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It’s Time for Teams

To: The Deputy Secretary of DNREP
From: Bob Behn
Re: Merging Two Agencies
Date: February 2003

You got the challenge you wanted. After all, merging any two large organizations — public or private — is always a challenge. Just look what has happened to the merger of America Online with Time Warner. It’s a disaster.

Although each of Bob Behn’s Manager’s Choice dilemmas is set in a particular public agency and deals with a particular problem, each is intended to provide a specific context for a common management challenge — one that might just as easily come up in a different kind of agency facing a similar problem but with different specifics. All Governing.com visitors are invited to draw on their experience and submit suggestions.

Any merger confronts three generic problems: how to merge the two organizations’ basic administrative systems; how to get everyone focused on a common mission and a specific set of performance targets; and how to merge their two organizational cultures. In addition, you have to deal with the personal conflict with George Herman and Carla Mays, plus meet the policy deadline on snowmobiles.

So let me suggest that you use the two administrative and policy problems to solve the culture problem — and to resolve the conflicts with Herman and Mays.

First: Tackle the Administrative Issues

You have to recommend a revised administrative structure for the new department. And you have to merge the two sets of personnel, procurement, budgeting and accounting systems. And you have to find a place to house the entire department.

Yes, the Department of Environmental Preservation and the Department of Natural Resources were both part of state government. Yes, they once were in the same department using the same systems. Over the years, however, both departments modified their administrative systems to respond to new ideas and particular problems. The systems are still similar but not identical — particularly in the way in which the staff in each department makes their inevitable discretionary choices. Yes, both departments have to abide by the rules of the state personnel office. Yes, both departments have the same fiscal years. Still, both have added their own special personnel rules and have evolved their own special budgeting quirks. And in the new Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Preservation you need to have one, consistent set of systems — at both the official level of the procedures manual and at the unofficial level of the operating culture.

You need a team to sort this out. Consequently, I suggest that you give the challenge to either Herman or Mays. For example, ask Mays to select a team of people to merge each of these administrative systems, with a subgroup to tackle each specific component. Make it clear to Mays that you consider this to be an essential task; by July 1, both divisions need to be operating with the same set of systems, which means that the formal decisions need to be made by April 30. Give Mays lots of authority to structure this process in a way that she thinks best, but ask her for biweekly, if informal, reports.

Give her a chance to shine. Massage her ego, but watch how she responds. If she appears to be making little progress (or, worse, to be sabotaging the project) be quick to give the assignment to someone else. She ought to recognize this as a test; everyone else certainly will, and they will be watching to see how you respond to any indolence (no matter how subtle).

Similarly, create a team to work out the new organizational structure. Presumably one of the “synergies” will come from the merging of the support units. Of course, this really has nothing to do with synergy; it is about old-fashioned cost-cutting. Thus, every accountant and every personnel officer feels threatened. They all know that they may lose their job. A reduction in force will cascade throughout the new department, and many are already checking where they will come out when people start exercising their bumping rights.

This team will need more delicate leadership. So pick the division head you (at the moment) think can best handle the task. You want to know how many positions you can reasonably lose and still ensure that every support unit can do its job. Then you have to figure out how to handle those who will lose their jobs. (Some retirements may help, but you don’t have any buy-out authority.) In fact, you need a quick estimate so that you can start talking with the deputy secretaries of other departments.

It isn’t great to start off asking for favors from your colleagues. After all, they won’t hire any of your people unless these individuals are qualified; yet they will be sure to note that you owe them one. Still, your top priority is to make the inevitable RIF work. Every individual in the department needs to see you as someone who took care of every victim of the RIF. Otherwise, the resentment will dominate your relationship with the department’s front-line staff.

And, all this has to be done by July 1.

Third, create another team to figure out where to house the entire department. This doesn’t have to be done immediately. In fact, I doubt whether it can be. But if the organization is divided between two locations, it will continue to be divided in every other way. Moreover, no one will believe that the merger has created any synergies if the department is still split up geographically. So find another old hand — perhaps someone whom you might promote to be a division director if either Herman or Mays leave — and give him or her this challenge. The legislature will have to approve whatever DNREP proposes, and it isn’t likely that you’ll have anything ready for this spring’s session. Nevertheless, come the fall, you’ll want to start briefing key legislative leaders on the options and on your recommendation. So you need to create a series of deadlines, ending with the secretary making the final call at the end of August.

Second: Tackle the Policy Issue

Again, to tackle the snowmobile issue, you need a team. This time, reach down into the organization to identify an up-and-comer — someone whom you want to test for a future leadership role. It might be someone who has the relevant policy expertise, but that isn’t necessary. You’re looking for a leader, not a wonk.

Again, ask him or her to create a team with a balanced membership from both divisions. Again, hold informal biweekly meetings with the team leader to get a report on progress and to get an early lead on potential problems. You may not know much about the technical aspects of the issue, but you do know enough to identify potential complications with the various ideas that the team is considering. Unfortunately, the team is not apt to find a win-win-win solution, a miraculous policy that will make everyone happy. And you and the secretary will be the ones who have to sell the inevitably imperfect proposal to stakeholders and the legislature. So monitor the team closely to be sure it isn’t creating a worse political entanglement.

Mission, Targets, Culture and Teams

But this only deals with the immediate policy issues and the essential administrative problems. What should you do about creating a department-wide mission, operational goals and a common culture?

Ignore the mission statement for a moment. If you want to manufacture a real problem for yourself, create a team with the job of writing a common mission statement. Either they will kill each other, or they will write a very long and very meaningless paragraph full of such phrases as “world class,” “customer service,” and, of course, “our people are our most valued resource.” And, they will certainly eat up a lot of valuable time arguing over these words.

Instead, use these four teams to begin the process of creating a common culture. Here the old principle applies: If you want to create a team, give the team something meaningful to accomplish. The four teams that you have created aren’t doing busy work; each has a very important task. You need to make sure that the teams’ members understand this, and that everyone else in the department understands it too. Make sure that the team members understand that everyone is watching — that everyone is depending upon the result of their work. And when a team does produce a significant result — whether that is its final report or an interim product — be sure to praise its members publicly in front of their colleagues.

You can’t, however, ignore the question of performance targets. The legislature wants synergy. And one possible definition of increased synergy is improved performance as demonstrated through the achievement of significant targets. So you need to find a mechanism for setting and achieving some.

One way to do this, of course, is to ask each unit within each division to create performance targets for the last quarter of FY 2003 and then for FY 2004. Another way is to focus on key units that you know can (or should) actually achieve a specific goal. A third way is to charge your snowmobile task force with the responsibility for creating specific performance targets for FY 2004.

Regardless, keep using cross-division teams to attack real problems, and keep rewarding team success with recognition within the department and throughout state government. If you do so, you will help establish a common organizational culture. Once you think you have that, you can create a team of organizational leaders to write a clear, concise mission statement that codifies the reality you have created.

To see responses posted by other readers, click here.

Robert D. Behn is faculty chair of the Kennedy School’s Executive Program on Driving Government Performance: Leadership Strategies that Produce Results.