A Passion for Leadership by Robert M Gates Page B

conventional wisdom on defense spending that the secretary would always get rolled by Congress or the military services on specific programs. Of the thirty-three changes I announced in April 2009, thirty-one would be enacted in the next defense budget. The other two came a year later.
    —
    By this point, an effective leader will have reached out to all the important constituencies to listen to their views and to win their support; established priorities; decided which initiatives she must lead and which can be delegated; developed strategies to shape the bureaucratic battlefield to maximize chances for success; and announced what she plans to do. Now it is time for the hardest part of reform: implementation, the part of the process where all too often good intentions go to die.

4
Techniques for Implementing Change
    W hen it comes to implementation, what you are after is the same outcome for every change you seek: practical policies, meaningful and workable structural and cultural changes, achievable plans, and outcomes that are affordable and have the broadest possible support within (and outside) the institution. Over the years, I have used several techniques to achieve those results. They can work at all levels of leadership and in all kinds of organizations.
    —
    In bureaucracies, the
process
of bringing change is critically important to getting lasting results, including acceptance or even enthusiastic embrace. Any fool can (and all too often does) dictate change from the top in a public or private sector bureaucracy. Fundamental to success, though, as I think I’ve made clear by now, is
inclusiveness
—getting as many people involved as possible, especially among the career professionals.
    In every senior position I held, I made extensive use of task forces to develop options, recommendations, and specific plans for implementation. I relied on such ad hoc groups to effect change instead of using existing bureaucratic structures because asking the regular bureaucratic hierarchy (as opposed to individuals within it) if the organization needs to change consistently yields the same response: it almost never provides bold options or recommendations that do more than nibble at the status quo. At the beginning of most presidential administrations, the White House (either the president or the national security adviser) asks the State and Defense Departments to propose areas for significant changes in national security policy—bold departures reflecting changed priorities or circumstances. Such efforts have historically produced pap. In recent decades, significant changes in policy almost without exception have been driven by the White House (or forced by external factors such as foreign crises or congressionally mandated budget cuts).
    It is a rare company where the head of a line unit—an operating division—will offer the CEO a dramatic proposal for transforming (or eliminating) his own organization. I never had a line of executives outside my office anywhere I worked who were there on their own initiative to tell me what was wrong with their outfit and how they intended to fix it. I am confident the same is true of most CEOs. Leaders have to understand that a bureaucracy is incapable of reforming itself.
    Asking established organizations to come up with ways to restructure or change what they do implicitly suggests that what has been done before was inadequate, has failed, or can no longer meet the need. Many people in middle and senior positions have gotten where they are by offending as few people as possible and disrupting as little as possible. So, a leader focused on bringing significant change must find a way to break up the bureaucratic concrete and create the opportunity to develop new thinking and approaches. Involving employees in forging the path forward mitigates the implied criticism. The talent and ideas are often available inside the institution; ad hoc structures offer the best chance for them to