Tag: foreign service

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Learning from Experience of Others

I wish I had served on the promotion panels before. It is grueling work & eye bugging, but all that reading is paying off in terms of vicarious experience. Each individual report is an encapsulated history/biography for a year and a whole file paints a picture of the progress of a career. My colleagues have done lots of interesting things, achieved some great things and made their shares of mistakes and in these experiences are valuable lessons.

After reading and thinking about what the texts tell, you see patterns in individual careers, in the ways of the FS and – excuse the hyperbole – even in the development of the world in the last decades.  For all the important things that happened, some of us were there, close up and personal.  These sorts of files will someday make excellent primary historical sources. I am sure they do already.  

So serving on the boards has been personally enlightening. I can see how the kinds of work I do fit in – or sometimes not – with the bigger events.  I think it is nearly impossible to see this perspective when you are thinking about your own career or when you are down in the day-to-day fight.  We all like to think we are unique and that the problems we face and solve are special. In detail, they are that; in general they are not.   

The names and the places change, but the situations recur … monotonously. I think we can learn from history and that with the wisdom of experience we may be able to avoid some problems, but not all.  They mutate enough that we just cannot always recognize them or anticipate all the permutations. Experience might allow us to minimize pain or pass through hard times easier and faster, but we will still have hard times.

Progress in careers is never linear. I don’t think it can be.  Not every year can have bigger achievements than the one before.  I can read that there were times when the people involved must have thought their careers were finished.  Often this comes just before a big opportunity or a jump to a bigger achievement. I don’t think this is a mere random occurrence.  Opportunities may come and go, but being able to see them and take advantage of them is a skill and a choice.  Maybe the setback or the career doldrums give the affected person the chance and incentive for introspection and reinvention or maybe just a time to rest before continuing up the mountain.  

It is success that can be more dangerous. It breeds arrogance & complacency and makes you less likely to consider changes, improvements and alternatives. A very successful person may be blind to opportunities. Failure is a better teacher, as long as you can see a way out of it. Of course, if you fail consistently, perhaps you taking the wrong lessons, or none at all.

I can see patterns of success and failure in the files and when I look back I can see them in my own career. They are repetitive and faults are astonishing persistent; it is hard for people to get away from them.  You can travel 1000 miles and leave everything else behind – except you always have to take yourself along on the journey. I recall one of those “de-motivating” saying, “the only consistent factor in your failed relationships is you.” The same goes for success. Of course, we tend to blame failure on outside factors or bad luck, but assume success is earned and maybe overdue.  All those things are true, and vise-versa.

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Promotions

I have not been writing much on the blog because I am serving on promotion panels, which are sapping all my psychic energy.  I am on the “threshold panel” which recommends FS-01 officers from senior Foreign Service.  There is a lot of reading to do and lots of things to consider.  It really is making me sad.  So many great people and not enough places for all of them.   It is like a deadly serious game of musical chairs.  Some people’s careers will end because of our decisions.   I make the choices as best I can and it is my responsibility to do it, but I find it harder than I thought it would be.

I have learned an amazing amount in just a few days.  There are things I thought that were wrong about how the system works, but mostly it is just a different perspective.  After the panels are over, we can talk and write about the process in general terms, but not yet.  For now suffice to say that the process really is as fair as we can make it.   I was very impressed by that and will do my best.

Seeing all these good people makes me wonder how I ever made the leap.  It is truly a humbling experience, but it also makes me proud to be a member of such a group.

Anyway, if I write less for the next couple of months that is why.  I write about what I am thinking about and right now I cannot properly do that.

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A Learning Organization and the New Media

IIP is consulting with FSI to produce a course on new and social media. I am doing the keynote plus and intro. Below is what I plan to say.  Here is a link to the PowerPoint presentation on social media:

Social_Media_FSI_Feb_11Download

Not a “how-to” course

You will learn to use new/social media more effectively in this course, but this is not a “how-to” training. The beauty of the new/social media is that it is fairly easy to learn how to use. The challenge is how to use it in the context of effective public diplomacy and the new/social media’s ease of use and very ubiquity complicate the challenge. We are tempted to just start driving down the road, but it is a good idea to look at the roadmap first to figure out where we want to be and how best to get there

For our next trick

We used to ask “what are the parts of the new media?” We identified Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and others and figured out how to use them. Some of us got very good at sending out tweets and finding friends on Facebook. It is very impressive to reach thousands of people with the push of a key, but what are you accomplishing? When we first got into the new media, just getting there was hard and it was accomplishment enough. But we have moved beyond that. If we used to ask about the parts of the new media, the question now is, “what is the new/social media part of?” You will not learn a “Twitter strategy.”

Public diplomacy professionals should no more have a Twitter strategy than a carpenter should have a “hammer strategy.” Like the carpenter, we want a toolbox filled with the best equipment available and we have a building strategy that uses the appropriate tool or combination of tools to get the job done.

