My apologies for the long dry spell – especially for those of you who can’t wait for the next agile bureaucracy post, not! I was temporarily distracted by our recent conference entitled Transforming Bureaucratic Cultures: Challenges and Solutions for Public Management Practitioners (www.thepublicmanager.org/2008Conference).

Along these lines, here’s a challenge that never seems to be out of the headlines for very long. In their recently published book on the genocide in Burundi in the mid-1990’s, former Ambassador Robert Krueger and his wife share their experiences in attempting to intervene in this tragedy while posted in the country (Ambassador Robert Krueger and Kathleen Townsend Krueger, From Bloodshed to Hope in Burundi: Our Embassy Years during Genocide, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2007 - http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=Robert+Krueger+and+Kathleen+Krueger).

I first met Bob at the American Society for Public Administration’s (ASPA’s) annual conference in Dallas, Texas earlier this year. After reading the book, it occurred to me that the couple’s first-hand experiences in Burundi might help shed light on a cloudy applied topic: the ethics of public service – particularly in the face of such horrific human rights violations. In effect, how should a public servant behave and what should one do in similar circumstances? Surely, the mounting evidence of genocide in the last century and the continuing pattern of ethnic cleansing and related humanitarian crises through the first decade of this century suggest that we’re likely to witness similar challenges for some time to come. Does our community of practice need a clearer roadmap, a code of conduct and special set of public management competencies to prepare public managers to act appropriately should their skill and courage be needed?  

With this in mind, Howard Balanoff, chairperson of ASPA’s new section on certified public management (CPM), and The Public Manager arranged for me to interview the authors before a student audience at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas in June 2008. (Video highlights of the seminar will soon be available on this Web site.).

In the book, the Ambassador sets the stage for this tragic story by recounting the small country’s brief, but tortured history – before and after the Belgians exited – and the significant waves of political assassinations and civilian massacres in Burundi between the early 1970’s and mid-1994. Throughout his documentation of the genocide that occurred during his watch, replete with first-hand reports from Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International, the Ambassador adds the couple’s own photos of the human wreckage to leave no doubt about what transpired (and who was responsible).

When reports of violence and official military and police complicity began to reach the embassy, Bob felt he needed to have first-hand evidence of what was being reported. Against the better judgment of his civilian and military advisors (including some higher-ups back in Washington) – and over the objections of in all likelihood, complicit Burundian officials, he continued to drive out into the countryside and isolated towns and villages to see for himself what was being alleged. He did this for several reasons: 1) to determine the veracity of such atrocities before reporting back to Washington, his international counterparts, and the media; 2) to prevent further violence simply by dint of his on-site presence as the US Ambassador; and 3) to provide leadership in the hopes that others would stand up in unity and offer hope to potential victims.

What the Ambassador (and former US Senator and Congressman) discovered was that the bureaucratic culture of which he believed he was a part was not exactly thrilled with his actions. He had not been sent to this remote nation of six million people – 85 percent Hutu (largely impoverished and institutionally uneducated) and 15 percent Tutsi (overseers installed by the Belgians) – to solve the country’s tribal and political squabbles. In effect, his mission was not to involve himself in Burundi’s internal affairs at all. So what to do? Ignore what was going on around him? Be silent, or worse gloss over reported atrocities because such news would support a narrative that ran counter to the United States’ strategic aims (e.g., gaining other benefits from Burundi’s Tutsi leadership)?

Meanwhile, his wife, Kathleen, regularly found ways to reach out into the countryside as well – both to “show the flag” and help in any way she could. Eventually, once events began to spiral out of control, this help included secretly hiding or transporting people out of harms way, providing emergency food, clothing and shelter, and other assistance through a network of local Burundian citizens (both Hutu and Tutsi) as well as members of the international community – all of whom took considerable risk for themselves and their families. A short time later, in March 1995, after an incident of violence against Belgian residents, Kathleen and their two young daughters were required to leave the country. Yet another hardship, the family was separated again, and Kathleen soon after arriving back in the States learned she was pregnant.

Bob stayed behind, only to get deeper into the imbroglio and fall victim to an assassination attempt when his 4-car convoy was attacked while attempting to document widespread, official cruelty in the countryside. Several passengers were killed, others injured, and the Ambassador escaped in one piece. Nevertheless, in June 1995, the State Department prohibited any embassy official from traveling more than 14 miles from the capital without formal approval from Washington. Subsequently, Bob was called back to Washington for consultations, and he never returned.

