A Passion for Leadership (5 page)

Successfully leading reform in bureaucracies, large and small, is not for the fainthearted or for the egomaniacal. As a leader develops her goals, hearing the ideas, assessments, and thoughts of others in the organization about what change is needed will make a critical contribution on many levels. Still, also taking into account the realities of the organization's situation, the leader alone must decide the path forward. The important thing to remember is that in any public or private sector organization, whether it has three million employees or three, having a clearly defined and achievable vision—or set of goals—and getting the priorities right in moving forward are the preconditions for successfully leading change. After all, as Yogi Berra said, “If you don't know where you're going, you will wind up somewhere else.”

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Disclaimer: I serve on the Starbucks board of directors; Schultz's qualities of leadership are a big reason why I wanted to.

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rmed with clearly defined goals for change, a new leader will be tempted to plunge ahead and let the chips fall where they may. He shouldn't. Too often, especially in the public sector, a leader comes in with a bold agenda for change, gives a powerful speech, and then…Nothing. There is no plan, no strategy for implementation.

A good example of this was the speech President Obama gave in Cairo in his first months in office. It was a terrific speech, candidly acknowledging U.S. missteps in the Middle East and describing the new directions he intended to take. Arab audiences were excited by what he had to say. But over the following weeks, their enthusiasm turned to bitterness when it soon became clear there was no follow-up plan or strategy to implement his vision. This happens too often both in the public sector and in business.

Carefully considered strategies for implementation are critical in reforming bureaucracies. On every matter I thought important, small or large, I always took time to devise a specific strategy to achieve my goal and to identify milestones and deadlines to measure progress. You can't depend just on luck or goodwill to make things happen. Begin with a concerted effort to win the support of internal and external constituencies for the reform agenda. Decide on the sequence in which you will pursue your objectives and the managerial tools and techniques to be used for each. And then carefully choose your lieutenants.

For successful change at every kind of institution in both the private and the public sectors, a leader must win the support of those in the trenches who deliver the mission of the organization. Recognition of their critical role and respect for them go a long way.

It is imperative early on for a leader to reassure (or disarm) those who will be apprehensive about his intentions—that is, probably nearly everyone in the organization. At minimum, opposition needs to be preempted or defanged; at best, allies can be won. Taking the time and making the effort to prepare various constituencies for change are steps often omitted by new leaders, dismissed as “stagecraft” or “getting warm and fuzzy.”

I know such an approach to be important because early in my career I failed to take it, with profound consequences. In 1981, the CIA director, William Casey, was unhappy with the quality of analysis produced at the CIA, as were a number of appointees of the newly elected Ronald Reagan. Indeed, I knew from having spent five and a half years on the National Security Council staff at the White House under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter that they too had been disappointed by the CIA's analytical work. I had long felt there was room for improvement. By late 1981, I was a senior CIA officer running the offices of both the director, Casey, and the deputy director, Bob Inman. I wrote a long paper for them laying out a number of specific measures I felt if implemented could significantly improve the quality of CIA analysis. When the job of deputy director for intelligence (analysis) came open, they jumped me over a number of more senior managers to become its head and to implement the recommendations I had given them. I had little experience running a large line organization. (I was thirty-eight.)

I proceeded immediately to prove it. In retrospect, it was clear that a number of senior officers in the directorate also believed far-reaching change was needed, that our analytical work for the president and his senior advisers had become intellectually lazy, lacking sufficient rigor. But confident I had all the answers, I hardly consulted with my colleagues. Instead, I filled the agency auditorium with managers and analysts and proceeded to deliver a jeremiad about past failures and shortcomings (with little reference to successes) and announced nearly a dozen measures that would upend the way the directorate had been doing business. In the space of an hour, as a brand-new boss, I managed to anger nearly everyone who worked for me and to antagonize even those who agreed with me on both the diagnosis and the remedies. It was the worst possible start.

