Fortunately, the Peters task force gave you a three-inch thick report. This group identified so many inefficiencies that no one will expect you to eliminate them all in a month. So pick and choose. You know which ones can be eliminated — or at least “fixed” — by some administrative action. On January 2, the day after the inauguration, when you present the new mayor with your implementation plan, be sure that it contains as many items as possible. Emphasize the number of inefficiencies that your plan will fix.

It would be nice to also report how much money your plan will save. But unless you can document that your fix list will save multiple millions, I would focus on the number of fixes rather than the dollar savings.

Of course, you could simply claim that your fixes will save millions. Who would know — either before your plan was implemented or afterward? The Peters task force estimated the of cost of all of the inefficiencies that it discovered. But the estimate for each inefficiency — and thus also the estimate for the entire group — was nothing more than a guess. (How much was the failure to consolidate the computer systems of the Taxation and Water Divisions costing the city? Any answer depends upon multiple assumptions.)

When you start playing this “savings game,” however, you can get in trouble. Grace Peters and her task force have disappeared. They won’t have to answer for anything that happens — or doesn’t happen. (If you can’t document that eliminating some inefficiency has saved as much as they predicted, it isn’t their fault. Instead, it will blamed on poor implementation.) You, however, hope to be around. And if you start saying that some action in agency X will save $Y, someone may demand that agency X reduce its budget by $Y. This is why I recommend that you try to get people to focus on the number of fixes, not on the dollars saved.

If you can pull this off — if you can help Ronald solve the “inefficiency crisis” — you will become a power in the new administration, the efficiency czar, someone with whom everyone will have to check to be sure that their brainstorm isn’t, somehow, inefficient. Thus, you’ll be in a great position to tell people “no” simply by saying: “Sorry, but that will create too much inefficiency.”

The Education Strategy

The rationale for this approach is obvious: People need to understand that the real causes behind the various inefficiencies are political, not merely bureaucractic. Everyone believes that government is inherently inefficient — that the bureaucrats who work in government are the cause of the inefficiencies. They fail to realize that the cause for the various inefficiencies is not the people who work in government but the people whom government serves — not the personal qualities of the people who work in government but in the personal desires of the people whom government serves. For every government inefficiency — just as for every government rule — there is some constituency that advocated it, supports it and may even benefit from it. And this group will fight to keep it.

If Zenith City is ever to intelligently tackle inefficiency in city government, someone will have to educate folks to the underlying political causes. For obvious reasons, the obvious person to do this is you. After all, it isn’t just that you know where all the inefficiencies are buried. You also know each one’s historical origin. If anyone can get the opinion leaders of Zenith City to understand the political forces that created each inefficiency, it’s you.

I suggest that you begin with your most receptive audience. Which opinion leaders are most able to distinguish between the various possible causes? Who is most likely to understand that inefficiencies are fostered by politics? Who is most likely to recognize that inefficient bureaucracies are created by the multiple and conflicting demands of citizens? Go looking for “distinguished” business leaders who once served (anywhere) in government and who, thus, understand the politics of inefficiency.

Talk with them. Describe the predictable forces that forged the report of the Peters Task Force. Then, convince them that, if the Ronald administration concentrates all of its early energy on eliminating inefficiencies, it will accomplish little of significance. It will spend all of its political capital attacking a large, diffuse collection of minor inefficiencies, each of which is supported by a large (but currently latent and invisible) constituency. And it will fail to tackle the city’s serious problems.

Once you obtained the support of the obvious opinion leaders, start to enlarge your coalition. Ask each of these individuals to introduce you to a friend who might understand your idea — and the more influential the friend the better. These people may never have served in government; they may never have thought about the politics of inefficiency. But once it is explained to them — not by you, but by their friend — they will quickly understand it.