In the aftermath of Krueger’s convenient departure, the Tutsi-led Burundi Army engineered another coup, deposed the Hutu President, spear-headed another genocidal wave that left over 50,000 Hutus dead and many more in “concentration camps.” It wasn’t until Nelson Mandela and others intervened in 2000-2001 that the country began to move in the direction of a multi-ethnic sharing of power – including, most importantly, leadership of the Burundi Army – and a process of truth and reconciliation modeled after that of South Africa’s.   

Reflections on the Culture of Bureaucracy

This book lays out the context and graphic evidence needed to understand what happened “on the ground” in Burundi in the last decade of the 20^th century. In reflecting on the Kruegers’ experience leading up to the outbreak of genocide, what could have been done differently to prevent the tragic events that followed? For example:

• What specific training was offered to key public officials of the U.S. mission (including the Ambassador and his State Department team, the US Information Service (USIS), members of the Department of Defense (DOD) – civilian and military, etc.) to prepare them to respond to such circumstances prior to traveling to Burundi?
  
• What leadership was provided in the way of in-country briefings, orientations and meetings with host country and United Nations (UN) officials, other missions and donor organizations, and local media to openly discuss the early signs and triggering events that could precipitate such a humanitarian crisis?
  
• Once the crisis was well underway, what could have been done differently to mitigate the horrific consequences of the genocide as circumstances on the ground descended into chaos? Were public servants given the green light and the tools to protect individuals by warning, hiding, transporting, feeding, medically treating and/or defending them?
  
• What aspects of bureaucratic culture (including the behavior of State, USIS, DOD, the UN, etc.) must be transformed to prevent such failings among public servants in the future?
  
• In the aftermath of such atrocities, what role, if any, should US officials be prepared to play to help heal the wounds and repair the damage from the horrific carnage and human rights abuses that have been committed?

Clearly, there are universal lessons to be gleaned from the Burundi genocide and analogous humanitarian crises (in Rwanda, Bosnia, apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, Ottoman Turkey, etc.). Given the repeated occurrence of racial and religious persecutions (i.e., genocide, ethnic cleansing and extermination of entire classes of human beings) virtually all across the globe in “modern” times, what have we learned that can inform a new, universal “code of ethics” for those in public management positions? What is the role of the public servant to prevent and mitigate such human rights abuses and what new skill sets are required in a “truth and reconciliation” process? The Kruegers’ insightful memoir raises questions about the ethics of public service (for the State Department and others) and offers a roadmap for our community of practice in the way of an expanded “code of conduct.”

Introduction

Over the past decade or so, government at all levels has begun requiring short- and long-term plans, including strategic goals, measurable objectives, a system for assessing outcomes, and periodic reporting on results. More recently, decision makers have attempted to tie budget and other resource decisions to agency performance.

Ironically, this shift to a more results-oriented management system hasn’t yet made a noticeable dent in public sector organizational culture. I say this because for such a transformation to have occurred would have surely nudged most culture bearers out of their silos and bureaucratic stovepipes. To illustrate, let’s consider one of the most prosaic examples of this phenomenon – the non-strategic state of training and development, or workplace learning.

Transformational Challenges

Theoretically, in a post-silo organizational culture, Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCOs) and/or Chief Learning Officers (CLOs) would be fully involved in the organization’s strategic planning and management systems. Moreover, these activities would be part of a transparent, integrated, 360° process aimed at harnessing all “agency” assets to meet priority challenges. What are some of these challenges at this point in time?

Performance

Starting with the performance challenge itself, to what extent have the CHCOs and CLOs planned, resourced and orchestrated workplace learning initiatives to foster a performance culture? How have they assured that all contributors – across the organization, staff and line managers and at different levels – understand the link between the procurement process and vendor performance? Between setting budget priorities that help guide agency investment decisions and justifying and reporting on the measurable outcomes of agency training efforts? Have training and development investments been made to compare performance against common standards – learning how other public sector organizations make use of benchmarking, leading indicators and other methods to improve and evaluate performance in a comparative context? And with respect to fostering an organization-wide performance culture, what effort is being made to pass along lessons learned from other federal, state and local efforts to improve organization performance? To set standards, hold organizations accountable and consider changes to HR law, personnel policies and systems, and other innovative ideas (e.g., "employment at will") in pursuit of a performance-based culture? And how do these workplace learning investments cut across entrenched organization sub-cultures?

