If you believe your company is challenging to maneuver, thinkabout the distinct difficulties of federalgovernment management.
Former Massachusetts guv Charlie Baker and his previous chief of personnel Steve Kadish dealtwith lotsof difficulties throughout Baker’s time in workplace—perhaps themajorityof significantly: the Covid-19 pandemic.
Looking back, they argue that running a federalgovernment is typically much harder than leading a private-sector business. For one thing, Baker states, there’s appropriately more public analysis of every choice you make as a leader. And, Kadish includes, decision-making is far more distributed.
In this episode, they share their four-part structure for breaking down complicated issues with numerous stakeholders to get outcomes. If you’re havingahardtime with administration and politics in your company, this episode is for you.
Key episode subjects consistof: management, technique execution, federalgovernment, stakeholder management, choice making, issue resolving, settlement.
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HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership, case researchstudies and discussions with the world’s top service and management specialists, hand-selected to assistance you unlock the finest in those around you.
If you believe your company is tough to maneuver, thinkabout this. There might be no company more hard to confine, more resistant to modification, or with more public attention than federalgovernment.
Looking back, they argue that running a federalgovernment is typically much harder than leading a private-sector business. For one thing, Baker states, there’s appropriately more public examination of every choice you make as a federalgovernment leader. And decision-making is far more distributed.
In this episode, they share their four-part structure for breaking down complicated issues with numerous stakeholders to get outcomes. You’ll likewise findout why the previous guv focuses on particular realities and information before making a secret choice.
If you’re havingahardtime with administration and politics in your company, this episode is for you. It initially aired on HBR IdeaCast in May2022 Here it is.
CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch.
When a politicalleader is running for public workplace, it’s typical to hear them promote their experience in the personal sector, specifically if they’ve been a business executive. Being a mayor of a city or a guv of a province, they state, is essentially being the CEO of a laborforce with X number of workers and in charge of a budgetplan of Y number of dollars.
The message is that federalgovernment oughtto run more like a service, or at least at the speed of company, that public sector lifers oughtto have the verysame efficiency of a personal sector worker. But today’s visitors state that argument is grossly streamlined and overstated, that, in numerous methods, public sector management is seriously more challenging than being the CEO of a business, and, at the exactsame time, turning around a business can serve as a terrific practice run for fixing issues in federalgovernment. They state that since they’ve done both.
Joining me now is Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, along with his First Chief of Staff Steve Kadish, who’s now a senior researchstudy fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. Together, they composed a playbook for governmental leaders and public sector executives. It’s called Results: Getting Beyond Politics to Get Important Work Done.
CURT NICKISCH: Governor Baker, thanks so much for coming on the program.
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER: Thank you, Curt. We’re grateful to be here.
CURT NICKISCH: And Steve, thank you.
STEVE KADISH: A genuine enjoyment. Thank you, Curt.
CURT NICKISCH: You 2 have worked together for lotsof years. Before you were guv, Governor Baker, you hadactually been the CEO of a medical insurancecompany Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare. And Steve was on your group, a Senior Vice President for Administration and Project Management.
So going back and forth inbetween public service and personal sector work, what’s the greatest mistakenbelief that individuals in the personal sector have about public sector management, being a federalgovernment executive?
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER: I believe part of it has to do with the exceptionally public nature of it. Having done both, so initially of all, it’s simply every choice you make in the public sector for the most part gets inspected. And there are lots and heaps of interested celebrations. There are supporters, there are researchstudy companies, there are media outlets, there are lawmakers. There are simply a lot of eyes on whatever you do in federalgovernment, far more than there are when you’re working in the personal sector. So that would be point number one.
I think the 2nd one would be that, in federalgovernment, we truly neverever stop disputing method or instructions or even strategies or organizational structure, whereas in the personal sector, companies figure out where they desire to go, they figure out what the structure they desire to infact continue and carryout on their objectives and goals is, and then they go. And if you wear’t desire to be part of that company at that point in time, you can leave. In federalgovernment, for the most part, it’s a consistent dispute and conversation amongst a lot of points of view about what we oughtto be focusing on and how we oughtto be doing things. And that is truly various than the method things work in the personal sector.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah, that’s so intriguing, duetothefactthat we believe about how difficult being a CEO is and how they are in the spotlight. And it appears like that’s absolutelynothing in contrast to being a governmental leader. Steve, what do you have to include to that?
