The New York Times asked Joseph J. Lhota, the Republican nominee, and Bill de Blasio, the Democratic nominee, to explain their approaches to being a boss: making tough choices, recruiting a savvy staff and coping with the crises that inevitably confront the leader of the nation’s largest municipality.
First up, an interview with Mr. Lhota, who spoke with Michael Barbaro, a reporter for The Times, at his campaign headquarters in Manhattan. An interview with Mr. de Blasio is coming Friday. This interview has been condensed and edited.
Q. What will a typical day look like in a Lhota administration?
A. I will have an 8 a.m. staff meeting every morning. Probably in the first six months it may be six days a week. Yeah, you’re not going to have much time off.
Tell me how you will manage.
I love managing by walking around. I just like to walk around and talk to people. I find it helpful because I think it’s morale-building. Sam Walton, who owned Walmart, would go to different Walmarts all around the country and wouldn’t announce himself. He would talk to people, and they had no idea who they were talking to. He got a good feel for whether it was a good store or not a good store, whether that person had potential to become a good manager.
You did this as a deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration?
I used to really tick off commissioners to no end because I would call the deputies, the first deputy, or the deputy or the assistant commissioner, and go around the rigmarole, the bureaucracy. There were some commissioners who actually had the gumption to yell at me for talking to people in their organization. To this day I’m still shocked that they decided it was their organization.
How did you respond?
I told this to them — this is an exact quote: “You think you got your job by answering an ad in The New York Times? No, we picked you. Remember that. Don’t talk to me that way.” I would do it nicely. I would also remind them that it’s not theirs. They’re only there on a temporary basis. We all are.
If you are such an experienced leader, why does your campaign feel flat-footed?
There’s a world of difference between politicking and governing or managing. I know this is going to sound arrogant and egotistical. If this was a job that people were being hired to, and you went out and you did a search and did an executive recruiting, I’d feel very, very comfortable that I would end up being given that job. This a job where you go through the electoral process. And the electoral process in this country is — and this is very eye-opening for me because I’ve always looked at it from the outside — now that I’m on the inside, it is amazing to me how phrases are more important than action, or even backup. You can talk about a tale of two cities, but never once talk about how you’re going to deal with it. There’s a shallowness to the discussion.
So as a manager, it’s a new territory for you?
I’m not managing this campaign. I’m not in the absolute trenches on this, and I was told early on and I didn’t believe it — it took me about 10 minutes to believe it — that candidates should not be the campaign manager. I now know it to be absolutely true. So if you want to ask about management-related stuff, you’re asking the wrong guy. I’m the candidate.
What was your first job as a boss?
When I was a little kid, I worked for a guy named Ira Frankel in this little stationery store. Somewhere along the way, Ira, when I was just 17 years old, trusted me to run the whole store. The money, the cash, everything, the customers. And I wish he was alive today so you guys can ask him why he let me do that. For the life of me I don’t know why.
What’s the largest number of people you’ve ever overseen?
About 280,000.
The entire city payroll.
But that’s presumptuous. Directly reporting to me would have been my staff and the commissioners.
How do you make decisions?
I believe in fact-based decision-making. Decision-making can never be done properly if it’s emotional. So you need to gather as many facts as possible. I don’t labor too long to make a decision. You just get to a point where you feel, all right, I have enough. There are a lot of people, both in the private sector and the public sector, who get to a point where they say, “I’m afraid to make a decision because there’s a probability that I’m wrong.” There’s always a probability that you’re wrong. I don’t worry about that. If I’m wrong, life will go on. I may lose my job, I may not.
You seem comfortable with risk.
Remember, I came from Wall Street originally in my career. When you make a decision to buy, to sell, you know almost instantaneously whether or not you’ve made the right decision or not, based on what happens to the value, whether it goes up or goes down. That has a lot to do with my ability to make a decision.
How do you hire?
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