Excerpt from Andrew’s Aticle "To lead and manage in the public interest”
Executive Summary
“To Lead and Manage in the Public Interest.” This is NASPAA’s first of the five core competencies, and for good reason. As I have learned in my studies at the MPA department, effective leadership and communicative management structures can be the glue that holds great organizations together or the water that erodes them away. Therefore, it is important that we reflect upon the words “Lead” and “Manage” and revisit what those two words mean to me from a public administration and organizational standpoint. This reflection essay will seek to establish the importance of these words and will look to define them within the context of “Public Interest” as well as how they will hopefully fit into my future as an administrator. We shall first look at the dialogic model researched in the PUBA 710 leadership class and how it relates to leadership in the public sector. We will then investigate several key management systems outlined in the PUBA 610 public and nonprofit management course and how they can help to improve the day to day and long-term management of public and non-profit organizations. Lastly, we will look to draw conclusions from these reflections, that when paired with takeaways from the PUBA 712 administrative ethics course, can round out why leading and managing in the public interest is such an important competency for me to follow in my future endeavors.
Leadership
As I have learned from all my courses within the MPA department, leadership is a central component to the health and wealth of the organization. Leadership can take on different forms and does not always have to be the loud, steadfast, charismatic organizer. As I have made my way through the coursework of this program and applied it to my everyday operations managing students and staff at Adventure WV, I cannot help but notice that leadership takes just as much listening and reflection as it does action and decision-making. In the PUBA 710 leadership course I had the opportunity to read about and research the great American outdoor activist John Muir. Muir’s reverence for the wild places in our country was a guiding light by which he worked to help solidify the protection of land that would eventually pave the way for the future of the National Parks. When dissecting his approach to leadership in 710, I found it helpful to represent it using a dialogic change model. This model breaks down leadership, and more importantly change-leadership, into four cyclical stages of development that all flow around an important understanding of stakeholder engagement. The first, “Exploring and Engaging” finds the leader building an understanding of what they and others would like to accomplish. This includes research into the need for change and engagement of the public to better understand the fundamentals by which the organization and its members (stakeholders) will be built upon. The second stage is that of “Building and Formalizing” which finds the leader creating the structures of communication, culture, professional norms, and the financing/funding of the organization. Third, the leader moves on to “Implementing and Evaluating”, where they implement methods for change through administrative policy and then create time and purpose for project reflection to better their scope and practice with regards to public interest. Last is the final stage of “Developing Further, Replicating or Institutionalizing” where the leader and the organization take the knowledge gained from reflection to modify and improve before the replication and institutionalizing of the policy for future opportunities. When I researched this model last summer, I had no idea how the dialogic change model would come to bear such importance on my soon to be role as a leader within a nonprofit organization. As a founding member of the Morgantown Area Mountain Bike Alliance, I found myself applying the dialogic change model in almost every aspect of my leadership. I sought to explore and engage the public about the inherent need for more shared usage and mountain bike friendly trails and infrastructure in the Morgantown area. Once we had solidified our base and created a mission and purpose, I helped to construct by-laws, articles of incorporation, budget and financial frameworks, and formalized regular board meetings and organizational norms for us to follow. Then in the last three months we have been implementing and evaluating our efforts through trail work, social media messaging, and direct public engagement in parks and riding areas around Morgantown. The feedback and constant messaging that we receive will help us as an organization in the coming months as we look forward to being an active partner with the city of Morgantown and West Virginia University’s strategic Outdoor Economic Development Collaborative. Without this understanding of how the leader can and should be the driving force for change, and then working with the public to build and initiate that change, I never would have been able to be as effective as I have been. Being able to listen, sit back, and watch to see what was needed is a skill that I have learned through both the 710 public leadership course as well as the 610 public and non-profit management course.
Management
If leadership is the cultural and transformational actor or actions that create opportunities for change within organizations, management is the day-to-day operational outputs that ultimately push the organization toward its goals. Management is the structures within the organization, the operational footprint, the command structure, and the organization’s ability to mobilize and capitalize on their mission and culture. In PUBA 610 I learned several key takeaways with regards to management. First, I learned that every organization needs structure. Effective and efficient organizations all have one thing in common, key structures for success with regards to management. Clear lines of communication, well established roles, consistent messaging and task delivery. These are all characteristics of successful structures within management operations. Second, it is important that managers can adapt and use their discretion and expertise to find solutions for problems. Leadership often focuses on culture or long-range outcomes of the organization and unlike management it is not as adaptable to everyday issues. It is in the management of those issues that success and cohesion are built within employees and with the stakeholders they serve. Managers derive their influence through policies and procedures and the enforcement and adherence to these is what ultimately drives the dayto-day processes. My job as Program Support Specialist for Adventure WV focuses heavily on tasks that fall under “Management”. I do get to lead my staff in the initiatives that we work on, but the mission and sense of overall purpose comes from those above. I spend most of my day managing personnel, equipment, food, and vehicles toward the accomplishment of that mission. I use the trust or discretion that I have learned and gained from fellow staff to work semi-autonomously within the world that I operate. Therefore, the management skills learned in 610 and 620 and the policy systems learned in 645 have given me the ability to build successful structures, communication standards, feedback loops, effective policies and procedures, and a sense of purpose for our department.
Conclusions
I feel as though the 712 administrative ethics course should be paired with the 700 capstone course in the sense that it is a great way of summing up all the leadership, management, and public policy tools that I have learned during my time in the MPA program. It’s almost like saying “ok, so you have all the tools...but how are you going to create action and movement while being mindful of the ethical implications of your work?” Whether we are leaders of an organization or the managers who operate and create the policies and procedures that the organization is built upon it is important that we are always keeping in mind the ethical relevance of our actions. In James Svara’s Ethics Primer he discusses the concept of “management by example” (Svara 2015, pg.163). I have found that this concept is truly the backbone of administrative leadership and management because it not only fortifies the culture of the organization in a positive or negative way, but it gives the organization its strength. When designees view their leaders and managers engaging in the same behavior and adhering to the policies and procedures they have designed or enforce this builds trust from the bottom up. When this fails it can erode those foundations and leave organizations in uncertainty. It is also important to recognize that every stakeholder cannot be “at the table” so to speak. As administrators, it is important that we recognize the “other” and work to include them into our policy aspirations. Doing the research and engagement is not only the first step but I would argue the most important step in the dialogic change model described above. It is only through effective stakeholder engagement that we can hope to be the most ethical in our decisions as public policy administrators. As I reflect on the skills learned in my coursework it is easy for me to find everyday occurrences of where these traits can be useful in my current work as an administrator and in the administrative roles I hope to operate within in the future.