Scott Cameron wears so many hats at work he’s lost count.

The deputy assistant secretary for performance, accountability and human resources at the Interior Department is also the agency’s chief human capital officer, managing partner for two Office of Management and Budget initiatives and co-leader on invasive-species issues. That’s four to seven hats in all, depending on who’s counting.

Personally, he would feel more comfortable managing fewer projects, he said, because time constraints prevent him from doing a perfect job on each.

His approach to good management is to hire the best people, trust them and leave them alone. But he builds in reporting systems to track their progress. His leadership style is highly participatory, letting team discussions evolve and the best ideas bubble forth.

By and large, Cameron relies on the expertise of subordinates and peers and trusts their judgment. “In the early part of our careers, we advance because of our technical expertise and our analytical abilities,” he said. “As we move into management and executive leadership roles, those technical skills become less and less important and what becomes more important is our understanding of processes and seeing connections between things.”

Cameron believes that multiple job titles in government are here to stay. “There is no significant challenge facing any agency that can be satisfactorily addressed with one skill set or by a single professional community,” he said. A financial-management challenge will invariably have IT, human capital and performance management dimensions, he said.

Cross-functional teams are necessary to deal with such multifaceted challenges. “The old stovepipe approach was inadequate at best,” he said. Drawing in multiple specialties from across the agency is easier to do if the manager is empowered to carry out multiple responsibilities, he said.