Otis White

The skills and strategies of civic leadership

The Worst Management Idea of the 20th Century

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I started paying attention to business management in the late 1970s, and my timing could not have been better. I saw all the business fads of the late 20th century paraded before me, from “management by objectives,” “Theory Z,” and “in search of excellence,” through “reengineering the corporation,” “good to great,” and “Six Sigma.” At one point, I wondered, are all these management theories actually the same ideas with new titles?

The fads seemed harmless enough—and may have been useful if they encouraged executives to think about their businesses in new ways. But one struck me, then and now, as dangerous. And that was “pay for performance.” Even more frightening, it has made its way into government, with terrible consequences.

In one sense, there’s nothing new about paying people for performance. Factories have long paid for “piece work”—that is, for each unit a worker turns out. Sales people often receive commissions, which are a share of each sale. And if you tip a waiter, a hair stylist, or a parking attendant, you’re paying for performance.

But extending this idea to employees who work not as individuals but as team members and are involved in complex tasks and not simple, easy-to-measure transactions is a new idea. Like a lot of bad new ideas, it came out of Wall Street.

It began with CEO pay, which Wall Street wanted tied to stock appreciation. If you want to know how executive pay became so grotesque with so little to show for it, that’s the reason.

But why stop with CEOs? In the 1980s and 1990s, the idea trickled down in corporations, aided by an army of consultants. It was easy to see the appeal. Employers wanted their staffs to work harder with better results. They wanted to hold on to the best workers and didn’t mind if the others left. And if pay—in the form of incentives for performance—could do all that, why not use it?

There’s just one problem: It doesn’t work in the way you’d think. Oh, it produces results all right; but some can be downright destructive.

Consider the Wells Fargo scandal that became public last year. The bank set goals for its customer-service representatives that most people considered unrealistic. One was to “close” (that is, sell) 20 new bank accounts a day. And one way was by convincing existing customers to set up at least eight separate accounts with the bank—checking, savings, credit cards, mortgage, and so on. (The CEO had a phrase for it: “Eight is great!”)

You can probably guess how this turned out. To keep their jobs and earn bonuses, employees began opening accounts for customers without their knowledge. And not a few rogue employees; thousands were involved in the fraud.

That’s a problem in a high-pressure environment like a bank. But it couldn’t happen in a government, could it? Well, it has happened. The Atlanta public schools’ test-cheating scandal of 2009 began when the superintendent announced that she would measure principals’ performance by their schools’ progress in standardized tests. For years this strict-accountability approach brought extraordinary gains in test scores—until it became known that some principals and teachers were changing their students’ answers in what were called “erasure parties.”

It happens once in a while in police departments, too, when a zealous chief decides there ought to be a quota for traffic tickets. (“Eight is great!” or something like that.) And predictably, cops start writing tickets just to meet the quota. Not exactly a formula for great police-community relations.

If setting quotas and paying for performance can turn into a disaster, then how should we think about compensation and motivation? Here’s the sensible alternative:

  • Pay employees a fair wage that compensates them for their skills, experience, and education.
  • Encourage teams to set their own measures of performance, ones that they will commit to meeting or exceeding.
  • If you feel compelled to offer bonuses for superior performance, award them to the teams and not individuals.
  • Understand that there are other motivations that drive people to work smarter and harder. You’ll find that, once employees have reached a livable wage, personal pride and the esteem of colleagues and superiors work as well as bonuses with none of the disastrous side effects.

In other words, if you want people to perform complex tasks and do so at a high level, don’t cheapen their work with simple measurements and simple-minded rewards. Try coaching, praise, promotions–and maybe a simple “thank you.”

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Anil Mohabir licensed under Creative Commons.

How to Deal with a Demagogue

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Civic leaders spend most of their time starting things like civic projects and nonprofit organizations. It’s absorbing, complex, difficult work that rewards the patient—and, for many, nourishes the soul.

But leadership is not always sunny. Sometimes responsible leaders are called on to stop things, from bad ideas to bad people. One type you’ll run across at some point in a long civic career is a demagogue, a person elected to office through skillful lying. The lies can be about imagined conspiracies holding back the city or promises that cannot conceivably be kept. Often, they’re both: Demagogues tell people that powerful forces are preventing them from getting unrealistic rewards, but electing them will put everything right.

