Affirmatively managing Helen 
Mary Timney Bailey 

Editor's introduction 
Affirmative action is often equated with the recruitment of women and minorities into professional positions in an organization, but, as this case points out, there is much more to it than that. An equally important part of affirmative action, and indeed of any good personnel system, is to utilize individual employees to the maximum advantage of both the employee and the organization. 
That is the challenge in this case-the challenge to administrative leadership to secure maximum benefit from a nonproductive but competent employee who has the potential to make important contributions to her department. The task is made more difficult both by the employee's lack of finesse in her dealings with other people and by constraints against her dismissal. Since those constraints are political, the case also explores the nature of administrative leadership in a political setting. 
The fact that the employee in question is a woman should be incidental to the larger question of personnel management. In a society emphasizing affirmative action principles in its movement toward equality in the workplace, however, that fact cannot be ignored. Thus the case also involves the problem of fitting a professional woman into an agency that has traditionally employed only men and in which male prejudices and stereotypes still abound. 
The management challenge in the case, then, involves more than just managing affirmative action efforts; it involves educating other employees-in this case, men-who must learn to work with the woman and abandon sexist patterns of behavior. 
The case thus involves a multiplicity of issues in organization theory and human resource management. 
Case 12 
Affirmatively managing Helen 

Background 

Rusty City is an aging industrial city with a population of about half a million and a strong-mayor form of government. Since the 1930s, it has been dominated politically by the Democratic party. Today, only remnants of the once-powerful machine remain. In recent years, the party bosses have been embarrassed by members of their own party running successful independent campaigns the party's endorsed candidates. This not only has created stress throughout the party organization but also has diminished government effectiveness. Successful candidates have found themselves constantly battling potential opponents in their own party, thus reducing their ability to perform effectively in their elected offices. 

152 Cases in Decision Making 
The city has a modern personnel system, but pockets of patronage remain. 
All department heads and assistant administrators are appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the mayor. Special positions can be created by the mayor with the consent of the city council. Certain departments, particularly those with a large component of laborers, also tend to have a substantial number of ward chairpersons and party workers. Several of the supervisors of these departments were hired as a result of political patronage. The mayor's office and the city council have been controlled exclusively by Democrats for more than fifty years. 
The case 
Mayor Sam Hartman, a lifelong Democrat, came to office after running an independent campaign against the party's candidate. Once in office, he set out to rebuild bridges with the party faithful. He was approached shortly after the election by a powerful ward chairperson who asked him to create a position for her daughter, Helen Miller, a mechanical engineer with a graduate degree in energy management. Miller herself had never been interested in politics, but she was having a hard time finding a job in the city and didn't want to leave her family. Mayor Hartman saw the opportunity to achieve several objectives at the same time: soothe some ruffled feathers in the party, demonstrate his concern for energy conservation, and employ a qualified woman at a mid-level position. It seemed to be a golden opportunity, and Hartman happily grabbed it. 
The city's engineers were scattered throughout various departments in the organization. There were no other female engineers at the time, although there had been some female student interns in earlier years. Miller was initially placed in the public works department. No one knew exactly what an energy engineer should do, but the mayor was sure that the department could identify an appropriate role for her. Still, the men in the office were more than a little uncertain about how to interact with what they perceived as a diminutive, fashionably dressed, rather attractive young woman. 
Given little direction, Miller tried to define her job. She began to develop a library of energy books and energy management journals. There were many good ideas in these publications, and Miller tried to share them with the other engineers. But these were new ideas that didn't fit the practiced ways of doing things in the department. Nobody seemed to care very much about energy management. They just left her to do her little projects. 
Month after month, Miller waited for recognition that never came. Her frustration mounted during budget-preparation time, when she failed to get approval for pet projects. Even though she had calculations that could prove that the projects would pay for themselves, she could never convince her superiors that the projects should be given priority. On top of this, she was very uncomfortable in the office. There were no private offices in the department, only cubicles. Her cubicle was located near the director's, and he was a cigar smoker. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, Miller sued the director for polluting her air space. 
Miller's next assignment was in the parks department, which managed and maintained about half of the city's buildings. The engineers there were primarily civil engineers, who, along with a few architects, were responsible for designing recreation centers and swimming pools. They didn't really know what an energy engineer should do, but it seemed a good idea to have her expertise available for consultation, at least. 
Now that she was in a department with responsibility for specific buildings, Miller assumed that her job was to identify ways that the city could save money on energy use. She set out to devise conservation strategies for the recreation centers. Although she did find some big problems, like antiquated heating systems, most often she found that the buildings were poorly maintained and needed 

