Endless Knots

Medal of Freedom for the Freedom Fighters 50 years later

 

Next Monday, November 24, the three young men murdered by the KKK in Mississippi on June 21, 1964, will receive the Medal of Freedom from President Obama at The White House. Members of the families of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner will be there to accept the award, including my friend from college days, David Goodman. See his ongoing work with the Andrew Goodman Foundation.

The poignant note: None of their parents lived to see this day. Andy's father was the first to die, just a few years after he was killed, then Mickey Schwerner's father, then Schwerner's mother, then James Chaney's mother in 2007 (unable to find reference to his father's death), followed just a few months later, by Carolyn Goodman (post on her memorial service here.) Imagine if you can (I can't) the horror of being those parents, their children's whereabouts unknown for six weeks until their bodies were discovered mutilated in a ditch.

None of the killers convicted in the first trial served longer than six years of their sentences; in 2005, Edgar Ray Killen (yes, that's his name--"You can't make this stuff up," David said on the phone during the trial), who was described as the mastermind of the executions, was convicted of three counts of manslaughter on the 41st anniversary of the crime and is serving three consecutive 20-year terms. Mickey Schwerner's widow, Rita Bender, who was in MIssissippi as a civil rights worker herself when the murders happened, had the poise to testify at Killen's trial.

I've written a number of posts about the Goodmans. I met David the year after Andy was killed and just a short time after my own father died suddenly. Grief can create indelible bonds and so we have remained friends all these years. I can't wait to see the pictures, David.

Mapping the president's org chart: Old post gets new life

Other long-time bloggers will recognize the phenom: a post written years ago suddenly gets lots of hits. I suppose it's no surprise why this post, written a month after the 2008 election, would be popular right now: "For Pres-elect Obama: Create transparent digital org chart."

Jeff Stamps, who invented OrgScope, the software that allows for digital mapping of complex organizations (all OrgScope posts at this link), took the lead in writing this post -- and he (not I, credit truly due to him) did the hard work of mapping the then-incoming Obama administration. In a few hours (we hope this doesn't drag on--it's election day in the US, all non-American readers), it will be time to update this chart again. We published this as a memo to the transition team, encouraging a style of open governing that would make it immensely easier for people to navigate government -- both those in the government and those needing government.

We've reprised these ideas more recently in regard to crisis mapping.

And while I'm on the subject of a single citizen/thinker/business person taking responsibility for researching and publishing information just because he knew it was important, I also want to point to Jeff's detailed work on following the money of the TARP (remember TARP?) funding back when the Bush administration first started bailing out the financial institutions.

OK. It's election day. What do I think? We need to update this chart with information for the turnover in the Obama administration that begins tomorrow.

 

Kamensky: "Using czars and commissions to govern"

Encouraging everyone to click right on over to John Kamensky's post, "Using czars and commissions to govern." John, who's a Senior Fellow at the IBM Center for the Business of Government, has been keeping tabs on new thinking in government for a long time.

We first met in 1993 when we were advising Vice President Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government, where John served as deputy director.

In the post I'm referencing here, John talks about the use of alternative appointments, such as czars, and organizations, like commissions, to cut through some of the government morass - and shines a little light on (disclosing self-interest) OrgScope and its use to track recovery funds, as per a couple of posts here over the past few days. Thanks, John!

Accounting for trillions through OMB

When President Obama receives his first report on "open government" this coming May, we're wondering what it will include. As we reported a couple of days ago, the president's first five actions at the moment of taking office included ordering the Open Government Directive, due by May 21, four months from its issue.

This directive "...instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum." What principles? Transparency, participation, and collaboration.

Three senior government folks have this deliverable on their to-do lists: Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag, the General Services Administration head (Paul Prouty is acting administrator), and the still-to-be appointed Chief Technology Officer, whose reporting structure remains unclear. (We're speculating, based on OMB's organization chart, that the CTO will be in that agency and likely report to Orszag and the president through the "Deputy Director for Management." But we can't really tell, especially since the president said during the campaign that the CTO would report directly to him. The deputy position, by the way, which is to include the new title of Chief Performance Officer, is vacant due to the original nominee's tax problems.)

