Letter to the editor

Following is a response to an FCW.com poll question that asked: "Do you favor dividing the Senior Executive Service into a corps of managers and a corps of technical experts?"

SES ought to be more about leadership and dealing with change and less about management and dealing with complexity.

People who can deal effectively with change come from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines. Developing and applying leadership skills ought to be the common element in SES. The diversity of the backgrounds and experiences of SES ought to be harnessed and leveraged to deal with change.

Forming two classes of SES would detract from the cohesion it ought to be developing. If specific initiatives require exceptional and deep technical talent, the government ought to have a way of bringing in such talent as it once had via the PL 313 [Project Leader] route.

Frank Nicolai