I held that job for more than four years, and over time many of the changes I imposed by fiat were accepted as necessary. The analytical product improved substantially in the eyes of most policy makers. But, internally, resentment smoldered for a long time over my early, mistaken approach to bringing change.

I learned my lesson and applied what I learned in every subsequent job. From the first days I took charge, wherever I was, I targeted the career employees whose roles and attitudes would determine whether any initiative for change would succeed or fail. Gaining the respect and cooperation of the professional cadre—or at least getting them to keep an open mind—should have very high priority on every new leader's to-do list.

Both real and symbolic actions and gestures of respect early can have significant impact in softening resistance to change and persuading people to be receptive to what a new leader is trying to do. The following actions I describe are peculiar to the three institutions I led but are easily adaptable to any public or private bureaucracy.

Faculty are deeply suspicious of university administrators and their often empty promises of “shared governance.” To paraphrase Mark Twain, for an administrator to deliver on such promises “will gratify some [faculty] and astonish the rest.” But making the elevation of the faculty the first item on the broadly agreed agenda for change at A&M addressed that problem quickly.

Texas A&M has commencement ceremonies in May, August, and December. Before I arrived, the entering procession at the ceremonies was led by the vice presidents with the deans and faculty following. On the stage, the vice presidents sat in the front row, with the deans relegated to the back rows. The faculty in attendance were seated on the arena floor next to the stage, nearly invisible to everyone. At my first commencement in August, just days after I arrived on campus, I placed the deans in the front row onstage (some were a little miffed they now had to pay attention and not read
Sports Illustrated
or check their e-mails during the ceremonies), the vice presidents behind them; and the faculty were seated together on the expanded stage at the side of the official party. At the next commencement, the faculty led the procession. These were little things, symbolic to be sure, but the faculty noticed.

The administrative vice presidents at A&M essentially ran the university when I arrived. Decisions on budgets, space allocation, and spending priorities were made by them and the university president with little input from deans and faculty. I resolved to subordinate administration to the academic mission of the university. (You would be surprised to know how often it is the other way around at colleges and universities.) The head of academic programs at Texas A&M, the provost, also carried the title of executive vice president, a hollow honorific. I made it real by requiring the administrative vice presidents to report to me through the executive vice president/provost, again sending the message that academic needs would drive administrative decisions. The person in charge of the academic program would be the chief operating officer of the university.

Less than a month after assuming my position, I went before the faculty senate to inform them of these reforms—and more. I would, I told them, create four councils of eight to ten people to advise the provost and me, three of the councils to be chaired by deans with both faculty and administrators as members. A finance council, chaired by the dean of the business school, would participate in creating the university budget and make recommendations for how better to align academic needs and budgetary allocations. A research council would be chaired by the dean of the College of Science, and an education council would be chaired by the dean of the College of Education. The “built environment” council would be chaired by the vice-provost and would make recommendations on the allocation of existing space and new buildings.

I also told the members of the faculty senate that I understood past administrative practices had created skepticism, even cynicism. I invited them to ignore my rhetoric and just watch what we did—but also to work with me as I tried to build a form of governance that recognized the primacy of the colleges and the faculty in accomplishing the mission of the university.

There were other gestures toward the faculty. I invited the speaker of the faculty senate to be a regular attendee at my staff meetings. I said we would have no secrets from the faculty—“After all, this isn't the CIA.” I met routinely with the senate's executive committee and consistently sought its recommendations for faculty members to sit on search committees and task forces. I created a new award, the Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence, two of which would be given out each year with a stipend of $25,000. That award had great appeal to the faculty but also scratched the itch of those who felt research universities like Texas A&M did not sufficiently value superb teaching.

Nothing makes an impression on a constituency accustomed to being ignored, in this case faculty, than for them to make a suggestion and have the boss simply say on the spot, “That's a hell of a good idea. Let's do it.” I went out of my way to find such opportunities from my earliest days at A&M.

