 You're watching FJTN, the Federal Judicial Television Network. Our program will emphasize conservation. The amount of energy being wasted, which could be saved, is greater than the total energy that we are importing from foreign countries. Opportunity is our engine of progress, so I'm asking Congress to work with me and not against me to control federal spending, to pass our fair share tax plan, lowering rates further, open up closed markets overseas, and urge other nations to cut their high tax rates to strengthen their economies and ability to buy American products. Saddam Hussein's unprovoked invasion, his ruthless, systematic rape of a peaceful neighbor, violated everything the community of nations holds dear. The world has said this aggression would not stand and it will not stand. Hello and welcome to our program. I'm Michael Burney and today I'll be facilitating a discussion about what we can learn from the most important leadership setting, the American presidency. I'm joined today in another part of our studio by our resident leadership expert, Dr. Michael Siegel. Michael, welcome. Hello Michael, I'm excited to be here and help our audience make connections between the leadership challenges faced by three American presidents and their own leadership challenges in the courts. Should be fun. Good. Now to keep Michael grounded in the realities of federal court administration, we've invited two court leaders here today. I'm pleased to introduce Ms. Betsy Paray, clerk of court of the United States District Court, Virginia Eastern and Alexandria, and Mr. Ted Johnson, the Chief U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services Officer for the Western District of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh. We also have courts who will be participating with us on Push to Talk and will look forward to hearing from you. Here's how we'll proceed. First, Michael will make brief introductory comments about the administrations of the three past U.S. presidents. He'll talk about the potentials and limitations of presidential power. Then he'll portray four specific dimensions of effective presidential leadership and relate those to the administrations of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush Sr. After each president we analyze, there'll be time for questions from our Push to Talk sites. Then with the help of our guests, we'll draw out the implications of those lessons to the federal judiciary. Okay, let's take a look at the specific objectives for our program. If you have the note-taking guide, please turn to page three. The primary goal of this program is to help federal court managers and leaders improve their leadership capacity in four specific areas, policy or vision, the ability to enunciate a clear vision or set of goals, and explain it to others in an effective manner. Politics or strategy, the skills needed to implement one's vision to influence others and build coalitions for change. Structure or management, the design skills needed to set up an effective organizational structure and manage operations in a smooth manner. Process or decision-making, the ability to actively listen to opposing viewpoints and make a clear decision and the ability to resolve conflicts among staff. Okay, that's what we'll be covering, and all sites, please feel free to fax in your questions at any time. We'll get to as many as we can during the question-and-answer session. Finally, a heads-up to our push-to-talk sites. I'll be asking you to tell us what you remember about each of the presidents we discuss, so start thinking about that. Okay, now back to you, Michael. Thanks, Michael. When they created the Office of the Presidency, the Founding Fathers had their fingers crossed, according to Presidential Scholar Lewis Koenig in his book, The Chief Executive. The reason they had their fingers crossed was that they did not want to recreate a monarchy in the young republic, and yet they wanted to invest the office with energy, as Alexander Hamilton said. Well, if they wanted energy in the executive branch, energy is what they got. The office has evolved from that point to be what many consider, as Michael mentioned, the most important leadership position in the world. And yet people who have served in that office see it quite differently. A frustrated Lyndon Johnson once said, the only power I have is nuclear, and I can't use it. Writing about Eisenhower Truman said, poor Ike, he'll say, do this, do that, and no one will do a thing, it won't be a bit like the army. And even in the judiciary, when he was Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit, Judge Merritt mentioned, or made the comment, when they handed me the reins of power, nobody told me there was nothing attached to the reins. So great positions have great frustrations, great constraints. The office of the presidency has great constraints. Consider the U.S. Congress, consider the institutions that we work for, the U.S. courts, as a constraint on presidential power. Consider the interest groups and the media. Many other constraints and limitations on presidential power exist. The question then becomes, how does a president or really any leader lead effectively in spite of the constraints? And the answer, in my opinion, is by mastering four components of leadership. And I'm going to briefly describe these components, illustrate them, and then, as Michael mentioned, we will apply this analysis to three recent U.S. presidents. The first component of leadership is policy. Policy is vision. Vision is purpose. What's your purpose? Where do you want to take the country? What's your goal for the country in the next four years? When he decided to challenge Jimmy Carter for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1980, Senator Teddy Kennedy was interviewed by Roger Mudd. And Mr. Mudd asked him a very reasonable question, which was, Senator, why do you want to be president? And here's Kennedy's answer, and I quote verbatim. He couldn't answer the question. He hadn't thought about