Managing by the Book

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

June 12 -- Nearly six months into his first year as Santa Monica’s city manager, Lamont Ewell is looking to establish himself as a leader who gets things done.

Whether shouldering the criticism of animal rights groups after refusing to halt the extermination of ground squirrels in Palisades Park, or making his first budget an “aggressive” one, Ewell has worked to establish himself as city manager that executes.

In what is perhaps his most telling move so far, the former San Diego city manager is seeking to change the City Charter to help him run municipal government more effectively.

“I think most people know I’m a hands on, hands off, type presence,” Ewell said.

Now that Ewell is in the drivers seat, where is the City headed and how will he steer the city's staff of 2,000 workers?

The answer, he says, can be found in the stories that have appeared for years in the business sections of national newspapers. And while Ewell says he is not looking to structure Santa Monica’s government after a Fortune 500 company that focuses on the bottom line, the “principles are the same” for leading any organization, he said.

Those principles are clearly spelled out in two books, one of which Ewell has read three times while preparing the City’s proposed record $445 million budget that will focus on increasing City services.

A New York Times bestseller, it is simply called “Execution.”

Based on the experiences of General Electric, Honeywell international and AppliedSignal executive Larry Bossidy and former Harvard Business professor and business consultant Ram Charam, “Execution” hints to Ewell’s vision of how to change Santa Monica’s government for years to come.

“The leader must be in charge of getting things done by running the three core processes – picking other leaders, setting the strategic direction, and conducting operations,” reads one of the early passages in the book.

“These actions are the substance of execution, and leaders cannot delegate them regardless of the size of the organization.”

A leader who remains in the thick of day-to-day operations without “micromanaging” – a theme echoed throughout the book – is one style of management that Ewell said he is striving for in Santa Monica.

“Leading for execution is not about micromanaging, or being “hands-on,” or disempowering people,” states another passage. “Rather, it’s about active involvement – doing the things leaders should be doing in the first place.”

Like a college student preparing for finals, Ewell has highlighted these passages, and scores of others, with color markers.

With major posts -- including police chief and planning director -- waiting to be filled, it’s not surprising that some of the most heavily marked texts involve the ability to assign leaders.

“It’s not enough just to get the people on the bus, but you have to get the people in the right seat on the bus,” Ewell said.

In Santa Monica, there have been instances in planning and other departments where “good people have been crippled by bad systems,” making it “almost always impossible to deliver good service,” Ewell said.

Insuring “good service” in Santa Monica is perhaps the key goal in the 2006-07 fiscal budget Ewell presented to the council last month. And to effectively deliver those services, Ewell must pick his team carefully.

“Especially, when a business is making changes, the right people have to be in the critical jobs,” reads one statement marked by a highlighter that bled through a section on the ability to choose leaders.

The section focuses on former Xerox CEO Richard C. Thoman, who headed the company in the late 1990s. A rising star at companies such as IBM, Thoman worked to consolidate more than 90 administrative services departments into four and reorganize a 30,000-person sales force.

The strategy didn’t work, and Xerox lost clients who had stayed with the company for decades.

“Critics argued that (Thoman) was too aloof to connect with the people who had to execute the changes,” reads the analysis of the anecdote.

“But Xerox’s clubby culture did not take kindly to an outsider, and as Thoman has pointed out, he did not have the authority to appoint his own leadership team.”

An outsider seeking more power to choose his team, Ewell is only beginning to write his chapter as the City’s top paid official.