Read Between the Lines

Strung through the stories of failure and success that fill the nation's newspapers and magazines, there often is the thread of a management lesson. When learning of an orbiting (or crashed) space probe, a losing (or winning) football team, or an invigorated (or beleaguered) political campaign, a reader senses that the story could be explained with a description of how the leaders of the enterprise performed their duties and managed their people.

But news articles rarely describe the management side of the story. For a number of reasons, journalists have trouble pinning it down. One reason is that employees are reticent to talk publicly about their managers' effectiveness. Organizations often have policies preventing employees from talking to the media without a management-controlled spokesperson at their side. And workers face punishment for breaking that policy. Also, when employees do talk, it's hard for reporters to gauge their motivation. Do they have an ax to grind if speaking negatively? Are they really telling the truth, or doing the right thing? For the managers' side of the story, there are just as many problems facing an inquiring reporter. If the story is negative, are managers just covering their tails? If it's positive, are they taking credit for their employees' work, or for lucky circumstances?

The best way to get the management angle is through direct observation-being there as a story unfolds. As that rarely happens, reporters often rely on he-said-she-saids from managers and employees or documentary evidence from subsequent investigations.

Nonetheless, federal managers are particularly suited to read between the lines of articles to glean leadership lessons, since they are daily practitioners. Knowing what happened behind the scenes from an article is unlikely, but managers can ask questions that will help them in their own organizations.

The Abu Ghraib prison scandal is one recent example that many managers took to heart. After it was reported that people on the ground knew about the prison abuses but were afraid to come forward, managers in many organizations told their employees that they should never be afraid to tell their bosses the truth. That's a nice gesture, but it may have rung hollow in some places, since managers didn't think more deeply about the issue. Why didn't the prison workers come forward, or more generally, what discourages employees from bringing problems to their managers' attention? How have managers in your agency dealt with bad news from subordinates?

On a more positive note, Eastman Kodak has been grabbing business headlines for its profit picture, as the camera company transforms itself for the digital era. What does that say to managers about changing with the times? About taking on new technology?

The story of how entrepreneurs launched the first private manned flight into space after just three years of development offers a glimpse of how clear goals help an organization to focus on results. The recent political conventions offer insight into collaboration, as the Secret Service coordinated dozens of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to keep convention attendees safe.

Some federal managers tell their employees they can take risks as long as they don't end up on the front page of The Washington Post. If, in fact, you did end up there, what lessons would other government executives draw from your example?