it. Of course he should be president. He's a Kennedy. He's a very powerful U.S. senator. But credentials and reputation are not enough. You need a vision. Warren Bennett said the first ingredient of leadership is a guiding vision. In order to have leadership, you need vision. Some of the great organizations know this. Nordstrom Department Store has a vision. Their vision is world-class customer service. You feel it when you walk in there. The salespeople are anxious to help you, and they make you feel like the most important person in the world. That's what we call vision. Federal Express had a vision. Get the package there the next day. It's not very lofty, but it's very powerful. John Kennedy had a vision when he said we're going to send a man to the moon and bring him back to the earth before the decade is out. We had no capacity to do it. And yet because the president laid out a vision, we rallied, we organized our resources, and committed to the accomplishment of that goal. Excuse me. The next step in leadership, in my opinion, is politics. Politics is strategy. Politics is about how are you going to implement your vision. Mario Cuomo once said, you can campaign in poetry, but you must govern in prose. This is the details of delivery. This is how you're going to implement your vision. Who are you going to get to help you? How will you influence the Congress if you're the president of the United States? How will you persuade your own executive branch of two million people? What's your strategy? When she was a provost at Stanford University, Dr. Condoleezza Rice said, you don't have a program. You can have a vision, but if you can't get it done, it's nothing. It may be elegant and beautiful on paper, but if you can't get it done, it never happened. So you need to have a strategy of implementation. Many corporate executives, in addition to government officials, fail because they cannot execute their vision. They cannot make things happen. And this is the second very important ingredient of leadership. Third, in my opinion, is structure. Structure is a management question. Structure is the question of, how are you going to organize the White House? Will you have a chief of staff, for example? Or will you, like Jimmy Carter, decide not to have a chief of staff? In the courts, will you have a chief deputy or not? Very important question, and a leader needs to very deliberately make this decision because it is a critical decision. Will you have an open or closed operation? Richard Nixon had a very closed operation. His own cabinet secretaries could not get in to see him for a year and a half, according to then HUD Secretary George Romney, because they were intercepted by Haldeman and Ehrlichman. That's called a closed operation. Many managers say, I have an open door policy. One of the questions I have is, when was the last time anyone ever walked through that door? And what happened to the last person who did? So you have to, again, think about these things very carefully. Be very deliberate in your structure and management decisions. And finally, there is a question of process. Process is decision making. How are you going to make and announce decisions? How are you going to handle conflict? And will you build in diversity into your administration? I believe these four components of leadership are essential to analyze the President of the United States and any other leader in current organizations. Let's take a moment to check in with our court leaders before we begin analyzing specific presidents. What would be the relevance of the concepts that Michael has discussed to work in a probation and pretrial services office? Michael, I think what we're talking about is managing change, moving from where we are today to our goal, where we want to be, and developing a strategy to navigate from point A to point B. Today's budget has really forced us to look at reorganization and, in my case, merger of pretrial probation. So my goal has really been set by the court. We're going to go from two agencies to one. Three key elements. The next step is to develop a strategy. Three key elements to making a strategy. And they're different for every instance. But the three key elements I see are, one, listing and prioritizing your tasks. Two, and most importantly, is using staff not only to work towards that goal but in the planning of the strategy. And, three, constantly monitoring your strategy, making adjustments when needed and maybe even changing that strategy if it's not working for you. But the most important of those three elements is to use the staff, make sure everybody's going in the same direction. And Betsy, how would those ideas apply in the U.S. District Court? Well, the two remaining concepts, structure and process, apply perfectly. Structure is all about surrounding yourself with good people. And these are people who have different skills and different abilities and talents than you. So if you're a big picture leader, make sure you've got people who are detail-oriented. And if you're an optimist, make sure you've got some pessimists. And a perfect example in my organization is we plan an annual clerk's office meeting and it's outdoors, it's a ropes program where you're doing team-building activities. And in my mind, it's always a beautiful spring day, the sun is shining, it's warm, it's comfortable and people are having a great time. In my training coordinator's mind, it's rainy, windy and cold. So I don't worry about, you know, what is going to happen just knowing that Hillary is going to make sure everything is taken care of, there's backup plans, there's a contingency plan and the day's going to go off out of hitch. But again, she's a compliment to my sort of the big picture, her following up with the details, my optimism and her defensive pessimism. The second part is process. And it's all about decision-making, conflict resolution and making sure you're getting the information that you need to make the best decisions possible. So it means going out and getting