The Foreign Service Journal, January 2003

make the new agency work. It helped that the State trans- ferees shared their Commerce colleagues’ belief that commercial work was challenging, rewarding and, I dare- say, fun. They also brought with them something very important that most DOC employees did not have: an understanding of the workings of the State Department. To find experienced businesspeople to round out the ranks, FCS launched a major recruitment drive. (For example, I found my way into the agency by answering an ad in the Wall Street Journal in 1982.) Hundreds of appli- cants from private industry, academia and the Civil Service took an entrance exam and underwent the year- long assessment process, including background checks, medical exams and training. That was the easy part. The real challenge of organi- zation-building began as we ‘outsiders’ from America’s private sector strove to retain our exuberance, enthusiasm and creativity, while assimilating into the mainstream of the bureaucracy — to ‘morph’ into a new kind of public sector/private entrepreneur life-form. FCS’s goal was to show America’s small businesses that we were program- oriented commercial activists; that we talked the talk and walked the walk of business. Sure, we were expected to know about trade policy, but more importantly, we were tasked with making the cash register ring, overseas. Learning to Live with State FCS patterned itself after State’s organization. For example, we copied the ‘desk officer’ concept and estab- lished our own personnel division (now called the Office of Foreign Service Human Resources), separate from the Commerce Department’s office. Because of costs, we (like many other agencies with a significant overseas pres- ence) asked State to handle our administrative needs. This step brought us into its orbit and ultimately, under its control. During the first few years of FCS’s existence, both State and Commerce got along fairly well. Through work- ing together, we learned more about each other and, I would say, learned to respect each other, too. Yet there were some drawbacks to being tied too tightly to State’s apron strings. Several of us have likened our situation to “being employed by Ford Motor Company, but seconded to work in General Motors’ headquarters” (i.e., taking our daily direction from State’s post management, but ever mindful that Commerce pays our wages). This divided loyalty created (and is still creating) significant operating challenges for many of our officers the world over. Not long afterward, it became clear that State regret- ted its decision to give up the commercial function, and it made periodic attempts to wrest more of our work from us. Deputy Secretary of State Larry Eagleburger’s 1989 “Bill of Rights for American Business” speech (given at an AFSA-sponsored conference celebrating the State Department’s 200th anniversary) — later sent to all chiefs of mission as a policy telegram — seemed to sum up State’s desire to take back the lead role in promoting U.S. business overseas. [See sidebar, p. 41.] None of us at FCS could really blame State for this power grab; after all, they were scrambling to find a solid constituency that would help them fight for more funding on the Hill. And what better group for that purpose than American business — who could be relied upon to argue that whoever provided them with commercial assistance was indispensable? Those were truly times that tried commercial officers’ souls. Our own management was demanding that we spend every waking hour helping U.S. businesses succeed overseas, while we in the field were busy being diplomats in our own backyards, trying to please our post management and, I regret to say, spending considerable time and energy protecting our congression- ally-mandated turf. But we made it through those years, and we learned some important lessons in the process. We learned that Commerce and State really did need each other and that if we spent more time working together, it would benefit us both. We also learned to engage our ambassadors (and some engaged themselves) in our programs and to push them out front to do advocacy work. We found that many non-career ambassadors were our natural allies in this effort since they often came from successful private sector careers. Unfortunately, more than a few post managements see commercial work as a kind of movable feast that can be passed around to other mission elements as they see fit. So, instead of leading the charge, we have become the “B- team” in some posts, supporting those with lesser experi- ence or competence. Whether this is done by choice or F O C U S 40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 3 Stephan Helgesen is a 19-year veteran of the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Service. He is currently the senior commercial officer at U.S. Embassy Copenhagen. He has also served in Singapore, Munich, Port of Spain, Rotterdam and The Hague.