Accountability

Moving to accountability challenges – stewardship, ethics and new financial rules and realities – as agency responsibilities, resources and sourcing relationships have grown in size and complexity, how have training and development emphases shifted to address priority oversight needs? What is being planned to assure basic performance measurement acumen and achieve mastery of distributing responsibility appropriately and adequately in a multi-sector workforce; managing internal and external risk and assuring proper internal controls; and effectuating outcome-oriented cost management and cost sharing? And how do these workplace learning investments cut across entrenched organization sub-cultures?

Human Capital

As for human capital, much of this challenge is framed by new demographics and the need to recruit, engage and retain young professionals. Considering the anticipated departure of a high percentage of Baby Boomers over the next 3-5 years – including many from the senior-most ranks of government’s career leadership – and the difficulty in attracting younger generations to public service, what is the training and development community doing to address this challenge? How have workplace learning efforts focused on measuring performance and linking pay and performance (where applicable)? Given the complex, wide variety and pressing nature of the transformative challenges facing today’s government organizations, what are agencies doing to prepare their current and future leaders and managers to drive this change over the next several decades? Given the complex, wide variety and pressing nature of the transformative challenges facing today’s government organizations, what are agencies doing to prepare their current and future leaders and managers to drive this change over the next several decades? What is being done to prepare current and future leaders and managers to drive anticipated change – both generic and organization-specific – over the next several decades? And how do these workplace learning investments cut across entrenched organization sub-cultures?

Technology

Much of the technology challenge – for IT professionals and non-technologists alike – will revolve around keeping pace with expanding E-expectations. How does the training and development strategy assure that the organization will keep pace with new technologies and rising expectations among all relevant users – citizens, the business community AND a younger more Web-savvy workforce? Both and opportunity and threat stem from the need to manage knowledge across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. How will training and development investments pave the way in this regard – helping transcend boundaries of federal, state and local governments and fostering collaboration among public, private, and nonprofit sectors. And how do these workplace learning investments cut across entrenched, internal organization sub-cultures?

Communication

To a large extent, the communication challenge is less readily apparent yet poses a significant threat to achieving organization missions. How does the agency’s workplace learning strategy assure that transparency becomes an organization-wide value, driving increased openness and candor in public bureaucracies, within and among different levels and branches of government, and with the public and the media? How are government organizations preparing managers to balance the need for internal controls and confidentiality with the demand for increased freedom of information? Given the volume, pace and complexity of policy formulation activities, how are government agencies preparing managers to engage citizens today – particularly in the context of new communication technologies? Given the inter-dependent nature of today’s public sector challenges and solutions, government agencies and occupational groupings will need to go outside their own vertically integrated comfort zones and interact with other bureaucratic sub-cultures to achieve priority outcomes. How are agencies preparing managers to reach out across traditional boundaries, alter their basic assumptions and behaviors with respect to sharing information and collaboration in planning, sourcing and managing efforts of common importance? And what is the agency doing to prepare practitioners for leadership and managerial roles aimed at communicating a more global perspective among career government officials around the world?

Governance

Going beyond inter-institutional communication, how does the agency plan to share responsibility for achieving results – with other governmental levels, internationally and the private sector? What are different levels of government doing to prepare managers for and respond more collaboratively to catastrophic disasters, and how are lessons learned and new techniques in one setting institutionally shared with others? Also, finding common purpose in international collaborations is almost always problematic. How is the agency helping its managers learn how to work together successfully and with alacrity internationally and in other cross-cultural environments? Moreover, more and more government work requirements have been sourced to private contractors. Given the need to measure and report on the performance of all parties, how are organizations learning to communicate oversight and accountability roles and responsibilities in such a demanding, resource-stretched environment? In this regard, what strategy does the agency envision to have managers successfully engaged the private sector, achieving high performance while remaining faithful to their missions and code of ethics and protecting the proprietary needs of their business community counterparts?

Winning Organizational Culture

In his comments on an earlier post, Don Zauderer suggested that this blog look at The Secret of a Winning Culture by Larry E. Senn and John R. Childress (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Secret-of-a-Winning-Culture/John-R-Childress/e/9780964846692/?itm=5) - which lays out strategies for building high-performance teams. Among other questions Don would like to see addressed are: 

• What was it about the NASA culture that contributed to the Challenger and Columbia disasters?
• What was it about the FBI and CIA cultures that made it difficult to share information across agencies?
• What is about organizational culture that propels senior leaders to essentially ignore survey data suggesting a distressing sense of low morale?
• What is it about the values embedded in organizational culture that makes it so difficult to create trusting communities of learning and action? And how do our executive selection processes influence these distressing realities?
• Why is it we often don't hold managers accountable for building human capital? 

