""Decision making here is how complex and difficult," he said. "In government there are far more estraints placed on decision makers."

"Look at how Jim Lynn makes decisions. He doesn't have anywhere near the freedom that a businessman has. If he thinks, for example, that housing allowances are the best approach to providing housing for the poor, he can't just go out and provide those allowances. Things move much more slowly in government. There is more routine, protective devices, caution."

In terms of organizational efficiency Mr. Tappert said, "I can't think offhand of any way that the government is better than business."

Mr. Tappert also found that Government management tended to have less experience within the organization than industrial manwas agement. "Jim Lynn only here a few months when I arrived. But the chairman and vice chairman of G.E. have been around for 25 or 30 years."

On the other hand, Mr. Tap pert said he was surprised at the high level of competence among the Government managers he had worked with, civil servants as well as political appointees.

Mr. Tappert is planning to return to the General Electric Company after his year in Washington and he believes that his experience will help him deal more effectively with Governmental agencies in the future. He knows now a good deal about the way the Government works and he appreciates the problems that it faces.

This is important for a corporate manager, he said, because the relationship between the private and public sector is growing ever more close.

But even more than helping him as a businessman, his experiences in the interchange program, he believes, have made him "a more conscientious citizen."

"I realize I now have to take a greater interest, and perhaps participate, in local government. We need a heck of a lot more intelligent and concerned citizens taking part in the governmental process," he said.

Mr. Tappert conceded that the Watergate scandals had made him think twice before accepting a position in "a Government that engages in such things." But he concluded that "there are two or three million people working in Government. The job has to be done."

When Bert Lewis was first introduced around his office in the General Electric build-. ing on Lexington Avenue last summer, one of his new co-workers looked him over and commented, "Well, you don't look like a Fed."

"It made me realize," Mr. Lewis reminisced the other day, "that there were a lot of barriers to be broken down."

The temporary transition from Governmental service to private industry represented a major change in Mr. Lewis's life. As No. 2 man in the Federal Price Commission, he had been one of the most powerful men in the country during Phase 2 of the Economic Stabilization Program.

Then Mr. Lewis had the authority to tell giant corporations such as General Electric, what they could and could not do. Now he was installed in a cramped office tucked away in one small department of the company and not giving any orders to anybody.

He seemed perfectly happy about it.

"What I'd been doing all my Government career" said Mr. Lewis, who turned 40 last month, "was managing large line organizations on a day-to-day basis. It was very interesting but it was also frustrating. I wanted to see how a large organization looks down the road over a number of years-how it does its planning and allocates its resources."

on

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He had heard about the President's Commission Personnel Interchange couple of years earlier. He had also heard that General Electric was a leader in the area of corporate strategic planning. The move was natural, but not simple.

"Before I took the job I had the files at the Price Commission searched to make sure I had made no decisions directly affecting General Electric.

"After I got there, I went out of my way to avoid meeting the guy at the company who handles stabilization affairs."

Mr. Lewis was assigned to G.E.'s strategic planning staff and was immediately given important, if ad hoc, tasks. Although an outsider in the company, he had access to the company's five-year strategic plans that are kept sealed in a library and which

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"I've done things here I never would have done in Government," said Mr. Lewis, dark-haired, quiet man who seemed much less intense and harried than he had during his Price Commission days.

Mr. Lewis soon perceived some major differences between Government and industry. One of the biggest, he believes, is the way decisions are implemented.

"A business can turn itself around a lot faster than a Government agency," he explained. "Not that a business is any quicker in making a decision. But it can pull things off faster than the Government, which doesn't have the advantage of fast and often brutal feedback from the marketplace."

A Government bureaucrat, he asserted, is insulated from the pressures imposed on corporate managers by the requirement of showing a profit. At the same time, the Government functionary is pulled in varying directions by legislation, pressures from Capitol Hill, the media, competing interest groups and other political consdierations.

But Mr. Lewis also has perceived an important distinction between the private and public methods of management that may favor the Government.

"I've sensed a tendency in the private sector, particularly in staff operations, for managers to serve up what their boss wants and avoid combat intellectual with him. This is because he feels if he fights for his own ideas his job won't be there."

