Bad Management in the Executive Branch
The world is rife with bad managers. That's one focus of this site.
Just as it is good to lead by example, it's bad to mislead by example.
Currently, there's a great bad management story in the news regarding the Attorney General for the United States, Alberto Gonzales, and his handling of the dismissal of eight Federal Attorneys General (note: this is not a political rant).
In a nutshell, it appears that Mr. Gonzales may have discharged qualified employees because they failed a values litmus test (that's my summary). That is, they were not enough in lock-step with the big boss to satisfy the big boss or one of his advisers.
There are several notable management weaknesses that are highlighted here:
- Loyalty does not equal good management
- "Yes" people are ineffective managers
- Being just like the boss, only amplifies the boss - the whole can never greater than sum of its parts
Loyalty is a great quality. Combined with sycophantism and mode-matching, however, you basically get what's happening in D.C. now: a manager who fires qualified, performing individuals because they (the manager) cannot act independently, cannot stand up to the boss (or worse, other members of the boss's staff), and are driven primarily to please the boss without regard to the greater organizational consequences.
(ask yourself: how many of you would be fine with firing someone working for you who, in general, was doing a fine job just because the boss's pet staff member wanted them gone?)
Clearly, you have to please your boss or you're toast. But as a skilled manager, you also have to walk that fine line and balance the needs your staff, the needs of the organization and the needs of your boss.
There's a recent book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the basic premise of which is that the Lincoln administration was made that much stronger by the inclusion of cabinet members who disagreed - sometimes vehemently - with Lincoln.
Conclusions: Effective and successful organizations need to allow dissent in the ranks; managers must be allowed to 'manage' (why else were they put in that role?) Loyalty-based hiring/placement is guaranteed to build a weak organization.
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Technorati | Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln author: Doris Kearns Goodwin asin: 0743270754 |
Comes with the territory, really.
Not to make light of the apparent incident, I recollect that attorneys general serve at the pleasure of the President. Which means that the President can (directly or through his chain of command) do as he wishes (ignoring, for the moment, the appearance of impropriety). Think of it as "at-will employment".
In any case, and unless I'm mistaken, these folks are in *politically appointed* positions - so one should not be so surprised that *political* considerations may have an effect on one's career or job security. (I will say that if the allegations are true, it was incredibly bad management, and unwise politically, but that's already covered in TrisW's post.)
I'm simply amazed that many folk seem to want to hand over (or tolerate accumulation of) greater power to the executive branch, when the probable outcome is so clearly spelled out.
Advise and Dissent
"When two people in a business always agree, one of them is unnecessary."
I'd say that organizations need to encourage and respect, rather than merely allow, dissent.
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