So you don't get to be a general in the United States Army by being incompetent. The Army is an extremely meritocratic organization. So maybe people should give Tony Tata the benefit of the doubt as he prepares to take over the reins at the state Department of Transportation.
When Tata was announced as the new DOT boss, the first reaction in some quarters was surprise, given that he lost his job as Wake schools superintendent in part because of the bus debacle.
I have always wondered how this happened. You would have thought that you could pick some bus routes at random and drive them with a stop watch to see if the new route system would work, or would leave youngsters stranded.
Maybe his military background led him to depend on the chain of command under him too much. Maybe it was his relative lack of experience in the logistics of running a school district.
Your typical school superintendent has had years of experience as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, etc. Your typical school superintendent is pretty familiar with what can go wrong when you operate too close to the edge with too few buses.
What I hope Tata took away from his Wake County experience was to recognize that while he had vast experience in the military running big budgets and organizations, he didn't know all he should have known to run a school district, and now he doesn't know much about running a massive transportation department.
So there are two ways he can go.
He can fall back on his chain of command instincts, rely on what people tell him and operate at 30,000 feet. Or he can get out on the ground, probe, ask good questions in the field and find out what's going on. Develop his own sources of reliable information, the chain of command be damned.
Tata, according to his critics, had an autocratic management style as superintendent. Imagine that. An autocratic ex-general. If that's the case, then maybe he needs to dial it back.
The most effective managers I have known were not tough guys. They inspired loyalty because they didn't have to be the smartest people in the room, were considerate, and people followed them because they wanted to, not because they had to.
I do believe that the best lessons are found in failure, not in success. Anyone who doubts that should review the arc of Steve Jobs' history at Apple, the first act consisting of running a successful business into the ground, and Act Two consisting of building the most successful consumer electronics business in the history of mankind.
It is not unreasonable to believe that Tata learned a good deal from his tenure in Wake County, the good, the bad and the ugly. He may do well in his new job precisely because of his experience as superintendent. I hope so.
