The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton provides expert insights on current events in the federal community. Read more interviews to keep up with daily news and analysis that affect the federal workforce. Reach out to Terry and the Federal Drive producers with feedback and story ideas at [email protected].
Terry Gerton This last year has been a hard one for federal employees, but before we get into all of that, I just want to check in with you. What’s the last year been like for you as you’ve stepped away after a lifetime of public service?
Dave Lebryk I really did have a wonderful run in my 35-plus-year career, starting out as a GS-9 presidential management intern when it was called that. And then my final position was acting secretary and acting deputy secretary of the Treasury. That was really quite a remarkable experience. I think you just look at how important public service is, and I’m really proud of my career. I’m proud of the people I worked with. I am proud of the things that we do as public servants, and that’s been really quite rewarding. I have been spending some time thinking a lot about where we should be headed, and so I spent the fall at the Kennedy School and will be back there in the spring as a Hauser leader and have a chance to interact with students, to lead a study group, do some guest lecturing, doing some office hours and the like. And it’s been really great. I mean, it’s really great to listen to the next generation of people interested in public service and trying to continue to encourage them, despite an environment which may not look very encouraging at the federal level.
Terry Gerton What are you hearing from that next generation? What are their concerns and what are their aspirations?
Dave Lebryk One of the greatest assets that the federal government has, as well as even state and local, is the level of enthusiasm and commitment to making the world a better place. And I think that enthusiasm continues to be there with young people, and they are really interested in trying to solve big problems. Now, one of the things that I would say is that, having worked in the federal government as long as I did, we do a couple of things. We sometimes produce a product. Sometimes we deliver a service. We don’t necessarily always think a lot, as much as we should, about the delivery and the execution of those things. And so I think, a lot of times, public service looks very exciting as it relates to establishing policy. But what you really do find is the nuts and bolts, which ultimately determine how successful you are and whether you are good at actually being a good public servant. A lot discussion I have with them is about, look, you really do need to embrace technology. You really do need to embrace things like project management. You do need to embrace how to lead people in an organization. Those things are really important, absolutely critical, because, as we know, new administrations come in with very ambitious agendas, but they ultimately will be judged about how effective they are at implementing those policies. And oftentimes, the success or failure of their ability to implement is going to be the career civil service, which they inherit. And so having a really strong, capable, principled, effective civil service is really important and I think that the young people I’m meeting with are very much in that mindset.
Terry Gerton What do you think that they perhaps misunderstand and maybe they represent the public at large, about how federal employees really work?
Dave Lebryk A thing that I learned over my career is — when I was advising political appointees, I was an advisor. My job was to bring forth the best available information based on my experience, based on the reading of the law, based on my expertise about, what are your options to do things? But I was not a decision-maker in those cases. And so I think sometimes you can come into government and think, well, I’m going to make these really big decisions. And you may do that when you go into the private sector, too. I’m going to run this unit or whatever it may be. But the second role that I had, I really was a decision-maker, and that’s when I ran things. When I was responsible for these very large-scale government operations, I was the decision-maker about how we were going to look at those operations, how we were going to think strategically, how we were going to achieve operational excellence, the people, the resourcing, the people we chose, how we developed them, how we rewarded them and encouraged them. In those areas, I absolutely was a decision-maker and having those skills and understanding that were really important. Having a good framework about how to lead — really important. I think that oftentimes when people come into the civil service, they think they are going to be only a decision-maker. And I think they have to understand, you sometimes are, but many times you’re not.
Terry Gerton Dave, you’ve written a recent op-ed offering some advice and encouragement for those who have sat through this last year and remain in public service. Can you recap that for us?
