A Critical Thought

Most local government managers are hired to maintain, generate and create public value. The skills that probably got you hired are expected to match up with the values of the organization. The political management by the manager is generally than directed at external stakeholders and employees as the majority of overseers are already politically aligned with the values of the manager.
As the overseers come and go over the years, the values of the overseers change and may no longer align with the manager. The concept of politically managing the overseers now takes on a huge ethical scope. Where does providing good policy analysis diverge ethically from championing a separate set of values? If the overseers have no conceptual political values other than believing they are better managers than the manager mean that you can’t try to instill some political value? At least understand how to determine what values they are using? The worst fear of all is having them become radically value inconsistent, no rhyme or reason to the decisions.
The reality is that they are trapped in our own subjective experience of the world. They bring our pre-conceived reality with them into every new situation and it would be foolish to pretend that they can simply put that aside at will in order to view the present issue without bias or judgment. It’s not possible. In fact, it’s not even desirable. What we want is for them to make the best possible use of their expertise and to act in logically appropriate ways in order to achieve their goals.