information from as many people as you can. And if you don't feel like you're getting the information that you need, for example from your managers and supervisors, then go ahead and talk to your frontline folks and go ahead and talk to the newest person in the office as well as the more seasoned people in the office. But don't spend too much time gathering information. You always need to keep in mind that there are some decisions that need to be made quickly and some decisions that take time and the involvement of many, many stakeholders, including, of course, the judges. Thanks Betsy and Ted. Those are great insights. Now let's turn to our president starting with Jimmy Carter. But first, let's check in with our push-to-talk sites. What do you remember about the administration of President Carter? And don't tell me that none of you were born in 1976. Wasn't it Carter that gave federal employees a 10% raise? That's right. That's right. Just encourage the push-to-talk sites to dial in later. We'll have a chance to ask you what you remember about the administrations of Ronald Reagan and also George Bush Sr. Let's turn back to Michael now for his observations. Thanks Michael. We are going to talk now about the administration of Jimmy Carter and I want to be sure that I distinguish at the front end the difference between Carter as a president which is the focus of my analysis today and Carter as a post-president, a great humanitarian who has recently been honored worldwide and who deserves all of these accolades because of his great humanitarian efforts. My focus here today, however, is on his years in the White House and in this regard I find several things to be critical of and I want to elaborate them according to my own framework. In terms of policy or vision and I like Ted's idea of going from point A to point B because that really is what vision is all about. Well the campaign of Jimmy Carter really started in large respect from a memo he received from Patrick Cadel. Patrick Cadel is a pollster in Cambridge, Massachusetts who advises the program called the West Wing or as some of my students like to call it the left wing. In any case, Mr. Cadel wrote Jimmy Carter a memo in 1975 in which he said, Mr. Carter, the people are sick and tired of Watergate. They're fearful of presidents who lie, who create enemies lists, who wield power without any regard for the Constitution and they are looking for a good, honest man of integrity. And Mr. Carter, you are the man. Well, Jimmy Carter read this memo and he said this sounds pretty good. The story goes in fact that he called his mother and he said, Ma, I've decided to run for president. And the response was president of what, Jimmy? Excuse me, Michael. In term of your first issue, policy or vision is it fair to say that Carter had none? Michael, I think it is fair to say that. He campaigned on a broad theme. He was really trying to position himself as the anti-Nixon, if you will. He was not going to be that kind of president. He was going to be a man of honesty and integrity and a humble man. And as we can see now if we look at a clip, we will see Jimmy Carter as he walked down Pennsylvania Avenue on the day of his inauguration. This was a very deliberate attempt by Carter to show that he was not an imperial president. To show that he was willing to avoid the writing in a limousine that every president before him had done on the day of inauguration and that he was a common man who was going to serve the people in a humble fashion. Basically he ran on defining what he was not. He was not a power-hungry megalomaniac. He was not an imperial president but he wasn't that good in telling us what he was. He was better in telling us what he was not than what he was. And in the wake of Watergate, the people were quite receptive to the message that he was different from Richard Nixon. Some organizations sometime will choose a leader. If a leader has fallen, they will choose that leader's exact opposite. Rather than looking at what's really right for the organization, they will go to that leader's exact opposite. This is in a sense what the American people did by electing Jimmy Carter and I believe along with my colleague Dr. Mark Siegel who served in the Carter White House that he campaigned on a thematic campaign, broad themes, honesty and integrity as opposed to a programmatic campaign, I will cut taxes, I will increase defense spending, whatever it is. Thanks. Betsy, what do you think about the importance of discussing vision with your judges and our staff? Critically important. But the key to it is using words that works best for a particular audience. So for judges, vision sort of became overused during the 90s and similar to paradigm shift. So sometimes judges will just kind of stop listening if you use the V word. So you can use terms like objectives, priorities, goals and that works well. With staff, they understand vision and you can use those words and phrases. But the key to vision is actually if you say you have an open door policy, have an open door policy. If you say you want input from everyone, you really should and do that. You have to have, you know, like to receive feedback. And if you're gonna say that you're gonna do things and you believe things, then make sure you do it because talk is cheap and you might have the greatest vision ever written and laminated on cards or something. But if you don't do it, you lose your credibility and you lose any chance at all to succeed in the organization as a whole. Ted? I agree with Betsy. Setting goals is critical. I mean, we do that. It's part of everyday life. From the time we get up in the morning to the time we go to sleep, we're setting long term goals, short term goals, educational goals, financial goals. When we reach those goals, we feel good about ourselves. We feel like we've accomplished something. When we buy our first house or when we graduate. Paul DePolito, a manager in my office when discussing this issue with him, said life without goals is like being on a