THE ENTERPRISE--Line vs. Staff

THE ENTERPRISE--Line vs. Staff

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LINE AND STAFF--A METAPHOR
For nearly all of my career, I was  "Line" manager and/or executive, as contrasted to the "Staff" who gave advice and counsel to the corporate CEO.  The difference is very basic.  A line manager is responsible for results--top line sales, profit/loss, customer service, quality, and employee development and relations.  Staff people are smart folks, but their input is advisory and often critical (of the line management decisions) and they often have the ability to impede (or approve) expenditures, people moves/promotions, facility decisions, etc.  Staff has significant input into policies and procedures, but Line must do the heavy lifting, get the results, hang in there when things get tough and work their way out of problems (which they may have caused by errant decisions).  "The buck stops at the line manager's desk."  If this sounds a lot like I am describing the Executive Branch of Government (the President and his Chain of Command) as compared to the Congress--Senate and the House, it is a fairly apt metaphor. 

During my career at three leading companies where I was a "Line guy" for over 25 years running major businesses (15 of the years with the title of President--not coincidentally) , I worked with a lot of Corporate staff officers.  Some very smart people, well versed in their field of expertise, and might have even been line managers at some point in their career--might have--but usually not lately  They were also politically astute people who built their power base on more than just results (like "sucking up").  The biggest difference between line and staff is that the line guys actually made important decisions that influenced the business and the  staff guys would then second guess a lot of line decisions (the good staff guys would consult with the line people, offer advice, hear the facts and then support--and often influence--the line person's decision).  The others would "pile on" repeating (with nuances) the same criticisms until, as a line manager, you wanted to either smack them down or leave the room. 

But you didn't  You stuck it out.  The thing is, successful, effective line managers (in business or in the military) don't quit when the going gets tough.  They "suck it up" and keep on.  They build organizations and when they do it wrong, or include the wrong people, they change them.  They "clean up their own messes" enduring the complaints and criticism of the staff people.   A wise CEO listens to the staff, but when the chips are down, s/he usually supports the line manager's decision--or replaces those managers, if they are not competent.  The staffers often try to add a bunch of new policies to limit the authority of the line people--on the rationale that it will protect them from making expensive mistakes.  The fact is that these policies almost always transfer power and control from the line people (who know what is really going on, because they are on the "front lines" battling with competitors, trying to keep customers happy, loyal and satisfied) to the staff people who know "theoretically" what "must be going on."

There is a value to persistence, resilience, mental toughness, calm under fire, and the ability to hang in there with what is right when things get tough.  I knew a CEO like this a few years ago.  He was a man of courage, character and competence--and a West Point grad as well.  He's probably reading this and knows I am talking about him. That is my model for a true line manager.

The line vs. staff metaphor still applies even though President Bushhas made enough mistakes to fill pages of criticism.  He is still our President and the Commander in Chief of the Armed Services.  Until someone else gets elected and sworn in, "he has to clean up his own messes" both organizationally and decision-wise.  I know that many readers are as frustrated with him as I am.  Others are downright fed up and wish he were gone a long time ago.  But he's not.  He is still our President.  And maybe, if I let the raging optimist in me consider things, he might just clean up a lot  (not nearly all) of his messes before he leaves office.  I sure hope so--because the opposing party's Presidential "favorites" won't know how to do it any better.

"A WAR WE JUST MIGHT WIN"--AN OP ED PIECE
Last week two strong liberals (Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack both of the Brookings Institution)  of  wrote an Op Ed piece that was published in an even stronger liberal newspaper.  It was about the Iraq war and titled "A War We Just Might Win."  They had spent considerable time in Iraq and were impressed by the progress they saw.  Now I agree, progress in limited places is a long way from "winning" that messy "war."  But it was very encouraging to see them honestly and directly contradict the "party line" being spewed by such gutless voices as Senate Leader Harry Reid, who already conceded defeat publicly and is now doing his worst to make his concession come true.  The text of the NYTimes Op Ed piece follows this edition of THE ENTERPRISE, in case you missed it.