I’ll let you figure out how to defeat such people at the polls. But the best way to defeat a demagogue is to undercut his effectiveness before he runs for office. Here are two thoughts:

  • Do not take these people lightly. If someone is flooding the community with fiction, respond with the truth. Do so in the same volume and with the same talent as the demagogue.
  • And practice prevention by praising leaders who do the right things, especially when it’s controversial. It is in these moments—when good leaders do good but difficult things and their supporters remain silent—that demagogues take over. So have your civic organization give the mayor a “courage award.” Write an op-ed article explaining why the mayor’s actions were needed and how they’ll make the city better. Attend city council meetings and speak up for the changes. In other words, preempt the demagogues and you won’t have to face them at city hall.

Let’s say none of that works, though. A demagogue runs and wins. What do you do the day after the election when you find that your mayor was elected on a platform of lies?

First, you can reach out to him, either on your own or as part of a small group. After all, talking is better than fighting. Elections tend to create hard feelings, of course, and you may have said things that make it difficult for him to answer your calls directly, so try reaching out to someone close to him. Let the intermediary suggest the meeting.

What do you say when you meet? You congratulate the mayor-elect on his victory and offer to work with him in any way you can on the issues facing the city. And then you stop and let him talk. You’re listening for hints that, once in office and facing reality, he may become more truthful and responsible. Or perhaps responsible in some areas, while continuing his antics in others.

If he offers those hints, breathe a small sigh of relief. It won’t be pleasant, but it’s possible that this may be someone you can work with in some areas . . . as you hope a better candidate emerges for the next election. (Keep in mind: This is a skillful liar. So, as Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify. And don’t be surprised if he says something different to the next group that walks in the door.)

There’s an equally good chance that he’ll use the meeting to threaten and rant. If so, listen without comment, thank the mayor-elect for his time, shake his hand, and leave as politely as possible. Or he may not meet with you at all. Then what?

You have to become part of his opposition. But here’s the problem: You want to stop the demagogue but do so in ways that do not harm the city. Otherwise, you’ve won a Pyrrhic victory. The demagogue is gone, but the citizens are so divided and cynical, progress on the real issues facing your city is impossible.

Here’s another problem: Demagogues rise because they have a talent for whipping up their followers with lies, prejudice, and a strong sense of victimhood. They are often good at innuendo and character assassination. If you fight on their terms, you will almost certainly lose.

The answer: You have to move the debate from terrain that favors demagogues (a clash of personalities) to that which favors you (the role of government in improving your city). As long as the narrative remains “the mayor vs. the Powers that Be”—which probably includes you—the mayor will win. But when it shifts to “the mayor vs. the job he can’t do,” you will win.

And this gets to the dirty little secret of demagogues: With few exceptions, they don’t have much interest in the job itself. They’re interested mostly in the position. Often, they don’t even understand the job.

I saw this up close in 1966 when I was in high school and my home state, Georgia, elected a demagogue as governor. Lester Maddox was a small man with large glasses and a gleaming bald head who ran a fried-chicken restaurant in Atlanta and bought ads in the local newspapers railing against federal civil rights laws. He more or less dared African Americans to integrate his joint.

When they did, Maddox made sure photographers were on hand to witness him and his associates, armed with guns and clubs, run them off. Incredibly, he wasn’t arrested for this, but he was forced either to integrate his restaurant or close it. He closed it. And then ran for office as a martyr for segregation.

Almost everyone in Georgia’s political, media, and business establishment considered Maddox a crackpot. But after a bizarre chain of circumstances—including finishing second in the election—Maddox was installed as governor in January 1967. And he was almost immediately paralyzed by the job, which involved appointing people to management positions, submitting a budget, announcing policy positions, and dealing with the legislature.

As his incompetence became apparent, he fell back on doing what had made him famous: stunts. He held “Little People Days” at the state capitol, where he invited people to show up and talk with him. He called photographers to the governor’s mansion to witness his talent at riding a bicycle backwards. (I’m not making this up.) He complained endlessly about news coverage. (When his official state portrait was painted, he insisted it include an image of a newspaper wrapped around a dead fish.) When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 and his funeral held in downtown Atlanta, Maddox ringed the capitol building with state troopers to prevent . . . whatever. (Nothing other than a solemn funeral and cortege took place, events attended by scores of national political leaders and thousands of citizens.)

