCain's performance over the past month, you can see the pattern of his life.  Maverick types may inspire initial romantic attachment, but once cast in executive positions, they wear Ventura thin.

The Brett Mavericks belong in frontier towns — where hardly anyone can get hurt when they shoot from the hip.

Instinct Man, Meet the Experts.

Look, I'm sure there are some of my friends out there saying, "I thought this guy was a market guy. What happened to him?"

Well, my first instinct wasn't to lay out a huge government plan. My first instinct was to let the market work until I realized, upon being briefed by the experts, of how significant this problem became.

— Pres. George Bush, explaining how reality finally overcame his market guy instincts

My first instinct, upon finding a quart of ice cream in the freezer, wasn't to figure out if anyone else wanted some. My first instinct was to eat the whole thing.

Then, when I dropped my third bowl on the kitchen floor, my first instinct was to let the cats lick it up. This had always seemed to work before.

I mean, when you see a big ole snake in the road, isn't your first instinct to run over the damn thing?

The Forgiving Governor.

The secret to a long, good life, says Minnesota Gov. Al Quie, is to love and to know you are loved by someone.

With that love comes the need for forgiveness — and the ability to forgive. Oh, yeah, plus horseback riding. Keeps you supple.

Quie was celebrating his 85th birthday yesterday on MPR's Midday.

Actually, others were celebrating Quie.

It was clear from the call ins the governor was loved by more than his wife of 60 years, but those calls were to be expected. The ones I heard sounded orchestrated, a sort of This Is Your Life series of recollections, rather than the typical Midday questions and challenges from listeners.

That's fine, but I wanted to hear more from this thoughtful Republican Governor who had the courage to raise taxes. Who was a strong advocate for education during his 21 years in Congress. Who ordered reform in the way judges are selected because he knew the legislature was too invested in the power over appointments to pass a reform law. Who was a friend of Gerry Ford but thought he was wrong to pardon Richard Nixon, saying an impeachment trial would have been a good check on the imperial presidency.

Who repeatedly invokes his relationship with god, yet doesn't creep me out like others of god's warriors in the public sector do.

Who offered to serve the remainder of Watergate felon Chuck Colson's term after declining to intercede with Ford and ask for a pardon. Quie disarmingly explained his offer, exposing the complex thought processes going on behind his sometimes simple demeanor.

Ford would never get re-elected if he pardoned another one of the Watergate conspirators, Quie reasoned. But with the political calculation came another. What was his Christian obligation to help his friend Colson, who was experiencing anguish over being blamed by his mother for causing his father's death, and guilt over a son who was having drug problems while Colson was in prison?

Quie remembered a conversation with a staffer about a law that permitted someone to serve another's sentence, and he decided to make that offer to Colson. Without telling anyone, he made a call to Colson's lawyer. Quie was sincere but admitted he hoped C0lson would not accept.

Colson did refuse, and Quie said he realized he was wrong in presuming to do God's work. Within the week, the courts cut Colson's sentence.

I met the governor only once, across the table at the State Board of Pardons when I was appearing as the character witness for a friend seeking a Pardon Extraordinary.

The forgiving governor has grown on me ever since.

Reforming Government: Dealing with a Bottomless Pitt.

After being fired for deciding to telecommute to her work on the I-35W bridge collapse, Sonia Pitt, the absentee emergency response communicator at the Minnesota Department of Transportation, landed on her feet at the Transportation Safety Administration.

We don't yet know why someone fired for misuse of state funds was hired so quickly by the feds, but the Department of Homeland Security says it will get to the bottom of it.

But the bottom goes a lot deeper than Sonia Pitt.

The Bush Administration has used government organizations as farm teams where mediocre party loyalists could burnish their credentials or could park until something better came along. Though not alone, they have been the foremost contributors to a "thickening" of governmental hierarchy — staffed with such titles as Chief of staff to the associate deputy assistant secretary and Principal associate deputy undersecretary — that slows decision making, obscures accountability and does little to put more resources in the hands of the people actually doing the work.

In an address [pdf] to public administrators last year, Professor Paul Light described this expansion and its consquences.

Although some of the growth [since the Clinton Administration] reflects the war on terrorism, every department has added new titles to its inventory. Presidents may think the titles create greater leadership, but this author’s research suggests just the opposite— more leaders create more opportunity for delay and obfuscation.

Meanwhile, front-line public servants are demeaned and devalued by ideologues who point to a starved government's failings as reason to turn more work over to the private sector. So now private contractors carry out more government work, with less oversight and at greater cost.

Light has outlined reasons why federal service is, in Alexander Hamilton's phrase, so "ill executed."

The nation has never faced more difficult and important challenges: an expensive, ill-advised war, threats from terrorists and global instability, climate change, water and energy depletion, immigration, declining infrastructure and financial peril from increased Medicare and Social Security obligations — at the same time our education system is failing more kids. "Americans may not agree on every mission," he says, "but the federal government is given little choice but to implement them all."

The effort to starve government into productivity fails because it focuses on cost, not output, and on political power, not public mission. Appeased by a deficit-spending President and Congress, the public puts off making hard choices about what it wants and what it is willing to pay for.

Politicians promising "change" really don't help the situation.

As Congress has become more involved in making government work, federal employees have faced one competing reform after another, leading to confusion, wasted motion, and frustration in setting priorities with fads and fashions that are now out of favor. The reform activity speaks to profound confusion over just how to make government work, in part because past reforms have been piecemeal at best.

But the key question is not whether certain reforms would be wise, but how does any leader mobilize systemic action when:

• top-heavy, staff-clogged hierarchies resist innovation and reform
• the public prefers to put off the truly tough challenges
• and talented people think of government service as a last resort, not a higher calling?