Transforming Leadership:
Governmental Transformation: Inside-Out

Roy Davis

Gonzaga University

ORGL 518, B1: Transformation Leadership [Fall 2014]

Instructor: Mike Poutiatine, Ph.D.

                                                                                                                             

Transforming Leadership:

Governmental Transformation: Inside-Out

 

Introduction

 

They call the new directorate the Office of Transformation Coordination (OTC).  This governmental entity “is responsible for coordinating “transformation” initiatives across United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), including managing the implementation of USCIS Transformation efforts to move the agency from a paper-based business into a more efficient, electronic environment” (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services).   The term transformational efforts should tell us that USCIS is undergoing an enduring change of “not only the organization but also the followers' vision of "what is" to "what can be"” (Chammas, 2010).  After all, “transformation is about modifying beliefs so that natural actions achieve the desired results” (Palinkas, 2013).  For USCIS, this would entail having organizational leaders who “possess the ability to create and communicate a powerful vision that will excite the minds of their followers, inspiring them to go "beyond" their current boundaries” (Palinkas, 2013).  A circular definition of this organizational process would be to simply state that transformation efforts require an organization to exercise the talents of a transformational leader.

 

Delving deeper into this effort, we see that at the heart of organizational transformation you have a “process of profound and radical change that orients an organization in a new direction and takes it to an entirely different level of effectiveness” ("What Is Transformation? Definition and Meaning," n.d.).  Within the heart of radical change, for lasting success, there must be in existence a transformative force that propels the alteration, an inspirational point of light kindled and gifted by a transformative leader.  Still, we have a term – transformation – now with a somewhat narrowed circular definition.  We know it is a driven and radical force that organizations utilize to take them in a new direction.  We know that a transformational leader with clear vision can guide us toward transformation.  But, who is this leader and how does their guiding us to something very new and different from what is traditional or ordinary take place? 

 

In a pioneering wagon master’s vision this may have been materialized by twenty-nine Conestoga wagons trailing one immediately behind the other on their way west, each safely guided by the wheel rut of the wagon that came before – men and women looking for change.  It is a simple example of change preceding the opportunity for transformation.  For these travelers, transformation was not unearthed in their change of view, but in their vision of the change that was to come.

 

At issue is this deeply cut rut and the federal government’s ability to manage its transition toward new horizons and a new operational philosophy.  Merely choosing to make a change in taking the road less traveled is a great deal easier than accomplishing an actual change in course.  If ever there were a deeply furrowed road where transformation stagnates in the facade of political change, our federal government seizes that prize with authority.  The path that originally led so many people toward freedom and democracy, now lays claim to the deepest hierarchical political rut in the world.  Out of this rut, “government reform strategy which aims to avoid the limitations which have come to be seen as associated with a traditional e-Government strategy” ("What Is Transformation? Definition and Meaning," n.d.) seeks to transform into a more agile servant-leader based work environment.  While the words servant-leader are not often synonymous with our federal government, the transformational process has begun and will find its way into our government of the 21st century.  

 

The road ahead.  What transformation is, and why is it important to leadership, begins with the leader’s underlying principles or rather their starting point from which all things are considered in relation to themselves.  And from where do these principles originate?  Early existentialist Søren Kierkegaard (1800-1855) “proposed that each individual—not society or religion—is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately and sincerely ("authentically")” ("Existentialism," 2014).  "When we learn to trust the invisible powers within us, we will watch ourselves, other people, our institutions, and our society grow in integrity" (Palmer, 2004, p. 66).  These trusted invisible powers not only become the leader’s ontological reference point but also the followers' vision of what is and what can be.  In organizational transformation, the pioneer often blazes as many trails as they follow.  The road less often traveled, for most – The Road Not Taken (Frost, 1920), becomes the starting point for both the leader and the follower.

