NSU Horizons Fall 2011

33 horizons Following retirement, Cairns founded the Cairns Blaner Group, a consulting company focused on delivering career-management strate- gies and services. He even found some time to pursue his love of golf. Then, he got the call from the White House. “We all know where we were on 9/11 and the importance of what [Home- land Security] is doing. These are dedicated public servants who identify with the mission to serve and protect the people of the United States. It was a privilege to be asked to join them. I had to say yes.” Cairns joined the Department of Homeland Security, which was created following the terrorist attacks of September 11, during the last several months of the Bush administration. He knew this was a short-term assignment that would require him to quickly assess the situation, build trust with agency employees, and implement needed changes in a minimal amount of time. While every agency within Homeland Security shared the mission of keeping the country safe, each had a different viewpoint about how this was to be accomplished and how employees within each organization worked with each other. Cairns quickly realized that he faced the additional challenge that government human resources practices were still operating on principles and policies common 20 years ago. “I’d forgotten what 20 years ago looked like,” he said. “Things were labor intensive and paper driven. There was more ‘throw people at the problem’ versus improving processes. From an operational standpoint, [each agency] had its own functions and separate funding. Now they needed to be brought together.” He believed the best way was to create a management system with common standards for all the business elements of running the agencies, including human resources hiring, policies, information technology, and finance. Yet, before he operated on any assumptions, he assembled his team of human resources representatives from all the associated agencies and asked them what they thought. He received valuable feedback that allowed him to work with his team, addressing the most critical issues, such as creating a five-year human resources strategic plan, forecasting budgets two years in advance for congressional approval, and unjamming a backlog of hiring to fill vacancies. As if the plate were not full enough, the 2008 presidential election resulted in a democratic administration in the White House. This would require transitioning out former political appointees and replacing them for the new incumbents. To achieve this efficiently, Cairns was asked by the Obama administration to continue the work he had started. By gaining the trust of stakeholders and having their help in identifying solutions, Cairns and his team worked at lightning speed. In what ended up as 12 months of service, Cairns led the effort to hire 130 replacements for the 170 available political-appoin- tee positions throughout Homeland Security and its associated agencies, establish a succession plan for career professionals to fill in for appointees, and develop human resources plans and policies for the entire organization. Since returning to the private sector in 2009, Cairns continues to grow his client base for his consulting firm. He serves as a career coach for the Graziadio School of Business at Pepperdine University and as an adjunct professor of management at Azusa Pacific University. He recently joined Nova Southeastern University’s President’s Advisory Council, working with George L. Hanbury II, Ph.D., NSU president. And, Cairns tries to squeeze in a golf game or two at his favorite courses around the country. n “We all know where we were on 9/11 and the importance of what [Homeland Security] is doing.”