"Homeland Security and FEMA, Why They Don't Work"

I am my father, and I am the product of the industry in which I have worked for 50 years. In fact the only insight I can bring to anything is not based on my intellect, but rather on my experiences growing up, and in the US Air Force, and the television business.

I was raised watching my father run his small dress manufacturing business. He was for me the quintessential operating executive in that he knew EVERYTHING he needed to know to run his business. Everyone who worked for him had a job to do including my dad.

I began my entertainment industry as a part time minimum wage shipping clerk and messenger for the editorial department of Screen Gems. In the intervening years I became a functioning operating executive, and although I had many staff positions, I remained an operating guy.

Following an upsetting budget meeting at Columbia Pictures in the late seventies, I asked to meet with the president in his hotel. When he asked why I was upset, I told him that neither he nor his people had the slightest idea what my staff and I had presented to them.

I pointed out that he was a lawyer, his COO had been the chairman of a car rental company, his CFO had been a tax accountant, and his general counsel had been a partner in a law firm prior to joining Columbia. None of them had any operating experience whatsoever; none of them had a clue as to what we had been talking about.

When I worked at Polygram, I was the only divisional president who was not a lawyer. When things went wrong in one of our divisions they didn't have a clue as to how to remedy the problem. We had gone from a projected $100-million profit for the year to a $100-million loss in one of our divisions. In a senior management meeting to discuss this situation, it was apparent that no one knew why this happened, nor did any of them have the slightest idea as to how to remedy the problem. There was not an operating executive in the room.

I cannot help but wonder about the situation we now face with FEMA and Homeland Security. We will watch the televised hearings with Michael Chertoff and reflect back on "Brownie" and listen as blame is spread around so as to place it elsewhere. To me, it is plainly an issue of bad staffing as well as inefficient operating structure.

From the perspective of "Don't be critical Norman if you don't have a solution," here are a few of my suggestions:

1. Put people with operating experience in charge of each part of the government departments -- people who know what to do because they have DONE IT! Allow them the latitude to get the job done. Consolidation and complex reporting lines hardly ever work.

2. Promote from within.

3. Give people all the authority they need to act independently.

4. Accept that in doing their jobs effectively, they will anger people on the federal, state, and local levels.

5. Accept that if large amounts of money had been spent in anticipation of Katrina, and the storm had "gone away" that it would have been a cost of doing FEMA's business, and be prepared to "stand up" to the critics.

6. When there is a failure of this magnitude expect the immediate resignation of the individuals in charge, period. Following that, have all of the hearings you wish, and realize that they won't help one teeny weeny bit other then getting yourself on television.

I was asked many years ago by a friend what his son in the entertainment industry did at his company. I said that three or four of his company's divisions reported to him and he reported to his boss. Since he didn't understand, he pressed me to tell him what his son actually did. He was chagrined when I told him his son conducted meetings, budget reviews, and detailed presentations that served to drain the energy from their operating units and that was all there was to tell.

It is difficult for me not to spend a moment in my own blame game. The executive responsibly for organizing this disaster is President Bush. The people he put in place, and the structure of this ongoing debacle is his, and his alone.

Homeland Security and FEMA should not be joined at the hip. They will each perform their assignments better if competent people individually run them.

Some of the finest operating minds in our country would be happy to serve if they had a chance. As a rule, political appointees who are friends - or friends of friends - lack the skill sets necessary to run an ongoing government operation.

This stuff does matter, and it matters a lot.

NORMAN HOROWITZ

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