The human equation

This is the place where I genuflect toward public diplomacy’s patron – Edward R Murrow – who said that our technologies can bridge thousands of miles, but that persuasion takes place in the last three feet, i.e. the human space. We are always talking to humans and must consider human behavior, preferences and limitations and there are many that affect us. They will differ in various cultures and in various times. We also have to understand that our own actions may fundamentally change the challenges we face.

It is a kind of public diplomacy game theory. The very fact that we are acting changes the environment where we do our things.

A learning organization

This is why we need you and this is why I need you to participate in the talks. There really are no experts in this field, or put differently the actual practitioners, i.e. YOU are the experts. Unfortunately, none of you, none of us, has the complete picture. But we all have some pieces.

How this course is designed to be a little different

We want to pick up some of those pieces. We want to help make State more of a learning organization. Individuals learn, but in order to become a learning organization we have to harvest and synthesis the knowledge of our individual members. Tomorrow Bill May and I will lead a discussion session. I am sure many of you have been in “open discussions” where you know they have a particular goal where you will reach the received wisdom. Less devious trainers sometimes even have the final conclusions written on the flip chart, to be revealed when the group reaches the correct gate at the city of knowledge.

We will try to guide the discussion but we REALLY do not have a goal in mind; more correctly our real goal is to facilitate the learning among all of us. AND we anticipate changing our approach and procedures on the basis of what we learn. If you take this course again, it will be different. And I will write up a synthesis of the results and post it on InfoCentral’s wiki platform. All of you will get the URL and all of you can continue to comment and contribute.

The picture at top, BTW, is Memorial Bridge over the Potomac.

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Running in Circles

I don’t think that life runs in circles, but we kind of follow trials, maybe more like a bloodhound following scents.   The scents can be stronger or weaker.  Sometimes they are washed away completely, but more often it only seems that way.   Naturally the course of your career is often determined by your core competencies and talents.   You tend to circle around the places where you have expertise.   That is why it is so important to start along a path with lots of options, since you may be travelling that way a long time.

The natural circle

Forestry was probably my biggest circle. I have always loved nature and studied forestry in college, but abandoned it as impractical.  I believed that was the end of it, but I didn’t know myself as well as I thought.   While my conscious mind was not paying attention, under the surface I was always paying attention to the opportunities and – in the Chicago term – when I saw my chances, I took them.   I became a forest owner.   People wondered not only why I wanted to do that, but also how I knew what to do.  I just did.  I had learned to identify forest types and assess forest land, not in the professional sense but enough to know what I was buying because that program had been running in background for thirty years.

Bookending Brazil

Now I may well be bookending my career with Brazil.   Brazil was my first post and Portuguese was the first language the FS taught me.  That was a long time ago, a quarter century ago.  Besides my sojourn in Iraq, I spent the rest of my career in Europe.  But I wasn’t so completely out of it.  In 2000, I went to the EU Summit in Lisbon.  Their Portuguese is very different from the Brazilian variety and for a couple days I couldn’t say anything.  But then it came back, mostly.  A couple years ago, FSI offered an online Portuguese reading course.   I had no reason to take it, but I did.

I went down to Sao Paulo and the State of Parana in May of this year.   Brazil surprised me.  I guess I should have known that it would change in twenty-five years, but it had changed a lot.   The country of the future was finally catching up with its vast potential.  So when they advertised for the PAO in Brazil, I applied for the job.   Yesterday I got it.

Foreign language is hard and you tend to think you sound better than you do

It is well in the future.  The job doesn’t start until summer of 2011.   I will finish the job here in IIP next summer, so I will have to find something for a couple months before I start the area training and language again.   I want to get my Portuguese as nearly perfect as I can and that takes effort and training.   I was easily fluent in the language when I lived in Porto Alegre, but I know that at my best I sounded like the equivalent of Sergeant Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes.   I want to move up to the Louis Jordan or Ricardo Montalban level.  

FSI has language proficiency levels.  IMO – the 1 level is like those Japanese fighter pilots on old movies,  You can say just enough to make a few exclamations.  When you approach the 2 level, you can ask where directions to the bathroom or the train station, but you might not understand the answer well enough to find it.  The 3 is Sargeant Shultz.  People understand you, but it is often comical. You have to get at least 4 to approach Louis Jordan or Ricardo Montalban, but they are probably closer to 5.

Once more around the track

So it looks like I will be doing another lap around another circle.  Brazil is a very good post.  The PAO seemed like a real big deal when I was looking at it from the junior officer perspective.   Now, maybe not so much, but it will be a good and rewarding work.  It has a big budget and a lot to do.  This time I will be able to see the country and appreciate it more.  Last time we were so poor that we couldn’t afford to go anywhere unless the government sent us.  We were paying off student loans, car loans and then the expenses of the kid.  Mariza was born in Brazil.   We should be on easy street this time. The verse from TS Eliot seems appropriate.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

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The Bureaucracy Has No Memory

A significant part of my pay could be “performance pay” now that I am in the Senior Foreign Service (Senior Executive Service) and don’t get automatic increases.  I didn’t get to compete for performance pay for 2007/8 because of a technicality – Congress acted too late on my class’ promotion and we were not in grade long enough to qualify according to the State Department’s arcane rules.   (Ironically, however, they acted quick enough that I lost my overtime pay in Iraq and ended up taking a pay cut because of my promotion. It won’t be until the middle of next year that I make up the money I lost by being promoted.) This year I just didn’t get performance pay.  I am a little surprised.  