 

As USCIS attempts an enduring change of the organization, the question must be asked if the followers' vision of what is and what can be merely adheres to coerced radical change where natural actions are at odds or if USCIS transformative leadership has inspired followers to go beyond their current boundaries to a place where natural actions achieve the desired results.  It is also important where from the light of the proposed transformation, whether coerced or inspired, flows.  Katha Upanishad (2.5) expresses this: "Abiding in the midst of ignorance, thinking themselves wise and learned, fools go aimlessly hither and thither, like blind led by the blind."  Indeed, if the light comes from leaders illuminating the way towards true transformation, their followers are not blinded by their inspiration: They are guided by it.

 

“Therefore, it is necessary to cultivate knowledge in the light of one's own personal realizations” (Goswami das, 2009, para. 4).  Knowing what transformation is and then realizing either the virtue or the shortcomings of its immutable effect steers the follower away from ignorance and into an awareness that is the light.  For USCIS employees and stakeholders, it begins to aid in answering the question if the term “transformational efforts” tells us that USCIS is undergoing an enduring change of “not only the organization but also the followers' vision of "what is" to "what can be."  Finally, it will define whether USCIS Executive Leadership believes in the inspiration that will lead transformation or if they merely revel in the glories and the visions the word “transformation” inspires.

 

A personal transformation

 

“Transformation is an internal fundamental change in your beliefs of why you perform certain actions.  Transformation does not require any external influence to maintain, and because of its fundamental nature, transformation is more likely to be permanent” (Palinkas, 2013, para. 2).  It is from a steady inner light stoked by my own transformation that I address the revolution attempted by United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS).  My reference point for addressing this transformation was irretrievably altered two years prior to accepting the position working alongside the Office of Transformation Coordination in D.C.  It came at a time when Gonzaga University was inundating and penetrating my world with the philosophy of servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1970).

 

I have worked for USCIS since 2006, first as an Immigration Information Officer (IIO) (a position now defunct); then, as an Immigrations Services Officer (ISO); later as a Community Relations Officer (CRO) in Boston; and finally, as a Business Advisor.  As an IIO, I interacted with every aspect of the immigrant community in answering questions related to U.S. Immigration Law.  As an ISO, I interviewed applicants and petitioners in order to determine eligibility for the benefit sought.  As a CRO, I created positive relationships, sometimes between intergovernmental agencies, most of the time between USCIS and those we serve. 

 

My hardest job had not been in interacting and creating positive relationships between myself and the very diverse community we serve.  It had been in helping my organization to understand that any relationship is an intimate connection between two parties.  This relationship was construed as the parties being myself as CRO and our public; when in fact, it was an intimate connection between all USCIS employees and those served.  This confusion manifested itself as a barrier in service. 

 

Wounds were in need of healing.  From the public point of view, the wounds were bore by those who had sacrificed and struggled in coming to the United States.  It was a perspective of man’s inhumanity toward man – often an embattlement between God’s law (commandment cited by Jesus in Matthew 22:35–40, Mark 12:28–34 that "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself") and man’s law (ministerial policy).  From some officer’s points of view, it was they who bore the wounds.  Invariably, they had been deceived time and time again by immigrants until it was only man’s law that gave them the strength to bear the daily crush of the immigrant’s acquired knowledge in the laws of survival.   By all rights, both were the injured party.  It was an intimate relationship bound by perceptions of right and wrong, each party fixated upon their own pain and suffering. 

 

“The healing of relationships is a powerful force for transformation and integration” (Greenleaf, 1998, p.5), both being operational prerequisites in successfully moving forward in this ever evolving nation of immigrants.  As CRO, I shouldered in great part responsibility in the healing of relationships.  But, where was I to begin to nurture healing?   Though the diametrically opposed viewpoints (both Service and served) believed that change should begin with the other party, change best emanates from within - slowly moving outward until opposition and misunderstanding is bridged.  Thus, I began my trek somewhere askew from either party’s target, with myself as an aspiring servant-leader.  Often, I stopped to evaluate my progress and trueness of path. 