Once you have recruited the necessary biggies from the Zenith City establishment, start picking off members of the Peters Task Force. Or, if you think you have a better chance with the editorial board of the Tribune, or the president of the Chamber of Commerce, or Ronald’s campaign manager, start with them. Start with people to whom the members your coalition have direct links. Expand the membership and influence your ad hoc group until you are collectively prepared to talk with either Peters or Ronald.

This, of course, is where things will get very difficult. After all, both Peters and Ronald have publicly staked themselves out as believing two things. First: Zenith City’s government is plagued by a lot of inefficiencies that are costing the taxpayers “millions.” Second: It will be relatively easy to eliminate these inefficiencies. Thus, you (and your new friends) will be asking the mayor to publicly confess that he was wrong during the campaign. And, you will also be asking Peters to publicly confess that her task force report was wrong.

If you can get them to do this — if you can prevent the city from saving “thousands” while ignoring the city’s more pressing problems — you will have indeed done a service to your city.

The Diversion Strategy

So maybe you should help the issue disappear. Rather than worry about the myriad of inefficiencies in city government, try to get people to concentrate on the really consequential issues that confront the city.

After all, you know more about city government than just where the inefficiencies are buried. You also know where the ineffectiveness and incompetences are buried. You know what the city is doing not inefficiently but badly. You know what dormant problems are laying in wait for the new mayor. You know what he needs to do today to ensure that he doesn’t look like a fool next May or next October.

So devote as little time as possible to the inefficiency issue. Instead, select what you think will be the big issues of the future and start preparing the mayor to deal with them. Naturally, Ronald won’t want to hear of it. He got elected to eliminate inefficiency, not to fix the reservoir, or halt the decline in test scores, or improve traffic safety. (So you will have to reassure him that you are, indeed, working on eliminating the inefficiencies.)

But you also have to educate Ronald about the minefields that, as mayor, he will inevitably confront. In fact, your best approach may be to identify a small minefield that you know will hit in the first few weeks of January — and which you also know he will misjudge. Warn Ronald about this problem frequently. Then, when he ignores the problem and it turns into a mini-crisis, you will look like a clairvoyant. It may take more than one example of your prescience before Ronald recognizes that your value lies less in your knack for finding and fixing individual inefficiencies than in your ability to keep him out of trouble.

Given that he knows so little about the real workings of city government, and given that (for a little while) inefficiency will remain at the top of the city’s visible agenda (until the other issues slowly bubble up), you ought to have an easy time helping Ronald to convince himself that he needs you to make it through his mayoral term.

The Mixed Strategy

First, fix some of the more obvious inefficiencies. Announce the individual fixes immediately — or have Ronald announce them. Use a few well-designed examples to convince Ronald, Peters and the Tribune that you are the one to who is squeezing the inefficiency out of city government. But don’t spend too much time doing this — just enough to buy some time.

Second, devote a little energy to educating the mayor about the political sources of the various inefficiencies. You could do this by getting some of the mayor’s friends to talk with him. Or you could go to the mayor-elect with a particularly juicy inefficiency that you have uncovered but warn him not to touch it because doing so will rouse a sleeping but potent constituency. Ronald will, of course, ignore your advice. “The people didn’t elect me to play politics,” he will tell you. “They elected me to do what is right.” And he will get burned. He may have to get burned several times before he will begin to understand that picking battles with powerful constituencies over small inefficiencies is not the way to get a statue of yourself erected on the city hall lawn.

Meanwhile, start working on the diversion strategy. Identify the key issues that will emerge in January. Educate Ronald about each issue. Explain to him what the issue is, who has what views, and how the issue will emerge. But don’t offer him any particular solution.

Instead, prepare your own plan. Actually, prepare several plans. Each one should be designed for intervention a different stages in the issue’s development — for different times when Ronald asks you for help. For if your implementation and education strategies are convincing Ronald that you are the most competent person in city government, he will eventually ask for your assistance on one of these emerging issues. Wait. Only when he asks for your assistance should you unveil to him your (appropriately timed) plan.

If the first one or two of these plans work, you’ll be in city government long enough to collect a full pension.

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