The Year of the Rat

The Chinese New Year started last week and many Chinese communities celebrated over the weekend. My family enjoyed a parade in Washington DC yesterday (see picture). According to Chinese custom, we are now in the Year of the Rat, the first of 12 rotating Chinese zodiacs. Another Chinese custom I learned yesterday involves Chinese children. On their first birthday a variety of objects, such as a coin, a book, a fish or a pen, are placed around the child or on a tray. The item the child touches first foreshadows what profession he or she will eventually pursue.

A few years ago it seemed as though EPA’s senior managers had gone through a similar process. Like many federal agencies, once an EPA manager rose to a particular position they tended to stay there. In 2004, well over half of our senior managers had been in the same position five years or more. Many had been in the same office for a decade or more. In other words, once they’d selected a position, that was it, no moving around. If you touched the fish first, you were destined to be in the Office of Water the rest of your years.

That may be good for building expertise in a subject, but it is not good for developing well-rounded managers who can easily communicate across organizational boundaries and take a wider view of agency work. Two years ago at the request of the Administrator, EPA started to put in place a program that would regularly encourage senior managers who have been in the same position for more than six years to consider rotating to another position. We went through the first round last year and 26 senior managers, about 10 percent of the senior management corps, found new assignments.

Today about a third of EPA’s senior managers have been in the same position more than five years and only 5 percent have been in the same spot for over a decade. To keep the pot stirred, the Administrator recently initiated the 2008 rotation program and we anticipate rotating another 5 to 10 percent of our managers again this year.

Does the fact this is the Year of the Rat bode well for this year’s rotation? I think so. According to Chinese custom, “Rat” folks make great leaders and pioneers. They are practical and hardworking -- passionate about what they do. “Rats” are the most highly organized and systematic people of all the Chinese zodiacs. They sound like my kind of peeps.

Comments

[Joel Miller]

I find some of the facts mentioned here curious.

You describe the huge turnover of managers in the EPA as a good sign, proof of the vitality of the organization.

The data you present could also be interpreted as saying that with Bush in power, managers are being moved from their areas of expertise. Presumably those who are willing to go along with Bush's dubious environmental policies get put into the positions where they are most effective, and those who are willing to enforce laws that this administration doesn't like end up in positions where they cannot be effective.

After all, the suggestion that this EPA is truly working to protect the environment is risible. There is no serious question as to whether the recent waiver decision will hold up to judicial review. It will not. The administration is knowingly violating the law with the sole intent of delaying protections for the environment. How the EPA became subverted to serving this goal is appalling.

[Marcus]

Joel, two things: first, the turnover of EPA managers (supervisors leaving and entering EPA) is very low. It's so low managers are staying well past their possible retirement date so that an ever increasing number of managers (well over 50%) are now eligible for retirement, which creates a vulnerability for the organization.

Second, while we want our policy and technical experts to build up substantive expertise, we would prefer our managers to build up management expertise. They can do that by rotating to different parts of the Agency. Indeed, many of our best managers (such as Stan Meiburg -- see the November 29, 2007 entry) have gone out of their way to rotate to different assignments throughout their career.

[snarlah]

I agree with the first comment. The EPA, as well as all the other government agencies, are being run by the most incompetent people that the Bush administration can find. If they quit, worse ones are found. The main idea is to make sure that corporations get to keep all their money for themselves and lie about the causes of such things as global warming. This is a disgrace, as is the entire United States government.