Key Elements of the Public and Private Sector

Dr. Nat: What in your view are the key differences between leading in the government sector versus leading in the private sector because you have been on both sides?

Dr. Atkins: The question has a little part in there that says key difference. That is a rather interesting approach because leadership in my mind was the same in both sectors as far as I was concerned, and as far as my leaders concerned. But I did see the application of those leadership principles into an organization with a different structural mode. A different mechanism for measuring success and moving forward is different in the government side than the private sector side. The government side, the rewards, feedback systems, particularly my point from a DARPA standpoint. How well did we push the envelope? Wasn't necessary, DARPA didn't make money, in fact we weren't allowed to make money. We were only allowed to distribute money. And we didn't really concentrate on many of the fiscal constraints that private sector has to take on as just a part of doing business. That's one of the other key elements. On one side, we were salesmen mostly, I was selling to my customer and concentrating on leading my team to develop products that we could move to the field to save the soldiers, the frontline guys, to impact them in a positive manner. When I moved to the private sector, we still had that as our objective, coupled with the constraints we had to work with inside of a business environment to worry about other things that went on. As a leader I had to worry about them a little bit farther. But the key principles are roughly the same. You're convincing people to do what you want them to do, and feel like its something good that they want to do. So that principle is there in both sectors; the implementation may be just a little different.