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A Threat to the Team

”Are the rumors true?” Kay Rodd demands. “Has HR really changed the rules?” As the district attorney of Spalding County, you’ve been dreading this question. And you know the honest answer is “yes.” Still, you search for an equally honest answer that can delay the crisis for a little while.

While 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 different kind of problem. All Governing readers and Governing.com visitors are invited to draw on their experience and submit suggestions.

Since last week’s briefing by Cecil Budd, the county’s new human resources director, you’ve been searching for an alternative answer for your staff of lawyers — something that is both honest and helpful. Now you face a potential disaster: the sudden departure of many of your talented attorneys.

This crisis is being brought on by Budd’s decision to bring the county’s HR system into the 21st century. His latest step: completely redesigning the personnel evaluation system.

Last spring, Budd moved from New York City, where he was deputy assistant director for personnel in the Department of Land Management. The move is a promotion for Budd. No longer anyone’s assistant, he now is the HR director for an entire jurisdiction. And he intends to make his mark.

Budd spent six months getting to know Spalding County. And he hasn’t been impressed. County government is fragmented, he concluded, without any overarching HR strategy or system. Indeed, Gloria Troy, the county executive, recruited Budd precisely because she believed that Spalding needed to modernize its personnel operation.

This fall, Budd started making changes. Few were big. For example, taking advantage of the county’s state-of-the-art intranet, Budd created a variety of electronic forms to replace outmoded paper procedures. Now, however, he is making a very big change.

At last week’s briefing, Budd explained that he was introducing standard HR practice to county government: “It’s time we stopped ’grade inflation,’ ” he asserted. “It’s time that we evaluated our people honestly.” And to ensure that public managers in the county do just that, he has (with Troy’s agreement) created new standards for the annual performance evaluations, which you need to submit in early January.

Every manager in the county will give each employee one of three ratings. Between 15 and 20 percent of any unit’s staff can get a rating of “exceeds expectations.” Between 65 and 75 percent can get “meets expectations.” And between 5 and 20 percent will get “fails to meet expectations.” No exceptions.

Now, Rodd is in your office wanting to know if this is all true. Because if it is, she asserts, “I’m outta here.” Indeed, with county salaries frozen and law firms looking for talent, she can easily land a job in a top firm. “From the moment I passed the bar until today, my ratings have always been excellent,” she reminds you. And if she stays, you both know, they might quickly drop. “Tell me,” she demands, “why should I jeopardize my career for some HR fad?”

Unfortunately, her career isn’t the only one in jeopardy. You anticipate that every one of your hot-shot lawyers will be in your office before long. Everyone will be asking the same questions. Everyone will be threatening to leave. And although not all of them have families who can move to another city, a number of them do, and will.

Over the past five years, you have built one of the best law “firms” in the state. You’ve recruited some of the top law school graduates from the state university and the Ivys. You’ve given them lots of responsibility. They’ve grabbed it and produced results — uncovering corruption and conflicts of interest in everything from government contracting to business accounting.

Your people enjoy the opportunity to be part of a high-performing team and believe in what they have accomplished. They’ve made a big splash and had some fun. They want to keep doing it.

At the same time, everyone on the team recognizes that any member can leave at any time — and get paid a lot more. Your people aren’t doing it for the money. They do it for the satisfaction of making a significant contribution.

Still, each year, there is some turnover. Lawyers have children, too. And their children have to go to college. So when a family needs a little more money, someone leaves for the private sector. Most of them have acceded to your informal request that they give you six months’ notice, not just the traditional two weeks. This gives you a chance to recruit a top-quality replacement, and you have been able to continuously replace departing talented veterans with talented rookies.

That is all in jeopardy now. You are going to have to tell many of your people that they are merely meeting expectations. And every member of your team knows that he or she can easily earn an “exceeds” at any firm. How can you keep your team together?

Or, you wonder, is it time for you to leave?

What should you do?

For Bob Behn’s approach to this month’s public management dilemma — or to post your own ideas — click here.

Robert D. Behn conducts executive-education programs on performance management for public officials at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and is the author of Rethinking Democratic Accountability (Brookings). To read a chapter from the book, click here.

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