Dumping Arwady would be a huge mistake
Her type of leadership doesn't come often
Whether it is a Fortune 500 company, one of the nation’s largest cities or a non-profit organization one of the keys to operational success is having the right leaders and support people in place. It is even better when they have repeatedly proved their competency.
For the foreseeable future, Brandon Johnson, weeks away from being Chicago’s 57th mayor, will be faced repeatedly with who are the right people to put in place-from the superintendent of police to the head of the city’s smallest department. The choice to lead Chicago’s Department of Public Health should be a no-brainer, but the mayor-elect may be on the verge of jeopardizing the easiest of those decisions.
Johnson is on record saying although he will meet with Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady; he doesn’t plan on allowing her to stay in the job. According to Arwady, who wants to keep her job, the meeting has yet to take place.
Everyone who understands the adage “to the victor goes the spoils,” is likely to concur Johnson has every right to discharge Arwady. Some might go as far as to say he needs entirely new leadership in all departments. However, when it comes to Arwady Johnson should be introspective about his puerile reasoning for wanting her gone. Every news account identifies that reasoning as he didn’t like the position she took when it came to sending CPS students back to school in early 2022 when there uncertainties about COVID 19 were impacting education decisions across the city, state and country.
The health commissioner’s position then was enough mitigation practices had been put in place to minimize the risks of COVID exposure and contracting the disease. The Chicago Teachers Union disagreed. Johnson, a former elementary school teacher, now is siding with the union position.
What the mayor-elect and anyone advising him is overlooking is Arwady, by all accounts did a laudable job in addressing concerns and providing daily detailed updates about where the city stood in terms of the spread of COVID. She became the reassuring face of the COVID battle. She understandably relied heavily on her background as an infectious disease specialist to explain and educate at the same time. She fielded countless inane questions with calm and questioners far more often than not, came away satisfied. The news media, and maybe more importantly, the general public came to trust her.
This is not the kind of position that someone can be parachuted into and receive the same level of respect and acknowledgement of superior expertise. No one knows if another equally devastating health crisis will pop up in the next year. If one does occur Chicago does not need a health commissioner doing on-the-job-training.
Replacing Arwady, primarily on basis of one situation is tantamount to cutting a basketball team’s best scorer because that person missed a couple of free throws.