treadmill and going nowhere fast. And I pretty much agree with him. Imagine being in jail, getting up, eating, existing, going to bed, getting up, eating, existing, and going to bed. Same holds true for the workplace. I think that employees need something to work for, need something to feel good about, a plateau to reach, to measure their success. If you have them and you use them and use their talents, you're all going in the same direction to reach that same goal. Now, the office goals are important, but individual goals are also important. I think it's important for a leader or a chief to also understand that the individual employees have goals. And it's our responsibility to know that, to sit down, where does that employee want to be in a year? Where do they want to be in five years and 10 years? Do they want to be a DQA? Do they want to be supervisors, specialists? Do they want to take my place as chief? And if that's the case, I think that we need to give them that opportunity. If they're going to help you work towards your goal, you need to help them work towards theirs. Michael, your second area of leadership performance relates to politics or what you call strategy. How would you describe Carter's politics? I can think of a lot of words to use about Carter's politics. None of them particularly flattering. Perhaps the best way to get at it is to ask you, I know you like movies. You remember a 1972 movie called The Candidate? Sure, that was the one that was starring Robert Redford. That's right, Michael. It was Robert Redford who starred as Bill McKay, a political candidate who really did not know why he was running for office. He was a very attractive political candidate who was managed by savvy political consultants, the Carl Roves of their day. And through very hard work and clever electioneering, they got him elected. And in the last line of the movie, the candidate turns to the political consultant and he says, now what do we do? With some measure of exaggeration, the same movie could be written about Jimmy Carter. Because he did not have a vision, because he had not outlined goals, as Ted and Betsy have described them. His staff were really uninformed. They were unfocused. In fact, they spent the first days of the Carter years, the very first days of the administration. They sat around the Roosevelt room and they were arguing about who should lead the first meeting. And Bob Lipchitz said, well maybe I should lead the first meeting because I'm the oldest. And Hamilton Jordan came in and said, no, maybe it should be me. And Jody Powell, they were all arguing about who should lead the first meeting. They had not a clue as to what the policy objectives were of the new administration. If we contrast this, for example, with Ronald Reagan's early days, his staff, specifically David Stockman, who would be his budget director, was already running around Capitol Hill with budget books, negotiating the budget changes they would introduce with Capitol Hill leaders before the inauguration. This is called having a vision and having a plan. And this is what leaders need to do. And this is what leaders need to transmit to staff their goals, their objectives, and what they really want done. On top of this Carter brought to Washington people who were really not Washington experienced. In fact, he campaigned on the basis of being a Washington outsider. A lot of other candidates have done that since, by the way. And it doesn't serve you well once you are in Washington to be a Washington outsider. For instance, Carter brought, designated as his chief of congressional liaison, the man who would sell his program to Congress, a position that has existed in the White House ever since the Truman administration. He appointed a man named Frank Moore, who had never been to Capitol Hill. And they had to drive Frank Moore around and say, Mr. Moore, here are the Senate office buildings and here are the House office buildings. That sounds surprising for a president. Indeed it is. It shows you a kind of a lack of familiarity with Washington and a lack of familiarity with the way things get done in Washington. I want to also build on the point about his lack of familiarity with the important aspect of presidential leadership, which is persuasion. Richard Neustadt, the presidential expert, once said, the only power a president really has is the power to persuade. Now I want to set up a situation where Jimmy Carter did try to make a persuasive speech. And in fact, he did it rather well and we're going to look at it in a minute. But he undervalued the importance of what persuasion really means. So let's drop in now on a speech that Jimmy Carter gave at the height of the energy crisis. On April the 20th, we will have completed the planning for our energy program and will immediately then ask the Congress for its help in enacting comprehensive legislation. Our program will emphasize conservation. The amount of energy being wasted, which could be saved, is greater than the total energy that we are importing from foreign countries. Now he made a very wonderful speech and you saw he even had dressed himself to reinforce the message of personal sacrifice. We've lowered the thermostats in the White House. We're all going to have to make sacrifice and I'm calling on the American people to make sacrifices. And by the way, I have introduced two energy bills to Congress and I'd like your support, he was saying to Congress. Well, Jimmy Carter's speech ended and by the way he was in a sense trying to emulate FDR and the fireside chats going directly to the American people but of course Congress is always a very important secondary audience or maybe primary audience. Five minutes after the speech, Jimmy Carter's phone rings. Who is it? It's Tip O'Neill, the Speaker of the House. And in his Massachusetts accent he says, Mr. Carter, that was a great speech. Now I want you to get on the phone and call every member of every committee, every chair of every committee where your bill is going to go and lobby for