How
To Fix
Personnel

To: The Mayor's Policy Director
From: Bob Behn
Re: Getting the Personnel Department to Join the Performance Team
Date: October, 1998

Don't try to fix the Personnel Department yourself. And don't let the mayor try to do it either. Neither of you know how. And even if you did know how, neither of you have the time to make it happen. Rather, create some incentives that will motivate Martinez and his agency to make the necessary changes so that they will be contributing to the mayor's efforts to improve the performance of city agencies.

To do this, have your line managers evaluate the Personnel Department. Make sure that each of the city's line managers has a specific goal to achieve for the current fiscal year. Then, ask them to explain how the Personnel Department helps or hinders their ability to achieve their goal. If the mayor takes these evaluations seriously, the director of Personnel and his key people will too.

The Traditional Personnel Function. Martinez is right. Government personnel agencies were created to prevent public managers from playing favorites. The assumption has always been that, unless some organization (i.e., the personnel department), vigilantly constrains the behavior of line managers, they will hire and promote their cronies, while piling work on the conscientious and firing anyone who is not obsequious. Indeed, if a public agency is not charged with accomplishing a particular task — if there is no way to evaluate the performance of the agency — then its managers are free to play favorites or engage in all kinds of corrupt behavior.

Moreover, Martinez and his people aren't dumb. In fact, they are quite smart. They are responding intelligently to the informal (but nevertheless very real) incentive system within which they work. For if Personnel does something right — if it helps a line agency hire the people it needs — nothing happens. But if Personnel screws up, if it lets a line manager's favorite sneak through, it can get into big trouble. Everyone in Personnel has figured this out. So, whenever they have to choose between helping an agency and going by the book, they go by the book.

The Importance of Line-Agency Goals. If a line agency is charged with achieving a particular goal by the end of the fiscal year (or, even better, by the end of the current quarter), its managers will be less able to indulge their personal preferences or biases. They will need to choose people who can get the job done. If the mayor of Zenith City has already set specific goals for each line agency, he has taken a big step toward insuring that his line managers prefer competent people to sycophants. (Goals do not, however, ensure that all hiring and promotion decisions will be fair. Managers faced with tough performance targets will tend to hire acquaintances whose talents and weaknesses they understand rather than unknowns who, almost by definition, are a risk.)

Still, any chief executive who establishes specific goals for line agencies but does not attempt to change the control mentality of support agencies (such as Personnel) is creating conflict. The line agencies now recognize that their biggest job is to improve performance. In contrast, the "support" agencies continue to believe that their biggest job is to prevent the line agencies from practicing corruption.

Changing the Control Mindset. You and the mayor have to change the basic approach of Martinez and everyone in Personnel. And merely exhorting them to think differently will accomplish little; their informal incentive system is just too powerful. Thus, to change Personnel's behavior, you have to change their incentives. You have to make sure that something positive does, indeed, happen when they help the line agencies. And you have to mitigate the negative things that will inevitably happen when, in attempting to help a line agency, they fail to go completely by the book.

Asking line managers to evaluate the Personnel Department will help provide Personnel with some positive feedback for its efforts to help the line agencies. Not at first, of course. Initially, the evaluations will be purely negative. Martinez and Personnel won't want to hear it. They'll hunker down while asserting that the line managers are really evaluating the personnel system (as created by the state legislature and perhaps modified by the city council). What the line managers don't like, Personnel will claim, is not the functioning of this personnel department but the nature of the governmental personnel system.

At this point, Martinez will need a small victory. He'll need to help a line agency find the people it needs to achieve its goal, and he'll need to get credit for it. This is where you (or the mayor) may be of some real assistance. If you can identify an agency that, to make this year's performance target, needs assistance in hiring or promoting or reclassifying people, and if you can help Martinez make this happen, and if you can then ensure that Martinez and Personnel get credit at a directors' meeting for this achievement, you can begin to change the thinking and behavior of Personnel.

One victory won't be enough, of course. But the first victory is essential. And if Personnel can't figure out how to create this first small win, you'll need to help them. Then, once you have taught Personnel how to be successful in the new performance-oriented environment, you simply have to make sure that they get credit every time they help a line agency.

Preparing for the Inevitable Screw-Up. As more and more people in Personnel get the idea that their job is to help line agencies improve performance, inevitably someone will make a mistake. Someone will inevitably break a rule. And someone will inevitably expose this mistake — either in the city council or in the Zenith City Herald.

This is testing time. Everyone in Personnel will be waiting to see what the mayor will do. If he lets Martinez and the Personnel Department — or, even worse, the employee in Personnel who made the "mistake" — twist slowly in the wind, the new system will be doomed. Everyone in Personnel will get the message: "The mayor wants the Personnel Department to help line agencies improve performance, but only so long as it doesn't make a mistake. My job is to never make a mistake."

If Personnel made an honest mistake, the mayor needs to say so — visibly, publicly and forcefully. He needs to sit next to the offending civil servant at the city council hearing. Or he needs to hold a press conference in the Personnel agency's auditorium. He needs to publicly thank the individual for diligent work, to explain that the mistake was an honest one, and to emphasize the Personnel Department's essential role in helping Zenith City improve performance.

Such an open display of support for a beleaguered city employee may not help the mayor in public-opinion polls. But it will certainly improve his personal credibility with the city's employees as well as convince them that his emphasis on performance is real.

Responsibilities in Conflict. Any government Personnel Department has two inherently conflicting responsibilities. It is charged with helping line agencies achieve their missions, and it is charged with preventing the line agencies from engaging in corrupt practices. The Personnel Department has both a control function and an assistance function. It needs to treat the line agencies as customers while simultaneously being alert for any potential crooks.

Thus, any government personnel department is plagued by a complex case of cognitive dissonance. The managers and staff at Personnel have to both support the line agencies effectively and police them diligently. They can't let one task compromise the other.

And to do this, to craft an appropriate balance, they need help. The elected chief executive can't run the agency. But he can help it cope with its conflicting responsibilities. If the mayor wants the Personnel Department to really help the line agencies improve their performance, he has to be prepared to support it — even when it makes a politically costly mistake.

Agree or disagree? If you think you have a better way to deal with this month's Manager's Choice dilemma, or would like to expand on Bob Behn's approach, share your thoughts with other readers here. Send your solution to mailbox@governing.com. Please include your name, location, government or business title or job description, and a daytime phone number (for verification purposes).

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