The Foreign Service Journal, March 2023

38 MARCH 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL However, the reason nothing has changed since Schake wrote the book can be explained in a syllogism that she herself sets in motion: • The State Department is dominated by political appointees. • Political appointees focus on policy over professional development. • Therefore, State cannot be changed for the better by political appointees or by high-ranking career officers who seek to please them. Though Schake does not say it explicitly, a political appointee could not possibly understand State’s culture enough to change it; nor could senior-ranking officers who embrace the “policy over professional development” ethic. In this piece, I will try to argue why it’s up to us—those in mid-level positions (both Civil Service and Foreign Service) and locally employed (LE) staff—to make State a more effective organization and a better place to work. How Appointees See State In State of Disrepair , Schake describes career State employees as thin-skinned and inert, as smart, but content to not challenge or develop our intelligence or skill sets. She frames us with a quote from former Secretary of State Dean Acheson: “[The State Depart- ment] never did find its place. My memory (perhaps an unfair or incomplete one) is of a department without direction, composed of a lot of busy people working hard and usefully but as a whole not functioning as a foreign office.” She sharpens the point, noting: “Fully half of the ambassa- dors at U.S. missions are political appointees. They are selected because of their commitment to the current president’s program, not their ability to conform to the standards of the Foreign Service. And overwhelmingly, politically appointed diplomats view the career Foreign Service as impediments to the president’s agenda, not allies in its advancement.” These appointees include the Secretary of State and hundreds of appointed staffers, whom Schake also indicts: “Typically, secretaries of state invest little in the professionalization of the department. Instead, they spend all their time on policies rather than the functioning of the institution.” She notes the noble efforts of Secretaries Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton (Diplomatic Readiness Initiative, Transformational Diplomacy, and Diplomacy 3.0), but adds: “What none of them proved successful at has been substan- tially affecting the culture of the State Department such that it responded to their priorities.” But what is the culture of the State Department? Schake takes a stab: “The people who are successful in the State Department are people who can be thrown in the deep end of the swimming pool and not drown; but the department never teaches them how to swim, and the successful ones even come to discredit the value of swimming lessons, because they succeeded without them.” Here is the limit of Schake’s analysis, by her own admission as a political appointee herself. It is where we, as State’s career employees, should pick up the torch and take ownership. Reframing and Reforming State Culture While the Director General (DG) and under secretary for management (M) are charged with instituting and improving professional development in the department, most State employ- ees could not likely identify any organizationwide effects of their efforts. This may be because the DG and M do not see that there are glaring problems with State’s culture of leadership; and this may be due to the fact that they are surrounded by staff who tell them that they are doing an amazing job. This predicament is a good illustration of State’s culture. The first step is to understand the prevailing ethos in our cul- ture, “managing up,” and then to discourage its most toxic muta- tions. Political appointees could spend multiple terms in State and still not understand how department employees apply “managing up” to their daily work and career advancement. A Harvard Busi- ness School article gives this definition of the concept: “Perhaps the most important skill to master is figuring out how to be a genuine source of help—because managing up doesn’t mean sucking up. It means being the most effective employee you can be, creating value for your boss and your company. That’s why the best path to a healthy relationship begins and ends with doing your job and doing it well.” That’s fine in organizations that have clearly defined missions and core values (the Department of Defense and successful busi- nesses, for example); but at State, where we are regularly reori- ented according to the latest agenda of political appointees, the most ambitious of us (in an organization full of ambitious types) fall back on the baser impulses of what it means to manage up. This metastasizes into hypercompetitive behavior, overreliance on “staffer skills,” and, at its worst, the practice of “kiss up, kick down.” One need only look at our evaluation processes and results to see that instilling a hypercompetitive, “walk-on-water” culture is damaging to the organization. It incentivizes us to groomword- smiths who model their evaluations (rather than their behavior) to the promotion precepts. Some of the worst officers I know in this organization are some of its better writers when it comes to articulating the precepts boards key on. In an explanatory anecdote, when President Donald Trump