For developing people? For positioning them for higher responsibility, etc.? What are some good models in the public sector? Don, who is a professor emeritus at American University and currently consulting on a variety of leadership challenges in the public sector, also suggests taking a look at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the National Gallery - highlighting leaders in specific offices whose "employees would kill for (them)."    


Turf Wars among State, FBI and the CIA

On the matter of the FBI and CIA, let's consider two recent books that offer insight on organization culture influences performance: Steve Coll's Ghost Wars, with its focus on turf wars and related tensions between the US Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower, with adds a more personal dimension to the insularity of these organizations - particularly the FBI.  

In Steve Coll's Ghost Wars (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Ghost-Wars/Steve-Coll/e/9780143034667/?itm=7), the author includes a host of references to turf wars and related tensions between the US Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Owing to a more legalistic approach to terrorism adopted by the Clinton Administration, FBI agents risked going to jail if they shared certain leads or evidence with the CIA that they had gathered in local investigations. Coll notes that "...The FBI's hermetic culture had become infamous by the early 1990s: ...agents would not tell local police what they were doing, were deeply reluctant to work on interagency teams, and would withhold crucial evidence even from other FBI agents." He concludes that "...All of this inhibited the CIA's reaction to the World Trade Center attack."  

Beyond these turf wars, the author cites numerous examples where State and the CIA were at loggerheads on both basic policy and tactical matters. He refers to "The CIA's Near East (Division) hands (being) increasingly annoyed at the State Department's diplomats ...wheedling onto the CIA's turf at the moment of victory, continually questioning the agency's assumptions, ...and wringing their hands about peace settlements." In another instance, Coll characterizes interagency debates as "caustic," with one team expressing optimism for their strategy and the other viewing matters pessimistically. Moreover, "...By early 1991 the Afghan policies pursued by the State Department and the CIA were in open competition with one another."   

In The Looming Tower (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Looming-Tower/Lawrence-Wright/e/9781400030842/?itm=1), Lawrence Wright adds another more personal dimension to the insularity of these organizations - particularly the FBI. He notes that "...In a country as diverse as America, the leadership of the FBI was stunningly narrow in its range. It was run by Irish and Italian Catholic men...Jersey boys, or Philly, or Boston. They called each other by boyish nicknames...picked up (as) altar boys or playing hockey for Holy Cross. They were intensely patriotic and were trained from childhood not to question the hierarchy." (Moreover), "...The bureau's culture had grown up in the decades when the FBI was fighting the Mafia...people from similar origins." As for the new threat - radical Islam - they didn't have a clue.  

Towards Understanding Bureaucratic Cultures

Adding to our seeds for understanding the traditional culture of bureaucracy, then, let's include such attributes as: the extent of diversity in hiring and staffing practices, a tendency towards sharing power and information vs. protection of one's turf, and of transparency and collaboration across organization borders vs. hiding within silos and stove-pipes.  Yet another colleague, Geralyn Miller, associate professor and director, Institute for Pension Plan Management at Indiana University-Purdue University in Fort Wayne, advises checking out Working with Culture: The Way the  Job Gets Done
in Public Programs by Anne M. Khademian (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Working-with-Culture/Anne-M-Khademian/e/9781568026879/?itm=7). The formal publisher's review notes that the author draws "...on detailed examples from federal, state, and local agencies, ...(showing) that cultural roots not only determine the way work is performed, but also dictate the ultimate success of reform efforts."

As we proceed with this examination of public sector organization behavior - be it praiseworthy or not - my goal is to sustain a coherent, practice-oriented exchange on the "culture(s) of bureaucracy." One of the first hurdles, I suspect, will be to clarify the variety of perspectives emanating from the different "units of analysis." For example, those with a psychological bent seem to see things in terms of the personality of the leader. Those with a management systems frame of reference are inclined to explain culture in terms of occupational ethos. What I typically see is a messier arrangement of a truly mixed bag of contributory assumptions - including a wide range of demographically-derived values, views that depend on rank, status, geographic location (e.g., headquarters & the field), organization history, political vs. career positions, and countless other internal and exogenous factors that drive such core behaviors.

More on how we talk about the culture of bureaucracy and specific organizational case illustrations in the next post. Meanwhile, let's hear from you as well. 