 

I knew I was not alone in my belief or in my course of action.  I was fortunate to have had Regional and District leadership who believed in the concepts of servant-leadership (Greenleaf, 1970).  So, while the path moving forward was fraught with players entrenched in their own beliefs and survival systems, my course was supported.  Even better, I believed I would have company along the road.

 

The argument

 

Since I began work at USCIS, I had many organizational discussions concerning whom it was that the Immigration Officers served.  One would think this could be assumed considering the title of our organization.  A commonsensical individual would say that USCIS is a service by title.  However, the name Citizenship & Immigration Services actually causes more confusion than it resolves.  Do we serve immigrants: Do we serve our organization: Do we serve citizens of the U.S.: Do we serve the law?

 

I had attended meetings with rooms resplendent with USCIS attorneys who strenuously objected to any service other than to that of the immigration laws found in United States federal code.  Prior to my entering Gonzaga’s Leadership program, I argued that Officers served the immigrants who filed the petitions and applications.  As a federal agency that is not funded by Congress, it is the receipt of these submissions that paid all our salaries.  My thought was that the law was merely a tool we utilized in service to immigrants.  That ideal was not in disregard to the fact that service to our organization was materialized in the proficiency of our decisions.  But, for most people who are unaware of the issues surrounding immigration in this country, they would ask why who we served mattered in the first place.

 

So it is with the servant issue. If there were a dependable way that would tell us, ‘This man (person) enriches by his presence, his is neutral, or he takes away,’ life would be without challenge. Yet it is terribly important that one know, both about himself and about others, whether or not the effect of one’s influence on others enriches, is neutral, or diminishes and depletes (Greenleaf, 1970, p. 33).

 

It is important to note that service in the context of service to others employed within USCIS was never mentioned in any of my early internal conversations with Leadership and Officers.  Usually, external stakeholders were always well-defined as attorneys and community-based organizations.  Internal stakeholders were seldom mentioned and often misdefined.  When Greenleaf wrote that "the care taken by the servant to make sure that other people's highest priority needs are being served" as an essential manifestation of servant leadership, I am certain this was to be taken holistically rather than myopically as in an individual relationship.  My prior narrow-minded approach, ignoring the whole picture, had been the reason I had not yet discerned who it was we really served.

 

Servant-leadership in an organization is systemic.  I realized that service was inexorably bound to priorities on a much larger scale than what my early arguments had broached.  I still contend that we could not serve the law.  Because, while "law" (a thing) carries with it power and authority, it is only a tool of the enactor - the enactor being the servant to the people who wield the tool.  My previous disregard of servanthood, as a holistic philosophy of individual priorities as they relate to the community to which they belong, had narrowed my vision and impeded my service.

 

I had to convince my organization that I had to touch both ends of the stakeholder pool.  Why?  Officers were angry because no one listened to their concerns, but Officers had no idea what concerns the real (not those machined creations that showed up for interviews) immigrants owned.  Immigrants were angry because no one understood what really drove their activities, which far too often derived from carefully seeded and guided misinformation.  They were also very afraid of Officers, some due to historical encounters, but most because of what was rumored and purposely perpetuated by unscrupulous individuals within their own communities.  For the unscrupulous, fear is a powerful commodity.  

 

It was a long hard road convincing a federal entity that they needed to be a part of that community in order that they might possibly counteract the effects of those individuals and provide immigrant education.  As if that wasn't hard enough, try convincing executives that a Community Relations Officer's duties should extend beyond corporate responsibilities - that we have a responsibility to all those people we serve, both internally and externally.  However, my quasi-autonomy aided in this a great deal.  My aspiring servant-leader understanding of transformation and in the meaning of service would go largely unchallenged as I moved forward.  That is until overarching political challenges darkened the light.