We've added these OMB positions and other top spots in the newest edition of our OrgScope chart of the accountability structure, as portrayed in our US Gov Map (click, patiently wait a moment for Java to load, click on the Executive Office of the President at about 1 o'clock on the map, then follow the chain down through OMB).

"Transparency for accountability" is the starting point, the critical role for organizational transparency as the precondition for "open government through participation and collaboration." Transparency, accountability, and open government are really OMB's core responsibilities. In essence, OMB is the working hub of the new "open government."

By law, OMB is the place where the executive branch of the US Government comes to "get a whole of itself" (sorry, we couldn't pass up the pun). Its mission is to assist the president with budgeting and  administration of executive branch agencies. Responsible for management and budget, this agency also collects data, measures effectiveness, and helps set priorities. It is a major information pipeline between the administration and Congress. Itself a small agency, OMB's job performance contributes to the effectiveness and efficiency of all the rest of government.

So how OMB does its job is particularly critical at this critical time. Kind of "critical-squared."

Why is mapping the hierarchy, in the way that we've been doing with our US Gov Maps, so important? The maps reveal the clear structure of accountability, the interdependent set of "end-of-the-day" responsibilities that includes every person-in-a-job in the organization. An org chart is the foundation for transparency, and provides context for all the specifics around both organizations that disburse funds and organizations where those funds are headed.

In our FDIC post earlier this week on ballooning rescue organizations, we reported that the budget for just one division was going from $75 million to $1 billion--not in funds to distribute or guarantee (those will likely be many billions, if not trillions) but funds allocated directly for the organization and management.

Three-quarters of that $1 billion will go to contractors. In our view, all organizations--government and otherwise--should map their accountability structures. Those maps should include the jobs of everyone working in the organization, whether full-time employees or contractors, i.e., the only org charts that make sense are the ones that account for everyone. Again, "account for," as in accountability.

The next step for the government agencies involved in the rescue/economic turnaround is to hang the specific details of dollars and deals off the boxes of the agencies and teams responsible for making decisions and awarding funds for rescue spending, investments, loans, and guarantees.

Tracking the transparency trail is already part of at least the stimulus package. While the president graciously took the suggestion of a Republican congressman to include a web site to track the stimulus funds, he has been laying the foundation for real transparency in spending since he entered the Senate--and laying it at the feet of OMB even when it was run by the Bush administration. Obama's early and deep interest is indicated by his co-authorship of the “Google for Government” law.

This bipartisan Coburn-Obama Bill, officially the “Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006,” directed OMB to create a searchable database of almost $3 trillion (in 2007 dollars) in federal grants. It was the first law the new senator introduced when he came to Washington.

The legislation called for tracking contracts, earmarks, direct payments, and loans by January 1, 2008. What happened? OMB made its deadline (see www.USAspending.gov for the result of this useful piece of 21st-century legislation). This is doubtless the platform that will be used to track the stimulus spending (see some of the back story here). For the moment, Recovery.gov is a nascent site in the whitehouse.gov style that shows great promise, offering both tabular views and visual displays of the information, although now only in a few gross chunks adding up to $789 billion.

We believe real transparency connects the details of spending to the the configuration of accountability, aka the org charts. Make both context (the map) and detail (the dollars) visible.

-- Jeff Stamps

Transparency and open government - Obama's midnight memos

At the stroke of midnight on January 21, 2009. five "Presidential Actions" went into force (see White House press statement), establishing a clear foundation of organizing values and principles for the new Obama Administration. The "Midnight Five," with their links, are:

Presidential Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government

Presidential Memorandum on Freedom of Information Act

Executive Order on Presidential Records

Executive Order on Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel

Presidential Memorandum Regarding Pay Freeze

The capstone action is the one we list first, the memo on "Transparency and Open Government," a remarkable document that lays out the fundamental reason we need openness and how to achieve it. This understanding of the central role of transparency is vital at this extraordinarily critical moment in the still-accelerating economic crisis. Transparency is both necessary and beneficial. To paraphrase Judge Brandeis again, things get better with sunlight.

