Dahlia Damas
The selected public administrator is Dahlia Damas, whom I personally know because she is a close friend of my aunt. She is in charge of administering the property of deceased people of the County of New York, who died with no will and have no one else to take over the property. Therefore, she operates at the local level, where she oversees the properties within the specified county.
Key Principles
Dahlia Damas has always been known for her entrepreneurial spirit because her background lies in the corporate world of Wall Street’s real estate trading firms. It is the main reason why she, among the most effective public administrators in NYC, who is well-known in her community. Dahlia Damas a clear manifestation of the second and third key principles, which are putting customers first and empowering employees to get results (Shafritz & Hyde, 2016).
She directly utilizes the given principles and her entrepreneurial skills to a great extent in order to tackle the public problem of administering the property. One of the major challenges of her job is ensuring that there are no eligible people who can inherit the property of a deceased without a will. It is stated that these public administrators’ responsibilities involve: “collecting and distributing the assets of the deceased person, arranging appropriate funerals, and administering estates that would otherwise remain un-administered” (“New York County public administrator,” 2020, para. 2). In other words, it is a highly important and essential job, which requires a number of managerial and administrative skills.
Management Style
Dahlia Damas’s management style was initially developed and built-up during her years in a corporate world, where efficiency and effectiveness are the main goals. She claimed that being a manager or administrator is highly dependent on one’s ability to juggle between clients and workers. She thinks that it is easy to forget about customers, and thus, she prioritizes them party over employees because, ultimately, the dissatisfaction of one of them will lead to dissatisfaction of another through a loss of revenue and employment.
Therefore, she strictly adheres to the key principle of putting customers first by primarily listening to them and learning about their needs. It is also important for her to achieve results than organizing the work process, which is why she gives more freedom to her employees. However, in return, she expects that they will bring results instead of describing their routine work procedures. Dahlia Damas has little interest in the ways her employees operate and mostly demands a certain level of success.
Customer-Oriented Approach
Dahlia Damas approaches public administration with a similar strategy, which she used in the corporate world. She prominently adheres to a customer-oriented approach in her endeavors, where customer satisfaction is the only metric that is valuable and representative of success (Tseng, 2018). It is important to note that the overall nature of her job makes it morally and ethically mandatory to put customers first. The main reason is that she constantly deals with the family members and friends of deceases people. The lack of will regarding the property can create a conflict between people who claim that they are legitimate to inherit it.
In other words, complex and intricate issues constantly arise among the close circle of the customers. Therefore, it is paramount to ensure that all parties are dealt with fairly and justly as well as in accordance with the law. It is evident that she has to put customers first because otherwise, her work and outcomes will become immoral, unethical, and chaotic.
Result-Oriented Approach
Dahlia Damas utilizes a result-oriented approach in regards to her own employees and subordinates in order to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the work procedures. She is a strong believer in an entrepreneurial government, where results and solutions are more relevant than the organization and labor management. She is adherent to the notion that her subordinates are competent enough to operate with certain autonomy and freedom. However, there is an evident tradeoff, which comes with an increased level of expectations from the employees. She always saves time during meetings by dismissing the justifications and explanations as irrelevant.
She allocates the meeting time only for results and result-related discussions, where she actively avoids any form methodologies or approaches used. Therefore, she achieves an additional efficiency level because the meetings with her subordinates take short periods of time. In addition, such gatherings do not occur as often as in many other public administration agencies because achieving results generally take more time and effort. In other words, her employees spend the majority of their time actually working with customers rather than exchanging irrelevant information and useless data.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Dahlia Damas is a public administrator who adheres to the key principles of putting customers first and empowering employees to get results. In other words, she utilizes entrepreneurial measures for achieving outstanding outcomes in her job. Dahlia Damas uses the customer-oriented approach, where she proactively tracks and monitors customer satisfaction levels. In the case of her employees, she adheres to a result-oriented approach, where she puts a great deal of emphasis on results only.
References
New York County public administrator. (2020). Web.
Shafritz, J. M., & Hyde, A. C. (2016). Classics of public administration. Cengage Learning.
Tseng, L. M. (2018). How customer orientation leads to customer satisfaction. International Journal of Bank Marketing, 37(1), 210-225. Web.