STEVE KADISH: I’m going to follow on the guv’s point about picking. In federalgovernment, you cannot pick the problems or the subjects you desire to work on. You can to some degree, and that’s infact a extremely effective chance when you can do that. But you have to address the things that are coming at you, and you have to address a broad spectrum of things, where in the personal sector, you can pick the item, the audience, the timing, the level of quality, and so forth.
The other actually identifying function is that choice making is distributed. For example, the budgetplan that you have for an effort, for a program at the end of the day is specified by the legislature. In the case of Massachusetts, a body of 200 people that vote to choose what the size of that budgetplan would be. We, at the really starting of the guv’s administration, we had some awful snowstorms and we were looking for how to most successfully acquire to purchase a entire range of things in our transport system. We required to have a law passed to modification the procurement system.
Most justrecently, with COVID, the guv introduced an effort around avoiding realestate expulsions, and at the end of the day, the analysis of notification and expulsion, we required the courts to weigh in a method that offered us more time to continue.
CURT NICKISCH: It’s a lot moredifficult than simply going to the board for a essential, expense, or technique modification.
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER: You’re likewise focused in the personal sector on your stakeholders, your consumers, your workers, and the context of the market you’re in. And that produces seriousness and focus. Don’t get me incorrect. The mostsignificant distinction inbetween the public sector and the personal sector is, in the personal sector, if you’re not really excellent at what you do, you will lose your consumers and ultimately, most mostlikely, lose your company. And there is a sense of seriousness there that’s simply indisputable. But in the public sector, the audience and the interested celebrations and the folks who have, as Steve put it, genuine choice making authority with regard to what you do and how you do it, it truly is a extremely huge neighborhood. And that huge neighborhood, most of the time, doesn’t constantly concur with itself either.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. That point you made in the book and that you’ve simply pointed to there, no rival actions in if you stopworking and go out of service in federalgovernment. Failure, you composed, is not an alternative.
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER: In the public area, a lot of what you’re up to and a lot of what you work on are things that should be done. The argument about how to do them, what’s thoughtabout to be effective, what’s thoughtabout not to be effective, that occurs every day. But you can’t stop doing them. They’re statutory. They’re needed. They’re essential.
CURT NICKISCH: So, I’d like to go through the results structure that you both usage when you believe about resolving huge issues and that you summary truly, actually plainly and successfully in the book. The 4 parts of this are individuals are policy, follow the truths, focus on how, and push for outcomes. And I’d like to go through each of those and possibly start with individuals are policy.
Governor, Steve might be a excellent example of this, since he was someone that you picked as your First Chief of Staff when you were veryfirst chosen in 2014, and a lot of inbound guvs or brand-new guvs pick their project supervisor for that function, since they’ve run a project, they’ve run an operation, and they’re extremely tuned in politically. You picked someone that you worked in administratively and in the personal sector as well for numerous years. Can you talk about that possibly to assistance launch this individuals are policy focus here?
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER: Well, it is real that most individuals, when they get chosen, select their project supervisor or someone who is close to the project, since they believe about that task as an problems management task. But from my point of view, state federalgovernment’s a huge operation. It’s executive branches, 44,000 workers, 250 companies, $40 billion operating spendingplan. There’s simply a lot to do there. And I truly desired the individual who was in the workplace next to me to be believed of as the chief operating officer of the Commonwealth, not as the chief problems management individual of the Commonwealth.
STEVE KADISH: It goes back to an earlier part of the discussion. I believe one of the lessons from the personal sector that we keep bringing back to the public sector is this concept of a chief operating officer. In the personal sector, it is an unassailable function. It’s a secret function in the C-suite.
In the public sector, you have your basic counsel, your policy leads, your budgetplan leads, your program leads, however you do not constantly have a individual who has the duties of a chief operating officer. And that is one of the things that we desired to bring from the personal sector, that discipline of how. And I understand you’ll get there in a 2nd in the structure.
We constantly start with individuals, individuals our policy, it’s a expression the guv really initially began utilizing method back at Harvard Pilgrim. For us in the structure, it’s the structural umbrella for whatever else. Simply stated, you cannot do things without individuals. We have a active focus on individuals at the start of any effort, both the leaders and the complete group.
COVID was a prime example of that. One of the veryfirst actions that the guv took was to name a lead of a committed group, the COVID Command Center, and then firmlyinsist that that individual, Secretary Sudders, Marylou Sudders fill out that group truly robustly. That concept of a lead and filling out a group is a standard to the results structure.
CURT NICKISCH: You composed in the book that the finest concepts are abstractions upuntil individuals act. Governor, you stated that you were looking for no jerks, however you wer