I like to speak to current and future leaders about the book, and about how they can lead change in their organizations. My buddies at PSG believe in—and are expert in—helping bureaucratic organizations reinvent themselves by making systemic changes, for example in systems like budget, incentives and procurement, as well in organizational culture. Me, I go along with them, but where my passion really lies is in leadership behavior. I believe that organizational leaders can make HUGE changes through their behavior—how they spend their time, how they trust and empower people, how they focus on their vision, how they "walk the walk." And I love to help leaders transform their organizations through systemic changes, sure, but mainly through their personal behavior.
Starting at MIT I learned to manage. By the time I got to the Pentagon I was a pretty good old-style manager. I believed in strong central control of the military, and if there was a problem, well then stronger central control was usually the answer. In fact that was usually my answer no matter the question. I practiced central control so well that I was promoted to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Installations, overseeing 600 military bases around the world, with a total area the size of Tennessee, and employing four million people under generally shabby and austere conditions. While trying to further centralize my new "empire," I discovered In Search of Excellence, a watershed event in my life that taught me the power of the human spirit and how to energize it.
I moved slowly at first, then like mad, away from bureaucracy and toward excellence. I discovered that the people who worked at our bases almost always knew much better how to accomplish their mission than I or my colleagues at the Pentagon. I became a radical decentralizer and passionate advocate of excellence. I fought a guerilla battle at the Pentagon to get authority in the hands of front line workers and, especially, base commanders. I was inspired and taught by the greatest military leader of the last 40 years, Air Force General Bill Creech.
The idea of a Pentagon "bureaucrat" (Oh, how I hate to be called that) radically decentralizing and promoting excellence was so incongruous and, I guess, interesting, that Tom Peters himself featured me and my experience on a PBS television show about "Excellence in the Public Sector." About that time David Osborne and Ted Gaebler discovered what I was doing and wrote a lot about it in Reinventing Government. That led to Al Gore hiring me to lead his reinvention task force, where I spent the last six years of my federal career, crusading to spread trust, empowerment, and of course customer service throughout the federal government. And then in 1999 the pull of our three grandchildren drew me and Roxane, the love of my life, to California. When we're not watching our grandchildren grow, which is my favorite thing, and when I'm not energizing public organizations, which is my life work, I love watching ballet, the Washington Redskins, and poking around interesting places around the world with Roxane. |
