Social Capital

When the Loma Prieta earthquake hit San Francisco in 1989, then-Police Chief Frank Jordan was at Candlestick Park for the World Series.

Soon after, he was in an FBI helicopter, surveying downed bridges and highways, broken buildings and other damage. A Navy hospital ship floated at the ready just across San Francisco Bay in Alameda. The California Highway Patrol let Jordan know they were ready to chip in.

In that perilous time, Jordan was not alone. He knew that FBI officials, Navy officers and highway cops, among others, were there to help him out. He knew it because he knew them. And they had planned, together, for just such an event. "We could interact very quickly to coordinate efforts," Jordan says.

Jordan and his federal colleagues knew they could count on each other. They had trust. And that mattered in the disaster they faced, much as the lack of relationships and trust among local, state and federal officials mattered in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

For years, sociologists and some management experts have encouraged leaders to develop what they call "social capital." Scholar Francis Fukuyama defines it as the "informal norm that promotes cooperation between two or more individuals." Basically, it is the stuff that makes up human relationships. Federal managers long have been good at developing what could be called "bureaucratic capital," or the ability

to establish formal relationships. But such formal relationships have their limits, as we learned in the breakdown of government's response to Hurricane Katrina. For government managers to be effective in similar situations, they need to develop social capital. They should have both informal and standing relationships with the people they might deal with in the future.

As a federal leader, who you know matters. The stronger your social network-or professional network-the stronger your response in disaster situations. Much has been made of the lack of qualifications and experience among Federal Emergency Management Agency officials charged with leading the Katrina recovery.

But a key ingredient they were missing was the personal connection with the people in the disaster field. Fukuyama wrote of the norms that promote cooperation when people know each other. Work can get done much faster if the phone rings and the voice on the other line says, "This is Frank, buddy, I need a hand," rather than, "This is San Francisco Police Chief Frank Jordan. We've never met before, but can you help me out?"

Fukuyama explains that the norms of social capital "must be instantiated in an actual human relationship: The norm of reciprocity exists in potentia in my dealings with all people, but is actualized only in my dealings with my friends."

Boxes on a chart do not work well together. People do. If you are a federal manager in a box on a chart and you don't know the people in similar boxes in local and state government, other federal agencies, nonprofits, business groups and community organizations, then it's time to think outside the box. Get out of the box and become friends with the people you don't know, but will have to rely on in a crisis.