The Manager’s Musings
Warren Master
New Roadmap Required?
Tucked away in the business section of a recent edition
of my local newspaper was an Associated Press article entitled “GAO: Contracts Rife with Fraud.” Given my understandable obsession with the kind of message
such coverage sends to the general public—not to mention the next generation of public managers—I decided to employ some recent additions to my management reform toolkit, specifically, several “question thinking” techniques offered by Marilee Adams in her book Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 10 Powerful Tools for Life and Work.
According to the article, it seems the U.S. Government Accountability Office
(GAO) found that private companies defrauded the government out of more than $100 million because the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) failed to properly check whether these companies were eligible for no-bid contracts. While the SBA agreed with the GAO recommendations, the agency noted that fraud control was not its responsibility, but rather the province of agency contracting officers. Oops! I’ll bet that response makes American taxpayers feel all warm and fuzzy. (And, the GAO’s fix for this issue relied mainly on developing penalties for businesses knowingly misrepresenting
their eligibility.)
By applying Adams’ technique to this “judgmental” approach, one might guess that the questions typically asked are programming the government for failure. That is, GAO is asking “How is SBA going to mess things up this time?” and “How can we distance ourselves from looking bad?” Meanwhile, SBA is likely asking the same kind of “reactive questions,” passing the buck downhill to agency contracting officers. The alternative, according to Adams’ Learner-Judger Choice Map, is to ask more forward-looking, “productive questions,” such as “How can we ensure that all players—contractors, contracting officers, and program technical representatives—are receiving the proper message?” and “How can we all make government look good?”
New Road to Management Reform
Shifting gears, this issue’s feature article on performance management by
Paul O’Connell and
Daniel Forrester suggests that thinking differently will update your reasoning powers to unlock new outcomes.
Next, a band of more than a dozen colleagues who contributed to the Winter 2007-08 and Spring 2008 issues of The Public Manager reprise and update
their two-part Forum series on the president’s management agenda. Subsequently published as a special issue before the 2008 presidential election, this expanded set of management improvement recommendations (sponsored by Cisco Systems Inc.) covered a wide array of challenges, including
pressing human capital issues, the emergence of new technologies, performance accountability and acquisition matters, and the need to learn how to manage and collaborate across organizational boundaries. Employing many of the original team members
and adding a few others, the current Forum attempts
to gauge not only the direction in which the new administration is heading, but also the progress it has made on these management reform challenges since President Obama was sworn into office less than a year ago.
Alan Balutis starts the review with his article, “What Is Happening, Why, and So What?”
Steve Benowitz and Fred Thompson offer their perspectives on the human capital front, with
Steve O’Keeffe adding his thoughts on telework.
Robert Childs, Gerry Gingrich, and Michael Piller weigh in on management
implications of the future workforce. Next, John Sindelar,
Daniel Mintz, and Tom Hughes provide a glimpse of the emerging technology agenda, with further elaboration on new technology directions by David McClure and
Martha Dorris. Allan Burman speculates on the “inherently governmental” debate in the acquisition community;
Robert Tobias looks at where the federal government seems headed on performance management;
Elizabeth Kellar and Robert O’Neill measure progress in the area of intergovernmental cooperation; and
Don Kettl ruminates over how the new team is quietly trying to reshape the way government works. Finally,
Balutis wraps things up with what he sees as the road ahead—five steps toward transformation.
Other Divergent Paths
Up ahead lies a round-about, with the first spoke leading to thoughts on managing stimulus funding performance by
Vincent Gooden and
Linda Gooden, who share a toolkit for this current public sector challenge. Branching
out to HRM pathways,
Shelley Kirkpatrick sums up fears and facts concerning workforce assessments;
Pat Galagan enlightens us with the first offering in a two-part series on how to bridge the skills gap; and
Nikki Jackson provides a recent case illustration of how Kentucky has gone about modernizing state government through HR. And getting down to grass roots,
Steven Waller spotlights Oregon’s best practices in engaging citizens in state recreation planning.
Roads Less Traveled
Moving toward the home stretch,
Alison Risso of KaBOOM! offers vignettes about how 12 communities across the United States—both large and small—are successfully getting kids active and healthy. Further down the road,
Kitty Wooley reviews a new book about performance networks, which argues that solutions to many of today’s governance challenges must cross organizational boundaries.
Finally,
Grimaldi drops us off at an executive confab, where lessons from past presidents are meant to shed light on the puts and takes of today’s choices.