The Newsmagazine of the North Carolina Center for Voter Education | Friday September 10, 2010

Improving the Business of Government
What the people's business can learn from big business

By Damon Circosta
Published: Jul. 27, 2009

RALEIGH - A common refrain in North Carolina is that we should operate our government more like a business. After all, in a state that is home to several Fortune 500 companies and several top business schools you would hope that some cutting-edge business thinking would rub off on state government.

Here are a few tried and true suggestions from the business world that could help make the people’s business run more smoothly.

Do what it takes to attract top talent.

No one should get rich when they offer themselves up for public service, but when we “hire” our officials on Election Day we should make certain that they are compensated fairly. Currently, legislators are paid less than $15,000 a year.  The job requires a long, open-ended commitment of time and makes holding any other employment extremely difficult.

As such, our talent pool is disproportionately wealthy or retired. If the job is to represent all of North Carolina, we need to rethink our HR strategy. So long as we insist on keeping the pay low, we will only be able to choose from a very narrow slice of North Carolinians.

While we are at it, we should make serving as a state legislator more predictable. Our lawmakers have been in Raleigh since January, and they have no idea if they will be done next week or in two months. Finding a way to conclude their service on a date certain would let prospective candidates build some predictability into their schedule.

Increase transparency and accountability.

Every good manager knows the importance of oversight. In order to ensure your employees are doing a good job you must be able to see their work. Good business leaders extol the virtues of “management by walking around” where they get out of the executive suite and onto the factory floor to witness first hand how their employees are doing.

As citizens, we employ our legislators to do a job. And while management by walking around might not be possible in a state as large as North Carolina, we need to find ways to see what our employees are doing. Televising proceedings of the General Assembly is a start.

Let’s not kid ourselves.  The whole state won’t suddenly tune in to what is happening in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday mornings. But having the opportunity to check in on our employees (our elected representatives) ensures that we can judge their work directly, not just during their biyearly employment review -- otherwise known as an election.

Reward good behavior.

Every office has its share of office gossip. Topics tend to skew towards the salacious, like misappropriation of funds or an untoward interaction with a co-worker. The business of government is no different. There is office gossip aplenty and most of it can be read on the front page of the newspaper.

I’m not suggesting that we should ignore stories of wrongdoing. It is important that our media ferrets out bad actors in government. But the overwhelming majority of people who serve are doing good things. As the employers of our legislators, it is up to us to make HR decisions based on solid information, not office innuendo.

When it comes time to choose who we want working for us, let’s broaden our view. Let’s applaud the many outstanding things being done in our organization and make our choices based on the whole picture, not just the headline-grabbing scandals.

The analogy isn’t perfect.  Business and government serve very different roles in our society. However, taking a few pages from the manuals of the business world could go a long way in making state government better for us all.