your bill. And here is Carter's response and here is an example of leadership and aptitude in my opinion. Carter responded to Tip O'Neill, I don't have to call them, they heard the speech. I don't know about you but most people I know are not persuaded by speeches. They are persuaded by one-on-one lobbying as Bill Clinton understood when he personally lobbied 100 members of Congress on the China trade bill. Betsy, let's look at this for a minute and let me ask you, how do you persuade people in your office? It's a lot of talking, a lot of lobbying, a lot of listening, and a lot of sharing information. And we had a recent situation in our Alexandria division where we noticed that the civil docket clerks were just always overwhelmed with work, whereas the criminal docket clerks had a situation where the work would spike but then there'd be a lull, it would spike and there'd be a lull. Well, the work just wasn't equalized and it was a big problem. I had lots of people coming to talk to me saying we just can't keep up this pace and we need to do something. Well, it would have been easy for me to give a speech and say this is what we need to do but I knew I would be unsuccessful in helping everybody to buy in. So we had group meetings, we had individual meetings and in the end what we ended up doing was everybody was given certain tasks, research assignments and they were calling other courts, getting information, how is it done in your court and we found out that we were one of the few district courts that still had an old fashioned civil section, criminal section that most district courts had already gone to, cross training and everybody carried a civil criminal number. So to the people who said, gosh, we've been doing it this way for 215 years, who are you to change it? That was sort of eye-opening to them and again it was talking to the people who wanted the change, it was talking to the people who didn't want the change and that was one of the most important elements of making this process work and it was listening and understanding why there was reluctance to change and trying to work within those parameters to try and get a better sense of how can we make this work knowing that there are going to be some emotional issues that we need to address as well and it's also baby steps. I mean we took our time, we never said at the beginning we know what the answer is, we didn't know, we really took it slow, we did a lot of research and by the end of it everybody was on board and in fact the most vocal opponents are now the ones who are most vocally supportive saying I never thought in my 22 years with the court that this is the best it's ever worked but this is the best it's ever been so you've got to go out, you've got to do the work, you've got to talk to people, you've got to listen but it's gradual and you need to know that going into the beginning and listen to the people who actually do the work because they're the ones who are going to come up with the best solution and a better solution that I would come up with on my own. Ted can you describe the strategies you used to influence staff especially around change? To be realistic about the change and to clearly show them through relevant and current information why the change is needed the most important thing again is to get feedback from the staff don't force-feed them again what we're saying is seek advice, ask questions and not just advice from inside the office but from outside the office when we were going through merger I called Atlanta and Maryland they had already gone through it let's not reinvent the wheel I called New Jersey for finances and Joe Jacoby in New York because he already had a combined office utilize what you have the FJC Center Kate Lyon had told me and made me realize that combining the two offices and the pre-trial and probation that they were two different offices and not to try to make the probation office a pre-trial office to keep that individuality I think just asking for help is key so that the officers and the staff can see that it has worked in other areas and that it will work in our office Okay Michael, back to you I want to pick up on a couple of points that both Betsy and Ted made that persuasion is a dialogue not a monologue that in persuading people you can also learn from them and if we go back to the energy bill for a minute Carter should have realized what's a good energy bill for California is not a good energy bill for Oklahoma and he needs to learn from the different members and their constituencies how to mold a bill that will meet everybody's needs in the end there's another dimension of the persuasion index where I think Carter fell short and this is an anecdote recounted by Bob Woodward in the news lately of course for his recent book on Iraq but in this case he wrote a book called Shadow which was an analysis of five recent presidents and he talked about Jimmy Carter and a tennis game Carter had a bit of a proclivity to be a micro manager and among the areas he supervised included the strategic arms limitations treaty Middle East peace and the White House tennis courts and while he scheduled by the way a supervisor recently told me that he was spending 75% on his time on parking issues I said that sounds a little high in any case Carter scheduled a tennis game and invited Senator Lloyd Benson to play along with some other people they played a game of tennis or two and then the senators were sent home and Lloyd Benson was quite surprised he said you know even a US senator doesn't have that many opportunities for him with a president it's quite unusual and it's a lost opportunity I can't persuade him he can't persuade me so Benson actually called the White House and he said he expressed his concern and the answer that came back was the president thought you'd want to go home and spend time with your families well in general this is good advice however in this particular case it's the loss of a golden opportunity a one on one meeting that senators don't call anybody