THE RIGHT LEADER MAKES A LOT OF DIFFERENCE
The big difference in Iraq is not just the widely debated "surge of troops" although that is a factor in the progress.  The big factor, just like in a business, is the right leadership with the right ideas.  General David Petraeus studied how to cope with this kind of situation for most of his career, and is now putting into practice what he believed would work.  And in several areas, it is working.  I hope he can spread it further, and that he continues to be able to lead our forces in Iraq.  I worry every day that some insane al Qaeda suicide bomber will get to him and take him out.  That is how they work, you know.  General Petraeus is also an honest, "line" leader who will report to the President in Sept. as promised, and likely tell him that it is going to take longer to clean up the mess and start leaving Iraq to the Iraqis.  Let's hope the line guy prevails over the gutless, politically motivated, second guessing "staffers".   You know who I mean.

BRIDGE COLLAPSE--WHO TO BLAME--A LACK OF MAINTENANCE
Another business metaphor hit me as I watched the tragic bridge collapse in Minnesota this week.  Maintenance always seems to be a postponable expense in business--until something critical breaks.  Then the finger pointing starts.  Why didn't you fund it, the critics ask?  Why didn't we spend the money budgeted for maintenance on actually maintaining the right things is the more appropriate question?  But of course our short memory has already forgotten the millions that were budgeted to beef up the levees around New Orleans before Katrina took them down.  It's easy to second guess, but in these cases, the "line mangers" lost the battle and the "bridge--and levees--came tumbling down."  The vast majority of the Interstate Highway system was built in the same era as this bridge.  That means there are probably a lot of suspect, aged and failing bridges around our country.  Maybe we should quit giving billions to big corporate farmers for NOT growing things and re-direct part of it into maintaining our highway infrastructure. 

I know, many of you are saying we should quit spending billions in Iraq too.  You are at least partly right, but that begs the question, because before 9/11 and Iraq were even on the table, we were still ignoring our infrastructure needs and funneling money to obsolete, politically motivated subsidies for Agriculture and lots of other places.  They were called "earmarks" tacked onto bills that slid through our government into the pockets of the wrong people for the wrong purposes.  It is time to stop that crap.

ENERGY USE--CARS AND TRUCKS AND CAFE VS. TAXES
I'll get a note from a friend at Ford on this one--telling me how well it is doling building higher mileage cars.  He's right.  GM is too.  So why are their corporate chieftains fighting the increase in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards?  It's disruptive, that's why--but it's necessary too.  Honda and Toyota already achieve much higher fuel efficiency, even when you adjust for the "trucks" sold in larger quantities by Ford and GM.  C'mon auto execs.  Quit playing ostrich and get your heads out of the sand (or wherever else you have them) and get with the program.  You know how to do it.   The technology exists today.  Use it.   CAFE is just one of a 3 leg stool--the other two are higher gas taxes and much, much higher gas guzzler taxes and annual license fees.  While Congress is at it, how about taxing gas and spending the money to 1) develop alternative (not ethanol!) energy and 2) reinforce a few bridges in our country. 

The only way to get people to drive less is to hit them in the pocket book.  And by the way, we need to reinstate and beef up the "gas guzzler tax" which doesn't hit the poor folks nearly as hard as a gas tax--it hits the wealthy soccer Moms driving a 70 lb. kid to soccer practice in a 5000 lb. truck-based SUV.  If Rush Limbaugh ever read the copy of this newsletter I send to him each week, he'd probably get mad at me for wanting to tax his big SUV.  To him I say, "pay if you want to play"...and you can afford it.  And hit them each year at license renewal time too, and direct that money to local/state infrastructure (bridge building, both literally and figuratively).

IMMIGRATION--A PRAGMATIC SOLUTION?
One of these days, someone will realize that we need immigrant workers in the US.  Unemployment at under 5% is structural--it is the Americans who aren't serious about finding or keeping jobs.  They are either lazy, unskilled, unreliable, worthless or all of the above.  What we need to do is to quit trying to round up all the illegals and "fine them" for coming here.  We can't stop them.  Hell, we can't even build the wall that Congress has appropriated billions for.  We need to get them to "sign the guest book" as Dennis MIller so aptly puts it.  If we know who they are, and where they are, and what they are up to, it might even help our Homeland Security.  We need skilled immigrants like doctors, nurses, scientists, and we need laborers, housekeepers and even migrant farm workers too.

