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Having worked in government and with governments, I want to share a point of view on how government works -- apparently very different than what some other leaders in our industry believe.
(Already responded to him separately, so this is more to share my thoughts.)
(Already responded to him separately, so this is more to share my thoughts.)
I worked in NYC government once upon a time, and have worked over the years with many elected officials (e.g., on our fund's visits to small cities with VCs and members of Congress, to which Paul, you'd be welcome to join). Based on personal experience...
1. People in government leadership work more hours for less pay with higher stakes than their peers in the business world. My boss in city government, @DanDoctoroff, got to work every day at 5.30am.
2. As @MikeBloomberg often says, the difference between business and government is that in business it's "dog eat dog" and in government it's the other way around. The culture's so similar.
3. In big corporations, the local indifference to the corporation's broader interests is about the same -- principal-agent problem! -- as in government.
4. The intelligence and knowledge of people I met working in government was roughly the same as people in similar roles in business.
5. Often times government has to react much FASTER. Nothing happens to business like, e.g., a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. I'd routinely see an issue pop in the morning, and a new fix plus a full press outreach happen by the afternoon.
6. Government is much more reactive, because it's harder to say no to your "customer," the citizen. That makes time management much harder for people working in government, and it is hard to make proactive progress.
7. Different government roles are really, really different from each other. Few roles in a corporation differ from each other as much as, e.g., being on a City Council (a legislator) differs from being the head of a city agency (an executive of a unit of a larger whole).
8. Structurally, governments are in fact often just corporations (e.g., cities are corporations chartered by a State). So many of their powers are the same as corporations, and the culture and organization follow often from legal setup...
9. People in government are no more benevolent or malevolent toward social good than people in business. They're just jobs, that people do for good reasons -- usually their own private interests (vs. "altruism").
10. One major, major difference: if you don't like how government behaves, you're empowered to do something about it in a much more direct way than you're empowered to change how a private corporation behaves. Vote! Fund better candidates! Learn something. Get involved.
Coda: You can say that NYC government of that era (2002-2005) was an exception and, in many ways, it was. Not in the ways above, though!
I've worked with countless public officials who do their work with a verve and intensity you rarely see in business or technology.
I've worked with countless public officials who do their work with a verve and intensity you rarely see in business or technology.
