Lessons From a Polite Revolutionary

Be Pleasant

You're going to need a lot of help, so if you're not naturally pleasant, fake it. It'll soon become natural.

At the National Partnership for Reinventing Government I bought an espresso machine and made cappuccino for people. Nobody ever thought I was too busy to listen if the news was bad-or better yet, if it was good. After all, I had plenty of time to make cappuccino, didn't I? Being pleasant can start a virtuous circle-people respond by being pleasant to you and to others.

Be Trusting

People who are trusted are happier and more productive-and more trustworthy.

At the reinventing government summit in 1993, Patrick Mene, vice president of the Ritz Carlton hotel chain, told Vice President Al Gore that Ritz trusts every employee to spend $2,000 on behalf of a customer, no questions asked. Gore asked what Ritz did if they caught somebody abusing the trust. Mene answered, "I don't know. We never have."

At NPR, staffers could travel whenever and wherever they chose, with no approval. If somebody ever took a trip that wasn't necessary, the cost would have paled next to the benefit in spirit that came from people feeling trusted.

Don't waste energy on people who aren't both trusting and trustworthy, and don't keep them in your organization.

Be Bold

Leadership is about causing others to go somewhere different. So if you're a leader you've got to move. But moving can get you into trouble, and people will try to protect you by advising you to stay out of trouble. So make sure you have people on your team who will keep you from staying out of trouble.

When President Clinton announced that the government would hire people on welfare as an example to business, the experts said it couldn't be done. They cited veterans preference, the lack of skills and work habits of the potential hires, and so forth. But Susan Valaskovic, deputy director of the NPR, was an expert at not staying out of trouble and volunteered to lead the effort. She created a lot of extra work and controversy for us, but we hired 10,000 people from the welfare rolls within three years-all because Susan wouldn't let us stay out of trouble.

Be Uplifting

A simple word or phrase can inspire people to lie awake at night figuring out how to do their work better. It works at all levels, from entire agencies to teams of just a few people.

At the Office of Student Financial Assistance, Greg Woods now has 6,000 enthusiastic people who don't just do their jobs-they "help put America through school." At the Patent and Trademark Office, Jean Logan convinced her small team of employees that they weren't just registering trademarks; rather they were "promoting the economic vitality of American businessmen and women." People will toil grudgingly to cut stone, but they'll put their hearts and bodies into building castles.

Be Positive

Look for things that go right and build on them. At NPR we discovered the successful collaboration between U.S. Customs and the air cargo industry that was speeding innocent shipments through while reducing drug smuggling. We spent gobs of time and effort building on this success until it became the foundation of NPR's entire effort to reinvent regulatory agencies.

Be positive in your dealings with people, too. When you must criticize, begin by acknowledging some value in what you're criticizing. If it's somebody's honest effort it shouldn't be too hard.

And say "thank you." It'll astonish people. I once wrote a short thank you note to the secretary to the Secretary of Defense. She walked half way around the Pentagon (a long way) to thank me and to tell me it was the first time in 30 years of government service that anyone had thanked her for anything.

Be Unreasonable

Gen. Bill Creech, former commander of the Air Force's Tactical Air Command, was so unreasonable about base appearance that he insisted on fresh paint everywhere. A Defense Department inspector general told me that they had found a crazy general (Creech) wasting the special readiness appropriation painting the backs of stop signs. Visitors to Creech's home post, Langley Air Force Base, were warned, "Keep moving or somebody will slap some paint on you."

Creech's fanaticism made it clear to everyone in his 100,000-person command that he was absolutely, unreasonably committed to excellence. His transformation of the TAC culture is widely credited for the Air Force's spectacular success in the Gulf War.

Be Clear

Defense has thousands of pages of rules and procedures about how to run military bases. Managers were going in all directions-spending more, spending less, increasing quality, scrimping on quality. Then I issued a one-page document called "Principles of Excellent Installations," calling for excellent living and working conditions for service members.

Everywhere I went, I preached the principles. Some people thought I was boring, and my boss thought I was stubborn. But when you're perfectly clear and the message has gotten through, wonderful things start to happen.

Marine Corps civilian Dick McSeveny's refusal to count rundown spaces in an annual inventory of barracks is just one example. McSeveny was holding out for excellence, and when pressed by military auditors, he cited my principles to justify his action. The auditors urged me to tell McSeveny to count the barracks, which met the traditional Marine standard of minimally acceptable. Instead I sent a note to the Marine commandant, applauding McSeveny's commitment to the principles for improving quality of life for Marines.

Think Three

Clarity and repetition aren't enough if the message is too complicated, and most people have difficulty remembering more than three things. West Point's values are "duty, honor, country." The three rules of real estate value are "location, location, location."

When I first met with Vice President Gore, I told him my three rules for changing huge organizations, and he embraced them:

• Have a simple, uplifting message that you repeat over and over.
• Use colorful stories in plain English, with props, to make your goals clear.
• Praise and reward people who are doing what you want, and don't waste one minute looking around for fraud, waste or abuse. In this article I've listed seven things. You'll never remember them, so I'll rearrange them into three:
• Be pleasant, trusting, and bold.
• Be uplifting and positive with others.
• Be unreasonable and clear about your principles.