bosses I guess but with a subordinate with a boss or even a colleague is an invaluable opportunity for them to influence you and for you to influence them a recent demonstration of the importance of this concept of one on one time comes from yet another book by Bob Woodward Bush Goes to War where he talks about the intervention of Colin Powell when Colin Powell heard that he was having one on one dinners with President Bush this is before the Iraq war and he was not he intervened through Condoleezza Rice and he assured himself a one on one audience with the president it is felt by many that the only reason we even tried the diplomatic route in Iraq was because Powell had forced himself to have one on one time with President Bush excuse me Michael I'd like to hear from our panelists is really key not everyone is comfortable expressing themselves in an open form or in large crowds anyone in my office will tell you that I spend probably more time in other offices than I do in my own this is a time when you can learn more about each individual you're going to get some of your best ideas you're going to be able to ask them how you're doing how you feel that the office is going you'll get to learn a little bit more about that employee what's really interesting about one on one time however is it gives me time to further debate and persuade those pessimists in my office and those people who are on the on the border they're not quite sure that they're what to do with your ideas it also gives you time to strengthen your allies what Betsy was talking about open door I think that's another time when one on one is important truly have an open door truly invite officers or employees to knock on that door and to ask questions anything nothing's off off limits what that does is it sort of limits the rumor and innuendo that generally goes around at the water cooler where people are trying to second guess if they can hear it from the horse's mouth that's a good thing as a new clerk almost three years ago I made it a point to have one on one meetings with as many of my staff as I could and to those of you I haven't met with I'm coming but one of the things it was important and I learned right away is that you learn a whole different perspective about the organization from other people than you will ever learn on your own and I learned also about all these skills and talents that people had that never had been tapped also became very clear sort of the underutilized people the overutilized people and places where we needed to sort of restructure reorganize to take full advantage of everybody's talents the other thing is take advantage of sort of the social activities I mean happy hours you know baseball games events that are organized for the organization I mean the things that you pick up are invaluable and of course you get to work the whole time but you do get to learn more about people and what's important to them and their values and sort of where they fit in to the whole scheme of the organization and I guess the last idea and it's been really critically important to me is go to lunch with staff I mean eat lunch in the lunch room I went out with a group of folks in my Norfolk office and it was great we had this fabulous time at a Mexican restaurant we didn't drink margaritas or anything some of my staff said you know I've been here 20 years and this is the first time I ever ate lunch with a clerk well you know be accessible and listen to people informally as well as formally okay Michael speaking of equal time let's finish up with President Carter so we can give equal time to the other presidents indeed Michael we'll do that one more word about politics before we move to the third variable of structure among the other problems that Carter had in his politics area was the lack of prioritization Jimmy Carter really had an engineer's mind and he was really into details and he really was what's called in today's world a policy wonk the problem is he didn't prioritize the issue so he was involved at the presidential level in 35 issues at the same time everything from hospital cost containment to Middle East peace now I suggest to you and I suggest to leaders and managers including the federal courts that to be involved as a chief executive in 35 issues at the same time is impractical it's going to drain your energy you're never going to sleep and I doubt that you're going to be able to accomplish 35 things equally well I once compared it to trying to take 35 college courses at the same time I'm sure there are some people who could do it but most of us could not now let's move it into structure let's look at Jimmy Carter's ideas about structure because I think in many ways his ideas about structure go back to his theme that I mentioned earlier his attempt to be a non-imperial president and so we saw him walking down Pennsylvania Avenue he got rid of a lot of the perks of office not only himself but his staff he enrolled his daughter in public school he would not let them play believe it or not he would not let them play hail to the chief when he walked into a room he was so determined to be a common man that he would not let them play that song and his media advisor Gerald Raffschund a year and a half later begged him, begged him to let them play hail to the chief when they see the president he said Mr. President people like to hear that music when the president arrives and so he did all he could to de-imperialize the office he was not going to have a chief of staff it was too imperial he had read a book by Stephen Hess called Organizing the Presidency in which Stephen Hess talked about a spokes of the wheel operation with the president in the middle and all these spokes radiating in and that was the kind of the model he was working with it was chaotic it didn't work and it was overwhelming so I would say it was too loose and it needed more structure the final area is process and in process a very interesting example in the Carter White House particularly in foreign policy now to staff