The president doesn't mince words in his preamble to the memo:

"My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government."

How are these open government benefits of efficiency, effectiveness, and a stronger democracy to be achieved? The memo outlines three imperatives ("shoulds"):

• Government should be transparent.
• Government should be participatory.
• Government should be collaborative.

Lest you think transparency and openness apply just to government, listen up all you leaders in organizations of every size in every sector who are feeling and dealing with desperate challenges. We can only get out of this mess by all of us being smarter and contributing to the overall solution.

We are posting the whole transparency memo after the break below, inserting in brackets words that indicate its applicability to all organizations, thus, the revised title and what follows. Please take a read and see if you might be able to endorse the same statement in your organization.

-- Jeff Stamps

Transparency and Open Governments [Organizations]

Obamicon-me: This is fun

So long as I'm having such a me-centered day, how about you? Try it.

Bailout plan fails to instill trust

Where is the new thinking?

With all due respect, I (Jeff speaking) don't think Tim Geithner gets it. Nor, apparently does the market think he gets it, as the Dow began to tank (losing almost 400 points) as soon as the new Treasury Secretary started outlining his plan for economic recovery today. 

According to Stephen Labaton and Edmund Andrews's page-one piece in today's NY Times ("Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout"), Geithner opposed placing tighter curbs on executive pay, didn't endorse directing how the banks would use the bailout money, and refused to challenge the retention of current management -- the brilliant folks who brought us this mess.

The Times article also said Geithner "expressed concern that too many government controls would discourage private investors from participating." And, the Times piece indicates that not everyone in the President's office agreed with Geithner's approach, specifically David Axelrod, who "did not deny that there were differences of opinion as the policy was being crafted or that he had taken a harder line on issues such as executive pay restrictions, as other participants to the discussions recalled."

Obviously, we are not privy to conversations in the White House but, along with millions of other Americans, we too experience the effect of every decision made regarding the economy--and thus care deeply about the choices Geithner is making.

In announcing the plan today, Geithner said he would restore "lost faith" in the bailout. Instead, he apparently did the opposite. His plan unsettled precisely the group he didn't want to offend, private investors. No thank you, said the market.

In a word, what Geithner doesn't get is trust.

We have been following the TARP (Troubled Assets Recovery Program) saga on our site and here on the blog since the program began in October, 2008. Likewise, we've created an OrgScope overlay of the Act I TARP and related programs on our map of the US Government. From the beginning, we said it was all about "transparency for trust," which we titled our online essay about this subject. We have written numerous posts on the subject.

Trust is not a nice to have. It's a need to have. The Obama plan needs to restore trust for private investors, for the American public, and for a Congress that will be asked to come up with billions and probably trillions more before this is over.

And the only route to trust is transparency. Sunlight. Geithner's plan thus far offers little in this regard.

-- Jeff Stamps

NetAge Report #4: Organizing at the edge of chaos

There's an obvious subtitle for this post: "Stop before you chop." Fourth in our series of NetAge Reports on virtual reorganization, we address the hidden forces that sit behind how we shape our organizations. Since so many organizations are undertaking reorganization right now, we feel compelled to contribute what we know. And, we're concerned about mindless reorganization that doesn't take into account unintended consequences.

Driven by twin needs--to optimize communication while enhancing decision-making--organizations are in constant flux between centralization and its opposite, decentralization. But as we've said before, mindless flattening of organizations will be disastrous because it reduces the ability to respond intelligently to change.

In our post yesterday, we pointed out that Obama is "complexifying" government by creating more layers, adding cross-links, and multiplying leadership. At the end of the NYT article we referenced there, Karl Rove is quoted as saying that Obama's moves are likely to "create a more centralized and possibly incoherent policy process." Not surprisingly, Rove has it exactly wrong, calling Obama's reorganization centralizing moves. But Rove is hardly alone in this common misconception, even among our network-tuned friends. However, he does have it right that such rearrangements indeed may cause incoherence. This is why we have promoted the idea of visualizing and analyzing our organizations, so we can manage more complexity with less effort.