In time, the voters had had enough of Maddox’s antics. When he ran for governor a second time, he was defeated by an earnest state representative whose campaign slogan was “A Workhorse, Not a Showhorse” and who promised . . . well, to do the job he was running for. The opponent won with nearly 60 percent of the vote.

Maddox was undone by his own shortcomings. But his downfall was aided by a set of leaders who figured out how to handle him. What did they learn, and what have others learned who’ve dealt successfully with demagogues?

Here are seven big lessons:

Don’t return fire when attacked. Demagogues are masters at name-calling, and you can’t win by trying to match them insult for insult. Remember: They aim to turn politics into a them-vs.-you battle. Don’t take the bait.

Don’t make fun of demagogues. The temptation will be strong to poke fun at their clownish behavior, but keep in mind that demagogues rise by telling people that powerful others are taking advantage of them. Treat them as clowns and it only bolsters their claims. Not only are people taking advantage of you, the demagogue will tell his followers, they’re laughing at you as well.

Treat the demagogue like a serious politician. When he promises fantastic things, analyze his promises the way you would a more serious leader’s. Tell the public what it would cost, what it would yield in benefits, who it would benefit, and who would pay. Don’t exaggerate. Don’t condemn. Just state the facts. But make sure your analysis is widely available and discussed.

Keep pointing out the issues not being addressed. Demagogues tend to have narrow bandwidths. They talk endlessly about their hobbyhorse issues but are easily bored by other, often more important matters. Use that boredom to emphasize the winning message: This mayor doesn’t want to do his job.

Praise responsible politicians. Find some “workhorses” and praise their efforts to take on the city’s neglected issues. (How about a “Workhorse Award?”) Let others draw the distinction between these workhorses and the showhorse in the mayor’s office.

Talk past the demagogue to his followers. Some unhappy citizens sent you a message in the election that they felt neglected. Find out what is bothering them and make their concerns part of your communications. You won’t win all of them over, but you may lessen the anger that is fueling the demagogue’s rise.

Beware of the manufactured crisis. As demagogues fail, they sometimes try to gin up support by creating crises—then demanding that others fall in line behind them. If this happens, start asking questions: Is this a genuine crisis or a problem the city has faced time and again? If it’s an old problem in a hyped-up guise, how has it been dealt with in the past? How did those solutions compare with what the mayor is suggesting now? If you can direct the debate along these lines, calmness will replace crisis. And there’s nothing less useful to a demagogue than a calm city.

Final thought: Hey, bad things happen to good cities. Don’t take it as an indictment if your city elects a demagogue who throws things into chaos for a while. Cities can learn from taking a wrong turn. It’s your job as a civic leader to gently steer yours in the right direction.

Photo by Robert Palmer licensed under Creative Commons.

What Government Is Good At

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Not much in life is certain, but of two things I am sure:

  • The secret to improving cities lies in collaboration. That is, in getting numerous independent interests working in coordinated ways on big problems.
  • One of the secrets of effective collaboration is knowing what each partner is good at, so each contributes from its strengths.

If I’m right about this, then we need to think deeply about what each participant can bring to a collaboration. And we should begin with government, since it will be central to almost every ambitious civic undertaking.

But first, let me urge my friends in government to give up that most human of instincts, defensiveness. If we aren’t willing to acknowledge that there are some areas where we don’t excel, then we’ll never work effectively with others.

This can be difficult in public life because governments face a chorus of critics ready to pounce on any shortcoming. What can I say? It takes courage to be a leader. But it also takes faith that, as you build successful collaborations, your list of critics will grow shorter as your list of admirers grows longer. So have the courage to say where you need help.

What would those areas be for governments? Most likely they would include coming up with new ideas, which tends to occur early in the collaboration process.

Why aren’t governments good at creative new ideas? Because they tend to be like old-fashion department stores. They offer many things, most of them as commodity services. This rewards a wide view and clearly thought-out routines, but not innovation.

Some of the interests governments collaborate with, by contrast, will be more like niche retailers: They sell one or two things but do so at amazing depth and variety and are constantly looking for new ways of doing things. So why not use these groups’ knowledge, passion, and focus to bring new ideas to civic undertakings?

