The Foreign Service Journal, May 2011

28 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 1 1 at the outset) and 16 first-tour con- sular officers. We had to hire and train more than a hundred Foreign Service National employees. Local Communist Party officials were wary of us at first, and when the new consulate general began operat- ing, we immediately had a problem with their reaction to the long lines of visa applicants on the sidewalk in front of the building each morning. To say that it was a high-pressure environment is an understatement. In addition, we often had to deal with attempts at micromanagement from some of the sec- tion heads in the embassy in Hanoi, a thousand miles away. I did a number of things to change the mood, starting with a habit I picked up in the Army: I walked around the consulate general for a good part of each day, visiting peo- ple in their workplaces and just chatting with them. Now and then, I would let the staff schedule an end-of-week social event, such as a happy hour, just to let their hair down and get to know each other. And for my own per- sonal sanity, since we often worked until late at night and on many weekends, I set aside Wednesday afternoons to join other consuls general, businesspeople and, on occa- sion, a local official for a game of golf, followed by dinner at one of the local golf courses. This didn’t go over too well with some of the senior peo- ple in the embassy, and I received a few complaints. But I was fortunate in having Pete Peterson, the first U.S. am- bassador to Vietnam following the war, as a boss. He rec- ognized the need for down time, and saw the added benefit of the extra contact with officials who would oth- erwise be unavailable. So he basically told the embassy staff to shut up and let me run my post the way I felt best. I will always be grateful to him for that vote of confidence. My approach was further validated when former Sec- retary of State Madeleine Albright visited Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi and remarked that the morale in the con- sulate general seemed much higher than it did in the em- bassy. Score one for work-life balance! Unchain Staff from Their Desks As an ambassador, as long as you don’t break any regu- lations or fail to deliver what is needed when it’s needed, you can pretty much call the shots without someone look- ing over your shoulder. The micromanagers of ambassa- dors are an ocean away, and most of the time they can be tactfully ignored. So when I took up my post as ambassador to Cambodia in 2002, a mission that was suffering low morale and loss of confidence from the department, I immediately set out to put my personal stamp on things. Of course, I did my usual walking around. At first, some people were nonplussed to look up and see me standing in their office door two or three times a week, but they soon got used to it and appreciated the extra, uninterrupted face time. That gave me a better handle on what was going on around the mission than if I’d stayed in my office waiting for people to come to me. I also announced that every day, unless there was some- thing going on that required my physical presence, I would be leaving my office at 4 p.m. sharp and working on un- classified stuff at home. So if there was anything needing my signature or approval, it had to be on my desk by 3:30 — and it would have to be ready to go, or I’d send it back until the next day. I did this for a couple of reasons. First; the embassy at that time was a depressing collection of ragtag buildings that looked more like a displaced-person camp than an embassy. The less time I spent in it, the better my mood. Second, by leaving early, I sent a clear signal that I didn’t expect people to be in their offices late each day unless they had something absolutely critical to do. Less time in the office meant more time with families, pursuing hob- bies, or just kicking back. Within three months, morale had soared, and accord- ing to an Office of the Inspector General team that as- sessed us early during my tenure, we were one of the better performing embassies, with the highest morale in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. When I served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for prisoners of war/missing personnel affairs from 2006 to 2009, I encountered a situation similar to that in Em- bassy Phnom Penh. Management by walking around is less surprising to people in the defense field, but appar- ently none of my predecessors had tried it. So except when we were crashing on an issue, I made it a point to get out of the office a bit early every day, thereby sending a signal that I expected my subordinates to do the same. Once or twice a month, we’d end a week with a little happy hour in our big conference room; and twice a year, F O C U S Leaving early sent a clear signal to my staff that they, too, were not chained to their desks.