OPINION
Broadcasting Board of Governors Information War: Worse Than Lost
It’s Time for Absolute Honesty, It’s Survey Time!
By The Federalist
Yes, it is. The 2016 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) needs your participation and absolute honesty.
And it is serious business. Here’s why:
The annual workplace survey of Federal employees is the most effective medium for agency employees to express the hard reality of what working for “one of the worst agencies in the Federal government” means.
Agency officials – the bureaucracy as we prefer to call them – would dearly love this survey to go away, to hide it from public view.
They can’t and that means a lot. It beats them up. It deprives them of controlling their preferred narrative of what a great job they’re doing and to deny the reality (here’s the windup) that the agency is (and here’s the pitch):
- “Dysfunctional” (Heritage Foundation scholar Helle C. Dale)
- “Practically Defunct” (Hillary Clinton)
- “Broken” (US statesmen, diplomats, media experts and journalists interviewed by former BBG member S. Enders Wimbush and former Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty executive Elizabeth M. Portale)
- “Truly Rudderless” or Leaderless (Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ed Royce)
The latest condemnation comes again from the House Committee on Foreign Affairs:
“This Broken Agency is Losing the Info War to ISIS & Putin,” House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Chairman Ed Royce, February 23, 2016.
That’s five strikes against these people. They are impossible to deny.
It helps disabuse the misinformed that the agency is home to a “fantastic leadership team.” They are effective in one thing and one thing only: wrecking US Government international broadcasting, quite likely beyond repair.
And for the misinformed: be mindful of the fact that the worst marks these characters get in the survey is in the area of
LEADERSHIP!
Why? Because they command no requisite leadership skills.
Most of us are well aware that if this were the private sector these people would have been gone a long time ago.
And deservedly so. They have made the place unhealthy. They have poisoned the professional atmosphere.
As employees, you need this survey. You need it a lot. You need to document with absolute honesty the real and odious state of affairs inside the Cohen Building.
At this juncture, the only positive thing about the place is that each day the employees are one day closer to retirement and their pension. It comes down to that and little else.
There may be a handful of individuals who think the agency is marvelous – maybe like a senior functionary who gets a $10,000 bonus for what is likely to be a fictional narrative of ability. We know these people very, very well. They are inept save for being able to preserve their self-interest.
Artificial preservation. The kind that reminds us of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin – except they aren’t under glass on the Kremlin Square. They are walking the halls, the Cohen building. When it comes to effective management practices they are practically paralyzed.
Yep. Employees know these people.
Yes. As employees, you need this survey. Without the survey, they control the narrative – and that is not in your best interests.
You know what you have to do.
Do it. Be absolutely honest. Be not afraid. Keep up the pressure. Get it done.
The Federalist
May 2016