Public Servants as Scapegoats

The Shiawassee County Administrator has taken a new job in Isabella County.  This follows several months of public attacks, criticism through various social media channels, and a formal consideration by the County Board of Supervisors to eliminate her position or terminate her contract.  Many people are pleased with her departure.  I am worried by it.  I don't know the particulars about this situation, or the content of her job reviews, so I cannot comment on whether her departure is warranted or not. However, I am worried because the pattern of her hiring and then exit follows a path we have seen too often in Shiawassee County; and these journeys have not led our community to a good place. While each experience is unique, and thus perhaps understandable when taken by itself, these unfortunate stories, when taken as a whole, are troubling.

               

The Rise and Fall of a CEO.   The story usually begins with a board of local residents, whether they be elected to a public entity like a school board, or volunteer on a nonprofit organization that serves the community.  In either case, the board faces the task of filling the chief executive position and conducts a wide search for the best candidate.  There is perhaps no greater responsibility of a board than this one.

Sometimes an organization is working through a crisis and needs a new leader to right the ship.  Other times, the board seeks to replace a long-time, well-respected executive who has retired.  In either case, the board and its constituents recognize that the task is an important one, and people get committed to the organization and put in hours and thought to find the right person.  Sometimes they go to the expense of hiring a search firm, or of traveling to interview candidates, or to conduct public surveys. There are inevitably a lot of meetings.  In the end, someone is hired with great acclaim and big hopes for the future.

Then the Honeymoon Ends.  When a new chief executive is hired, too often board members or the community feel like they can step back from their involvement.  After all, the job of the top employee is to run the organization, and good board members know they shouldn't micromanage.  There is often too a honeymoon period in which constituents want the new person to succeed, so they hesitate to pay close attention to the issues, engage in policy decisions, or provide much feedback.  And of course, board members change and the personal history of the hiring of a CEO is lost.

Eventually mistakes are made, by either the executive and/or the governing board.  No one is perfect and even the best ship's captain sometimes rocks the boat.  It's hard being a public official in a place and time of economic challenge.  Tough choices have to be made and sometimes the pain caused by a hard decision is too much to bear: angry people show up at a meeting, a critical letter to the editor is published, harsh comments are made on Facebook or at the breakfast club. Then comes the moment of truth for a board member, or employee, or other stakeholder:  do you stand by the chief executive or do you side with the critics?

Of course, there have been instances of incompetence, even malfeasance, in the top positions in our community, and in those instances a board must act quickly and firmly to make a leadership change.  However, at other times, there is an impatient public that lacks all the facts, or a group of mean-spirited critics driven by personal gain, or idealogical warriors on a campaign for visibility.  And most of the time, the situation is somewhere in between, and a board member has to listen hard through a lot of noise to really comprehend the situation and make the right decision.

Scapegoating.  Those people we hire to run our local governments, our schools, or our visible community organizations are in a precarious place.  On the one hand, they have to answer both to a board and to a variety of constituents; on the other hand, they are expected--and paid--to be highly competent professionals balancing a strained budget, complying with a myriad set of laws and regulations, and supervising a staff of other professionals.  It is never easy, and sometimes the task defeats the person in charge.  Too often, we have expected Superman, or Wonder Woman, and we turn on our leader when they turn out to be mortal.

We have a bad habit in our community of throwing our chief executives under the bus when the going gets tough.  Maybe some of them made mistakes so severe they deserved it, or maybe at some point the controversy is so intense that a change needs to be made. When you think about any one departure, you can see it in several ways, and a post-mortem can be a good learning experience.  But when you step back and think about this repeated pattern of rise and fall, it looks like we as a community choose to address our problems by blaming a staff person.  Rather than take on the tough task of analyzing the true causes of a crisis, or stand against the mob, we tend to join the revolt and execute the leader at the top.  Why?

What's Wrong With Us?  I think we have replaced policy debates with personal and partisan conflicts.  In Washington and Lansing, we seem to favor political defeats of the other side rather than compromises which offer a legislative solution. At the local level, we resort to personal attacks rather than problem solving.  Perhaps the challenges we face are too big or too complex; perhaps people have lost the patience to work through tough choices; perhaps we are too insecure to accept change.  I don't know, but it seemingly has become easier to blame a hired person for our difficulties than it is to face the hard truths of declining revenues, competitive economics, changing demographics, or new state or federal requirements.