For over 40 years, as a recovering cultural anthropologist working in the federal government and later outside as a public management consultant, I've been a participant observer and chronicler of "the culture(s) of bureaucracy." This blog seeks to illuminate the topic by drawing on case illustrations from across a wide spectrum of bureaucratic settings - federal, state and local government; headquarters and the field; staff and line functions; domestic and defense-related missions; regulatory, scientific and administrative cultures; community-based public nonprofits and non-governmental organizations (NGOs); among many others around the world.

My goal is to provide practitioners and others who work with government organizations a guide for navigating their way through bureaucratic cultures, including best practices, tools and techniques to bring about needed change. Hopefully, executives, managers and young professionals working inside these organizations will empathize with the challenge and help transform these cultures from within - by leading from the top, mentoring up and/or advocating from whatever perch you hold.

The Literature on Organizational Culture

Here's a challenge for all of us. Sift through the literature and google the Internet on organizational culture, and try to find anything at all on the public sector. So far, I've found very little - other than the kinds of anecdotal insights referenced above. What you do find are books and articles by management gurus and HR types (including political scientists, sociologists, psychologists and professional keynote speakers) who have studied and/or consulted for private sector corporations - HP, DEC, IBM, Apple, Ciba-Geigy, GM, EDS, Amoco, MA-COM, etc. To be fair, I did find several tidbits on the culture of the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Several sources worth starting with include: Schein, Edgar H. Organizational Culture and Leadership. John Wiley & Sons. San Francisco. 2004. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Organizational-Culture-and-Leadership/Edgar-H-H-Schein/e/9780787975975/?itm=2.  and Kotter, John P., and Heskett, James L. Corporate Culture and Performance. The Free Press. New York,. 1992. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=Kotter+%26+Heskett)

I've worked as a public servant and public sector volunteer, consultant, trainer, speaker, writer, and editor since serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Turkey in 1965. What puzzles me is why no one has formally studied this phenomenon of organization culture in public bureaucracies. Aside from internal culture surveys that are understandably confidential and remain under wraps for an eternity, what are our sources - other than the memoirs of retiring career and appointed leaders whose storylines are oftentimes highly suspect? One who comes to mind with whom I had the privilege of serving is Smokin' Joe Califano, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (subsequently the Department of Health and Human Services) under President Carter from 1977-1979. His memoir, Inside, A Public and Private Life, Public Affairs, 2004, sheds light on the culture of the Pentagon during the Vietnam War, bureaucratic behavior in LBJ's White House, and similar phenomena in the reorganization of HEW. (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/imageviewer.asp?ean=9781586482305) 

We'll return to Schein and others later - from whom we can learn a lot about how to look at organization culture in general - but for the moment let's consider several alternative sources. Until researchers and seasoned practitioners take a penetrating look at government agency cultures, I guess we'll just have to share first-hand experiences and find case illustrations that are typically embedded elsewhere - in local newspapers, non-fiction literature and (heaven help us) films.

Making FEMA Move Faster

Just a few weeks ago, the op-ed page of The Palm Beach Post (March 22, 2008, page 12A) noted that federal grant-in-aid funding was finally flowing to reduce hurricane-related damage in local communities. However, "...the excessive delays are easily explained by the involvement of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has a history of making hard work harder." (Thus in this part of the state), "...only a few projects have been completed out of the 74 grant applications generated by the '04 storms. Some local managers withdrew their applications in frustration, rather than fight with FEMA to get plans approved." Meanwhile, "...FEMA has wasted time fighting over details on application forms and blueprints." (http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/content/opinion/epaper/2008/03/22/a12a_fema_edit_0322.html)

Several weeks later, The Post published an article lauding R. David Paulson, former Miami-Dade fire chief and current FEMA Administrator who took over the reins after the agency's botched response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (April 3, 2008, page 2A). Paulson "...recruited other state and local emergency responders" (and) "...took something that the...public had no confidence in" and brought it back to life. (http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/content/nation/epaper/2008/04/03/a2a_fema_0403.html)

In this coverage, which is representative of similar pieces on public sector organizations you can find in any local newspaper any day of the week (look for them and I suspect you'll agree), lie the seeds for understanding what we mean by the culture of bureaucracy. In the case of FEMA's response to the perfect storm, a few elements that stand out include matters of: agility, hiring and staffing practices, and a rule-driven vs. customer- or citizen-centered process.  

More next week on the concept of organizational culture and further illustrations from a wide range of public sector settings. Meanwhile, let's hear from you on your experience and research.