"In' Government, a guy can take his boss to the mat on an intellectual issue without worrying about losing his job. This certainly is a healthy thing in public service."

Generally, Mr. Lewis finds no difference between the the quality of people in public and private sectors. Government officials get bigger responsibilities at an earlier stage in their careers, he noted, but managers in industry get higher salries.

P. S.

THE

HE PROGRAM Estrin joined is the President's Executive Interchange Program, through which government and industry trade young executives for a year.

The idea is to give business a better idea of the intentions and operations of government and to give government an inside look at what the corporations are up to.

Estrin, now 37, moved to Detroit last September to spend a year with Burroughs Corp., where he is assigned to analyze legislation and any other government activity in the areas of world trade, particularly where such legislation might have special effect on multinational corporations, like Burroughs.

His counterpart although the program does not operate on a one-forone trade of men - might be Richard L. Smoot, a 33-year-old economist who went on a year's leave last August from the Philco-Ford Corp. (recently

sold by Ford) to join the Commerce Department.

In all, 45 executives from industry are working in government and 35 federal government executives are scattered about the country working for private business.

Ford is particularly strong in the program, perhaps because its president, Lee A. Iacocca, is a member of the President's Commission on Personnel Interchange.

Three Ford executives are with the government presently: Smoot, Ann Pacitti and John M. Valentic, the latter two with the General Services Administration.

career

James V. Fare Jr., a government man from the Department of Commerce, is with Ford's parts division.

Other Detroit and Michigan firms in the program are Dow, General Motors, and Coopers & Lybrand, an accountant firm.

And how is it working?

Both Smoot and Estrin say they are doing real work with their temporary employers, that they are getting that special inside look the program intended, and that they will take something real back with them to their old jobs.

Estrin, at Burroughs, says he is finally getting that real look at free enterprise and the American corporation and, as a bonus, he says he is getting, from his associates and his neighbors in Southfield, something most Washington-locked civil servants don't get, an idea of how the rest of the country views Washington.

Smoot says his role at the Department of Commerce is giving him an opportunity most business executives don't get, the opportunity to see how social and legislative changes affect the whole broad front of American business.

SMOOT'S JOB in the Department of

Commerce is acting director of the office of domestic business policy.

His office reviews and analyzes about 700 legislative bills a year that relate to business; it monitors the progress of collective bargaining, to watch for trends that go far beyond the narrow interests of the principals in the negotiations; it watches the mood of Congress in matters such as antitrust legislation and social and ecological matters, all of which are major factors to business.

"It's a real job," Smoot says in Washington.

"I think there are some business executives in the program who are not being used to the limit of their full abilities.

"But not in my case.

"This is exactly what I wanted for this year, a line job with real responsibilities, and the people in the department to whom I report have made it clear that a job has got to be done.

"They set up a lot of special programs for each of us in Washington from business. Luncheon meetings with Cabinet people and agency people and congressmen, and that takes up some time. But the job is real, and they expect it done.

"And I've been very pleased with them. They've given me responsibility in every way to really run that office."

Smoot, who took a master's degree in economics from the University of Cincinnati in 1964, joined Ford the same year. He worked in the Ford Division in Dearborn for a while, in personnel, and then was transferred to Philco-Ford in Pennsylvania, where he became involved in personnel, labor negotiations, and special programs for training various groups of people to bring them to a level where they could be productive workers.

After he was tapped by the company for the executive interchange program, he was interviewed by six or seven government agencies before choosing the assignment with Commerce.

"I thought I could use my back

ground in economics here," Smoot says, "and as I said, this was a line job. There would be things to be met all the time and more things to tackle directly."

What has his half year in Washington given him?

"Mainly," he says, "I think it is the opportunity to look at things affecting business from a broad overview.

"It's hard for the businessman, totally immersed in his own single company and its progress, to really see the big picture or to sort things out as they relate to him.

"Take social costs, for instance, of which business bears a large share.

"I think it is hard for the individual businessman to sort out his social role

other than to produce a quality product, get his own fair return, and pay his employes fairly. And just that, by the way, is a great contribution to society.

"But here, with the whole range of matters we deal with, from raises in social security to health insurance to anti-trust, we can see the picture in its whole, or at least get an idea what the whole picture might be.