This was the last performance report that included Iraq.  Next year my Iraq experience will be buried under the relative obscurity of this Washington assignment.  If I didn’t deserve performance pay for Iraq, I certainly should not get it for Washington, so my prospects don’t look good. Iraq was about the best I can do.  I am beginning to feel unpopular.

In fairness, my colleagues are doing lots of important things in Embassies overseas and in Washington.  I don’t doubt the merit of those on the list. 

But being a PRT leader in Iraq seemed a bigger deal to the Department when they asked me to take the assignment. They dragged me out of the job I had and made me feel that delay of even a couple of days was disastrous.  It sure seemed important. Of course, the perceived value of a service declines rapidly after that service has been performed and there has, anyway, been a shift in priorities.   You get little advantage being tied to yesterday’s urgency, no matter how important they told you it was at the time.  

I said when I signed on for Iraq that I did NOT do it for career advancement and I was telling the truth.  I remain glad that I volunteered.  I derived immense satisfaction from doing the job there. I worked with great colleagues and I am convinced that there are people alive in Iraq today who would not be had we not done the work we did.   I would not change my decision.

Nevertheless, it bothers me a little to conclude that I would likely have been in a better career position, at least in terms of contacts & assignment prospects, had I not volunteered, had I kept and built on the good job I had in September 2007. Things moved along w/o me while I was literally wandering in the desert.  It is my own fault too. I did a poor job of reconnecting.   I thought I could just pick up where I left off; I was mistaken. 

Chrissy says that I don’t get mad enough about these sorts of things and that I need to develop a stronger sense of entitlement. Sometimes the people who make the most noise get the most recognition. I tend to downplay hardships and achievements and I am not prone to anger. I am mad about not being recognized for my Iraq service, but this is about the extent of my rage.

“Do it because it is the right thing to do, but remember that the State Department talks a lot about the importance of the mission and the people who do it, but the bureaucracy has no memory.”  That is what I will tell the people who ask my advice on taking on hard assignments.

It is a dreary, depressing day, both in terms of the weather (as you can see from the picture above) and my outlook, but the sky will brighten up and so will my situation.    I plan to wallow in self-pity for a little longer; then I will stop and try to do something useful again.  

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Unlearned Lessons

I participated in a seminar led by guy who had been on a CORDS team in Vietnam. CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support) were supposed to do some of the development and coordination activities done by PRTs.  I was aware of CORDS but through talking to some older guys who knew about them. You cannot find much about them otherwise. It is the forgotten war and maybe the forgotten victory.

The professor pointed out that the insurgency in South Vietnam was decisively defeated after the TET offensive and CORDS cemented the victory.   After that, it became a problem of invasion from North Vietnam.  The popularly held idea that a bunch of insurgents, living with the people in the countryside, overthrew the South Vietnamese regime is just wrong.  We all remember the fall of Saigon, but we often forget that it was conquered by the armies of the North; big armies complete with armor and air support.  It wasn’t little guys in black pajamas.     

The successful counterinsurgency, including CORDS operation, was linked with the disastrous fall of Saigon and because we got the history wrong, usually w/o even thinking much about it, we were unable or unwilling to learn the lessons.  

The strategy associated with the surge worked in Iraq. We went from near defeat in late 2006 to a clear success (call it victory) a year later. I personally saw the change and felt its effects.  It was literally a matter of people dying or not. You can do all the academic analysis you want and round the words until they fit into square holes, but I am morally convinced that thousands of people are alive today because of what we did. PRTs were part of the surge and people like me contributed to the victory in Iraq. 

Our work at the PRTs may be following CORDS down the memory hole. It just doesn’t have many powerful champions and there are detractors. Some people are almost embarrassed that the surge worked, since they had so vociferously predicted its failure. Others have convinced themselves that success would have happened anyway.  Still others deny that we were successful at all since the situation is not a perfect as they could imagine. And then there are those who imply that victory or defeat in Iraq were/are just irrelevant.    

Some of the participants in the seminar asked me how State Department had taken advantage of the unique experience I had gained in Western Anbar. How had we absorbed that knowledge as a learning organization.  This is what they wanted to know.  I thought about it. I thought about it again.   The Marines invited me to Quantico to discuss my experience, several times, I told them. An independent scholar contacted me.  He had read my blog and wanted to see if I could tell him anything else.  At State Department … well, FSI asked me to present to classes of PRT folks going to Iraq.  I was on a panel with four other people and collectively we talked for about an hour.  That was good.  I sponsored my own brown bag lunch to discuss Iraq.   Five people came, all of them my friends just trying to be nice. I wrote a few entries on our State Department wiki, Diplopedia.  I don’t know if anybody read any of them, but information gets stale anyway unless it is converted to knowledge.

