Page 108 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS CREATE A SENSE OF URGENCY

eighteen individual cabinet meetings with the president over a two-year
period. “We would ask each of these individual agencies that were respon-
sible for a specific drug strategy, either on the supply side or the demand
side, to come to the cabinet room in the White House and brief the cabinet
and the president. There is nothing like the importance and the urgency
of briefing the president of the United States to bring people together to
get the job done and to fight complacency and bureaucratic inertia. It’s
amazing what people can accomplish when they have to, so creating action-
forcing events is among the top management leadership lessons I have
learned over the years.”
After leaving the Drug Policy Board, Coy applied his finely honed lead-
ership techniques in the private sector, overseeing highly successful
companies in the aerospace industry and business outsourcing. In 2002, in
the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he was selected for a job that would
put his leadership skills to the test as never before. It was at Boston’s Logan
International Airport that terrorists armed with razor-sharp box cutters
circumvented airport security and boarded two planes that they ultimately
crashed into the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City,
killing thousands of innocent men, women, and children. Americans were
outraged over the Massachusetts Port Authority’s (Massport) perceived
shoddy oversight of security at Logan. Massport’s CEO—a political
appointee—hastily resigned, and the governor appointed a task force to
take the first step in reforming the ailing agency. Former White House Fel-
low Marshall Carter (WHF 75–76) led the task force known as the Carter
Commission, and when it came time to find a new CEO, he encouraged
Coy to take the job.
“At the time I got that call, I did not know much about Massport at
all,” Coy recalled. “However, after learning more about it, I realized that
there was a good match between the job requirements and my background.
I also wanted to get back into public service again.” Coy took the job and
began leading the beleaguered and overwhelmed agency; Massport over-
sees the Port of Boston, the Tobin Bridge, and Bedford’s Hanscom Field
and Logan International Airport, which was going through a $4 billion
refurbishment. Creating an initial sense of urgency for his workers would
not be necessary for Coy in this job; Congress had seen to that by setting
January 2003 as the deadline to complete the project. It would be up to
Coy to channel that urgency toward a productive and speedy conclusion.

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