Not all company leaders are able to — or want to — take sides in social and political issues. Many, in fact, hold neutrality as a core component of their strategy. But maintaining non partisanship in an increasingly polarized world is a difficult task. It means, in some ways, that those leaders have to become activists for neutrality. Perhaps no one has a better understanding of how this works than Max Stier, the CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that works with political administrations to hire and train political appointees. A condensed and edited version of our conversation with Stier follows.
Can you tell us how you’ve navigated partisanship while maintaining a nonpartisan position?
There’s no question that maintaining a nonpartisan stance is more difficult given the increasingly partisan environment. We are, however, an honest broker on management issues, and we’ve been successful in sidestepping some of the partisan debate by coming back to something that everyone should agree on: Whatever size you want our government to be, you want it to be effective and efficient at delivering the best value to the American public.
Our core mission is focused on the health of our government. The government is our only tool for collective action to deal with our most pressing problems. The Partnership starts from the proposition that a well-functioning government is vital to our democracy. When you hold onto that as your north star, you can better navigate very tricky politics
I understand that making the government more effective traditionally has been a universal goal. But in today’s polarized world, is that even possible?
People today are more skeptical about wanting to help government function efficiently. Those who disagree with a current administration’s agenda may worry that improving government may actually result in more outcomes that they don’t like. And our argument comes back to that north star: This is about a collective asset for all of us. You can’t step away, allow things to crater in our government, and then come back and clean up the pieces and think that all will be fine — because it won’t be. We strive to help the public and policymakers understand that there are things that ought to be off-limits to partisanship. When core democratic pillars of our society are pulled onto the political battlefield, we risk losing everything.
We aren’t attempting to fix all problems — such as the weaponization of government procedure to achieve a political aim — but instead are focused on improving the effectiveness of our government. It’s really scary to watch as the career infrastructure of our government becomes a target of partisanship. We have a phenomenally mission-oriented, experienced and nonpartisan career workforce, but it has struggled under political leaders in Congress and the executive branch that don’t consider managing talent and making government work more effectively to be part of their primary job responsibilities.
Companies typically try to promote their interests in Washington by working through trade associations, lobbying and contributing to political action committees. Do you see an activist role for companies in promoting your mission of fostering a more efficient government?
CEOs overlook this point, ironically. Companies engage with government around their policy preferences, but they rarely pay attention to how policy will be executed to achieve the most effective outcomes.
A good example is the healthcare .gov rollout. A giant war raged on the policy side about the responsibilities the government should have in health care, yet no one was engaged in thinking about how to deliver on the promises that were eventually made. No business leader I have encountered would spend 99.9% of their time on the idea and virtually nothing on the execution. In their own spheres, business leaders focus on execution and operational capability — but they typically do not when they engage with government.
I imagine your employees have their own political opinions, particularly now given how polarized the world has become. How do you strike that balance between the views of your employees and the mission of the organization?
I am proud that our employees have a diverse set of political views and an internal culture that makes it clear that everyone should be respectful of those differences. We try to have representatives of both parties as part of our board, our team and our larger set of partners. No matter what our political views, we all benefit from a healthy government, and we all get hurt by one that is not performing well. The truth is that no matter where you are on the political spectrum, there’s some part of government that you have to believe in. Leadership, for me, is about keeping people focused on that ultimate goal and how we all can contribute to achieving it.
