Laurence Lynn, Jr., makes clear that commissioners do not have unlimited choices of strategies. The current focal concerns of the constituencies and the potential support or opposition from powerful groups (such as governors and legislators) represent the "demand side" of the rather vague social economics involved. Both the personal predispositions and the skills of the commissioner represent the "supply side" of this strategy choice. As Lynn shows so compellingly in his case studies of welfare commissioners, the political entrepreneur Gregory Coler simply could not have chosen Steven Minter's system-maintenance, risk-aversive approach. The personality, skills, and style of each commissioner had great impact on the strategies they chose. In those two cases, the predispositions of the person fitted the demands and the support available in the situations they faced, but the way commissioners are appointed does not always ensure a good match. A person will try to seek jobs that fit his or her nature, but that is not easy to determine when the job in question involves changing focal concerns and power relationships among constituencies-shifting demands which one must supply.
No one person can be broad enough to cope with all possible contingencies. It is therefore very important for commissioners to assess the fit between their skills, as they understand them, and the demands and support at hand. When the commissioner finds the fit shifting, he or she may seek help from associates who have the needed skills, if help-seeking is enabling and if such associates are available. It is likely that different people will read the same situation differently and therefore respond differently. It is also likely that more than one strategy will work in a single situation.
Personal skill must be empowered by politics, meaning that a lot of people will support the commissioner for reasons of their own. In the first cell (the double positive), skill and strong support reinforce each other for empowerment; that is, personal skill adds to empowerment, but the commissioner receives vital help from many quarters. In the second cell, skill is limited, but the support is strong. The actions of others provide the motive force for success. In the third cell, the leader is skillful but the odds are against success, so a great premium is placed upon skill and personality. This is the most common situation facing the talented holder of impossible jobs. In the final, double-negative cell, low skill is further undermined by a formidable opposition.
The ability to analyze the political environment and identify the resources needed to complement and supplement one's skills is crucial for any public executive and vital for commissioners in impossible jobs. They must find a way to make an existing pattern of political support fit the predispositions and skills they supply-or they must change the pattern of political support to accomplish a fit.
Turning from the development of the entrepreneurial commissioner to the changing, patterned scene of the commission itself, a question arises: Is the environment of the commissioner always so unstable, impoverished, dispersed, and unpredictable? No, not always. After a period of desirable, dynamic but disrupting reform, both the support of the constituencies and the effectiveness of the commission's staff may depend upon increased stability. Then the emphasis turns to the efficient performance of the core mission: sanitation of the environment, immunization of children, discipline of prison inmates, justified distribution of benefits. Statistical reports of the scope of these activities are regularly issued, contrasted with past reports and with those of comparable jurisdictions, and celebrated in a lively fashion. The governor and the legislature may demand that the efficiency-oriented commissioner allocate his or her primary attention and energy to staying out of trouble or defusing embarrassing incidents, especially those compromising the governor and legislature. Lynn analyzes the crisis-avoiding coping of several commissioners of welfare.
Moving down another path toward stabilization, commissioners may also concentrate on and frequently execute some striking procedural or technological innovations to increase the efficiency of the core mission. John Dilulio, Jr., observes that when stabilization is needed, such innovations have worked well in corrections. In addition, advisory and study groups can be appointed to analyze any conflicts and shortfalls and make public recommendations for remedial actions. The commission can then study the report carefully for quite some time. Any needed conflict resolution may be moved into traditional arenas of debate and negotiation in legislative committees, courts, and bargaining tables. The resolution process is then institutionalized and, to be sure, possibly stalemated. But change will be decelerated, and the commission stabilized.
In another scenario, the commissioner may excel at projecting his or her image as a figure of professional authority and as an expert problem-solver. Sometimes citation of professional authority is a good response to dramatic mishaps, particularly when responsible professional practice is at issue. Emphasizing politically neutral professional competence, after a period of change and disruption or after a tragic event, serves stabilization and consolidation quite well. It does not yield conflict management, program expansion, or creative provision of public and private goods.
Up to this point, we have given our attention to the interactions between the commission and its environment. Management, understood as the task of implementing programs through a bureaucracy buffered from the turbulence in its environment, receives less notice in this article than does entrepreneurship. To some extent, the public manager shares the preoccupation of elected politicians with the short-run political incentives arising from frequent elections. Issues of implementation often take a backseat when policy is developed, because the political credit is for invention, not follow-through. Reelection is the reward of having achieved good things for people recently, not of efficient administration of old, taken-for-granted programs.