"I think it is good for people like me to get away and get this broader view.

"The program has some critics. Ralph Nader, for instance, who feels bringing us into government is just a way of helping business get a bigger voice in government than it already may have. Me, I don't agree. I think the government is entering fields that were previously left to private decision, and I think business can help to give government a different view of this problem or that, or a more balanced view.

"And, after all, we in this program are middle management. We report to the assistant secretaries and the secretaries and give them our views, but we don't make policy. The secretaries and the President make the policies.

"For me, when I return to industry, I'm going to take back a very good

Richard Smoot

went from Ford to the Commerce Dept.

The Lines of Communication Are Different

view of the interworking of business and politics. I think you just can't realize how complex that association is until you have the opportunity to see it the way I have."

And is there any difference between a giant corporation like Ford and the maze of bureaucracy that Washington is?

Smoot laughs and says, "One of the difficult things here is to learn to know who are the right people to go to. I think there are 67 or 87 agencies or organizations in Washington who are involved to some degree with ecological and environmental matters, all of them highly important to business.

"If you don't know the right agency or the right person to go to on a particular matter, you can waste a lot of time hunting for him.

"I think the lines are clearer at a company like Ford. There are the production people and the marketing people and so forth, and generally only one set of each. So it's easier to know where to go.

"But there are old hands around who can direct you here.

"As to people, I think the civil servants I've met here are on the whole on the same level of competence as their counterparts in private industry. Perhaps there are more intellectual types here, and they may tend to spend a lot more time on a question or a project than they might in industry, just because of the demands of industry.

"But I find the level of competence about equal. There are some awfully good people here, and they've helped me see things from a new angle for me."

ALEX ESTRIN says, "When I

decided to get into this program, my one goal was to see just how one of these big corporations functions. How do they make a profit? How do they make decisions that lead to profits?

"And I'm getting exactly the good close look that I had hoped for.

"My job at Burroughs, analyzing and following legislation that would or might affect the company, takes me into practically every area of the company, so I'm meeting the decisionmakers and observing how they operate.

"Then there are my colleagues here. Just having lunch with them and listening to them talk about their jobs and their departments tells me a lot about how they work and how each contributes to the corporation.

"And there is the bonus of having this opportunity to live in the Midwest, to hear what people out here think of Washington, what their feelings about the federal government are."

Estrin grew up in New York and went to college there, taking an MA in industrial and management engineering from Columbia University. He worked briefly as a sales engineer for Westinghouse, then in June, 1961, at 24 years of age, he joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Colombia.

He was a field volunteer for two years, working in the coffee villages at projects such as water systems and drainage systems and at the construction of schools. Then he moved to Rio de Janeiro and moved a big step up in the Peace Corps, becoming associate regional director responsible for 750 volunteers and staff and administering a $1 million budget

By 1965, when he moved to the Agency for International Development

first as a recruiter of young talent and later as deputy special assistant for equal opportunity Estrin had decided on a career in the civil service.

From AID he went to the Department of Labor, monitoring equal opportunity compliance by federal contractors. He then worked in the offices of a congressman and a

In Washington You Tend to Get Insulated

senator, on a fellowship-study basis. The industrial exhibit in Russia, a function of the U.S. Information Agency, followed, and when Estrin returned from the USSR he was assigned to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

He was working in the new Office of Management and Budget when he left to come to Burroughs.

"One of the problems in Washington." he says, "is that you can get so insulated. You tend not to see beycra your own narrow focus. And, although you are working on things like regulations and guidelines that certainly will affect people all over the country, you are not really in touch with those people.

"You truly get insulated.

"So my coming here-in addition to getting a real feel for how a company like Burroughs gets its job done - also has given me a real opportunity to learn what the people think of us in government.

"I learn from the neighbors, from people I meet on social occasions, from the people at Burroughs just how they regard Washington. What I've found out from them is that Washington is not something operating in a vacuum or a vapor to them. They really know what is going on in Washington beyond Watergate and they really are interested.

"In Washington you are apt to be not aware of the people out here in a reai way. But the people are certainly aware of us. And that will be a great help to me when I get back to the government just having been out among another group of people in another place."