Page 234 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS LEAD THROUGH EXPERIENCE AND COMPETENCE

Running a city is always a challenge, but that was especially true of
San Francisco in the late 1960s. A serial murderer nicknamed the Zodiac
Killer was terrorizing area residents. Racial turmoil was prevalent. There
was a simultaneous strike of the police and fire departments and a string
of random killings known as the Zebra murders committed by a group of
radical Black Muslims. Student protests were common, and there was
citywide unrest when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy
were assassinated. The pressure was intense. De Luca often slept at city hall
and was rarely home on weekends. To make matters worse, Alioto was
embroiled in civil suits both as a plaintiff and as a defendant and was
indicted by a federal grand jury on bribery charges stemming from his
earlier work as an antitrust attorney. Responsibility for the day-to-day
running of the city fell to De Luca. For nearly eight years he worked
tirelessly at that post, not just putting out the proverbial fires that seemed
to flare up daily but also moving the city forward.
“Our office and staff had to win public, media, and departmental
support through the rational marshaling of facts and benefits in order to
achieve several important victories during that time,” De Luca explained.
“The Market Street $22 million bond vote, approval of the Transamerica
Building, the Embarcadero Financial Center, the Performing Arts Center,
the route for Highway 280, and the list goes on and on—none of this could
have gone forward had we not demonstrated sufficient management skills
to keep the city safe in the midst of all the turmoil.”
At the end of his term as deputy mayor, De Luca took his career in an
entirely different direction when he accepted an offer to head the San
Francisco–based Wine Institute, an organization that represents the interests
of over 1,100 wineries and wine-related businesses at the state, federal, and
international levels. The troubled institute was in desperate need of a
strong and talented leader. Membership had dropped by half because of a
conflict over dues. The organization’s finances were a mess. If De Luca
could not turn things around in a hurry, the Wine Institute would go bust.
Again, he called on lessons learned during his White House Fellows years
to rescue the failing organization.
“I remembered that authority did not automatically confer executive
power and results,” De Luca said. “I exercised a balanced collegial style
and made a strong case for unity of purpose and effort.” Under De Luca’s
thirty-year leadership, the Wine Institute—and the California wine

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