Solving Problems in Government

Earlier this month we had a local primary election in Knox County, and people are still talking and writing about how the results were part of the fallout from Knox County Commission's Black Wednesday when the Sunshine Law was violated. I decided this might also be a good time to share some of my thoughts regarding common challenges in government, what causes them, and what might be done about it. Enjoy!

Not too long after I’d conducted training in a global Fortune 500 corporation, I received an email from one of the participants. He wrote to tell me about some controversy within the municipal government of his city and to ask me to contact his city’s mayor.

“The Mayor and City Council in my town really needs your training,” he said, “I’m not sure they’re ever going to be able to work effectively together without it.”

I politely thanked him for his vote of confidence, while diplomatically explaining to him that his mayor and councilmen and women would need to first recognize they could benefit from my help, before I or anyone else could ever be of any use to them. I could only assist them, if they want me to.

The training to which he was referring had been part of a broader initiative in his organization, which I had helped design and facilitate, to transform the organization’s culture into one that was “principle-centered.”

Similar to the nature of his city’s government, which is to serve its constituents, his organization was a service organization, which existed to provide service to the consumers of its products. The corporation’s philosophy was that, in order to treat its consumers the way they should be treated, thereby ensuring long term buy-in, everyone in the service organization needed to be operating with a solid set of moral principles.

Principles are defined as natural laws that operate in the world. These principles of which I speak span all cultures, religions and social strata. They are universally true, whether we align ourselves with them or not. The degree to which we do or do not align our behavior with these natural laws generates a constant stream of positive and negative consequences in our lives. For instance, gravity is a natural law of physics. I may say, “I choose not to observe gravity,” but if I climb up on the roof and jump off, the natural principle of gravity is still going to operate, and I am going to experience the negative consequences of choosing to behave as if it won’t.

Likewise, there are moral principles—such as Integrity, Honesty, and Respect—which, if we choose to ignore in our behavior, will eventually generate equally negative consequences. Apparently, the mayor and city council of this man’s town were right smack in the middle of experiencing the negative consequences of their previous, unprincipled behavior.

The important fact to understand is that these moral principles are inexplicably linked to the level of trust we’re able to build in all our relationships. Stephen Covey, author of the book, “Principle-Centered Leadership,” says trust (or the lack of it) is the root of success or failure in relationships and in the bottom-line results of business, industry, education and government. The key to dealing with the challenges that face us today, he says, is the ability to build trust, which becomes achievable once we recognize a principle-centered core within both ourselves and our organizations.

Covey’s philosophy—and the philosophy upon which we based the culture change in the corporation I worked with—is to align ourselves with these universally-true principles to bring true power, focus, energy, and integrity to our work and our lives.

The focus of the corporation’s culture-change initiative, and the focus of my training, had been on teaching men and women how to be principle-centered leaders of character who work on the basis of natural principles and build those principles into the center of their lives, into the center of their relationships with others, into the center of their agreements and contracts, and into the center of their management and work practices.

Anyone who has read any of Covey's other books, such as “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and “First Things First,” is familiar with his belief that the four basic needs of all people is "to live, to love, to learn and to leave a legacy.” Many leaders from all different sectors struggle with the second point, “to love.” So I was fascinated when I heard former mayor of New York City and former Republican senate and presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani, speak at a conference on this very topic. Giuliani, who, beginning on September 11, 2001, skillfully led New York City through the greatest tragedy in American history, was speaking at the conference about his philosophy of leadership. He had made several points and cited specific examples from his own lengthy public service career, first as U.S. Attorney and then a two-term mayor in one of the country’s largest cities. When Giuliani finally reached his concluding point, I listened intently as he prefaced it by explaining that nothing he’d described up to that point in his speech mattered unless you got this last one right. “You have to love people,” he said matter-of-factly, placing great emphasis on the L-word when he spoke it. He then proceeded to explain. A public servant, if he or she is to be effective in the long term, must be operating from a core commitment to compassion for others and an overriding desire to do what is right for those they serve, even if it is unpopular in some circles or could be detrimental to you personally.

How can any of us hope to do that? I believe, and those who have been part of these kinds of initiatives agree, it’s by operating from that principle-centered core. That certainly was what my former student was expressing to me, when he asked me to contact his city mayor.

Covey says this has to be practiced from the "inside out" on four levels:
1. Personal trustworthiness - our relationship to ourselves.
2. Interpersonal trust - our relationships with others.
3. Managerial empowerment - our responsibility to get a job done by working with others.
4. Organizational alignment - our need to organize people: recruit them, train them, compensate them, build teams, create aligned structures, develop strategies, form systems, and solve problems.

Each one of these levels is necessary but doesn't work well individually on its own. The four levels must work together in a comprehensive way.

Nowhere are those more critical, as pointed out by Rudy Giuliani, than in the government sector. Those are the levels on which government administrations can be helped . . . but only if the people who comprise those administrations want help.