Page 129 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE LESSONS

we met, the chemistry was incredible. Basically he said, ‘I’ve got to get
control over this department, and I don’t know how to do it. I need some-
body like you here.’ To have a cabinet officer tell you he needs you—well,
I was sold.”
Because Secretary Hardin believed that direct access to the secretary
was a privilege to be earned, he granted it to only three people: his secre-
tary, his executive assistant, and Copen. People within the department were
forced to fight for time to communicate with the secretary, and as a result,
he lost touch with many of those who could have made his job easier.
Copen compiled a weekly report designed to keep the secretary as
informed as possible in the circumstances. He asked each agency to send
relevant news items, which he condensed to two pages and gave to Hardin.
“He was a wonderful person to work with. He was receptive to new ideas,
but he was also quite closed when it came to granting access,” Copen
explained. “It was nice for me that I could just walk into his office when-
ever I wanted, but I could see he was hurting himself by not being more
open, by not communicating with others.”

At the end of Copen’s Fellowship, Hardin asked him to stay for three more
years to help consolidate the department’s 16,000 offices into a network of
forty-eight “one-stop-shop” computer centers. Copen agreed to take on the
massive project, but before the three years were up, Hardin left the depart-
ment and was replaced by Earl Butz, a man who was as different from Cliff
Hardin as night is from day. Copen was already somewhat familiar with
his new boss. The two had served on a board together years before, and
Copen did not have a high regard for him. He thought Butz was the most
arrogant, opinionated person he had ever met, and he was certain that
Butz’s tenure at the Department of Agriculture would be a disaster. How-
ever, he was in for a shock.
“I haven’t had to reevaluate my assessment of people very often, but I
sure did with Earl Butz. He was so much more open with people. He had
his finger on the pulse of the agency, and even though he wasn’t a great
analytical mind, he was more effective,” Copen recalled. “The one thing
that Butz provided that Hardin didn’t was the charismatic side of leader-
ship. Hardin was too remote; no one understood him. He may have had
better ideas than Butz, but he didn’t inspire. He didn’t have close interac-
tions with the people under him, whereas Earl Butz was always out slapping

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