In my work with clients we commonly create job benchmarks. A job benchmark is a tool that is used to concisely measure and prioritize the key accountabilities for a position in order to define success in terms that best contribute to organizational health. Once these are determined, a natural extension is to use psychometric tools to identify and quantify the behaviors, drivers, and competencies necessary in fulfilling the critical tasks in that position. This knowledge favorably disposes us to optimally match a person to the role and, just as importantly, create conditions that lead to success and best provide ongoing development.
This practice is an integral part of a comprehensive People Strategy and improves the attraction, selection, development, and retention of talent and thereby performance. The approach is so powerful that I assert that every important position in every organization should be benchmarked. Too bad we can’t do this for one of the most important jobs of all – President of the United States.
Or can we?
If we could, it would be a big job, because the position of POTUS includes lots of responsibility and numerous and often conflicting constituencies. But hey, fortune favors the bold. So let’s give it a shot.
I should first qualify this thought experiment. Elections are, ideally, supposed to fulfill some of these functions. Candidates explain their priorities, what they propose to do about them, and why their personal attributes mean that potential voters can be confident that they will execute successfully. The problem we have is that the Machine (comprised of vested interests – current public sector structures, media, the two major Parties, and their deep-pocketed constituents) obfuscates. The Machine’s criterion for a successful President is limited to “someone who will help expand our power.” This leads to the purposeful avoidance and misrepresentation both of what success looks like as well as what is true about candidates. This undermines our ability to discern.
For that reason, we will have to make some assumptions. This is not ideal because if you miss on an assumption you miss on your conclusion. This limits our ability to be precise or even scientific. But the experiment should nevertheless give us a more in depth and robust analysis than is typical in our current political discourse.
This week we’ll cover the benchmarking process. Next time we’ll define the key accountabilities for the POTUS and how they might be measured. The final installment will focus on personal attributes and how those might be applied to the current crew of Presidential hopefuls. The aspiration is that this exercise yields useful and perhaps unique insights.
When benchmarking a role, you begin by defining how the role serves the greater organization. Often you start by analyzing an existing job description. In the case of the POTUS, we need to begin with the U.S. Constitution.
The office is established and circumscribed in Article II. In Section 1, the office is described: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The text goes on to stipulate the terms of service (four years), manner in which the President will be elected, and requirements of eligibility: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
This is a broad requirement. Today, as many as 150 million people may be considered for the job. There is no mention of qualifications such as educational degrees or professional backgrounds. The Founders do, however, give us some insights about the highest priority for the POTUS at the end of Section 1 in the description of the Oath of Office: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Clearly the Founders were invested in creating a government of laws, not of personages. They did not include a limit on number of terms; this was not added to the Constitution until the 22nd Amendment limited the number of terms to two in 1951 after FDR served four presidential terms. It should also be noted here that the Constitution, as a whole, was created as a document of “negative powers.” This means that if an established authority is not specifically empowered in the document, rights and powers remain with the States and with the People. This aspect of our Constitution has been repeatedly contested over the past 100 years, as those who want more leeway in executing Federal authority seek to expand their basis. This dynamic will become important later as we prioritize key accountabilities.
In Section 2, the Founders flesh out the duties of the Office of the President of the United States. Therein the President is established as Commander in Chief of military forces and in charge of executive agencies. The President is also given the ability to grant Pardons, except in cases of Impeachment. The ability to make Treaties is handled as follows: “He shall have the Power, by and with the Advice of Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur…” The President is empowered, also “with the advice and consent of the Senate,” to place individuals in positions of influence and power. These include “Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for…”
Section 3 calls for the President to give an annual State of the Union report to the Congress. Today, this is conducted in person. It does not have to be and historically was not. Section 3 also gives guidelines wherein the President can call and keep the Congress in session as well as adjourn them in times of dispute. The President is also empowered to conduct diplomacy by not only appointing Ambassadors, but receiving foreign emissaries.
And that’s about it. The rest of the expectations about the role of POTUS have been built over time but in the main are conventions and traditions, not mandates.
In order to identify, quantify, and prioritize key accountabilities, we typically assemble the stakeholders who interact with the person in the role and whom that person serves. In the case of the POTUS, we might include representatives of the whole of the people, most likely to be the Speaker of the House of Representatives as well as House and Senate Majority and Minority leaders. We could consider the Governors of the fifty states. Since the President is given responsibility over the various departments of the Executive Branch, representatives from each could be considered. Today the number of such Departments is 645. A central duty for the President is acting as the civilian Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. So it would seem wise to include the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the process as well.
Constituents outside of the government also merit consideration. Representatives from media, industry, financial, legal, and medical sectors, and any number of special interests would thereby deserve to be included. We could conceivably fill a large hall and not have everyone properly represented.
If we were to do that, the process of gaining agreement about the priority of key accountabilities and their measurements would be unending. In almost all benchmark processes, logistics require us to impose limitations. Typically, the discussion flows best if there are 6-9 participants. So we’ll have to cherry pick.
Let’s say we pick the Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs, the Speaker of the House, the Senate Minority and Majority leaders, the Attorney General, and Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury. We could possibly include one or two more that represent areas of critical need today. So let’s include the head of Homeland Security, the White House Press Secretary, and the Chief of Staff. The problem with this list, other than it leaves many federal and State functions unrepresented, is that it also under-represents private sector constituents. So let’s at least invite the CEO of a major corporation along with the President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It would be nice to have at least one sitting Governor too so that the States aren’t left out.
It also makes sense, when possible, to include people who have served in the role in the past. So we might include a past President in our group.
I don’t feel great about this list, as too many important perspectives are missing. The President should serve all of the people, not just important constituent groups. So let’s include you in the meeting as a representative of “ordinary” Americans. That gives us a group of sixteen. It’s a large group, double the optimal size, so everyone will have to be respectful and concise.
Now that we have our stakeholders, we’ll conduct an imaginary discussion about the key accountabilities of the POTUS from their perspectives. Each participant should think about how the POTUS adds value to the country as a whole and to their interests in particular in preparation for the discussion.
We’ll conduct this discussion in next week’s article. In the meantime, I’d like to invite you to personally participate in this process. What do you think the top one or two priorities for the POTUS should be? What tangible, measurable evidence indicates that the POTUS is successful in meeting that responsibility? Try to look at these two questions from the perspectives of some of the other personages in the list of stakeholders. How might their answers differ from yours? If you can, please forward your responses to me over the next few days. I will look to include them in the “discussion” next time.