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Setting goals at EPA
Q: Is there a window of opportunity in that first year that you either exploit or risk losing altogether?
MR. COSTLE: Absolutely, just as it is with Presidents. Right after a new administration is elected, you will get a benefit-of-the-doubt that you'll never get again. It will diminish. You'll never have more flexibility than you have early on, so it is very important to know what you want to do. If you don't set objectives, you can spend four years coping. External events will then basically determine what you spend your time on. You may be a good administrator in that set of circumstances, but you are going to walk away feeling like that adage about the Chinese meal -- you are hungry again in an hour.
Q: Is there a reasonable expectation about what you can accomplish as an administrator? Obviously, you can bite off more than you can chew. Is there any sort of wisdom that you could provide about what is reasonable to expect?
MR. COSTLE: You have to believe that, like Sisyphus, you can push that boulder up the hill. Any number of things will conspire to frustrate your ability to accomplish your goals. You may underestimate the energy and time it is going to take you to get from A to B. But if you go in assuming that you are not going to get there, and you are going to settle for some indeterminate point in between, you might as well not do it. You won't be able to mobilize the energy and talent of the Agency to accomplish a set of goals. If you believe in the goals that Congress has given the Agency, you have got to believe that you can make measurable, tangible progress toward them. If you don't believe that you can motivate the Agency and organize it to get that done, nobody else is gong to believe it either.
That doesn't mean you have to go in with a naive perspective. That is why I say setting achievable goals is important. It's a fine balance. You don't set the bar too high because that frustrates people, but you have to set it high enough to challenge people to achieve more than they think they can.
I think the worst situation is where you take a job like that and you wander in saying, "What's in the in-box today?" That is deadly, because you'll never get out of the in-box mentality. You'll always be perceived as the boarding party, and everybody will be out to capture you, rather than trying to get your goals accomplished. The job of a public administrator is harder in many respects than that of a CEO of a corporation. You have so many more constituencies to deal with, and so many entities outside your control that can shape decisions which can negate your goals. You have to build consensus in a way that isn't necessary in the private sector, where you can simply give an order. As a CEO, your fear may be that someone will carry out a wrong or hasty order too literally. You don't have that fear in the government. There your fear is: I give an order -- Can anybody hear it? Is anything going to happen as a result?