When I was an international business trainer, I often opened a session with an icebreaker. My favorite was to ask the group what the difference between a leader and a manager was. It is a trick question because the name itself is the definition. A leader leads, and a manager manages.
This crossed my mind at the January 9th Lycoming County Commissioners Meeting when, after the usual preliminaries, Commissioner President Scott Metzger recognized Matt McDermott for his tenth anniversary as the Lycoming County Director of Administration. The leaders recognized their hard-working, incredibly productive manager who keeps the ball moving.
Commissioners have the tough job of creating a budget and then deciding how the money should be spent, which happens weekly at their public meetings. Leaders have to lead, meaning they must make tough decisions and live with the consequences. On the other hand, there are managers who have to manage the best they can with what they have: personnel, finances, operations, etc. Each department has a department head, and each of these needs someone who gives them guidelines on what they can and cannot do or help when they don’t know what to do! This is where Matt McDermott comes in.
Lycoming County government has dozens of departments, from Assessments and Conservation to Voter Services and Veterans Affairs. All of these need direction from time to time and also must be aware of the right hand needs to know what the left hand is doing. This is where the Director of Administration comes in. Over the past decade, I have engaged a number of these department heads, and they all say the same thing: Matt is the man who keeps the train on track and helps when problems or questions come up.
Lycoming County is very fortunate to have someone like Matt McDermott in this position. A Virginia native, Matt served for 26 years in the US Army, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. He was a helicopter pilot and served in command in Afghanistan, among other operations. But he also coordinated emergencies in the USA. During the summer of 2011, Matt McDermott was the key organizer at the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Virginia, for the disaster response support for the victims of Hurricane Irene. Matt coordinated aircraft coming from all over the country and had them staged and prepared to be ready when any state required them.
This ability to deep dive into problems was highlighted by Commissioner Marc Sortman when he noted how Matt worked nonstop day and night to help those recovering from the floods in Trout Run last year. Commissioner Metzger remembered the cluster bomb that COVID brought to the county back in March of 2020. After the two weeks to “flatten the curve” turned into three weeks, it became clear that there was no end in sight. Metzger noted that the county was receiving contradictory directions coming from Harrisburg “almost hourly.” The Department of Health would require one thing, and PEMA (PA Emergency Management Agency) would require something exactly the opposite.
To deal with this quagmire, the Lycoming County Commissioners came up with a Planning and Coordination Team consisting of themselves and twelve others such as Jeff Hutchins, Director of Emergency Management, Sheriff Mark Lusk, Coroner Charles E. Kiessling Jr., and Matt McDermott, who just so happened to have a Master’s Degree from Georgetown University in Executive Masters in Emergency & Disaster Management. This team became a model for other counties that did not know which way to go in the COVID fog.
In watching and engaging Matt McDermott over the years, I am mostly impressed with his humility. Commissioner Mussina shared a story of a friend whose son was in ROTC and was considering becoming a helicopter pilot. Mussina asked Matt if he would talk to the young man, and Matt spent an hour in conversation with him. The family was beyond appreciative for helping their boy with an important career move and were amazed that a man in Matt’s position would give up so much time to a stranger.
Former Commissioner Tony Mussare was at the January 9th meeting and added his appreciation for McDermott. He told a story of when he had just become a county commissioner and asked Matt what he considered his #1 priority. Matt did not hesitate with an answer, “To protect you (commissioners) from making mistakes.”
Which is exactly what a good manager should be doing. And no one does it better than Matt McDermott.