Affirmatively Managing Helen 153 
simple things like caulking and weather stripping. She also found several cracked windows. When she tried to get these conditions corrected, she encountered stiff resistance and even hostility from the maintenance staff. These men had been doing their jobs for years. They were doing the best they could with the resources given to them. Who did this lady think she was, to come around and tell them what to do! 
The superintendent of maintenance was an old hand who worked closely with the top administrators of the department. Although the administrators thought that energy conservation was a fine idea, they were not inclined to take sides against the maintenance crew just because this woman, who had been forced on the department, couldn't get along. After several clashes with the superintendent of maintenance, Miller expressed her frustration to the mayor loud and clear, as did the department administrators. 
Miller was rapidly developing a reputation for being hard to get along with, although it was easy for the mayor to see how a bright woman could ruffle the feathers of the maintenance crew. The mayor felt that she just needed more supervision and perhaps a position where she could influence policy decisions. So she was reassigned to the mayor's office, where she was given the responsibility of developing a strategy to carry out the emergency energy conservation guidelines of the Carter administration. 
At last, Miller thought, she had a position where she could accomplish something. She was determined to conserve energy even if she had to turn out everyone's lights herself. Before long, she had alienated a significant number of managers throughout the city government, almost coming to blows with one when she attempted to remove a desk lamp. She finally managed to humiliate the mayor's staff by writing a minority report to the U.S. Department of Energy, accusing the mayor's staff of covering up their lack of commitment to energy policy. Everyone waited for the ax to fall. 
The mayor maintained his commitment to keep Miller employed. While he was a good-hearted soul, he was also a pragmatic politician. At that time he was involved in his reelection campaign and did not want to risk the potential fallout from firing Miller, from either the party leaders or the feminist and affirmative action groups in the city. So Miller was assigned to the building management department, which had responsibility for the other half of the city's buildings. 
The department had a new director, Roger Newton, a civil engineer who had been lured from the private sector and had a reputation for being firm but fair. Newton had management skills honed in business and was confident that he could manage this recalcitrant employee. She had expertise and Newton welcomed the challenge to put it to good use. Initially they got along well, and for the first time in her career with the city, Miller seemed happy. Newton was not exactly sure what an energy engineer could do, but Miller seemed to have a clear idea of the parameters of the position. He encouraged her to develop ideas and projects for all of the city's buildings and implied that he would provide budgetary support for implementing her projects. 
Miller set up visits to all police and fire stations. She discovered that there was no comprehensive set of data on energy use, so she decided to develop basic data on electricity and natural gas use for all city-owned buildings. This was a monumental undertaking, since the data had to be obtained from individual gas and electric bills for two hundred buildings. 
Miller spent most of her time gathering the data, and a good bit of secretarial time was devoted to typing the reports. Miller felt very proud each month when she delivered reports that showed, along with the dollar costs, electricity usage in kilowatt hours and natural gas usage in cubic feet. She also calculated the usage in BTUs per degree day to show changes in energy use from year to year. Several copies of these massive lists were made and circulated to the mayor's 

154 Cases in Decision Making 

office and to all department heads, including the police and fire chiefs. Despite her extensive work, recipients of the reports found them almost unreadable. They did not want to take the time to examine all the numbers, and some of the jargon was incomprehensible to them. Newton seemed to appreciate her efforts, although he did not have time to read the reports either. 
Miller also spent time in the buildings, identifying potential energy conservation projects. She got along well with the firefighters, who always seemed to appreciate a visit from the "lady engineer." They had lots of ideas on how to save energy and were supportive of her efforts to improve their buildings. This good relationship did not exist with the police. In addition to finding her visits a nuisance, police officers remembered the troubles that one precinct had had with a modern building that was supposed to be energy efficient. The building had a fixed thermostat, set by "some dizzy engineer" (not Miller), and the heating and cooling system never worked right. The cops in the station froze in the winter and boiled in the summer. They never could get anyone to fix it right until one officer, in a rage, shot the darn thermostat with his service revolver. 
Miller also had clashes with the maintenance staff in the building management department. These hostilities were mollified somewhat by Newton, who was able to establish a truce between Miller and the maintenance superintendent that permitted the two to work together even though they did not like each other. During this time, Miller identified several projects that could pay for themselves and save the city several thousand dollars each year; she submitted them to Newton for inclusion in the department's capital budget request. But Newton was faced with a budget crunch, and, although he thought she had some good ideas, he felt he could not justify approving these projects if it meant he would not be able to obtain funding for more critical projects. 
The honeymoon in the department ended when the energy projects were not included in Newton's recommendations for capital spending in the next budget. Miller's frustration finally boiled over. She raged publicly at Newton at a staff meeting. He was furious. It seemed that Miller's days were numbered at last. 
Once again, the mayor's staff found themselves dealing with the problem of Helen Miller. The mayor was not pleased by this turn of events, but he still did not want to offend his political friend. He insisted that his staff find another place for Miller and a director who would supervise her more closely. 
Shortly after the most recent incident, several departments were reorganized. 
The building management department was eliminated, and many of its functions were placed in the new Department of General Administration. The engineering function was centralized in another new department to streamline operations and coordinate all capital and construction projects. The new director was a highly respected engineer who had been the assistant director of public works. He had heard about Miller and, as part of his agreement with the mayor's office on the reorganization, one engineer-Miller-was excluded from the new arrangement. 
Miller was assigned instead to the Department of General Administration, which had been given many of the functions of her former department. The new director, Gloria Asbury, had been assistant director of the budget and finance office. She was known to be a tough administrator who wasn't afraid to fire people. The mayor's staff was convinced that Asbury would be able to handle Miller. Perhaps, after all, Miller just couldn't get along very well with men. 
The decision problem 