Having trouble picturing this? Think of a collaboration aimed at attracting more young people to a city. The city government will surely be one of the partners, but others might include the chamber of commerce, the local university, entertainment venues, apartment developers, and, one hopes, some actual young people. Which participants in this collaboration would you expect to offer the most promising ideas?

Collaborations are about more than ideas, of course. They’re about creating workable solutions and seeing these solutions put in place. So as a collaboration moves toward decision making and implementation, the strengths of government become critical. The three most important strengths that a government offers are fairness, scale, and steadfastness.

Fairness is a value that you’ll have to help your partners understand and appreciate. They’ll see it, at first, as delay. But government processes are designed to ensure that everyone gets a voice—and, in doing so, they can reveal the flaws in our plans and show us their unintended consequences. So while government officials should accept others’ leadership in generating new ideas and approaches, their partners have to realize that public decision making depends on . . . well, the public being involved.

The other two, scale and steadfastness, are obvious but rarely appreciated strengths of government. The best example of scale at work is water conservation. By making changes in their building codes (mandating that new construction and renovations use more efficient plumbing), cities have dramatically reduced the amount of water each household uses over time.

New York, for instance, was consuming 1.5 billion gallons of water a day on average in 1979. By 2009, it had reduced its daily consumption by a third to just over 1 billion gallons even as its population grew by nearly 12 percent . . . with almost no one noticing the changes. Now, that is scale!

It’s also a lesson in steadfastness. Unlike businesses and even nonprofits, governments tend to stick with what they do. The reason New York reduced its water consumption so dramatically is the government never wavered in its commitment.

So as you begin collaborations, government leaders should ask for help with ideas. But they should outline what their partners can expect in return: The government will listen widely and decide carefully. But, once committed, it can offer real, measurable change. And by and large, it will keep its promises.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by torbakhopper licensed under Creative Commons.

Return to Sender

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In February 1945, John Gunther sat at Fiorello La Guardia’s elbow for eight hours and 20 minutes and watched him work. Gunther was a famous journalist. La Guardia was New York’s mayor and was even more famous—a short, profane whirling dervish of energy and ideas.

La Guardia did not disappoint. As Gunther watched, the mayor made decisions in machine-gun fashion, riffling through letters and reports on his desk, barking at his three secretaries, interrogating subordinates. He even found time to hold a press conference while seated at his desk.

No item, it seemed, was too small for La Guardia’s attention. When the president of the New York Board of Education dropped by, he grilled her about lunchroom decorum, personnel transfers (he told her he would handle one of them personally), and pay raises. They argued a while about whether an administrator should get a $500-a-year raise . . . or a $1,000 raise. At La Guardia’s insistence, he got $500.

Gunther was stunned. As he wrote later, “Mr. La Guardia really runs the entire machinery of New York City, in all its dazzling complexity, singlehandedly.”

Some regard Fiorello La Guardia as America’s greatest mayor ever. Maybe, but he was a terrible manager. If you are a mayor, agency director, or someone managing a complex civic project, think carefully about La Guardia’s management style—and then run from it as fast and far as possible.

That’s because La Guardia was what we would call today a “micromanager,” and by inserting himself into so many decisions he undermined those who worked for him. In short, we don’t need mayors or top administrators to be involved in minutia. We need them to make strategic decisions that bring major results.

So consider this two-part test next time you’re handed an issue: Can this decision be made at a lower level by those who will be directly involved in its implementation? And if the decision is made at that level, is it likely to affect other interests? If the answer to the first question is yes and the answer to the second is no, then your response should be, “That’s for you to decide.” If the answer to the second question is yes, your response should be: “Pull together a group to make this decision and make sure these people are involved.” Have a nagging sense that something might go wrong? Then add: “And when you reach a decision, run it past me.”

Pushing decision making to the appropriate level is one of the most important things a manager can do for three reasons. First, all things being equal, it will result in better decisions. Believe it or not, teachers and cafeteria workers know more about lunchroom decorum than mayors. It makes sense, then, to have those closest to decisions—especially those who’ll implement them—involved in the solutions.

Second, it forces you to think about decision making as a process and not just an act. And the more you think about the process, the better you can teach it to others. As you push decisions down, remind your managers of how good decisions are reached: with the right information, the right people, the right decision-making processes. Show them how to keep discussions open and frank, to consult widely about possible solutions, and to consider testing solutions before fully implementing them.

