Stop Managing the Optics—Start Managing the City
Why Mayor Karen Bass Should Embrace Peter Drucker’s Philosophy to Build a Functional Los Angeles
Los Angeles Mayor: Karen Bass
Leadership today is too often measured by the noise we make, not the results we deliver. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass began with a rare moment of clarity. On day one, she declared a state of emergency on homelessness and began restructuring the city’s response systems.
These weren’t symbolic acts. They were serious signals of intent—something too often missing in public life.
But nearly two years later, the city is still struggling. Homelessness persists, budgets are in crisis, and basic services remain unreliable. The promises are still big, but the progress is hard to measure. And so we must ask the uncomfortable question: Is it really vision that’s missing? Or is it management?
Peter Drucker, who helped define modern management not far from here in Claremont, would say the latter. “Leadership without execution is performance,” he warned. “And performance without accountability is a mirage.”
For Drucker, management wasn’t about charisma—it was about responsibility. “Rank does not confer privilege,” he wrote. “It imposes responsibility.”
So let’s ask the real question: What is the responsibility of a mayor who genuinely wants to transform a city?
“Rank does not confer privilege,” he wrote. “It imposes responsibility.”
Where Is the Engine?
Let’s start where Drucker would: the economic engine. Without a functioning economy, nothing else—housing, safety, infrastructure—can be sustained. And right now, Los Angeles doesn’t have a plan to grow.
It has a patchwork of programs and a budget tied together with creative accounting, hiring freezes, and short-term patches. We are burning innovation on internal gymnastics when it should be directed outward—toward growth.
Legacy industries like aerospace and entertainment no longer carry us. Emerging sectors like green tech and digital media haven’t scaled fast enough. Meanwhile, other cities have pulled ahead. Toronto built its innovation economy by aligning education, business, and infrastructure.
Seoul invested in agility and digital access. Copenhagen fused sustainability with workforce development. These places didn’t get lucky. They got focused.
Los Angeles, by contrast, is caught in a cycle of ambition without infrastructure, promises without power. And this is exactly the kind of dysfunction Drucker foresaw. In A Functioning Society, he argued that government is a poor manager.
Its job isn’t to execute, but to govern—to define purpose and set clear standards. “Any attempt to combine governing with ‘doing’ on a large scale,” Drucker wrote, “paralyzes the decision-making capacity” of government.
The answer, then, isn’t for City Hall to try to do everything itself. Drucker believed in what he called “reprivatization”—handing implementation to institutions better equipped for it: nonprofits, community organizations, universities, churches, to name a few.
The role of the mayor is not to be the provider of every service, but the conductor of a civic orchestra.
“Any attempt to combine governing with ‘doing’ on a large scale,” Drucker wrote, “paralyzes the decision-making capacity” of government.”
Drucker Warned Us
In The End of Economic Man, Drucker warned that when institutions fail to provide meaning and stability, people don’t just suffer materially—they lose trust. They retreat. And they become vulnerable to ideologies that promise certainty without responsibility. Totalitarianism, he argued, was not just a political movement—it was a false religion, offering identity and belonging in place of true purpose.
L.A. does not face a fascist threat, but it does face a trust crisis. When systems fail, when promises are unfulfilled, people disengage. They stop believing the government can work. This is why Drucker emphasized that social progress is rooted not in slogans or spending but in institutions that give people dignity, meaning, and a role in society.
That means rebuilding civic trust through real partnerships—neighborhood councils, faith-based coalitions, and frontline workers. Government can’t do it alone. And Drucker wouldn’t ask it to.
Not Just a Team—A System
Mayor Bass has a capable team. But as Drucker said, “The productivity of the worker is the responsibility of the manager.” If the team isn’t delivering, the answer isn’t another press release—it’s a new system.
Right now, L.A. has too many warning signs. An LAist investigation found the city has paid nearly $1.5 billion in liability settlements over the past decade. That’s not a line item. It’s a symptom of unmanaged risk. The fire department scandals—ranging from payroll abuse to credit card misuse—are not anomalies. They are signs of institutional drift.
And then there’s the 2028 Olympics. A grand vision, yes. But L.A. doesn’t currently have the financial muscle or internal control to deliver something of that scale without serious reform.
Drucker said it clearly: "Government tends to do reasonably well what it is structured to do—but it does poorly what it was never designed to do in the first place. The more it tries to manage operations directly, the more it drifts from its core function: making policy and ensuring accountability."
“The productivity of the worker is the responsibility of the manager.”
Execution Is Strategy
Tom Peters put it plainly: “Execution is strategy.” Charles Handy added, “The future is not inevitable. We can influence it—if we know what we want it to be.” Drucker didn’t write about management to entertain. He wrote to warn: in the absence of execution, institutions crumble.
Mayor Bass stepped into a broken system with courage. She saw what was wrong and didn’t flinch. That earned her the trust to lead. But leadership is not something you win once. It’s something you demonstrate—again and again—through the daily discipline of making government work.
The road forward isn’t ideological. It’s operational. It doesn’t require a new vision—it requires making the existing one real. That means outcomes over memos. Mission over ego. Performance over posturing.
A Final Word to the Mayor
Mayor Bass, your courage brought you to the podium. Now the city needs the same courage to follow through—to shift from declarations to delivery. You’ve laid out a bold and morally serious vision. That’s not in question. What’s in question is whether the city will have the management systems and standards to make that vision real.
Peter Drucker warned that when government overreaches, it loses not just efficiency but authority. If you want to lead a functioning city, embrace a new model: govern with purpose, manage through systems, and measure with integrity.
The real crisis is not lack of ambition—it’s the absence of structure.
“If Drucker were advising Los Angeles today, he might say: Stop confusing activity with achievement. Don’t just aspire—organize.”
The future of Los Angeles will not be decided by slogans, or even by elections. It will be shaped—day by day—by how well we manage what’s already in our hands.
But this responsibility doesn’t rest on City Hall alone. Tom Hayden once said, "In order to be civically engaged in Los Angeles, you first have to find City Hall." That’s not just a metaphor—it’s a challenge. Mayor Bass has launched initiatives like Shine LA, aimed at sparking local engagement.
But we need more than public enthusiasm. We need serious programs that bring outside talent into city government—fellows, more exempt positions, civic entrepreneurs, problem solvers. Think of the FUSE Corps fellows program. Think of the former Mayor’s Operations Innovation Team. These weren’t symbolic—they delivered results.
