LEARN TO LEAD - Civil Air Patrol

pany’s non-transportation assets and concentrating onspecialized transportation, including Jeep, a companythat had lost money in each of the preceding five yearsbut that Chapin believed could be turned around by substantialcost reductions and economies of scale in manufacturing,purchasing, and administration).Chapin succeeded for the year ending September 30,1971. AMC earned $10.2 million on sales of $1.2 billion.Recalling the list of general management functions inTable 2, which similarities and differences appear salientand important?StrategyBoth Chapin and Costle had to establish objectivesand priorities and to devise operations plans. In business,“corporate strategy is the pattern of major objectives, purposes,or goals and essential policies and plans for achievingthose goals, stated in such a way as to define whatbusiness the company is in or is to be in and the kind ofcompany it is or is to be.” 16 In reshaping the strategy ofAMC and concentrating on particular segments of thetransportation market, Chapin had to consult his boardand had to arrange financing. But the control was substantiallyhis.How much choice did Costle have at EPA as to the“business it is or is to be in” or the kind of agency “it is oris to be”? These major strategic choices emerged from thelegislative process which mandated whether he should bein the business of controlling pesticides or toxic substancesand if so on what timetable, and occasionally,even what level of particulate per million units he was requiredto control. The relative role of the president, othermembers of the administration (including White Housestaff, congressional relations, and other agency heads),the EPA Administrator, congressional committee chairmen,and external groups in establishing the broad strategyof the agency constitutes an interesting question.Managing Internal ComponentsFor both Costle and Chapin, staffing was key. As DonaldRumsfeld has observed, “the single most importanttask of the chief executive is to select the right people.I’ve seen terrible organization charts in both governmentand business that were made to work well by good people.I’ve seen beautifully charted organizations that didn’twork very well because they had the wrong people.” 17The leeway of the two executives in organizing andstaffing were considerably different, however. Chapinclosed down plants, moved key managers, hired and fired,virtually at will. As Michael Blumenthal has writtenabout Treasury, “If you wish to make substantive changes,policy changes, and the Department’s employees don’tlike what you’re doing, they have ways of frustrating youor stopping you that do not exist in private industry. Themain method they have is Congress. If I say I want to shutdown a particular unit or transfer the function of one areato another, there are ways of going to Congress and in factusing friends in the Congress to block the move. They canalso use the press to try to stop you. If I at Bendix wishedto transfer a division from Ann Arbor to Detroit because Ifigured out that we could save money that way, as long asI could do it decently and carefully, it’s of no lasting interestto the press. The press can’t stop me. They may writeabout it in the local paper, but that’s about it.” 18For Costle, the basic structure of the agency was setby law. The labs, their location, and most of their personnelwere fixed. Though he could recruit his key subordinates,again restrictions like the conflict of interest lawsand the prospect of a Senate confirmation fight led him todrop his first choice for the Assistant Administrator forResearch and Development, since he had worked for amajor chemical company. While Costle could resort tochanges in the process for developing policy or regulationsin order to circumvent key office directors whoseviews he did not share, for example, Eric Stork, theDeputy Assistant Administrator in charge of MobileSource Air Program, such maneuvers took considerabletime, provoked extensive infighting, and delayed significantlythe development of Costle’s program.In the direction of personnel and management of thepersonnel system, Chapin exercised considerable authority.While the United Auto Workers limited his authorityover workers, at the management level he assigned peopleand reassigned responsibility consistent with his generalplan. While others may have felt that his decisions toclose down particular plants or to drop a particular productwere mistaken, they complied. As George Shultz hasobserved: “One of the first lessons I learned in movingfrom government to business is that in business you mustbe very careful when you tell someone who is working foryou to do something because the probability is high thathe or she will do it.” 19Costle faced a civil service system designed to preventspoils as much as to promote productivity. The Civil ServiceCommission exercised much of the responsibility forthe personnel function in his agency. Civil service rulesseverely restricted his discretion, took long periods to exhaust,and often required complex maneuvering in a specificcase to achieve any results. Equal opportunity rulesand their administration provided yet another network ofprocedural and substantive inhibitions. In retrospect,Costle found the civil service system a much larger constrainton his actions and demand on his time than he hadanticipated.77