Only the Most Able by Duncan Stephen M.;

Author:Duncan, Stephen M.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

In considering the qualities that political appointee leaders in departments like Defense and Homeland Security need to possess, it is important to understand the kinds of unique challenges with which government officials routinely have to deal. One daunting challenge is that posed by networked organizations. DoD, for example, is almost exclusively a traditional hierarchal bureaucracy. When the department was created by the National Security Act of 1947, its organizational, management, and personnel systems were designed to operate within a hierarchal framework, not a networked model. Thus, problems can arise in command and control—for example, in the control of the Army and Air National Guard. A network that includes the governors of the several states is involved. Until and unless the president federalizes the Guard of a particular state pursuant to Title 10 of the U.S. Code, its commander in chief is the governor of the state. Tensions naturally exist when a president sends Guard units on extended foreign missions like the armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time that the governor of the state from which the Guard units are taken needs the units in connection with forest fires, flooding, or some other emergency within the state.

Another recent study of leadership in the public sector has concluded that there are, in fact, several distinct ways in which the challenges for civilian leaders in the government are unique.[25] One is the dispersion of authorization to make decisions. At a minimum, the leaders of a department or agency must be sensitive to the views of the authorizing and appropriations committees of both the Senate and House of Representatives, for those committees have significant power over department/agency spending and policies. Since DoD includes the three military departments, the civilian and military leaders of each of those departments must regularly appear before the authorizing and appropriation committees in connection with the budget and programs of the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. The committees closely scrutinize all existing and proposed programs. The most extreme example of this kind of dispersed authority involves the Department of Homeland Security. Senior officials of that department must report to more than seventy committees of Congress, each of which asserts jurisdiction over some aspect of that large department’s work.

Another unique challenge identified by the study leaders is that of compulsory performance requirements. Industry leaders can sell or terminate an unprofitable line of business. They can reinvest the savings or pass them along to shareholders. Government leaders (for example, officials in the Department of Veterans Affairs) do not select the constituencies they serve. They are rarely able to use operating efficiency or some form of financial results to demonstrate success. This is not bad per se, but managing to performance can be very difficult when Congress legislates performance objectives and measures that are ambiguous, change, or focus on short-term political outcomes. I experienced this challenge in spades in connection with the drug war.

When I assumed responsibility for the complex new counterdrug program in April 1989, the secretary of defense delegated his counterdrug responsibilities to me.

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