 

Transformation acknowledged.  My last day in Boston was a good one. My District Director addressed my departure to a large number of our staff.  He told them that I had successfully rewritten how we interact with the community. He pointed out a time when I had asked him for Officers to accompany me into the field and how his answer had been harshly spoken at an executive meeting: "That's your job! That is what I hired you for! Can't you do your job by yourself?"  The purpose that I had not been allowed to convey was simple: I wanted the Officers to meet the people whom they served.  I wanted the people that they served to know the Officers who served them.  He went on to say to those staff that I had proved him wrong - that "we are a community and we are all in this together."  Not everyone listening knew what he meant, but I did.  By then, we had shared many conversations concerning servanthood and servant leadership. There was no longer a question of "who we served."  For us, we served everyone and served no thing.  This entire process was transformational for both me and operationally for the Boston District Office.

 

When I had accepted the position of Community Relations Officer, I had no idea that the real answer to the question of who we served would so greatly impact both my personal and professional views.  My worldview had changed.  Thank goodness that Gonzaga University was there to guide me through it.  Palmer pens: "The only guidance we can get on the inner journey comes through relationships in which others can help us discern our leadings" (Palmer, 2004, p.26).  Sometime that also means getting out of the way.  I had stumbled into a situation at a perfect time in my education where I worked for a District Director who expected results but did not want to have to ever tell me how to do my job.  This professional autonomy allowed for my personal transformation to greatly impact my professional life.

 

Honest introspection is difficult when the answer to your transformational process requires you to first admit who you once were.  Even harder to admit is that who you once were will always be some integral part of who you are.  While “authentic leaders know the external world has no influence over their being” (Adams, 2011, para. 8), personal history creates a knowledgeable and Machiavellian character that requires in the transformed an awareness of its constant attempt to deceive and alter one’s path.  In myself, I understand that it is this awareness that differentiates change from my authentic transformation.  It is not a bargain I strike with this character where they have their space and I have mine.  In fact, we occupy the same space.  Devoid of intellectuality, I bear it without possession: I rise above it without arrogance (Lin, 2006).

 

In grading and editing the second attempt at this paper, my Transformation Leadership professor, Mike Poutiatine, Ph.D., stresses I identify:

 

The catalyst, then major shifts in your own thinking, the times when you were uncertain about our own path here, the places where you saw a new identity emerging, the places where that new identity was manifest in your work and behavior (personal communication, November 26, 2014).

 

In deeply considering his guidance and my own introspection, I realize that my transformation is not complete.  Perhaps this negates the essence and requirements of my assignment, but the realization is an honest one.

 

I have grown.  I have become a better person.  When my professional interactions with people having ideals beyond my current worldview occurred at the same time in my life as when the Gonzaga Organizational Leadership program was enlightening my world, I began seeing my new identity emerging.  All people around me started becoming more than mere faces and names that I could not remember.  Work was no longer satisfying unless I could figure out how to go beyond just interviewing immigrants.  I had to know who they were, what they experienced.  Every person became a true epic and their stories a part of my own history.  “Here, I believe is the heart of our spiritual yearning: to be connected to something larger and truer than our own egos and their designs” (Palmer, 2004, p. 108).  Here, I believe, is the inception of my transformation.

 

But a total transformation cannot be my claim when the times of uncertainty are now.  I now exist in a worldview that I have never before experienced.  The opportunity to experience something larger than yourself is also the chance you take in finding that the Machiavellian character has not left your side, that perilous corridors exist beyond your known worldview.  It is at this time in my life when I seek the executive leadership that will help lead me back to the path of transformation.

 

Literature Review

 

Experiences of personal transformations by individuals below the executive level of an organization provide for important understanding of organizational transformation.  “To dwell on executives’ capacity for management and manipulation, however, is to risk exaggerating their causal role in the overall movement of events and minimize that of subordinate executives and followers” (Burns, 1978, p. 375).  Therefore, examination of executive leadership for transformation must clearly be directed toward USCIS’s capacity for leadership at the subordinate executive level. 