Here's NetAge Report #4:

Organizing at the Edge of Chaos

Early in the presidential contest between the newly-presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama and already named Republican John McCain, Elisabeth Bumiller published “Cast of 300 Advises Obama on Foreign Policy” to which the New York Times gave page-one real estate. Largely an insightful “who’s-who” of his advisers for this delicate area of national concern, the article also offers remarkable portraits of the stark contrast between the organizing styles of two the candidates. One was simple, the other complex. Guess who won.

Bumiller describes Obama’s apparatus as a “huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy organized like a mini State Department to assist a candidate whose limited national security experience remains a concern to many voters.” The article goes on to describe an “infrastructure” of twenty teams that focus on regions (e.g., Asia and China) and issues (e.g., nuclear proliferation). By contrast, Bumiller describes John McCain’s approach as “a far smaller and looser foreign policy advisory operation, about 75 people in all, and none are organized into teams.”

So there you have it. McCain had direct input from 75 people, an incredibly large “span” of “direct reports” by any organizational measure and an extremely flat organization. No “middle” men or women. Perfect for simplicity and direct communication. McCain, the ostensibly more experienced of the two men in foreign policy, didn’t think he needed nuanced views regarding foreign policy, and he didn’t get many.

Obama organized differently, with a core team of six people managing twenty separate pipelines of progressively synthesized input from advisors with great depth of expertise. Larger teams had their own sub-teams, such as the forty-person nuclear proliferation team organized into eight working groups by Brookings Institution and National Security Council veteran Ivo Daalder.

Reorganization fever at the White House

Peter Baker has a great reorganization story in today's NY Times' Week in Review section, "And Now Let the Jockeying Begin." It neatly combines attention to the power of the position with the power of the person--twin dynamics that we've been writing about when discussing organization structure. Baker's story recaps many of the reorganization changes we've noted in posts over the past few weeks, and nicely platforms (stayed tuned) tomorrow's post, "Organizing at the Edge of Chaos." The Baker piece and those that we're adding here are not just about the Obama administration but also point to valuable insights for any organization facing redesign themselves in uncertain times, meaning now.

The Times piece notes, as have we, that Obama's government is becoming more complicated, with the appointment of "czars," special envoys, and task forces, which Baker describes as "overlaying an additional set of actors upon a bureaucracy already scratchy about who's in charge. Mr. Obama concluded that new high-powered figures are needed to force change but they pose a delicate management challenge."

These formal organizational overlays are precisely the virtual reorganization forms emerging to transform traditional bureaucracy. They represent a necessary "complexification" of government to match the complexification of problems we face. They also reflect the need for a more "leaderful" structure, a hallmark of the new networked organizations, whether hierarchies or more informal groupings. Such enterprises are, of course, more difficult to manage, but they're smarter. If there's one thing we need right now, it's intelligent organizations. Really, we have no choice.

The article notes the same new White House offices that we described in our recent "Reorganizing the Executive Office of the President"--offices to coordinate climate change and energy, urban policy, technology, and health. Vice President Biden's task force on the middle class is a great example of a coordination overlay that you can see in US Gov + Task Force map. We've also blogged about the unusual two-hatted organizational role assigned to the incoming HHS Secretary, who will also serve as an insider in the Exec Office of President, leading the Health Care Reform effort. This dual role is now threatened by a tax mess with an uncertain confirmation ahead.

According to Baker's article, John Podesta, who co-headed the transition effort, is an architect for many of these design changes. "There are things that cut across agency lines that needed real powerful White House cohesion, direction, and leadership," Mr. Podesta said.

These cross-cutting networks overlaying the hierarchy require new types of leaders who can operate in more complex environments. Thus, the choice of leaders follows the design requirements. "The structure that was built was done with due regard for the fact that there would be conflict. But the team we built was done with the idea that these people could work together," Podesta explained.

-- Jeff Stamps

"...so that all our children could fly"

Speaks, make that, sings (see Amy Dixon-Kolar) for itself, posted for all veterans of the Civil Rights movement, for my parents who called themselves "integrationists" in a segregated Pennsylvania town where that word was hardly understood, and for all of us, still shaking our heads while looking ahead: