But extraordinary people are not bunched together in most organizations. You have to produce extraordinary results with ordinary people. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration did it in recent years. That s what the most successful organizations in America do every day. That s the management task.
Talent does exist, however, at every level in federal agencies.
These professionals know what s going on, what has to be done, what needs fixing and they re ready to follow good leadership. The trick is to find them, enlist them, and make a habit of listening to them. He was great the exemplar of professional executives in the federal service. And the organization came to know that he knew how to push my buttons. If I really had a bad idea and they had to talk me out of it, they d send him in to do it.