his foreign policy operation Carter chose two people who could not be more opposite his secretary of state with Cyrus Vance and experienced Wall Street lawyer very calm, collected person to whom anything is negotiable his national security advisor on the other hand was Zbigniew Brzezinski who had left Poland when the Soviet tanks rolled in in 1956 and he was a more emotional person had very strong feelings about the Soviet Union not everything was negotiable now every time a foreign policy issue came up for Jimmy Carter his top two deputies were at total opposite ends of the issue Vance on one and Brzezinski on the other now if you're the boss and your two top aides agreeing I think you have a few choices you could fire one of them I guess you could hear them both out and then choose as our current president does but not of your Jimmy Carter what Jimmy Carter tried to do was to blend both positions into one and he ended up with what analysts call schizophrenic foreign policy pronouncements they were basically half Vance half Brzezinski he couldn't make up his mind when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan then finally Carter decided Brzezinski had been right and he actually went toward a more hard line foreign policy at that point so Michael in summary what would you say about the administration of Jimmy Carter and what can our court managers learn from his experience Michael that's a fair question and I don't want to leave the impression that Jimmy Carter did not have some very significant accomplishments he did after all this was the man who was able to bring about a peace treaty between two erstwhile enemies Israel and Egypt let's take a look now for a moment at a clip from Camp David where we see Jimmy Carter with Anwar Sadat the president of Egypt and with Menachem Begin who was the prime minister of Israel he worked very hard he mediated the conflict and he got a peace treaty which you see them celebrating at the White House and both Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat said that it would not have happened without Jimmy Carter's mediation efforts in terms of our institution the federal judiciary Jimmy Carter appointed more women and minorities to the bench than any other president he took the caps off of education loan programs he did a lot of good things but I guess my point is he could have done a lot more because remember he had a Democratic Congress and had he had a clear vision had he understood the hard work and details of persuasion had he set up an efficient and nimble White House operation and had he understood how to build in conflict but still make very strong decisions I believe he would have been a much more effective president ok Michael let's move on to our next president Ronald Reagan but first let me ask our court leaders what they remember about the administration of Ronald Reagan talking about two terms 1981 through 1989 Star Wars comes to mind the assassination attempt of the president laying off of the air traffic controllers that's right Michael can you start us with Ronald Reagan's administration I can Michael thank you in terms of context let us remember that as I said before people who are sometimes perceived as people's opposites win and in this case I believe that Ronald Reagan was perceived as Jimmy Carter's opposite where Carter was seen as weak and vacillating one member of Congress described Jimmy Carter as having both feet firmly planted in midair Reagan was seen as decisive and resolute where Carter was seen as unable to pull off even a minor military operation in Iran Reagan was seen as a reliable defense advocate who would use force if he needed it he was very strong very resolute very decisive and unequivocal in his beliefs now on policy it's fair to say I believe that Ronald Reagan was consistent he was a consistent advocate of the conservative agenda and he had been a consistent advocate of this agenda ever since 1964 when he was heavily involved in the Barry Goldwater campaign he identified four chief variables or four chief pillars of his policy and he consistently articulated them they were cut taxes cut social welfare spending increased defense spending and deal with the moral and ethical decline of America it didn't matter what audience he went before it didn't matter what part of the country he spoke in he would say the same things and he was unequivocal in his beliefs and I think people respect people who have convictions they don't agree with all of them and of course the other magnificent quality that Reagan had as long as he had his cue cards I would add is that he was the great communicator let's take a look now at a press conference with Ronald Reagan good evening please be seated I have a a statement here we've been pleased to see mounting evidence of new strength in our economy by following policies of lower taxes and free and fair trade America has led the world with 33 straight months of growth and more than 8 million new jobs inflation has been held under 4% and meanwhile nations clinging to high taxes and protectionist policies have not only failed to match our performance they've lost jobs and seen their investment flow to the United States opportunity is our engine of progress so I'm asking Congress to work with me and not against me to control federal spending to pass our fair share tax plan lowering rates further open up closed markets overseas and urge other nations to cut their high tax rates to strengthen their economies and ability to buy American products and so there we see the great communicator at work and he was convincing in fact he was able to bring disparate constituencies together under what he called the big tent because people who believed in free trade and laissez-faire economics may not be in agreement with the people who had the conservative agenda of the religious right and yet Reagan was able to bring all these people together and to unite them in a coalition he was very effective and he also surrounded himself with very professional people people