Dave Lebryk I have an opportunity to continue to talk to a lot of leaders in civil servants, and it’s been a tough year. I don’t think there’s any way to sugarcoat that in any shape or form. You have had significant reductions, 20%, 25%, 30% reductions. The ability to hire has been limited significantly. I think many are struggling with how to how to respond to the moment and what’s the right reaction in that moment. And I think the couple of things that I would observe is transitions — I’ve been through many transitions and they happen and they’re going to happen. I mean, I think over the course of my career, I probably had close to 30 different bosses, political appointee bosses, because they do turn over every two years. So you are used to transition to a point, but this one has been different. The thing that can be a challenge here is that you need to always kind of come back to some very core things. You need to lead as a leader in the public sector. You need to take that responsibility seriously. Now is not the time to retreat. And that means really about engaging your workforce. It means really making sure that you’re not invisible and control what you can control. And so as I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of things there about, you deliver a product or a service — do that well. Regardless of administration or whatever, you have that responsibility. That stewardship is incredibly important. You may not be able to do as much as you used to do because of the constraints that are there, and that’s really important, but that’s part of the leadership part is really understanding what you’re able to do and what you’re not able to do, and engage the workforce in that conversation. I think there’s sometimes there’s a tendency to withdraw and to say, hey, look, I’m going to back away from this and put my head down. I think as it relates to the core mission that we do in most of the organizations in government, you really shouldn’t do that. And you may need to not do what you used to do, but what you do do, you want to do well.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Dave Lebryk. He’s the former fiscal assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Treasury. Dave, in addition to this last year being really tough for the people who work in government, one of the things that’s happened is many of the obstacles to institutional change have been decimated, for better or worse. A lot of silos that used to keep us from doing things have been just torn down. You’re at the Kennedy School now, and I know you’ve been thinking about this. From where we are now, how do we re-imagine new ways of building the government for the future? Do we have a terrific opportunity? Do we need to be in damage control mode? What’s your thinking?
Dave Lebryk When you’re in a situation, you tend to go to management skills, and that is, how do I manage the environment in front of me? Whereas what I’m really suggesting is you need to do that, and that’s really important. Probably step one is your operational excellence, commitment to your operations. Step two, though, is thinking about leadership. And in the thinking about leading where the organization’s going, it would be a mistake not to really look at your core functions and not say, how can I do it better? Sometimes when you have a budget cut of 3% or 4%, you kind of do marginal changes. In the world we’re in today, you have to look at things fundamentally differently. And I would say that you can’t do it in isolation. You need to be looking outward. And you also need to engage in your people inwardly about that conversation. So when you’re trying to move forward with respect to change, what you can do, I would say you’re right, there are many moments of opportunity here, of looking at things fundamentally differently. I think the challenge, though, is change is hard. It takes discipline. You can talk about change, but the actual process of change is not always exciting or interesting, but it’s necessary. And that’s really about taking inventory about where you are. It’s about having a plan, about understanding your resources, about communicating and the like. And I think that that is something that is enormously important. I would say, coming back to your question is, you know, oftentimes we have this conversation about should government operate like a business? And my answer would be, there’s a reason it’s called the private sector, because much of what you do is in private. There’s a reasons it’s call the public sector, because much what you is in the public. And in the private sector, you can segment and determine what audience you want to serve. Well, in the public sector, it’s a little bit different than that. It’s not to say that there’s not a lot of really important lessons to learn from the private sector. I think that they are very different things, and managing in the public sector is much more complex than it is in managing in private sector, given the competing things you have to balance, rules and regulations and the like. But I’d also say that where we can do much better is how we approach technology. The private sector is so much further ahead than the government with respect to having agile, responsive systems that actually can take information from the user and the end user and change the way they deliver that service more rapidly and more to meeting of the user’s needs. And I think why this is important is, you can take a look at why does someone trust an entity? Well, if they have a good user experience, they are much more likely to trust that entity than if they have a bad user experience. And so at all levels of government, we can do a much better job of making that user experience much better and therefore really engender much greater trust.
Terry Gerton Dave, if you’re looking back on this moment four or five years in the future, what do you hope we will have learned and accomplished?
Dave Lebryk Well, I think a couple of things, and I’ve been in organizations which have not really done the investment in their people that they need to do. And I think what we’re going to find here is that lack of investment in the people is going to have long-term damaging impact. Things like eliminating many of the feeder programs, the really important feeder programs. Things like eliminating really good training and development programs and limiting their access to them. There’s going to be an impact of that. I think that’s going to be one of the lessons. When you when you contract as much as we’ve contracted and limited the resources, the cracks will start to show in the near term. But as I’ve seen over time, sometimes the consequences of those cracks don’t really appear until three or four years down the road. When you haven’t done the investment in your in your O&M, or you haven’t done the investment in your people, or you haven’t done the investment in your systems — those things come back to bite you three or four years down the road. I think we’re really going to have to think hard about how do you quickly try to address those things in the future.
Read more on Federal News Network