Finally, pushing decisions down puts the emphasis where it should be, on hiring and training the right people. You cannot run a driver’s license bureau, a downtown redevelopment project, or the entire government of New York City by yourself. But you can, over time, staff it with good managers who’ll make good decisions because they learned how to do so . . . from you.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Bill Smith licensed under Creative Commons.

The Loneliness of the Courageous Leader

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Of all the things required to be a good leader in a community, here’s the one that is least discussed: courage. One reason is that it sounds so wildly out of proportion. Courage is what soldiers and fire fighters have; it’s not something we normally expect of mayors, council members, city managers, business leaders, and concerned citizens.

But should we? Courage is the mastery of fear in the service of something worthy. Physical courage in facing enemy fire or entering a burning building fits the definition. But so does social courage, which involves facing the disapproval of those we care about. This is the kind of courage that is important to communities.

That’s because, on occasion, we need respected leaders, motivated not by anger or vanity but by love, to tell us things we don’t want to hear. When time proves these leaders right, we have a special place for them in our civic memories. These are the people for whom statues are erected and streets named.

There are times when courageous leaders come forward in groups. Here in Atlanta, it was the 1950s and 1960s, when the city confronted racial segregation and, with great difficulty, defeated it. Some of these leaders became national figures—Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy—while others are remembered mostly in Atlanta: William B. Hartsfield, Ralph McGill, Donald Hollowell, Jacob Rothschild, Eugene Patterson, Ivan Allen, Jr.

Most times, though, courageous leaders step up alone or in twos and threes, which makes their work especially lonely. Where do you see this courage?

One is in the lonely advocate, the person who sees the future more clearly than others and withstands ridicule or censure in pointing it out. The leaders of Atlanta in the 1950s and 1960s were examples. But so was Victor Steinbreuck, an architect who became in the 1960s a clarion voice for saving the buildings that made Seattle special. He became a writer and organizer, but he was also unafraid of leading protest marches. If you’ve enjoyed Pike Place Market, you can thank Victor Steinbreuck. He was instrumental in saving it from the wrecking ball.

Then there’s the opposite of the lonely advocate, the lonely opponent. This is the leader who asks us not to step forward but to step back from some action that is popular and emotionally satisfying but wrong. Take 15 minutes to read the extraordinary story of Greggor Ilagan, the young Hawaiian county council member who could not give into something his most vocal constituents wanted—and you’ll see what I mean.

Finally, there’s the lonely leader, a person who takes on a nightmare issue with no clear solutions because it’s important and no one else is stepping forward. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has done this several times in her remarkable career, including in 2013 in dealing with jail overcrowding in Chicago.

I can’t tell you where the courage of these leaders comes from. Probably from somewhere deep inside. But I can tell you what separates them from the obstinate, for which they are sometimes mistaken.

First, as I’ve already mentioned, courageous leaders act out of love, not egotism. They genuinely want to help their city with a problem that needs solving or help citizens avoid a terrible mistake. And they act reluctantly. Compare this to gadflies and political mavericks. They have no reluctance to stand against the majority; that’s their “brand.” And their actions aren’t expressions of love; they are part of their branding.

Second, the courageous ones are those who’ve studied the issue thoroughly and listened to people respectfully. That, too, is a sign of love. They are not going to put their community through the stress of controversy if it can be avoided.

Finally, time proves the courageous right. This may be a comfort to those who’ve lost their jobs because they stood for the right things, stood against the wrong, or shouldered the burdens the rest of us shirk.

Then again, perhaps these remarkable leaders don’t need comforting. After all, they have courage.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by jridgewayphotography licensed under Creative Commons.

About Otis White

Otis White is president of Civic Strategies, Inc., a collaborative and strategic planning firm for local governments and civic organizations. He has written about cities and their leaders for more than 30 years. For more information about Otis and his work, please visit www.civic-strategies.com.

The Great Project

Otis White's multimedia book, "The Great Project," is available on Apple iTunes for reading on an iPad. The book is about how a single civic project changed a city and offers important lessons for civic leaders considering their own "great projects" . . . and for students in college planning and political science programs.

For more information about the book, please visit the iTunes Great Project page.

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