Customer Reviews

Many Unhappy Returns: One Man's Quest To Turn Around The Most Unpopular Organization In America (Leadership for the Common Good)

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This is a modest and engaging memoir from a successful businessman who, to the surprise of his own family, accepted an offer to become Commissioner of the IRS. He took the job in 1997, when the IRS was in a political firestorm, being berated as both abusive and bungling in dramatic Congressional hearings. Charles Rossotti took over this very troubled agency, and after five years of hard work, left it, well, still a troubled agency, but with somewhat more manageable problems than it had before.

The list of problems he faced was truly daunting. The IRS was an outdated organization based on geography instead of function; its computer system for taxpayer accounts was from 1962; its customer service lines were chronically busy; and its workforce was demoralized. On his first day in office, Rossotti told his staff he wanted to send an e-mail to all employees and was promptly told it was impossible. Where to begin?

He began with the organization, removing layers of management and consolidating functions so that offices could focus on particular types of taxpayers. Rossotti was allowed to bring in his own management team, but to his relief, found that the career IRS executives he inherited were eager and able to make big changes in the agency. He accompanied IRS employees during their meetings with taxpayers so that he could watch them work. He replaced the big paper manuals that telephone assistors used with computer databases, and devised a plan to keep the old computer system updated for Y2K and tax law changes until a new system could be designed and deployed. All these changes were made after consulting with everyone from the employees' union to small business groups; Rossotti's motto is, "Engage, and then decide."

As the dour title of the book would suggest, not everything went well. Most of Rossotti's plan for "Modernizing America's Tax Agency" had only long-term benefits, but the politicians who make the rules and set the budget wanted a sense of immediate accomplishment. Congress demanded that he respond to the hearings by firing some employees. The White House hoped that a few public relations gestures could just make the problem go away. In one of book's few insider revelations, Rossotti claims that Clinton aides actually asked him to find a "happy taxpayer" for the audience of a State of the Union speech. Rossotti's budget requests were routinely cut, so he reduced enforcement to pay for the improvements he wanted in customer service. Not surprisingly, tax evaders, often assisted by prestigious accounting firms, took full advantage of the decline in audits.

So what is Charles Rossotti's legacy? The organizational and technological changes he was able to make will have lasting benefits. The IRS has caught up with such basics as fax and e-mail, and the irs.gov website is excellent. Rossotti's positive assessment of the employees he met is encouraging. His major emphasis on customer service may be threatened though. Rossotti's successor, alarmed at the level of cheating but no more successful with the overall budget, is now cutting customer service to shore up enforcement. Congress ignored Rossotti's requests to simplify the tax code, and in fact made things worse. Rossotti certainly wasn't the first businessman to go into government and find frustration, but with his modesty and his emphasis on consultation, he seemed much more poised for success than an autocratic type.

Many Unhappy Returns is neither bitter nor self-congratulatory. Rossotti doesn't criticize many people by name, and he is quick to share credit for what went right. His analysis of organizational structures certainly won't outsell books on terrorism or celebrity trials, but he does seem to be a very honest and capable man who took on a difficult job with no prospect of fame or glory. Reading his book is a small way of saying thanks. He didn't completely succeed, but thank God people like him are willing to try.

This is a truly remarkable book. Clearly written, with many practical examples and devoid of management jargon, it describes what Charles Rossotti did to signbificantly improve IRS operations. But it's not just about the IRS, or about big, cumbersome government buraeucracies, or about how to change organizations. It's about good management! The principles that guided Rossotti and that he lays out out in this book are universal, such as focus on the customer (that's right, taxpayers treated as customers)and involvement of employees in the improvement process. Those apply to any organization at any time and make this book an extraordinary valuable read for anyone genuinely interested in good management. I highly recommend it.

All those interested in how the best modern management practices of the private sector can be applied to huge government bureaucracies with dramatic benefits to the taxpayer (literally) should read Charles Rossotti's book. This book should remove all doubt about whether it's possible to improve the operational performance of government. The fundamentals are all that's needed: getting one's arms around the whole problem, structural reorganization, customer focus, gathering input from all directions, using modern information technology, leveraging the frustrated talent already in the organization, constant and honest communication, and the right chief executive. Rossotti was the right executive for the IRS, and fortunately he has written a clear and lively narrative of his experiences there.