The follow up question was something like, “then how do you all learn?”  I mumbled about “reading in” to the cable and reports.

It is hard to be a learning organization because it is hard to turn experience into information and even harder to turn information into useful knowledge. We too often content ourselves with information on paper, or these days on computers.  We can gather all the numbers, metrics, whatever you want to call it, but it has to be converted to useful knowledge and categorized by human intelligence.  Creating useful knowledge usually means putting it into understandable context.  It usually also requires that the person digesting the information is also someone who can make decisions.  You cannot outsource your brains.

As a PRT leader, I had first-hand, primary knowledge. I sometimes didn’t know the significance of my information or how it fit into a bigger picture. It was helpful when someone had the secondary knowledge to evaluate and figure out what my information was part of. That is why a learning organization is stronger and smarter than the individuals in it.  If the information contained in individual minds remains un-harvested, the organization doesn’t learn.  It can be full of smart people who are adept at learning and improvising solutions, but it will lack the synergy of a learning organization. This is our problem.

I have been observing organizations for a long time.  You have to look at the organization as a whole with its own behaviors, not only at the separate individuals because groups are more than a the sum of individuals.  They develop a culture. We all know that individuals can learn, but so can organizations under the right conditions.

I see that many can be episodically learning organizations.  Much depends on characteristics of individuals in charge and the culture they engender. People have to talk and exchange information informally and non-judgmentally. The learning episode stops if anybody gets in trouble for being wrong, stepping out of line or presenting information that contradicts a agreed upon course of action.  But it is clearly a lot harder than just letting people talk and engage.  There has to be a way to evaluate information. Someone might be 100% honest and open, but still lack the perspective to create accurate or useful knowledge.  On the other hand, the old saying applies that even a broken clock is right twice a day, so you have to listen to everybody. 

The Marines in Iraq had become a learning organization.  I wrote about it at this link. Parts of State Department have been learning organizations during some periods.  I have been involved in some. It was exciting but those flashes of lights tend to flicker out when personnel or priorities shift. 

Maybe both personnel and priorities have shifted concerning PRTs in Iraq.  Maybe its just me.  Maybe the State Department has moved along.  Maybe the old Arab proverb applies, “The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on. I don’t suppose my banana index translates very well anyway. It even stopped working in Iraq before I left. 

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IIP engages new audiences with social media

Below is a draft of an article we submitted for “State Magazine.”  Regualar readers will recognize some of the themes I monotonously return to in this blog.  The text clearly has that bureaucratic feel necessary when writing for any in-house publication, and I did resisted the urge to put in some of my snarky comments, but it highlights some of the good work my colleagues are doing so I think it is worth posting and worth reading.    Below that is an article I wrote for the “Foreign Service Journal” way back in 2001.  Some of the cliche terms were just starting to be used back then.  In the intervening eight years, some things have changed but the basics remain the same.  We still have not really succeeded and we will never be finished, but there is some progress.

 IIP engages new audiences with social media

By John Matel and William May

Social media is, above all, social.  The increasing popularity of Facebook, Twitter, Short Message Service and podcasts gives public diplomacy practitioners unprecedented direct access to publics, opens doors to new overseas audiences and gives us the chance to engage people around the world in new ways.  It is a opportunity and a challenge to pick the right tools.

The Department has more than 130 official Facebook pages, more than a dozen feeds on the Flickr photo-sharing Web site, nearly 40 Twitter accounts and a growing list of blogs.  The Bureau of International Information Programs is taking the lead in employing these tools for international engagement, using cutting-edge technologies to reach people, remembering always that the medium ‑ the technology ‑ is not the message. We try to match the technology to the audience and the message.

At IIP we have found that using social media effectively often requires risk taking, creativity and a willingness to be on the cutting edge of these technologies.  Fortunately, the Department’s leadership is firmly committed to seeking out and implementing these new approaches that expand our ability to engage in exchanges with foreign publics. As Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale said recently, “[In] the right circumstances, the use of new media could be smart power at its best, as when employed in dialogue with wired constituencies.”

Global Outreach

An important aspect of the new technologies is the ability and the need to be where the customers are.  IIP’s Digital Outreach Team connects with online users in Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Chinese, inserting the U.S. government’s voice into conversations on prominent blogs and forums and engaging an often skeptical audience on their own ground.  The Iranian government has labeled the team “dangerous and subversive” for its online discussions of the need for greater openness, the economic costs of Iran’s hardliner attitude and Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capability. In fact, the team has engaged in a back-and-forth online dialogue in Persian with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s media advisor.  IIP’s blogging team gives Iranians an unfiltered look at a U.S. perspective on issues such as their nuclear programs and human rights.

“The blogging team’s willingness to address hard issues in an open and transparent way mitigates rancor and helps get our messages heard, copied and amplified,” said IIP Coordinator Jeremy Curtin.