 

Einstein posits that "no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it" (“Icarusfalling,” 2009, para. 3).  For USCIS, political consciousnesses create these difficulties at the executive and legislative governmental levels.  While “problems are best solved by transcending them and looking at them from a higher viewpoint” (Hawkins, 2009, p. 176), this higher perspective is not dependent upon elevation so much as inspiration and vision.  Moreover, this transcendent viewpoint “tends to become associated with people’s highest and most central values and aspirations, revealing what inspires them at the deepest levels” (Bernbaum, 2008, p. 2).  If true transformation is to take place within government, it must originate at least three hierarchical steps down from the problem-makers (elected officials and political appointees) and further below to the executive management levels.

 

In federal government, subordinate executives count in the thousands, from Senior Executive Service (SES) positions, or Senior-Level, down to general schedule (GS) management levels in a multitude of fields.  However, what is available for growth does not always equate to marketable potential.  “We are in dire need of pacesetters, at least one in each field, that stand so far ahead that even the good ones feel uncomfortable” (Greenleaf, 1977, p. 65).  These pacesetters require foresight in the “head, heart and gut” (Sipe & Frick, 2009, p. 111).  Observation tells me that we have intelligent management in these positions; so the Sipe and Frick reference to the head is accounted for.  It is the heart and gut that are severely lacking from politically-driven would-be pacesetters.

 

An independent “second brain” called the enteric nervous system resides in the intestines and contains more neurons than in the spinal column.  A “third brain” in the heart…contains over forty thousand neurons, more than some key areas of the cranium’s brain.  The heart…has the capacity to communicate with and exert control over the brain.  And it can remember (Sipe & Frick, 2009, p. 111).

 

Transformative shortfalls are direct results of the head, heart and gut (Sipe & Frick, 2009) failing to understand one another’s wants and desires, then symbiotically failing to provoke ethical change.  “A leader addresses these wants with challenges to things as they are, with solutions and the ways and means to achieve change” (Burns, 2003, p. 239).  In failing to accept things as they are for the head, heart or gut, “the kinds of traits that would make you admire that person…such as qualities as integrity, self-knowledge, optimism, vision, courage, and creativity” (Thompson, 2000, p. 133) may materialize to followers as disingenuous. 

 

“Extraordinary leaders are required to transform members’ self-interested tendencies - leaders who can create exciting visions, communicate these in compelling ways, and energize others to achieve them despite personal costs” (Ciulla, 2004, p. 153).  “Because they are in touch with their hearts, they aren't thrown by changes and challenges in the external world.  They remain calm and content, and don't worry about what others may think of them” (Adams, 2011, para. 8).  Instead of embracing the mediocrity of egocentricity, “leaders embrace values; values grip leaders.  The stronger the value systems, the more strongly leaders can be empowered and the more deeply leaders can empower followers” (Burns, 2003, p. 211).

 

Greenleaf (1977) speaks to the transformation an organization as a “new ethic… (Not a new idea but new as a firmly held business ethic.)…The work exists for the person as much as the person exists for the work” (p. 154).  “Above all, values – operationalized, claimed as rights, empowering leaders and followers – are weapons…the great public values of the Enlightenment, woven into people’s aspirations and expectations” (Burns, 2003, p. 213).  Organizations must wield this weapon counter to tyrannical leaders, those who support and carry out changes deprived of ethical authenticity.

 

In achieving authenticity and the non-terminable results indicative of authentic transformation, “it is important that this principle be embraced as an ethic and not simply as a “device” to achieve harmony or increase productivity or reduce turnover” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.155).  “Whether “statesman-leaders” can accomplish this, even when all this, even when the decks have been cleared for them, is another matter” (Burns, 1978, p. 378).  ‘“The fundamental issue is that notions of a “common goal,” “general interest,” “public good,” and so forth are theoretical concepts (every bit as metaphysical as natural rights)’ (Ciulla, 2004, p. 167).  Taking these theoretical concepts, applying them to the vision, then, staying the ethical course defines the authentic leader: Authenticity breeds the exceptional.  “Occasionally institutions of all categories…rise to the exceptional under the long-term direction of an unusually able administrator” (Greenleaf & Spears, 1998, p. 178).   

