The job descriptions of chief executives might detail their duties and responsibilities, but current chief information officers, chief financial officers and chief human capital officers have learned the following lessons about how to approach a transition situation.
Learn your specific business and programs quickly.
Familiarize yourself with agency’s businesses and programs.
Collaborate with other executives internally and externally.
Make changes in the existing framework.
Encourage a long-term management agenda.
Promote employee accountability and measure for results.
Be careful where you cut jobs.
Be creative to attract new federal employees.
Understand the budget effects of major programs.
Be aware of the concerns of congressional authorizing and appropriating committees.
When federal chief executives take office, whether they are political appointees or career professionals, their first instinct is to jump headfirst into their new roles.
But they soon learn what the current group of federal executives already knows: Their positions are bigger than their job descriptions.
No matter what letter the “X” in CXO stands for, executives should take the time first to learn the agency’s business and its programs, said Lisa Schlosser, chief information officer at the Housing and Urban Development Department. She recently returned to her HUD duties after a year’s military assignment in the Middle East.
“What’s most critical is to take the time, learn the business, the programs,” she said. “Try to understand, through the experience of the employees who have been on the programs a long time, the complexities of the business.”
At the same time, federal executives have to quickly learn their specific business and programs, said HUD’s chief financial officer, John Cox.
A CFO might be adept at federal accounting, audit and financial management compliance activities. Agency executives might be integral to programs that encompass more than their organization, he said.
HUD has a large role in mitigating the mortgage crisis, so the CFO must understand the core provisions and impact of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act passed in August. The department’s Federal Housing Administration plans to help as many as 400,000 homeowners in danger of losing their homes refinance them through community block grants.
Executives also need to take a broader view of and role in their community outside their specific office, Cox said. That means getting involved in cross-agency executive councils to identify and come up with solutions to governmentwide problems.
Cox and other executives cited the benefits of learning best practices and working with colleagues in the same executive position at other agencies to solve situations that affect them all.
For example, the CFO Council has established a process to reduce the accounting differences that occur when agencies trade with one another in intragovernmental transactions, he said. Reconciling those balances and resolving the accounting procedures will remove one of the major obstacles to the federal government receiving a clean audit from the Government Accountability Office.
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