IIP is also developing powerful new media tools for digital diplomats to allow them virtual personal contact with people worldwide.  The bureau has turned Adobe Connect business conferencing software into a multimedia-platform outreach tool that allows U.S. diplomats to cheaply and easily engage with publics via the Internet over high- and low-speed networks.  Dubbed “Co.Nx” (http://co-nx.state.gov), this tool integrates video, audio and print into a flexible platform that can carry the Secretary of State’s Town Hall meetings in Brussels to thousands of participants in Europe or, at slower speeds, transmit small interactive programs in Africa and Afghanistan.

New Meets Traditional 

Working closely with the White House new media team, IIP developed the first worldwide mobile Short Message Service-based event, which was used to engage audiences around the world to discuss the President’s speeches in Cairo and Ghana.  In Africa, where mobile phones are common but few have access to the Internet, the White House and IIP married Short Message Service with traditional radio broadcasts.  People across Africa and the world texted more than 17,000 questions and 50,000 instant messages to the White House in three languages.  President Obama produced a podcast that answered some of the Africans’ questions, and public diplomacy officers in Africa then took the podcast to radio stations, which broadcast it locally.

In another social media effort, IIP launched the “Democracy Video Challenge,” which attracted more than 900 video entries on YouTube (State Magazine tk.).  A second round of the contest began in September.

IIP’s Office of Innovative Engagement, in collaboration with eDiplomacy, has launched the Social Media Hub (http://www.intelink.gov/communities/state/smp/), which contains user manuals for Facebook, Twitter and blogging. It also has best practices, an “Ask the Expert” section and news about training opportunities.  This gives the posts overseas the encouragement and information they need to work effectively with new media.  It also provides a platform to share their experiences with Washington and with each other so that the innovation, imagination, intelligence and specific knowledge of our colleagues around the world can be shared and engaged. 
By using these new social media tools along with more traditional media and outreach, IIP is enhancing its ability to tailor and target public diplomacy messages to specific audiences.   Even as it explores the frontiers of new media, IIP is keeping an eye firmly fixed on the fundamental social aspect of public diplomacy.  At the end of the day, the bureau is still in the business of relating to and engaging with people. 

The new technologies simply make doing that easier – and better.

John Matel is director of the IIP Office of Policy, and William May is director of the IIP Office of Innovative Engagement.

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Below is the article I wrote in 2001.

Speaking Out
Public Affairs: Out of the Information Business
By John Matel

It is hard to recall a time before we could read today’s American newspapers anywhere in the world online, or watch coverage of breaking events on CNN or a host of other TV and Internet news channels. Yet until recently, it was enough for information officers to provide — well, information. Sometimes we provided the latest news, or at least news that local media had not yet seen. Press attachés frequently thought of themselves as a species of journalist, faithfully furnishing unbiased, or at least evenhanded, information and official statements to host-country media. Overseas opinion-makers were often regular readers of our products and the local media treated them as supplementary news services.

What a change! Media organizations and the State Department’s own Internet sites now give our former clients 24-hour access to timely and accurate information. They bypass local public affairs officers, who cannot compete with Washington and should not try. Yet if public affairs sections can no longer be “honest information brokers,” they can be effective policy advocates by using the Internet as a public diplomacy tool. Or to put it another way: The Internet will not replace public affairs, but it will revolutionize its practice.

Strategic vs. Tactical

Despite its ubiquitous quality, the Internet has not lived up to its potential as a public affairs tool. A key reason is confusion over strategic versus tactical use of the new methods. Washington Web sites and most mission sites are almost entirely strategic in that they provide content to support general goals and messages, are directed to a wide, self-selected audience, and are independent of specific public affairs campaigns. They are excellent information sources that compare favorably with those of large private enterprises.

A breakdown results when strategic Web efforts are inappropriately applied to tactical situations. An effective tactical Internet campaign must be forward-looking, support specific programs, be interactively targeted to particular audiences and time-sensitive. It also requires active, sustained support by other public affairs activities; in other words, it is a fully integrated part of a larger public affairs campaign that no longer just informs but advocates a point of view. In many respects, Internet, e-mail and user-friendly electronic databases fulfill the promise of the old USIS Distribution Records System: identifying and reaching the relatively small number of key opinion leaders and transmitters who shape the larger society’s attitudes. This is a necessary but not sufficient aspect of public affairs. To be effective, information must also stick with the consumer.

Making Information Stick

The biggest problem with information delivered via the Internet is that it is not “sticky.” Recipients either cannot recall the message or fail to integrate it into their outlook or behavior. The solution is not limited to making our information more exciting or relevant; what usually makes the real difference are the context of the message and the perceived character and credibility of the messenger. In other words, recipients must trust the source and know what to do with the information they receive.

