Don’t drive away the effective public officials

When a scandal breaks, the public often clamors for “heads to roll,” especially the high-level officials that let the scandal happen “on their watch.” Forcing them out is the safe course for government, but we often lose great public servants as a result.

Bob Peck, the visionary head of the Public Buildings Service at GSA, was one of several executives forced out over the recent overspending in Vegas.

That event was inexcusable, but Peck wasn’t the one who spent lavishly. Instead, he just didn’t pay close enough attention to lower level employees and might not have reprimanded them strongly enough when the issue came to light.

Firing Peck will sate politicians’ and the public’s appetite for blood, but GSA will be worse off without him. And his story will drive away from public service effective leaders who are more interested in bringing the really significant, big picture reforms to government than in micromanaging their staff day in and day out.

Peck’s work particularly affected DC, since his division was the one that pushed to bring retail to GSA’s headquarters, signed deals with WMATA to locate more facilities near underutilized Metro stations in Prince George’s and Fairfax, and made buildings in the area better neighbors.

In the comments on Wednesday morning’s Breakfast Links, commenter jnb made an excellent point:

What happened to Bob Peck and Martha Johnson is an example of why it’s hard to attract and keep good people in public service. If you’re trying to make change at an organization at the scale they were trying to, a) you’re going to tick people off who will do whatever possible to subvert, and b) you’re not going to be checking all the administrative things that, in a less politically charged atmosphere, will inevitably trip you up if you don’t catch them.

If you get someone who’s totally focused on avoiding administrative problems — employee behavior, leave-taking, food buying, travel, car use, etc. — there’s little left over for the big picture stuff.

OctaviusIII added:

I sometimes get the impression that public servants are expected to do their job in sack cloth and ashes, always concerned and saddened that they use tax funds to survive. They need to innovate and perform and still hate themselves for working in government.

Officials in power within government need to be held accountable for their offices, but those at high levels are in those jobs to handle things beyond the day-to-day. To then punish them for mistakes in low-level operations tells other officials that the more they focus on the big picture, the more they put themselves at risk. We need to praise and reward big-thinking officials, not punish them for being too high-level.

Some people in the public sector just want to plod along in a safe job, building up seniority and cashing paychecks without rocking the boat. Others passionately believe in improving the world around them, and are willing to accept the lower pay and greater scrutiny in order to make a bigger positive difference in people’s lives.

It takes a lot of patience, too. There are people in any large organization who have created little fiefdoms over the years, controlling budget and ruling over everything that happens in their slice of the world. Tread into their territory, and you make an enemy. Higher-up officials may well put the harmony of the organization above moving game-changing projects forward.

When people in the latter group rise to higher levels and start having a big impact, they become more vulnerable. Since these people are human, they’re not perfect. Maybe they’re not the most careful at reviewing every financial report that comes along, since they’re focused on the bigger picture, as seems to have happened with Bob Peck.

Maybe they launch a lot of great projects but don’t build the most solid foundation of detailed plans behind every one, which some criticized Gabe Klein for. Maybe they accidentally say something a little offensive, as Rollin Stanley recently did. Even if the heat he took for saying something inappropriate didn’t drive him away, it couldn’t have helped Montgomery County keep him.

Harriet Tregoning seems to have avoided all of this. She has an almost inhuman ability to patiently yet persistently push for change while getting along with others. At least so far—did someone once waste five dollars and she didn’t notice? We’d never know until some shocking news breaks that’s totally at odds with our experience, just as was the case with Peck.

I spent a few months working inside the government, and realized it’s not for me. I gained enormous respect for those who successfully effect change within that kind of organization, and learned a lot about how the people who obstruct change operate.

If we want change and want it to last, we need to dispense with the calls for blood every time there’s bad news. Nothing excuses the enormous lapse at GSA, but we also have to focus on the real wrongdoers and calibrate our expectations for higher-level managers. Do we want public officials to live in constant fear of making a mistake, or empower them to improve our lives?