Leadership and the Management of Public Institutions

Let's move to this question of managing large public organizations, because I want to bring all these issues together. But before we do that, there's one issue that we touched on and that was your service in the marines. What did you get out of that? What in that experience affected your role as a leader in the future?

The first thing I got out of it was another instance in which I could conform myself to the sub-drill milieu that I was in the midst of. I really enjoyed the Marine Corps. I went in as an officer. I had a platoon and then I had a battery -- that's a platoon and a company. I was relatively young. I was just turned 21. This was an awful lot of responsibility. It worked out well. I enjoyed exercising that responsibility. I even flirted with the idea of staying. My wife flirted with the idea of leaving me if I did, so I didn't. But it was a great time for me of maturation, and taking on responsibility for a number of people.

You went on, as we know, to head the University of California at Berkeley, and the Smithsonian Institution. I'm interested in understanding what you see as the requirements of leadership in an important educational and cultural organizations like these. I find several themes that emerge as part of your carrying the portfolio. And one of the responsibilities, it seems to me, that you had was responding to great societal change as you led these institutions. Helping them adapt to, for example, in the case of the University, affirmative action. In the case of the Smithsonian, a great changes in our understanding of the importance of the museum in relating to our history. So, looking back, what key skills that you acquired or learned were important in both jobs?

That's a hard question. The first statement I want to make is there are many ways to lead well. But I think that's it's terribly important that you lead from your own psychological make-up and whatever is inside of you, and you act pretty much naturally, rather than trying to assume another persona. And thus, there are wonderful leaders who lead very differently than I do. Some quite more successfully, and some less. But you have to be what you are. Part of that is obviously personality, and a personal psychology. I have found in that regard that I have wanted to be liked. I don't know if excessively, but certainly sufficiently. One of the things that does do is that it makes you see the other guy's side of the affair, because you're really trying to get the other fellow to accept bad news, very often, and to do that you've got to really be sympathetic or empathetic with that person's reactions. I don't know where that came from, but that is one part of my character that I know about.

A second thing for me was that during the time that I taught, from '59 through '74, when I was [first] in the Law School and then both the Law School and City and Regional Planning, my work outside of teaching consisted of working with a number of organizations, the principal ones being regional environmental agencies in California. So I worked with the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. I worked with the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, and I was beginning to work with the Coastal Zone Commission. And I always defined what I was doing more broadly than solely the law part. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency was the major one in which I [worked with] another fellow with whom I became very close, Bob Twis in Landscape Architecture at Berkeley, in the College of Environmental Design. In many ways we devised the planning system up there. I wrote all the ordinances and he wrote supportive materials, but we worked very, very closely. That was a very tough political situation if you were going to get anything done. It meant that you had to consult very widely with people in California, mainly politicians and administrators, and the Board itself. And people in Nevada. Very different kinds of people with very different agendas. That taught me a lot about how you get things done. We got that done, and we got it done with very little rancor, interestingly enough. But it really meant bringing people along.

The other thing it meant was being very clear about your objective, and being very honest about those objectives. So when I came in to running big institutions, it was just normal for me to do some things which very often people don't do, and I don't understand it. One is to state with as much specificity as you can what it is that you want to get done during the period you're going to be in that job. Second is to highlight that and state it in ways that are simple so that everybody understands it. And then, thirdly, during the period of time that you're in that job, is constantly being aware of those objectives and constantly trying to manage towards them. And then doing all the other things that you have to do, so that you've got an understandable thread that goes through.

As I reread recently my inauguration speech here, I had about five objectives. By the way, you can't have any more than five or six if you're going to get anything done. And then I read a speech I made when I was finishing up as Chancellor. The objectives were the same, and you could see progress or non-progress, but mostly progress. One of the things that does is that when you're in a big, complex organization like Berkeley or like the Smithsonian, you're trying to affect a lot of people and you're trying to get them to go in a particular direction. When you state what you think is right and what you're going to work towards, about 80% of the people feel very relieved that there's a direction. And they like working in that. Now, there are people who are going to disagree with you, and you've got to be open to comment and consultation and the like, but a lot of people, in any event, feel very comforted and comfortable having a direction specified. I think that if there's anything to applaud, if that's a way of putting it, in terms of my activity in these jobs, it's specificity, consistency, and looking at these things from the point of view of the people who are unhappy or potentially unhappy with direction or with specific decisions.

One of the results of this process that you've just described is getting people who are the organization, who run the organization, to rethink their values in light of pressures from outside. And so, as you suggested, you learned in this environmental work to listen to all the voices out there related to a particular issue. But there is also a job of educating, isn't there?

Absolutely. First of all, you've got to educate. If you're going to take a point of view that is inconsistent with the point of view of the number of people in your organization, you simply have to educate -- devise ways of educating and listening and arguing. You've got to get into the trenches and really argue your case. I can't [make changes] simply by the exercise of authority.

When I came in at Berkeley, there were the six objectives. There were only two that were controversial. One was affirmative action. But there, I felt the kind of passion, for whatever set of reasons, that I feel about inclusion; both pragmatically in terms of what this society is and is surely becoming, and also on moral grounds. So there's both a pragmatic and a moral side to it from my perspective. I argued very vigorously and constantly, and finagled and did all kinds of things to try to make that successful.

At the Smithsonian, the big thing was "What are the roles of curators? Are they people who are bringing presentations? Who are educating people about, at least on occasion, controversial matters from different viewpoints? Or are they people who are organizing and designing their exhibitions to enhance a particular point of view?" The latter is what most curators want to be, because they want to see themselves as intellectual historians. On the other hand, my view about what you do in museums in terms of controversy is not to run from it, but on the other hand, to give a fair shake to opposing points of view. That's not a very comfortable position for curators. And I spent, I'd say, four and a half years at the Smithsonian making that argument, going around, making the argument, fielding questions. I mean, spending a lot of personal time trying to deal with that. And I had some moderate success. The fact that I was passionate about it, and I would talk about it openly, and not in a condemnatory way, brought people around to do it even if they didn't really agree with me, was in part because of the manner in which one sought to bring that result to bear.

Next page: Goals and Values: Leading Berkeley