Beaming data to Palm Pilots works for stock prices and sports scores because recipients are waiting for the information and know how to use it. They have context. The kind of information we disseminate as diplomats is more complicated than factual reporting, however, for we seek to influence, not merely inform. Public affairs events, personal meetings and media relations provide the glue, the context that renders message content relevant and makes it stick in the consciousness of opinion-makers. Without human and programmatic context, electronic resources are like encyclopedias. Without electronic resources, conversely, most programming falls seriously short of providing content. They need to be used together. Consider the following:

In a traditional scenario, we meet a contact at an event, promise to provide more information and maybe even remember to send it. By the time it arrives, however, the contact may have lost interest. We created an opening, but were unable to follow up with content. By contrast, the Internet can provide complete and timely information, but not required context. Thus, a contact browsing a State Department Web page might carefully read a piece of information and make a mental note of it, but quickly lose the “mental notepad” because he or she also read 50 other pages the same day.

Now imagine a combined strategy. The public affairs section organizes an event, with its own Web page offering links to information. Key contacts get e-mail invitations with links to the event page. They can browse the page and get a comprehensive idea of what they want to learn. As a result, we meet a fully primed contact at the event, and can concentrate on specific parts of the presentation. We can then follow up with more information provided by our Area Information Resource Center in an e-mail with Web page links later that day. Now the information sticks with the contact because of the additional context of the event and the personal attention. In fact, he or she may well share it with colleagues and friends, and perhaps refer them to the Web page or forward an e-mail. That is success.

Reaching the Right People

Obviously, the combined strategy is best. Beyond that, skillful use of databases and e-mail will maintain relations as long as the contact remains important. With these tools, we can fine-tune our efforts and maintain meaningful contact with a greater number of truly engaged people (opinion leaders) across a wider spectrum of issues, instead of dispersing our resources on a mass audience, most of whom are indifferent to the message or unable to act on it.

Without technology (or several personal assistants), an average person can maintain regular personal contact with 150 to 200 people during any particular period. This maximum is set by the limits in the number of hours in a day and human memory capacity. Working harder or longer will not significantly increase this number, but technology can, by creating the possibility of mass personalization. Targeted e-mail with Internet links can be very precise in creating contact opportunities, since databases are memory enhancers. Thus, using technologically enhanced methods, one officer can maintain meaningful targeted contact with thousands of individuals. Notice that I am not advocating that this contact work be completely automated, however. In the high-tech world, personal attention is actually even more important.

Toward A New Paradigm

Those who think that technology will make overseas officers irrelevant are as misguided as those who believe they can ignore technology. Information technology will never replace public affairs officers. On the contrary, technology increases the value of human interaction while providing tools that liberate public affairs both from the tedium of being a mere conduit for information and the exciting, but uncreative, experience of having journalists clamoring for the latest breaking news. Because the Internet has made information a free commodity, we no longer score points for providing it. We add value only by customizing information and making it recipient-specific.

Ironically, “hard” technology puts a premium on “soft” skills by devaluing rote, programmed procedures and making the product itself (raw information) less important than the channel of delivery (relationships) and customization (personalization). Also, by eliminating the external discipline of the urgent, the new technology necessitates more creative and self-motivated behavior. Making it all work together successfully requires a new paradigm for public affairs, one that blends our traditional communication and people skills with new communication and people skills.

Technology changes the terms of engagement, but our relationships are with people, just as they always have been, not with their computers or fax machines. Effective communication with people is still the only real business we are in.

Why have we applied these methods only sporadically to our public affairs? One reason is simple newness. Only recently has such communication become possible with a significant number of recipients. Everyone must get used to using the new system. But a more pernicious impediment to effective synergy of electronic communications with public affairs has been the structure of the State Department. New technologies mean different ways of doing business and challenge us to be flexible in everything from job descriptions to traditional perks. They cannot just be strapped on old management structures. The department’s hierarchical, sequential culture, where one step must be cleared up the chain before the next one can begin, is not well-suited to a new world where several problems must be solved simultaneously and hierarchy sometimes ignored. (Who should sing tenor in the choir? The ones who can, not necessarily the senior members.) Bosses are uncomfortable when they lack the requisite knowledge to clear the work of their expert subordinates and are therefore reluctant to trust decisions they make in response to uncertain circumstances. The commitment of State’s new management team to addressing this problem is encouraging, but convincing those who prospered under the old system is a tough challenge.

Nevertheless, it is a challenge that must be met. If an integrated approach is not applied, the department’s public affairs efforts will soon be ignored and irrelevant. If the State Department can’t explain and advocate American interests abroad in a timely and effective way, the task will pass to those better suited for the job or not get properly done at all. These are unacceptable alternatives. To succeed we must release the talent and energy we already have. Let’s do it.

John Matel, an FSO since 1984, has served in Porto Alegre, Oslo, Krakow and Washington. He is currently information officer in Warsaw.

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Who Ought to Sing Tenor in the Quartet

The State Department blog featured an interesting discussion about discrimination against people with disabilities in the FS.  I won’t go into details.  Suffice to say the idea was that people who go to places like Afghanistan and Iraq derive career benefits and that the system is thus unfair since only the able-bodied can do these kinds of assignments. 

This takes the idea too far.  I agree that we should make reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities wherever we can, but there are some places where we can’t.  If we think a job is important enough to be done, we have to allow those who can do it to do it.

