Recent scandals involving the GSA, Secret Service, and ATF’s gun-walking “Fast and Furious” debacle lead me to ask: Does power corrupt leaders? Or does power give them opportunity to demonstrate how corrupt they already were?

The Peter Principle postulates that people get promoted to a level that is beyond their ability to handle the responsibilities of the new job.   

Promoting for Politics  


Is the Peter Principal at play because many politically appointed leaders are not hired for any managerial expertise they had demonstrated, but because they will pursue a political agenda at all costs? 


Power Drunk People 

The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context, asks: “What is the difference between someone who is intoxicated on power and someone who is addicted to drugs or alcohol?  You get erratic behaviors from both, including loss of mission focus, blurred concepts of reality, lying and mismanagement. 

Three Dimensions of Government Leaders

1. Leaders who think, “The organization must serve me!” 
2. Leaders who believe political ideology is the mission. 
3. Leaders who manage effective operations for acceptable public service outcomes.  

One-dimensional politicians think that employees’ jobs are to do their personal bidding, regardless if it is mission related or not. Two-dimensional government leaders think as long as employees are pursuing a political agenda, whatever means they engage in is justified and gives them a free pass to not be held accountable for poor behavior.  

Government Needs Effective CEO’s

Three-dimensional political leaders act as CEO’s who take responsibility for government programs to operate efficiently with employees who work competently with integrity. This three-dimensional perspective should be the standard all levels of government set for their leaders and employees as models for their citizens.    

Properly Presiding In Power  

Character is required to handle public power properly. Keeping an overriding perspective of how mission matters most, and is the only legitimate use of resources is the context for stewardship that fulfills government obligations by achieving effective operations and avoiding the Peter Principle.

Politicians tend to appoint to government’s most influential decision-making positions their family members, friends, paramours, significant others, chief donors and key supporters. These people often see that their main mission is to help their politicians gain the name recognition they need to continue to get elected to office every two to four years.  Consequently, many appointees use their positions to dream up costly, politically motivated initiatives designed to make a headline or photo opportunity for them and their politicians. The initiatives make great sound bites, but in reality often lack not only a working knowledge of available resources but also the contextual awareness and detail to coordinate the various operational elements to make programs effective. 

As a former statewide government program administrator, I improved underperforming government services by instilling pride and focussing employees on performance and productivity processes.  The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context explains that government has challenges with efficiency often because its leaders only function within two of the three MRC essentials necessary to achieve effective operations.  

Even simple things are overlooked like coordinating the job titles and partner relationships that are necessary to provide services in ways that deliver meaningful outcomes to the public.  While many appointees can recite a government agency’s mission statement, their behaviors painfully demonstrate to gifted and skilled civil servants that they have no actual experience in what they are tasked to manage or oversee. 

The new initiatives often are out of synch with why the program was established, and how it was set up to operate.  The heavy handed way appointees tend to go about implementing them demonstrates the lack of people skills and leadership abilities necessary to effectively coordinate large numbers of people across multiple departments.  Many a civil servant has been idled as a result.