While we are ticketing people like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan for driving under the influence, and lots of others for driving without insurance, we should nail the "unlicensed--un-ID-card carrying immigrants" and deport just them.  If we give the ones who are here for the right reason a reasonable time window to show up and "sign in" --to get their tamper resistant, RFID chip embedded ID cards--we can let them go on about their work, picking our crops, tending our lawns and yes, even paying taxes, because now we'll know where they are and what they are up to.  Then we can deport the 5% that are "bad actors."

Well, that is plenty or ranting for a single week.  I hope some of the ideas will spur you to take some action, think a big differently, or even disagree--because in that disagreement is one of the great things about America.  Freedom to disagree...and then debate the outcome.  Go meet with your Senator or Congressman.  Start a dialogue.  They are YOUR elected representatives. 

Best, John

The New York Times
July 30, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
A War We Just Might Win
By MICHAEL E. O'HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK

Washington

VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration's critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily "victory" but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated - many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services - electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation - to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began - though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

In Ramadi, for example, we talked with an outstanding Marine captain whose company was living in harmony in a complex with a (largely Sunni) Iraqi police company and a (largely Shiite) Iraqi Army unit. He and his men had built an Arab-style living room, where he met with the local Sunni sheiks - all formerly allies of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups - who were now competing to secure his friendship.

In Baghdad's Ghazaliya neighborhood, which has seen some of the worst sectarian combat, we walked a street slowly coming back to life with stores and shoppers. The Sunni residents were unhappy with the nearby police checkpoint, where Shiite officers reportedly abused them, but they seemed genuinely happy with the American soldiers and a mostly Kurdish Iraqi Army company patrolling the street. The local Sunni militia even had agreed to confine itself to its compound once the Americans and Iraqi units arrived.

We traveled to the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul. This is an ethnically rich area, with large numbers of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. American troop levels in both cities now number only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate. Reliable police officers man the checkpoints in the cities, while Iraqi Army troops cover the countryside. A local mayor told us his greatest fear was an overly rapid American departure from Iraq. All across the country, the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term remains a major question mark.

But for now, things look much better than before. American advisers told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq).

In addition, far more Iraqi units are well integrated in terms of ethnicity and religion. The Iraqi Army's highly effective Third Infantry Division started out as overwhelmingly Kurdish in 2005. Today, it is 45 percent Shiite, 28 percent Kurdish, and 27 percent Sunni Arab.

In the past, few Iraqi units could do more than provide a few "jundis" (soldiers) to put a thin Iraqi face on largely American operations. Today, in only a few sectors did we find American commanders complaining that their Iraqi formations were useless - something that was the rule, not the exception, on a previous trip to Iraq in late 2005.

The additional American military formations brought in as part of the surge, General Petraeus's determination to hold areas until they are truly secure before redeploying units, and the increasing competence of the Iraqis has had another critical effect: no more whack-a-mole, with insurgents popping back up after the Americans leave.

In war, sometimes it's important to pick the right adversary, and in Iraq we seem to have done so. A major factor in the sudden change in American fortunes has been the outpouring of popular animus against Al Qaeda and other Salafist groups, as well as (to a lesser extent) against Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local leaders and seized young women to marry off to their loyalists. The result has been that in the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help. The most important and best-known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less than six months has gone from the worst part of Iraq to the best (outside the Kurdish areas). Today the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets without body armor.

Another surprise was how well the coalition's new Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams are working. Wherever we found a fully staffed team, we also found local Iraqi leaders and businessmen cooperating with it to revive the local economy and build new political structures. Although much more needs to be done to create jobs, a new emphasis on microloans and small-scale projects was having some success where the previous aid programs often built white elephants.

In some places where we have failed to provide the civilian manpower to fill out the reconstruction teams, the surge has still allowed the military to fashion its own advisory groups from battalion, brigade and division staffs. We talked to dozens of military officers who before the war had known little about governance or business but were now ably immersing themselves in projects to provide the average Iraqi with a decent life.

Outside Baghdad, one of the biggest factors in the progress so far has been the efforts to decentralize power to the provinces and local governments. But more must be done. For example, the Iraqi National Police, which are controlled by the Interior Ministry, remain mostly a disaster. In response, many towns and neighborhoods are standing up local police forces, which generally prove more effective, less corrupt and less sectarian. The coalition has to force the warlords in Baghdad to allow the creation of neutral security forces beyond their control.

In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In particular, we still face huge hurdles on the political front. Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation - or at least accommodation - are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines.

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

Michael E. O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kenneth M. Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.