My job in Western Iraq was more vigorous than most others because we had to travel across the largest area of operations in Iraq.  I didn’t have to be in top-condition to do the job, but just humping onto a helicopter or into an MRAP with body armor and gear is hard.   The chow hall had a wide selection of food, but we were not always near the chow hall.  It gets pretty hot and dusty in the Iraqi desert.  It is indeed a physical challenge that not everyone can do.   It would be life-threatening to send anybody who couldn’t pull his own weight, for the individual as well has his colleagues.   This is just true.   

I would point out/admit that I have lost some of my ability over the years.   That is what happens as you get older.  Ability and disability are a continuum.    When it comes to running miles in less than six minutes, I have become disabled.   This gradient can be deceptive.   It is hard to identify the exact point where we are not in good enough condition for a particular task.   But that point is reached.  This is not like a made-for-TV movie or an after school special.   Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you want something or how much you try.  

Nature, war and the laws of physics are not fair.   

So what about the compensation?   I suppose it depends on what you mean by fair.   FSOs are supposed to be worldwide available.   Not all of us are and we might lose our worldwide clearance.   But good health is a definite advantage.   I don’t know how we can get around that.   One reason I have been successful is that I don’t get sick very often.   You may not succeed even if you show up, but you certainly cannot succeed if you don’t, no matter whether the reason is good or bad.

We will all sooner or later become “disabled” if we live long enough and I suppose being dead, i.e. “vitality challenged” is a significant impediment to success, so that is all our fates.  Before that time, we can do our jobs and be productive members of society, and I guess that I think of work as more an obligation than a right.   It makes a lot of sense to help everybody be as productive as they can, but you cannot achieve total equality in results. 

I had great experience but I didn’t get promoted this year for my work in Iraq.  This is okay.  I agree that we don’t necessary deserve a career jump just for going to dangerous or unpleasant places.   And you don’t need to go to Iraq to find places like that.  Many Foreign Service posts are dangerous and unpleasant.  The ability and willingness to go to these places – and do a good job while there – is part of our job, part of our work ethic.  It is worth something.  It should be encouraged.  It deserves consideration and it should not be devalued.  It makes little sense to subtract one of the big virtues of the FS just because not everybody can achieve it. We need to be reasonable about these things.  

Henry Ford said that asking “’who ought to be boss’ is like asking ‘Who ought to be tenor in the quartet?’ Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.”  This goes for most things.  Ability counts and talents & abilities are not evenly distributed.  This is the way it is, whether we like it or not. 

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Water Finds Its Level

Our Foreign Service evaluation period ends this month and it is time again for all of us to list our myriad achievements in a couple pages of dense prose.  I hate that.  Coming from my conservative Midwestern background where bragging was discouraged and ridiculed, I am at a significant disadvantage vis-à-vis those who consider pushing oneself forward a pleasure.  I have always hated hustlers and hustling.  But there is the time for those things. 

I have gotten better at it and developed methods and rationalizations that help me through.   My best method is to imagine I am writing about someone else.   In my job, I often have to “sell” ideas.   I make the self-promotion exercise just another job like that.  I have never lied or even exaggerated in any of my assessments, but it is amazing how different achievements can seem when put in context or surrounded by the right words and phrases.  And I guess I have done all right in the promotion game, despite all the gnashing of teeth. 

If you stayed in the Foreign Service for 200 years, things would even out and you would probably end up more-or-less where you deserve, but in the course of a 20 year career there can be lots of random events that affect your success.   I know very capable colleagues who suffered some kind of career downdraft through little or no fault of their own and forever stalled at mid-level and there are a happy few who have risen to very high ranks on the strength of some random occurrence or lucky break. Of course, some people can’t get ahead no matter what breaks they get, but chance matters too.

Good or bad luck can affect whole generations, so you have to compare people to their peers.  During the middle 1990s, it was very hard even for good people to get promoted because they were cutting the FS.  It is easier now when we are expanding hiring.  I read in a biography of Eisenhower that he despaired of ever getting another promotion back in the late 1930s.  But it worked out for him.  His became “the class the stars fell on” (the class of 1915 produced 59 generals out of 164 graduates, not bad) when WWII expanded the army. Eisenhower, Bradley, Marshall, Nimitz, Halsey etc were able men and they were successful, but had the war come five years later we would have had a whole different set of five-star leaders.  Colonel Eisenhower might have found himself called out of retirement to run a training program, but the crusade in Europe would have had a different champion.  “There is a tide in the affairs of men …” 

Below is a statue of Gen John Pershing, General of the Armies, the only man to attain that rank during his own lifetime.   Later Congress passed a law stipulating that no American ever had or could outrank George Washington.

General Pershing monument in Washington

Losers blame their circumstances, and they are right just enough to keep the idea plausible. With the caveat of comparison mentioned above, promotions are correlated to actual merit, but certainly not perfectly correlated.  There is a statistical quality to them, which is not always fair or right, but in the long term and for the most part you can understand what happened.    

