Ripping Down Barriers

Fenty, Smith speculated, must feed off input from others, "but that would drive a lot of people crazy. Even the most extroverted CEOs I know do not work that way."

Zia Khan, a principal at Katzenbach Partners in New York, said Fenty's style sounds like "air-traffic controller mode."

Employees "take cues from their leader," Khan said. "You're much more on display, and you have the chance to really reinforce your values and culture. But . . . if you need to think quietly and privately about major issues, it's kind of hard to do that."

Thus far, staff members in the bullpen profess to love their environment, huddling around one another's desks or using two small, doorless conference rooms. Memos are out; impromptu chats are in.

"In the time it would take to send five e-mails back and forth to talk about a situation, you can solve it with a short conversation," Ginsberg said.

There is some griping, but mostly about minor things. Although staff members are mostly in their 30s and early 40s, the dress code isn't Silicon Valley casual. Fenty, always in a suit, requires staff to look professional at all times. "I'm a jeans girl," lamented Hobson, 32, the stylish spokeswoman, who owns 15 pairs, mostly designer. She's wearing a gray pantsuit on a snowy day.

Tene Dolphin, Fenty's usually cheerful chief of staff, is the enforcer, shushing colleagues when they get too loud. She allows staffers to listen to D.C. political talk shows or council hearings on their computer headphones but asks them to keep one ear free, lest the mayor call.

Perhaps the biggest bugaboo: tiny trash cans the size of Thermoses, designed to encourage recycling.

"I thought there was candy in them," said Peter Nickles, Fenty's general counsel. He promptly violated bullpen law by sneaking in a large metal trash can.

Still, Nickles, the father figure at 68 who favors tweed three-piece suits, thumbs away on his BlackBerry and compares the bullpen to the way his staff prepared for trial in the private sector.

"We'd take over a conference room for six or eight weeks, and the trial team would spend time in there," he said. "Increasingly, in an e-mail age, we do not see each other or even talk about business or our private lives. It's good to know how each other is doing, if our families are okay. That creates a bond."

Tangherlini was a bullpen convert before joining Fenty. As chief financial officer of the D.C. police years ago, Tangherlini put his entire 50-person staff in one room after reading about the concept in the book "The Emperors of Chocolate," about competition between the Hershey and Mars companies.