VIEWPOINT<br /> Put the Right People in the Right Jobs

This column is second in a series comparing federal and private-sector management in business planning, human resources and customer service.

ny manager would agree that the single most important route to business success is putting the right people in the right jobs. That means being able to hire, offer incentives, promote and fire in a flexible and fair fashion. But that's simply not an option in the federal government, where common sense is often superseded by mindless attention to the civil service rules.

By the time I became chief operating officer at the Forest Service in 1998, agency chief Michael Dombeck had spent almost 18 months making my position official. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, a staunch opponent of Forest Service land management policy, believed Dombeck violated pre-selection rules by choosing me for the job without first throwing it open, in a several-month process, to general recruiting across government.

With Craig threatening to hold hearings, Dombeck's only avenue was to have me join the Senior Executive Service, making Craig's objections moot. But in the meantime, Craig could continue to delay the hiring process for several more months and simultaneously batter the agency on its woefully inadequate financial controls. The Office of Personnel Management said I'd have to attend the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, Va., and fulfill an internship in private industry to qualify for an SES position.

I felt it was senseless to attend a several-week program administered by government managers who developed their skills in the milieu of problems I was hoping to correct. My 25-plus years in private industry, mostly spent as a chief executive officer, constituted an adequate internship. The only alternative OPM offered was to write five essays on my approaches to management. A mid-level government manager, who probably had little or no management experience, would judge the essays and decide whether I was qualified.

I wrote the essays, but Forest Service human resources managers said they were too short. "OPM looks a lot more favorably on long essays," I was told. The essays were lengthened with the liberal use of adjectives-no facts were added-and I passed the grade to become chief operating officer. But note that without the civil service rules, my appointment might have become official a full year sooner. What was the cost of that delay? Assuming that good business leadership techniques could shave at least 10 percent off the Forest Service's $3.2 billion in annual expenses, avoiding the evil of pre-selection might eventually have cost the agency up to $320 million in forgone savings and maybe a lot more.

Unfortunately, pre-selection is just one of many policies designed decades ago to prevent personnel abuses but which now tie the hands of government. The rules actually inhibit recruitment of the best possible talent. For example, hiring requirements for senior-level positions often result in job interviews conducted by panels of individuals unfamiliar with the required duties. The panels are required to ask exactly the same questions of each candidate regardless of his or her professional background-all this to assure objectivity. Also, a military veteran who appears on paper to have the necessary qualifications is bound to be given hiring preference over more highly qualified nonveteran candidates. These are intolerable situations if government is ever to put the right people in the right jobs.

Changing the civil service laws and their protector-OPM-is like teaching a dog to be a vegetarian. It's not going to happen anytime soon. In the meantime, we are left with a leadership corps that is not always up to the task of managing complex entities. Leadership in government is unique and complicated in comparison with the private sector for the following reasons:

• Dedication to mission has absolutely no correlation with the ability to lead or manage. If it did, the federal government would be overloaded with management talent. Unfortunately that's not the case, and leaders incapable of managing are ineffective.
• The challenge of leadership is complicated by the need to balance decision-making with government's cultural needs for consensus, collaboration, ownership and buy-in. Leaders must develop missions with their organizations and then see that they are carried out. In an environment where consensus is critical, government leaders often design missions that offend no one-and accomplish little.
• Leadership and power go hand in hand. But power in Washington is based on access to information, not on profits. Without a quantitative measure of its impact, power is a lot easier to maintain and unfortunately in the nation's capital is often misdirected. When officials whose power is based principally on access to information are put in charge of a few billion dollars, their management ability is assumed to increase exponentially-with no training.
• Because of mindless civil service rules, federal managers cannot rapidly and easily hire, offer incentives, promote or even fire employees. This culture creates a major roadblock to change, despite the dynamism of well-intentioned leaders.

The solution to these vexing problems lies with the Senior Executive Service-the elite corps of top government managers. Like any other selection process in the public or private sectors, recruiting for the SES has its political aspects. Despite rules that make candidate selection difficult and less effective, the SES brings forth some of the best potential leaders in government. However, it is impossible to train these people in the techniques needed to solve the knotty problems of government inefficiency in one brief course. We can't expect to put an SES candidate through training and come out on the other end with Jack Welch, General Electric's brilliant chief executive. It's worth noting too that it took Welch a decade to mold GE to its current model of efficiency and effectiveness.

So why reinvent the wheel by trying to create people who can emulate the private-sector manager? Let's use common sense and simply hire professional managers from the private sector who already know how to operate administrative machinery.

We need to create an SES category called the "professional business manager." Prerequisites would include 20 years of senior-level management experience in the private sector. The position, chief operating officer, would focus on administration, not policy-making. COOs would be designated No. 2 at agencies, emphasizing the fact that implementation is as important as policy creation.

The COO would oversee key staff operations such as accounting, financial analysis, human resources and information services, using private-sector management techniques where appropriate. The Federal Executive Institute would hold a several-week class for all entering COOs on the basics of the federal government.

The recruiting process must be accelerated to hire private-sector COOs who are unlikely to tolerate the government's lengthy process. And we must streamline the following rules to make their jobs feasible:

• COOs must have an ability to hire three direct reports. They must have the flexibility to hire from the private sector if the necessary talent is not available internally.
• Pay scales for COOs must be competitive with those of the private sector. The government will pay a fortune to outside consultants, but will not consider adequate pay for managers based on performance and experience.
• The Office of Management and Budget must approve such additional staff without cutting existing positions at agencies.

This recommendation parallels the requirements in the successful 1996 Chief Financial Officers Act, which created CFOs to improve financial management. This proposal extends that concept to general business management and goes a step further by tapping into the private sector. CFOs should report to COOs. Financial improvements alone cannot fix the dire problems cited in the Treasury Department's "1997 Consolidated Financial Statements of the United States Federal Government."

Some will say this idea just adds layers of bureaucracy to already intolerable overhead staffing levels. But without proper professional management, the bureaucracy is ineffective. This recommendation would improve the professionalism of the so-called overhead staff, which ultimately will reduce the number of people needed.

Francis P. Pandolfi, who has spent 25 years as chief executive officer of a number of private firms, was the first chief operating officer of the U.S. Forest Service. After three years in government he returned to the private sector this year.