Some people have opportunities dropped in their laps; others have to work hard to find them.  You do need opportunity to shine, but what you do with it makes all the difference.  The FS is a very good laboratory for achievement because we have such a variety of jobs and we move among them.  Even though we are all similar in background, and the FS test ensures that we are all smart in the academic sense, you can really see the difference people can make in positions.  Posts and positions may suddenly become important and effective just because a new person has come in.  The reverse is also true. 

In my observation, chronic underperformers are those that avoid responsibility and refuse to make consequent decisions.   It has to do with that opportunity thing I mentioned above.  In choosing mediocrity, they cannot be blamed for failure, but they also never have the opportunity to succeed.   In a knowledge organization like the FS, the preferred method to avoid responsibly is to over analyize every situation and then spread risk by involving lots of marginal participants in your decision making.  I don’t think that most of those doing this really understand the implicit choices they are making.  They think they are being prudent and honestly don’t understand why their list of achievements pales next to those of their “crazier” and “less hard working” colleagues.

I have real trouble understanding how I achieved the success that I have enjoyed and I cannot believe that I deserve it.  This doubt is not a malady I suffer alone.  I find that most successful people who are honest and self-aware fear that they are frauds whose mistakes and faults will someday be embarrassingly revealed.  This is a useful attitude.  It keeps us more humble and stimulates a desire for continuous correction and improvement. I pity the fools who believe they have no serious faults left to correct.  But self-doubt can result in the risk-avoiding mediocrity I mention above and you have to be careful not to be overly influenced humility and self-doubt at evaluation time.  Evaluations are comparisons.  In this universe of imperfect people, where do you stand in relation to others? Nobody is perfect and the ostensible quest for perfection is another way people avoid responsibly to make choices.  If we disqualify ourselves based on the faults & fears we know we suffer, all we do is allow the more dishonest or self-deceiving people among us to prosper and rule … and those are not the kinds of people you want running the show. 

It is not only your right, but your proactive duty to ensure that you can make a contribution commensurate with your capacity.  That means we have to engage in what I would call bragging at evaluation time.  Unfortunately, evaluations are like a race run in the fog, where you might have to judge the winners by who is bragging the loudest because the actual finish was unclear.

The arguments we make for ourselves should be honest, but well crafted.  We can share credit and take credit for common efforts at the same time.  It is not a virtue to allow your achievements to be hidden or ignored, since that means that your ability to do more will be curtailed and it is likely that a less competent but more confined guy will take your place.  In my circumstances, getting promoted really doesn’t mean making much more money, since our pay is capped.  It does mean having the opportunity to do more useful and interesting things before they kick me out (we have an up-or-out system). 

Anyway, those are the things I am telling myself as I embark on my creative writing exercise.  

We get to write our own first page on our evaluation forms and tell the promotion boards why we are worthy.   I will imagine that I am writing for somebody else and give that guy the benefit of all doubts.   I have some interesting narratives this year and I suppose I can spin some gold out of that common straw. 

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Working for the Go’mint

People are breaking down the doors trying to get jobs for the Federal government.   In these inconsistent economic times, the promise of steady work and a good pension trump dreams of riches. 

US Captiol on March 22, 2009

My original plan when I joined the FS was to stay in for about seven years and then start a different career.   It didn’t work out that way.  When my seventh anniversary came, I was in Norway in a great job.   Then I was in Krakow.   Who would ever want to leave a job in Krakow?  Then Warsaw, Fletcher School, it was always something good.  The only time I was really unhappy with the job was brief time when I was doing shift work in the Operations Center 1997-8, but I was only there for nine months and they sent me to Poland for three of those months to work on NATO expansion issues, so I never got around to sending my resume around.  

You have to look at the totality of life that goes with a career, not just the job alone.   As an FSO, I get to travel, meet interesting people, work with a variety of ideas and serve my country.   I am not being facetious when I say that I had the opportunity to go to Iraq and the privilege to live with Marines.  Few jobs offer that sort of adventure to a man north of fifty years old.

State Department has long been a popular place to work and the FS never has any trouble recruiting good people.   BTW – it is a good time to be looking for a job as an FSO.   They are hiring a lot this year.  This year, however, people government jobs are popular across the board.   I have mixed feelings about that.  It depends on why you want to work for the USG.  There is a special responsibly when you work for your Uncle Sam.   Government jobs should be callings, not refuges. 

I am glad that we have so many good people who want to work in the USG.  I welcome them in the FS – follow this link.  But we don’t want too much of a good thing.   America has been an exceptional country ever since our revolution and even before.  There are other models.  France has followed a different, more directed, strategy since its revolution, for example.  France is a great and beautiful country, but I prefer America.  

In France, the best students dream of getting secure jobs in the government. Young Americans have always had visions of being entrepreneurs or running businesses. I am delighted to have enthusiastic and smart young people eager to work with us and they are coming at just the right time.  We will face a wave of retirements in the next five years.  We will need them in the FS to accomplish our mission. But I hope they are doing it for the right reasons (because they want to do good service not just for security) and I hope that soon young Americans will recover their confidence in the economy and themselves.  I hope that some of them will still want to work with us, but maybe not so many.