 

The question and the answer for USCIS reverberate in the works of such great visionaries as Greenleaf, Spears, Ciulla, and Palmer.  “Deep and durable change, guided and measured by values, is the ultimate purpose of transformational leadership, and constitutes both its practical impact and its moral justification” (Burns, 2003, p. 213).  Will that extraordinary executive leader rise to transform the hierarchy toward authentic transformation?  What will oblige them?  Greenleaf & Spears (1998) tell us this: “Neither compulsion nor money has much utility in causing institutions to be reconstructed as more caring or more serving.  Only the voluntary actions of people inside an institution can accomplish this” (p. 179).  Recent world history provides an extraordinary example of a leader’s rise in transforming from the inside a hierarchy steeped in oppression.

 

Case Analysis

 

Attempting to merge the ideals of transformative leadership with a politically tiered organization appears an irreconcilable squandering of resources - attaining restructuring through internal processes an even more futile undertaking.  In government, we often use terms like transformational and agile processes to express the outward-facing desire to transcend such futile dichotomies.  However, “cutting-edge ideas about leadership must face the test of applicability to real life” (Burns, 2003, p. 231).  “The fact that we have been  a country of great promise and extraordinary accomplishment, and at the same time a country of systematic and even heinous oppression, is a difficult paradox to face” (Ferch, 2012, p. 10), but not an impossible undertaking.  For case analysis, we look to a country where great was this paradox and yet perhaps never were there so exemplary an example of transformation.

 

Under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, the South African government met face-on such a challenge.  “For 20 years, he (Mandela) directed a campaign of peaceful, nonviolent defiance against the South African government” (Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, 2014, para. 1) and “the racist policy of South Africa that long denied blacks and other nonwhites civic, social, and economic equality with whites” (apartheid, n.d.).  The South African National Party enacted apartheid laws in 1948, essentially providing for two set of laws – those that applied to whites and those that applied to everyone else.  

 

Clearly, the whites in power that created the apartheid remained in power through the segregative practices they employed.  There existed no need to gild the lily, as the apartheid was enforceable law bent on oppression as a means of silencing opposition.  Exclusivity of the white political machine did so overtly and perhaps with an overconfident understanding that only a more powerful external revolutionary force could upend their rule (Tutu, 1999).  It was clear the South African government held no intention of transformation and also apparent that any external attempt would serve the revolutionary’s demise.  What the government failed to realize was the myriad of ways revolution could take root and flourish.

 

In their rule, the National Party would make Mandela’s attempts to transform the South African government appear as futile as possible.  After incarcerations on charges ranging from political activism (treason) to orchestrating and leading a five-day national worker’s strike (sabotage), in 1963, Mandela was again brought to trial (Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, 2014).  “He and 10 other ANC (African National Congress) leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment” (Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, 2014, para. 14).  In doing so, the apartheid government quelled the external revolution, confirming the confidence in their own inalienable white supremacy.  However, “leaders cannot be effective in the long run if they are simply power holders—rulers—and fail to see the moral and ethical implications of their work” (Burns, 2003, p. 231).  Moral and ethical, or not, Mandela was incarcerated twenty-seven years. 

 

In a letter Mandela wrote while confined on Robben Island to his wife Winnie, he confided to her his thoughts concerning how a person judges their own progress as individuals versus their concentrating “on external factors such as one’s social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education” (Sampson & Battersby, 2011, p. 5330).  The true leader inside Mandela was emerging, the individual that would one day take the reins of his country and guide them toward enduring change.  Though imprisonment did not weaken his resolve, the world was moving on.  While incarcerated, “violence across the country escalated...Under pressure from an international lobby, multinational banks stopped investing in South Africa, resulting in economic stagnation…Banks asked Botha to release Mandela – then at the height of his international fame – to defuse the volatile situation” ("Nelson Mandela," 2014, para. 33). 