Just when you think that your own job is the pits, you encounter someone whose occupation is even worse. Actually, Rosetti volunteered - sort of, if you can call succumbing to pressure from several Washington heavies 'volunteering' - to fix something that appeared terminally broken: the IRS. But the result is a book that has more to do with transformational change in large organisations than taxation, and Rosetti is clear about the steps that were involved in bringing the IRS back from the brink to being a fairly credible organization (although he admits the process will take much longer than the five years that he held the job).
As a former businessman from the private sector, before taking the job he insisted on being able to form his own team - and he managed to assemble some good people from the private sector and from within the IRS. He also highlights the importance of keeping reform promises credible - better, he says, to only promise realistic changes, rather than promise the world and deliver nothing. Another key was the installation of up-to-date technology - astonishing to realise that the IRS was still running on a computer system from 1963.
The major problem was the micro-mandates imposed on him by various Congressmen and other stakeholders, as well as the apparently random interventions of the Clinton White House.
As a non-American, I cannot personally vouch for Rosetti's claims about the IRS lifting its game, although it sounds right from other things I have read and heard. One way or another, it makes for a pretty interesting book, and Rosetti writes with clarity and occasional humor (an ability to see the funny side of things would have been essential in this job).
I think I will send my (advance) copy to the head of the tax office in my own country.

When Charles Rossotti took over as Comissioner of the Internal Revenue Service in 1997 the IRS had more customers than any organization in America--and the lowest customer service rating. In Many Unhappy Returns, Rosotti describes how he led a major turnaround of the agency in spite of the extraordinary constraints he faced. Rossotti did an amazing job of engaging the career employees of the IRS at all levels while managing relations with key constituencies such as Congress, the National Treasury Employees Union, and the media. Rossotti demonstrated mastery of the big picture, but his strategic vision was informed by his regular encounters with front-line employees, who helped him understand the systemic problems that undermined employees' ability to provide great service to the public. This is an engaging read and a compelling story.

Rossotti tried it as head of the IRS from 1997 to 2002, coming from outside government and without prior significant tax experience. At the time, it had the largest number of customers and lowest approval rating of any institution in America. Behind this rating was a new $4 billion computer system that could not meet requirements, callers couldn't get through, staff could not resolve many issues without added calls and letters, there were high error rates in response to caller questions, and numerous charges of staff building "success rates" by deliberately focusing on taxpayers thought least able to resist.

One of Rossotti's early acts was to have a list compiled of outstanding promises - it exceeded 5,000. He consolidated the list and focused on 157 - giving them top attention. In addition, Y2K was coming - threatening chaos unless thousands of old programs were changed before the old programmers familiar with them and increasingly uncertain about their own future left. (Resolved that problem with a temporary 10% bonus and the promise of re-training in new languages.)

The "bad news," however, is that Congressionally-imposed complexity had led to an 83,000-page manual, a prohibition on quotas, and a requirement for performance statistics. Further, MAJOR improvement would require not only simplifying the tax code but also the organizational structure. For example, the Office of Management and Budget had great control over staffing, and Treasury department attorneys determined the legal rulings used by staff - often with little concern over practicality.

Rossotti focused on having staff stop seeing taxpayers as "the enemy," moved to organize those responding to taxpayer questions by topic and providing more training. Their efforts did improve customer satisfaction ratings, but he did not provide data on what happened after leaving. (My experience in government is that after the crisis passes or the change agent leaves, things revert back to the way they were.)

Probably most helpful, though was Rossotti's suggestion for Congressional focus - that the definitions and requirements regarding dependents (different in various situations) and tax-treatment of savings accounts added the most complexity to most taxpayers situations. Therefore, revising those areas would have significant benefit in simplifying taxpaying for many, many taxpayers.

Former IRS Commish Rossotti writes a valuable playbook for all public and private sector managers faced with effecting deep changes in culture. Thought provoking and a pleasure to read.