Government Leader home > August 2005 issue
August 2005; Vol. 1 No. 3
MANAGING TO A DIFFERENT DRUMMER: Interior’s Lamb uses skills, smarts to nurture partnership environment
By Stephen Barr
With Robert J. Lamb, the Interior Department’s senior adviser for policy, management and budget, there is no such thing as a set script.
He’s got no special recipes for managerial success. He often comes up with his ideas while on the road to meet with federal employees and members of community groups. “I just try to be honest, practical, down to earth, not too preachy and connect with people where their values lie,” he says.
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| | “People realize there are limitations in going alone.” —The Interior Department’s Robert Lamb | |
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“Everyone manages differently. It is based on how you relate to people. ... We all do it differently. You are successful when you are yourself.”
For the last two years, Lamb has been using skills and smarts gained over a 34-year federal career to build support for public-private partnerships as a way for the government to deliver on programs and services.
The Interior Department, to be sure, has paid attention to partnerships since the days when railroad barons helped lobby Congress to establish national parks in the West. Partnership has had its ups and downs as a management fad, too.
But Lamb believes there is a growing appreciation that partnership is no longer “just a cool word. People realize there are limitations in going alone and that combinations of resources and talents can produce a better outcome.”
In his office on Interior’s fifth floor, Lamb points out that federal budgets and staffs are stretched thin, while sometimes contradictory pressures increase to protect what’s left of the nation’s natural resources and to provide more recreation opportunities on public lands.
Federal employees “are no longer the center of all activities” but more and more are finding they have to reach out, collaborate and foster long-running cooperation among state and local governments, nonprofits, companies and others, Lamb suggests.
“We have worked to educate our employees about the importance of looking at a partnership environment and a partnership way of doing business as really essential for our success as an agency in the long term.”
Lamb’s job has been made a little easier because he has the backing of the department’s top political appointees, including Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and Assistant Secretary P. Lynn Scarlett. Since being named to the Bush Cabinet, Norton has sounded the theme of partnership as part of which she calls the “4 C’s”—conservation through cooperation, communication and consultation.
A self-described “Washington desk jockey,” Lamb says he knew from the start that Interior could only create partnerships by winning the support of employees in the field. He began by visiting Interior’s eight bureaus and asking the directors to give him a person from their office that they trusted. Lamb also opted for an “open door” policy that encourages anyone interested in partnership to walk in and volunteer.
Today, Lamb is the co-chair of the 4 C’s Partnership and Collaborative Action Team, which operates with 30 to 35 people who have added the initiative to their regular jobs at Interior, the Army Corps of Engineers, Forest Service, Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies. Brian O’Neill, the National Park Service superintendent for the Golden Gate Recreational Area, serves as the team’s other co-chair.
The team’s goals include breaking down opposition to partnership as a way of doing business, bringing attention to success stories and making partnership skills a factor when agencies hire, train and reward employees.
Change does not come easy in large organizations, and Lamb says he tries “to paint a realistic picture of the challenges we face” and to engage employees in brainstorming sessions.
“When you begin to talk about shared problems and shared values, then people say, ‘Gee, maybe I do have to do things differently.’”
Stephen Barr writes the Federal Diary column at the Washington Post. He also hosts an online discussion, “Federal Diary Live,” each week at www.washingtonpost.com.
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