 

For Mandela, twenty-seven years of contemplative determination came not in the form of terrible resolve, though those in power may well have seen it as the fulfillment of some heinous dramatic tragedy.  More so, Mandela emerged from prison all the more resolute that transformation come in a form centric to restorative justice in lieu of vengeance (Sampson & Battersby, 2011).  This “restorative justice, promoted by leaders such as…Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu in response to the atrocities of apartheid in South Africa, presents a different answer to the harms of humanity” (Ferch, 2012, p. 30).  Mandela and Tutu sought to create a culture of forgiveness.  “God wants to show that there is life after conflict and repression—that because of forgiveness there is a future” (Tutu, 1999, p. 282).  Tutu understood the cruciality of Mandela’s imprisonment as the polymerization fundamental to making transformation an internally emanating systemic change:

 

The time in jail was quite crucial.  Of course, suffering embitters some people, but it ennobles others.  Prison became a crucible that burned away the dross.  People could never say to him: "You talk glibly of forgiveness.  You haven't suffered.  What do you know?"  Twenty-seven years gave him the authority to say, let us try to forgive (Tutu, 2013, para. 11).

 

On May 10, 1994, “Mandela was duly elected President by the first democratically elected National assembly of the new South Africa” (Tutu, 1999, p. 11).  His years in prison had sparked a change in the South African non-white population that elected him.  However, this was not the great transformation that both Mandela and Tutu had envisioned.  It was merely a catalyst for enduring change.  The actual transformation came when Mandela began systemically altering the worldview of both white and non-white.

 

A Clear Vision

 

Indeed, “Mandela was the founder of a new nation, like Washington, Garibaldi or Bolivar, but he had not established it through military conquest or brute force” (Sampson & Battersby, 2011, p. 10663).  Mandela’s transformative presidency still faced issues of multi-racialism.  He was acutely aware that change in any cultural ideology that promoted a society composed of various races would have to be gradual.  What he had hoped for most and had attained was “a government of National Unity under which everyone could say: I am represented by that government” (Sampson & Battersby, 2011, p. 10663).

 

In his acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize 1993, Mandela said of the South African transformation, “Because of their courage and persistence for many years, we can, today, even set the dates when all humanity will join together to celebrate one of the outstanding human victories of our century” (Mandela, 2014, para. 11).  The defeat of apartheid proved the “power of motivation as a resource against entrenched, “formal” power with its superior material resources and presumptive legitimacy” (Burns, 2003, p. 198).  Mandela and the indelible changes his philosophy of forgiveness brought about proved that even a government steeped in tradition and predicated upon lawful endowment, once diagnosed malignant, can and must either confront imminent excision or accept the necessities of revolution. 

 

Government transformation without external militant force is therefore not without precedent (Sampson & Battersby, 2011).  What has been discussed in the preceding paragraphs briefly touches on an individual’s personal transformation guiding their opportunity to transform not just a government but an entire nation.  And, this is how it has to be - the correct ideological order of things.  “Personal transformation is about shifting the structure and character of ourselves – learning to alter our own identity, values, and beliefs to become better human beings” (Sahota, 2013, para. 4).  Without the individual first possessing the aptitude to transform themselves and to mobilize one’s vision, organizational transformation will never be more than an antediluvian and soon forgotten imaginary.

 

Case Epilogue

 

Nelson Mandela died December 5, 2013, at the age of 95.  At the time of Mandela’s death, then South African President Jacob Zuma said, “Our nation has lost its greatest son.  Our people have lost a father…What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human.  We saw in him what we seek in ourselves” (Karimi, Curnow, Martinez, Smith, & Orjoux, 2013, para. 8).  South Africans knew that in life Mandela had been “effectively refounding a nation, stamping it with the concept of racial tolerance and cooperation as firmly as his predecessors had stamped it with intolerance and segregation” (Sampson & Battersby, 2011, pp. 11930-11931).  South Africa achieving a higher degree of racial tolerance was likely Mandela’s most notable transformation.