The cost is high with such a system:  not only do we put decent men and women, and their families, through hell in order to effect change, we also do damage to our local institutions.  When there are attacks against, then a replacement of, the chief executive, employee morale suffers and the ability to move ahead with even routine activities is hampered.  The reputation of a school, a city, or a community institution takes a hit when there is a messy leadership change.  And, as board members come to find out, it can be very difficult in hiring a successor following a high-profile firing. The news accounts of attacks on the CEO, which seemed so righteous at the time, just read as organizational dysfunction to the next person looking to take the lead job.

Advice to the Board.  It will be interesting to see what the Shiawassee County Board of Supervisors does in replacing their much-maligned primary staff person. The County has not yet decided whether it wants its board to be elected officers carrying out executive functions (like a Township Supervisor) or delegate its authority to a professional manager (like every city in Shiawassee County).  This indecision further complicates the jobs of almost every person who gets a paycheck from the County.  The County Administrator's job is, for this reason, perhaps the most difficult job in our community.  Whatever is decided for Shiawassee County, I have some advice for any public board charged with the task of hiring a chief executive:

1. Be transparent in your process, publicly adopt a job description, and be clear about your criteria for the job.  The public is going to be very interested in who you hire, and you should be open about what type of person you want before you ever talk about specific candidates. Even if you have a strong inside candidate (and hopefully you done some succession planning and cultivated some internal leaders), the hiring process needs to take place in the full light of day so that the public, and everyone involved, can feel a part of the outcome.
2. Get a unanimous vote for your hire. If the board can't agree on one candidate, postpone the decision and go back to the drawing board.  If your preferred candidate is not the top choice, you need to be able to work with whoever is hired. To be successful, a chief executive needs the public support of every board member; they should start with it, and they should maintain it, even through difficult times.  
3. Make it about policies, not the person.  It is a board member's job to adopt policies, oversee programs, allocate financial resources, and provide a critical eye to the operations of an organization.  But keep your focus on the outcomes, not the people doing the job. If you don't like what is happening, or if your constituents have complaints, be specific with your concerns and suggest the policy or program changes necessary.  Ask questions, do your homework, and think through your opposition; too many board members just criticize the chief executive.
4. Criticize in private, praise in public.  If you do have complaints about the behavior or actions of your chief executive, deliver it in person, one-on-one.  While someone on Facebook may be happy, or the room applauds, when you attack the chief executive in public, you undermine the credibility and effectiveness of the organization you serve.  The storyline should be about a difficult budget debate, or the pros and cons of two policy choices, not the fireworks between a board member and the chief executive.
5. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate.  Unfortunately, the public is not as interested in the issues that you as a board member are.  Investing in new infrastructure, overhauling information systems to improve efficiency, squeezing a few more dollars out of the budget, or adopting a new policy or program can be very rewarding to those of us engaged in the day-to-day mission of an organization.  Unfortunately, the press and the trolls of social media are much more interested in reporting on personalities and conflicts.  Unless you make a continued and vigorous effort to provide information to your constituents, your good stories won't get told.  And when times are tough, and the problems complex (as they usually are), attention may get diverted to an argument or heated words, rather than to policy options or potential solutions.
6. Stand by your man, or woman.  It's not easy to be an elected official or serve on a nonprofit board, and many of the decisions you have to make are between unpopular options.  It is appropriate to have your chief executive be the spokesperson or on point, but you have to back them up.  Don't leave your leader out there alone; even worse, don't put the blame on your chief executive for the challenges facing your organization.  If you don't like the policy proposal, or the budget cut, direct your comments to the specifics, and the alternatives, not the person who has the job of implementing them.

As a member of the public, I don't know--and sometimes can't know--all of the many challenges that face our County, our cities and townships, our schools, and our community organizations.  But I respect the leaders--volunteer and paid--who put in the time and step up to the responsibilities of their positions.  I take notice when leaders share the facts and realities of their jobs, listen more than speak, and actively seek out my, and other's, opinions.  I appreciate most of all when leaders are transparent and give it to me straight when there are problems, difficult decisions, or even a crisis.  None of us alone is as smart, or as capable, as all of us together.  We need to stop blaming and attacking one another; the cause of our problems are usually bigger than any one person.  When the ship starts to leak, we need to stop blaming the person at the tiller.  We need to stop punching holes in our ship, and pitch in with one another to bail out the ship and get us back on course.