that didn't know Washington as we'll see in a second we'll see some of the closest aides that Reagan worked with and we'll see for example in a meeting with Jim Baker who was his chief of staff Ed Meese his counselor to the president and Mike Dever all of whom he had a great deal of respect for and all of whom he delegated authority to and they were very clear on what the president's objectives were they did not have to sit around and guess what he wanted accomplished they knew with a very clear mind what the objectives were and what the goals were and so they went forward and they lobbied Congress in addition to them there was as I mentioned before the budget director David Stockman former congressman from Michigan and there was the congressional liaison in this case a man named Max Friedersdorf who had been ironically enough part of the Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party and you say well how does a Rockefeller Republican end up in a highly conservative administration and the answer is because Reagan understood I think the importance of knowing how Congress works and the importance of hiring people who can work effectively with Congress and so they did they went forward to Congress and they explained to Congress these Reagan aides that they had a mandate from the American people now this is a sort of a funny situation because their mandate was empirically based on not only the election of Ronald Reagan but the defeat of six liberal senators that same year however if you analyze the figures closer what you see is that Reagan at one actually 27% of the eligible vote in the United States in 1980 and on the basis of 27% of the eligible vote he claimed a mandate and he was so convincing in claiming a mandate that the Speaker of the House who we mentioned earlier said to his Democratic colleagues we better give this guy some of what he wants he's so popular and so they negotiated heavily staying focused like a laser beam as Bill Clinton would say later on three key issues cutting taxes cutting social welfare spending and increasing defense spending and they actually accomplished all three of these things in the first year and a half of the presidency a tax cut of 30% a social welfare cut of about 7% and a defense increase of 10% not bad for a year in Washington alright very interesting let's get some court input on these issues Ted what is your approach to developing priorities and focusing in on them a few at a time Michael there's an old saying you can build a house one brick at a time the same goes for an agency that's going through change I think that when you prioritize your tasks and have everyone focused on that one task you're going to get more energy more solutions a faster solution to the problem I don't think anybody's going to agree that splitting up their armies and dividing up the responsibility is going to win anything thanks Betsy many of us have a tendency to take on too many projects and what's critical is to always sort of take a time out and just make sure that what you're working on is consistent with your vision and your long term plans and often you need to just say okay where is everything and if we have a number of projects that are on the five yard line let's make sure we get some touchdowns before we kick off some new projects but I know that I rely on my staff a lot because they're going to tell me if we've got too many new things going on and we're just sort of scattered and we're not focused on the task at hand and the overall vision of the organization but sometimes it's just a matter of taking a time out seeing where you are and regrouping and starting again thanks Michael I'm going to now delve into the third component of leadership with Ronald Reagan and that is the component of structure and again compared to Jimmy Carter we find a very different picture here we find a man who is not as interested in making changes as Jimmy Carter and using a more traditional management structure and a unique twist on it because Ronald Reagan is the master delegator we never want a picture of delegation and what delegation looks like look at Ronald Reagan there is after all a paradox to the Reagan presidency as his biographer Luke Cannon pointed out in a very good book called The Role of a Lifetime by the way Luke Cannon indicates that Ronald Reagan was surprised that anyone who wasn't an actor could be president of the United States in any case Cannon says that never before in history had so many people been indebted to one person for its ideological inspiration as was the case with Ronald Reagan and yet never before had one person, the president been so totally dependent on others for the details of governance because he really did not know the details he really wasn't interested in them and he did not know them but he surrounded himself with people and both Betsy and Ted talked about the importance of surrounding yourself with talented people who will challenge you when necessary and who will do your work for you without you having to look over their shoulder every moment he had a delegating style he wanted to be out of the White House by 4.30 or 5 o'clock he liked to eat dinner with Nancy he wanted to go horseback riding he wasn't there all night studying briefing papers and doing what other presidents have done and so we have what Francis Fitzgerald way out there in the blue a macro manager the exact opposite of a micro manager a person who only sees the big picture who doesn't understand the details and has no patience really for the details and delegates them out to people whom he trusts that's what Ronald Reagan's structure is and I believe most professionals are inspired by being trusted by a manager by a leader who's not constantly looking over their shoulders and gives them the freedom to operate this is inspiring I believe to most employees and even in the judiciary yes Ted Betsy what can court leaders learn from Reagan's macro management as compared to Carter's micro management you're much more well rested if you're...