 

However, all is not well as South African leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak out.  As late as December 2014, Tutu has “condemned government corruption, violence and continuing racism” (Bruce, 2014, para. 2).  Tutu goes on to state that “it's as if we're in a time warp, and have returned to the past” (para. 4).  This does not negate the significance of Mandela’s transformation.  What Tutu now laments upon is the failure of the South African government to maintain what Mandela had so gloriously delivered. 

 

The solidity of Mandela’s transformation is not in doubt, his accomplishments now a matter of historical record.  However, the permanency of any revolution is held secure only within spiritual practice and in the physical exercise of the ideals that brought it to fruition.  “The natural order of things is for energy to wane, and things come to a grinding halt” (Rainer, 2010, Sect. 3, para. 5).  Without sustained ethical exercise, the permanency of transformation ripens and rots upon its own splendor – a forgotten vision. 

 

Conclusion

 

In adopting the title Office of Transformation Coordination (OTC), a directorate within USCIS has intrinsically assumed responsibility for knowing what transformation is and why the substantive importance to both leader and follower.  As USCIS attempts to move beyond outward-facing change toward a more all-inclusive enduring organizational transformation, the questions remain.  Does a politically-driven component of our federal government possess the competence of leaders in guiding followers' vision of what is and what can be?  Will the path taken merely rely on followers’ adherence to coerced radical change, where natural actions are at odds with that vision?  Will USCIS leadership inspire followers to go beyond their current boundaries to a place where those natural actions achieve the desired results? 

 

If USCIS is to succeed, or even to progress in the transformational process, they must first see that their exploitation of the terminology organizational transformation is a misnomer.  “Transformation is literally a change in the structure of an individual’s mind and the linkages and protocols of an organization (Taylor, 2005, Sect. 3, "What").  This organization/individual transformative process is a dependent relationship.  In that, as both undergo provisional change, the two merge united in an absolute physical and permanent modification, the essence of which remains the ethical individual.  Stepping away from organizational transformation and first into transformational leadership (Burns, 2003) is essential in USCIS understanding and acting upon the needs of the ethical individual. 

 

In John Adams’ pamphlet, Thoughts on Government, he wrote:

 

The foundation of every government is some principle or passion in the minds of the people.  The noblest principles and most generous affections in our nature then, have the fairest chance to support the noblest and most generous models of government (1776, p.3).

 

It is the nature of things for individuals to create change, the noblest of change the more likely to persevere.  Governing bodies do not transform people: People transform the body through leadership.  “Only the kind of leadership that would enter their lives, not to preach to them or placate them on their terms, as the initial action in helping them realize their human potential” (Burns, 2003, p. 230).  Finally, the answer lies in sufficient motivation.

 

In better understanding the transformative process, in better understanding ourselves and in looking to recent history for examples of the kind of transformative successes that hallmark our struggle to become “islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity” (Greenleaf & Spears, 1998, p. 12), we serve as the answer.  So easy it would be to justify inaction by laying the fault of procrastination upon our current administration.  Yet, in this we are self-serving only. 

 

Yes, USCIS has the ability to transform.  However, when I say USCIS, I do not speak to the shell organization, moreover, to the ethical individuals serving the organization and the nation.  It is in the course of time reliant on USCIS employees to become transformative leaders and in doing so exemplifying the best practices of philosophers as Greenleaf, Spears, Ferch, Sipe and Frick, Burns and practitioners as Mandela, Gandhi and Tutu.  Long-time professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, Robert Clinton writes this of the leader’s journey:

 

God develops a leader over a lifetime.  That development is a function of the use of events and people to impress leadership lessons upon a leader (processing), time, and leader response.  Processing is central to the theory.  All leaders can point to critical incidents in their lives where God taught them something very important” (Wilson, 2013, para. 3).

 

I do not sit in judgment of the politically-driven organization’s willingness to transform.  There exists no requirement that their motivation and mine mirror one another.  I can only strive to answer for myself the question these great visionaries have placed before us:  Will I choose to lead.  The answer is: Yes.

 

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