Chief of Chiefs: OMB's Clay Johnson: A COO by any name can get the job done

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March 2005; Vol. 1 No. 1

Chief of Chiefs: OMB’s Clay Johnson: A COO by any name can get the job done

By Richard W. Walker

Another story on Chief of Chiefs is The Emerging Need for a COO.

As deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, Clay Johnson III plays a pivotal role in improving agency and program performance.

Johnson also serves as the White House’s kingpin on the President’s Management Agenda, which seeks fundamental reforms in personnel, procurement, finance, budget and performance, and e-government—all areas that intersect with the duties of senior-level CXOs.

In his deputy director role, Johnson speaks with the administration’s voice. He’s a friend of President Bush and has worked with him since 1995, when he signed on as appointments director for the then Texas governor. He later was the governor’s chief of staff and then executive director of the Bush-Cheney transition following the 2000 election.



BY THE NUMBERS: OMB’s Clay Johnson says the President’s Management Agenda scorecard helps track how well CXOs are meeting reform goals.

He is chairman of two major CXO councils, the Chief Financial Officers Council and the new Chief Acquisition Officers Council.

Government Leader senior writer Richard W. Walker interviewed Johnson about the critical roles of the government’s chief acquisition, financial, human capital and information officers, and how Johnson sees the need for an executive to act as a COO, regardless of what that executive’s title is.

GL: How do you think the roles and responsibilities of the government’s CXOs are changing?

JOHNSON: Their roles are more significant than they’ve ever been. There’s an awful lot of change going on in the federal government.

Agencies are changing forever and irreversibly in the way they go about pursuing their missions. This change involves thinking about [human capital] differently, about the way we acquire and use financial information, about the role of information technology and about the importance of acquisition and competitive sourcing.

So the senior people in each of these functional areas are a critical part of the change that’s taking place in each of these agencies and, collectively, in the federal government.

Each of [the CXOs] is critical to the way an agency operates. They are all more critical than they used to be.

GL: Do the CXOs have to be business transformation leaders?

JOHNSON: All these people have to have good business and operational sense. The CIO, for example, needs to understand the business processes to be able to understand what the IT solution might be.

The CXOs can’t just understand their functional area. They have to understand the way their functional area fits into the overall way that department or agency works.

GL: How about the chief acquisition officer?

JOHNSON: The U.S. government spends more money acquiring things than anybody else in the world, so we need to be smarter about the kind of people we have in the acquisition workforce. We have to be smarter about how we hire and train them and how we hold them accountable.

The chief acquisition officers and the Chief Acquisition Officers Council are critical to helping the other CXOs learn from each other.

The CXOs need to learn from each other’s common problems, learn from the mistakes the others have made and try to replicate the successes.

GL: Are any CXO positions—for example, the CFO or CIO—more important than the others in the effort to make transformation happen?

JOHNSON: I don’t think so. They all have to work together. [Many initiatives] involve people, money and the flow of information, so the CXOs have to work very closely to-gether on many things.

In some cases, two of them might have to work more closely together than with others. But I don’t think any of them are more important than the others.

GL: Is the CHCO role becoming more important?

JOHNSON: It’s very, very critical. We have to be able to clearly communicate to our employees through our managers and supervisors about what’s expected of them and how they’re performing relative to those expectations. That’s all about having good managers, hiring good people and training people effectively. The CHCOs are in the middle of all of that. If we don’t have the people part of the equation addressed, we cannot become more effective and more efficient as a service provider for the American people.

GL: Who in the management structure is ultimately responsible for business transformation?

JOHNSON: The primary person responsible for all business transformation in an agency is the secretary, director or administrator of that department or agency.

If the secretary or whatever the title is doesn’t want there to be transformation, it will not happen. If the secretary really wants it to happen, it will happen. It all starts with the top person in the agency.

GL: Is there a need for agencies to have chief operating officer to manage business transformation and oversee the senior-level CXOs to make sure that they work as a team?

JOHNSON: Yes, there has to be somebody that the CXOs report to. That person has to make sure that the [CXOs] are properly coordinated and orchestrated. In some cases that’s the deputy secretary; in other cases it’s the undersecretary for management or the assistant secretary for management. It’s different positions in different agencies.

The president has called for a person to be designated the COO for each agency and for that person to be the agency representative on the President’s Management Council. So it’s usually the deputy secretary, but in some cases it’s an undersecretary or an assistant secretary.

GL: With regard to the White House directive [issued in July 2001] for agency heads to establish COOs, is it necessary to establish an actual COO title? Or is it enough for agencies to make the deputy secretary the de facto COO and make sure that the job description includes responsibility for coordinating reform?

JOHNSON: It’s not about titles; it’s about who is going to be the senior management person at that agency and therefore who should serve on the President’s Management Council.

GL: Comptroller general David Walker thinks there is an urgent need for COOs at big departments such as Defense to oversee the planning and integration of transformation initiatives. Do you agree?

JOHNSON: I don’t know enough about the needs of the Defense Department to be able to answer that. But I know for the Homeland Security Department, for example, we proposed and Congress agreed that there should be an undersecretary for management and that the position should be a [political appointee] who reports to the secretary. So there is that position [at DHS].

GL: What do you think about the notion of a statutory COO or chief management officer with a long-term appointment to provide continuity to the reform effort?

JOHNSON: I don’t think there’s a need. If there was a COO in an agency and the secretary did not want transformation to take place, it wouldn’t take place, whether the COO was career or not career, termed or not termed. Conversely, if the secretary wanted it to happen, it wouldn’t make any difference whether there was a person in that position, career or political or termed or not termed; it would happen.

Somebody with the appropriate skill set would be designated and there would be appropriate support from OMB to see that the necessary change took place at that agency.

Making the position termed or making it career doesn’t really address the need. There has to be somebody who is well-qualified and who clearly understands that this is an important part of their responsibility in that agency and that the secretary and the president want this to happen.

If somebody who was termed didn’t get along with the secretary or the deputy secretary, that person wouldn’t want to stay there, especially if they weren’t well-respected. So I don’t know that having a termed or career position solves anything.

The key is that there has to be real commitment to getting the things done right at the very highest levels. Then there has to be a real clear definition of success. There has to be a clear action plan for getting there. And there has to be a person, be it a deputy or an undersecretary for management, who is responsible for seeing that the action plan is implemented as designed.

Another story on Chief of Chiefs is The Emerging Need for a COO.