Looking back, they argue that running a government is often much harder than leading a private-sector company. For one thing, Baker says, there’s rightly more public scrutiny of every decision you make as a leader. And, Kadish adds, decision-making is far more dispersed.
Looking back, they argue that running a government is often much harder than leading a private-sector company. For one thing, Baker says, there’s rightly more public scrutiny of every decision you make as a government leader. And decision-making is far more dispersed.In this episode, they share their four-part framework for breaking down complicated problems with many stakeholders to get results.
So going back and forth between public service and private sector work, what’s the biggest misconception that people in the private sector have about public sector leadership, being a government executive? STEVE KADISH: I’m going to follow on the governor’s point about choosing. In government, you cannot choose the issues or the topics you want to work on. You can to some degree, and that’s actually a very powerful opportunity 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 private sector, you can choose the product, the audience, the timing, the level of quality, and so forth.
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER: You’re also focused in the private sector on your stakeholders, your customers, your employees, and the context of the market you’re in. And that creates urgency and focus. Don’t get me wrong. The biggest difference between the public sector and the private sector is, in the private sector, if you’re not very good at what you do, you will lose your customers and eventually, most likely, lose your organization. And there is a sense of urgency there that’s just undeniable.
Governor, Steve may be a good example of this, because he was somebody that you chose as your First Chief of Staff when you were first elected in 2014, and a lot of incoming governors or new governors choose their campaign manager for that role, because they’ve run a campaign, they’ve run an operation, and they’re very tuned in politically. You chose somebody that you worked in administratively and in the private sector as well for many years.
We always start with people, people our policy, it’s a phrase the governor actually first started using way back at Harvard Pilgrim. For us in the framework, it’s the structural umbrella for everything else. Simply said, you cannot do things without people. We have a hyper focus on people at the beginning of any initiative, both the leaders and the full team.
There’s this tendency, especially in the public sector for people to think about their own world and to forget about the rest. And focus is good. But one of my dad’s favorite sayings when I was a kid was, “You need to understand, son, that people usually get fired by their peers and their subordinates long before they get fired by their bosses.” I always thought that was a pretty interesting phrase to love live by, when it came to thinking about organizational structure.
STEVE KADISH: The idea of follow the facts hopefully is natural to people who are managers and leaders. It’s to really understand what’s going on. There are two parts for us. One is the data evidence is what we call it. And that is probably the more obvious of the kinds of facts that we look at. It’s the size of the problem, the money involved, the people, the trends, the context, if there’s a triggering event and so forth.
CURT NICKISCH: I loved how in this section of the book, you talked about distrusting averages, we’re really trying to look at extremes and individual experiences to get a sense of it. When you encounter a problem, or you go into a room where important people are gathered, how do you get to the facts? What are you trying to get to?
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER: The broadband issue is a good example of getting out of the tower. We had this terrible problem with broadband in Western Mass, 55 communities that didn’t have it. And the effort on this had been going on for almost 10 years. It was just stalled. And when we started talking to the communities, we realized that part of the reason it was stalled was we were trying to … The state was trying to basically sell a single solution to 55 different kinds of communities.