As Asbury began the task of establishing administrative norms and procedures for the new department, she faced the problem of Miller. How could she develop a good working relationship with this person who had alienated everyone with 

Affirmatively Managing Helen 155 

whom she had worked up to now? Was there a way to have peace in the department and make Miller a productive employee? How could she, Gloria Asbury, be any more successful with Miller than all of her predecessors had been? How much control did she really have in light of the mayor's continuing refusal to remove this troublesome employee? 
Asbury considered also the needs of the department and the skills that Miller could offer her. As a former budget analyst, Asbury knew how much the city spent for energy each year. Her department budget included $2 million for heating and lighting bills as well as $1.75 million for automotive fuels for the city's vehicles. Miller's expertise, if properly harnessed, could be a way to control the growth of these budgets or even to reduce them. Just a 10 percent difference, which energy experts claim can be obtained with no-cost or low-cost efforts, would mean a decrease of $200,000 in the utility budget. If Miller could find ways to save more than that, it would certainly make Asbury's job easier. 
Miller had developed several proposals over the years, but they had never gained budgetary approval. Asbury recognized that part of the problem had been the way Miller had presented her ideas at budget time. As an engineer, she tended to believe that the numbers spoke for themselves; she didn't seem to understand the politics of the budget process. Asbury felt that the presentation of the data could be improved in ways that would make it more understandable. Further, the support of a director who was a budget insider would make it possible for Miller to be more successful at budget time. 
But the primary question remained: How would it be possible to get Miller's cooperation? She had a reputation for being very hard to get along with. She didn't really have any friends in the city organization. As a female engineer, she didn't have the opportunity to interact very much with other professional women, and she clearly did not get along with the men. 
Within the department, the maintenance superintendent considered Miller a domineering female. His cooperation would be necessary to carry out any energy maintenance projects, but he resented any suggestion from Miller that smacked of trampling on his territory. In the old building management department, they had had some legendary arguments, and the truce between them was uneasy. Yet Asbury knew him also to be a team player, an old hand who would carry out requests from his director even if he didn't like them. The trick, then, was to establish some ground rules for both of them. 
In thinking through how to deal with Miller's outbursts, Asbury had to consider how she would be viewed as a manager-both by Miller and by the rest of the department. She was sensitive to the stereotypes of women as being too emotional to be trusted in management positions, but she was also concerned about being labeled as too hard or rigid, another part of the stereotype of women managers. She would have to walk a fine line, but she had to make it clear to Miller and the rest of the department that her tolerance of certain behaviors was limited. Moreover, she had to do it in such a way that she would be taken seriously but would also be seen as a fair-minded manager. 
Finally, there was the problem of the mayor's loyalty to Miller. Others in the city might have fired her long ago, but Asbury knew that it was not unusual for an organization to retain a difficult employee. There was always the possibility of a lawsuit by a disgruntled employee, and it seemed to be cheaper to transfer than to fire. Asbury knew in her heart, then, that it was not likely that Miller would ever be fired. It was far more in Asbury's best interest to find a way to manage Miller so that Miller could exercise her expertise and Asbury could benefit from it. 
In considering these factors, Asbury realized that she had few options. If she simply laid down the law to Miller about her behavior, it was not likely to bring about a change in Miller's relationships within the department. Moreover, Asbury would have little recourse if the behavior did not improve. Given no power to 

156 Cases in Decision Making 
fire Miller, Asbury might ultimately be seen as an ineffectual manager and might find her authority with the rest of the staff undermined. Clearly, she had to find a managerial solution that would give Miller a sense of professional accomplishment and bring about cooperation between her and her fellow workers. But what kind of strategy could accomplish those ends after so many past failures? 

James M. Banovetz, ed. Managing Local Government: Cases in Decision Making (Washington, DC: ICMA 1990)