Midway through my first year, I announced that we would hire 450 new faculty, with the deans and faculty working with the provost to decide how to allocate the positions. That would be transformational, having substantial impact both on teacher-student ratios in the classroom and on research.

Through the actions I have mentioned and others—outreach efforts, symbolic moves, and more—by the end of my first semester I had gained the important allies I sought among faculty and deans. Without their support, there was little I could have accomplished. Collectively, the blitz to win friends and allies took a lot of time, but the investment paid off handsomely when I started to change things. A consistent message to all was the need to preserve and strengthen those traditions at A&M that were core to who we were and made us unique and to shed those that were holding us back.

When I became secretary of defense, I had the same strategy for winning allies early through gestures of respect and recognition. When I was nominated to be secretary, rumors were rife that I would purge most of the senior civilians who had worked for my predecessor, Don Rumsfeld, and name new people to take their places. But I had learned a lesson about that. Many years earlier, I had worked for a director of the CIA who, when he assumed the job, had brought with him dozens of his own acolytes from outside the agency. He never recovered from the hostile reaction. Before I began my job, I resolved not to change a single senior official at the Pentagon at the outset and to walk in the door alone, entirely alone, without bringing even a personal secretary. It was a message of both confidence in and respect for the incumbents. It was also recognition that in the midst of two wars, both going badly, trying to find (and get confirmed) new people would be a waste of precious time. This was in stark contrast to my approach at A&M, where I was far more willing to replace senior administrators because, as I've said, I had plenty of time and no pressing crises.

There were gestures toward the military leadership. Rumsfeld nearly always met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in his conference room. When I met with them as a group, I would go to their conference room, “the Tank.” I would try to meet there with them once a week just to hear what was on their minds, even if there was no other reason to get together. Similarly, rather than summon the ten or so major commanders from around the country and the world to brief me when I took over, I visited their headquarters; I went to them. Aside from the gesture, that gave me a chance to see them in their “native” habitat, where they were comfortable, but also to meet a number of the men and women in uniform who worked for them—from whom I would always learn something. I also would try to attend as many change-of-command ceremonies for these major commands as possible. I believe that the respectful way I treated senior military leaders made a huge contribution to their support of what I was trying to do or, when they disagreed with me, their willingness to refrain from undercutting me or running to Congress to sabotage my efforts. That had been a common practice under many of my predecessors.

Until 2004, the DCI not only headed the Central Intelligence Agency but also was the nominal head of the “intelligence community,” with considerable control over the budgets of the other fifteen or so major intelligence agencies and authority in establishing priorities both for collection of information and for assessments. As deputy DCI from 1986 to 1989, I put into practice what I had learned from my earlier managerial mistakes, so my relationships with most senior people in the CIA were pretty good. When I became DCI in 1991—I had been gone less than three years—that paid off.

As for the leaders of other intelligence agencies I did not know, I quickly began to establish a close working relationship. Unlike a number of my predecessors and successors as DCI (and later director of national intelligence), I realized the limits of my direct authority to manage the other agencies. I had real influence—partly statutory, partly because of my close relationship with President George H. W. Bush—but knew I couldn't boss the others around. I used regular get-togethers as vehicles for gaining their support for my ambitious agenda for adapting the intelligence community to the new, post-Soviet world. Treating them as colleagues and not subordinates, listening and using their ideas, I forged a strong team with them that made historic changes in American intelligence—restructuring agencies, reorienting our activities and budgets away from the Soviet Union to myriad other global problems, and changing the way we collected and analyzed information for the nation's leaders. I think these lessons can be successfully applied wherever change is sought.

There is another important constituency to cultivate in every organization: those low in the institutional pecking order—line workers, staff, troops, or students. The only way for a leader to persuade them he has their interests at heart is through consistent actions over a period of time. Rhetoric cuts no ice. But knowing the person at the top cares matters a lot, regardless of the kind of institution or its size.