YETMO

”Being Held Responsible for Your Work” (Week of November 13 – 17 , 2006)

Here’s another troubling piece of news about contractors doing work for the government. They are not being held responsible from their actions – or inaction.

Read Griff White’s November 4, 2006, article in The Washington Post and tell “The Forum” what conclusions you draw from it, especially whether only eight (8!) investigators and auditors are sufficient to handle all the possible demand for review and investigation of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) non-Iraq activities. [As of press time, the DoD IG’s office had not return calls to refute or confirm the eight investigators and auditors number.]

My take is that many government employees are not being held accountable for the quality of their work, either. Before you jump up and down and accuse me of being a shrill for Beltway Bandits, Inc., my point is merely to include balance in this discussion.

Yes, there’s trouble but it’s not necessarily only or primarily with contractors (although that may prove to be the case in this case, we’ll have to await further investigations). In my view, the problem lies with two factors, in varying degrees of relevance depending upon the players: 1) the “system” and the concomitant challenges in disciplining or terminating poor performing employees, and 2) the guts, gumption, and stick-to-it-ness of individual managers or supervisors who find their programs not operating optimally, either through employee or contractor nonfeasance, malfeasance, or misfeasance.

Anyone who’s spent time working with or managing people in the government knows exactly what I’m saying. For reasons I can only speculate, the “system” has tilted in favor of those not performing work up to management wishes and standards. My guess is that some managers over the years, and I don’t know whether that number is closer to ‘some,’ ‘many,’ or ‘most’ must have run rough-shod over employees’ rights and failed to give them the benefit of their side of the story. Perhaps employees performance standards weren’t clear enough, i.e., an employee will produce five (5) memorandums every day and will not, on average, have more than one returned for grammatical errors. Or, and I suspect this is the most likely culprit, government work is more qualitative in nature, i.e., not susceptible to objective measurement (like batting averages in baseball), that supervisor, employee, and, if needed, arbiter, assessment of results could vary widely – and wildly.

Perhaps this isn’t something we should scream about too much, as it falls into the nettlesome, but very real, category of managing and addressing human conditions and dynamics. The good news is that more is being said – and demanded – in government to clearly prescribe upfront, in writing, what tasks must be performed, and how managers and employees will be able to set measures of successful or failure in those endeavors.

A key factor with evaluating and enforcing adequate contractor performance is to address one specific systemic problem mentioned in Griff White’s article: “Litigation fear.” Yet, how can anyone address or influence that, as the process resides solely in the handle of a third-party – the courts. Is the cost needed to prevail in court the expense to prepare and prosecute the case? Such decisions are made daily by law enforcement in determining which cases to bring to prosecution. The answer in any case and for any case, of course, is to set clearer standards and conduct more effective and assiduous review of contract performance. Having the strongest case possible is the best – and only – to reduce litigation fear.

There seems to be an imbalance. Is it perceived – or real? Many people feel that underperformers go unpunished and organizations often deal with such endemic conditions by calling upon their capable employees to do even more to offset the drain caused by these laggards. There’s only so much we should ask of our star employees to cover for their balking brethren.