1. Public management is unique because of managers’ responsibility to the public. Public managers face a distinct form of scrutiny because of their stewardship of the public’s trust. Leaders in the public domain can wilt under this unyielding scrutiny or they can embrace the chance to demonstrate good stewardship of the public’s resources. That the public holds its managers accountable to more than just “profitability” – fairness, honesty, and quality are other desired outcomes – can be seen as a crushing burden or a rewarding opportunity.
2. Organizational culture counts. Initiatives can only survive in contexts conducive to their success. Good leaders, then, are careful to create organizational cultures that are healthy and vibrant, and to work across departments and up and down the organizational chart to foster a shared commitment to success.
3. One achieves results through leadership and influence. The “right answer” is merely the first step in a leader’s work. In order to actually effect results, he or she must then mount a successful internal “PR” campaign to influence others to get on board. To convince others to follow your plans is an inherently political process, and effective leaders know how to influence that process to carry through their initiatives.
4. Get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus. In his bestseller, Good to Great, Jim Collins argues that rather than setting a course and then finding people to help get there, leaders should fire the bad people and find the good people and then move. I tend to agree, for I have seen strong organizations crippled because they allowed the wrong people to hang around, and I have also seen mediocre organizations do great things because they found and mobilized the right people.
5. Make the big decisions and make sure your little actions are in sync with them. I have ready many biographies of great American leaders, particularly Dwight Eisenhower and Theodore Roosevelt, and I am always struck by how few decisions they actually made. Good leaders, it seems, know which are the important decisions to make. Then they make sure they make the right choices in those decisions. Finally, they align their day-to-day details around those big decisions. This leadership style gives followers comfort in knowing that their leader is courageous enough to make the big decisions. Also, it is a mark of integrity that a leader’s actions harmonize with his words, so living accordingly engenders a deep level of trust from followers.
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