Replying to Joe Podolsky's mini-anthology of comments in "Are We Determined
to Get Better? LO14453 -Comments".
JAMES H. CARRINGTON wrote:
>>What then, you ask, is the bottom line?
>>Money.
This may be true in the private sector. In every sector, the bottom line
- or a piece of it - is often the status of a particular individual.
Margaret Wheatley says that organizations exist in order to protect the
status of individuals, and I've seen this at all levels of organizations,
from the CEO level all the way out (not down) to the front-line worker.
Money may be one criterion of effectiveness and efficienvy, but if we ask
what really motivates people, I think we'd find a strong thread of
identity - the need to maintain one's self-esteem and the respect of one's
co-workers, to have a secure place in the organization.
What happens if we remove money as the bottom line measure? I think we
can look to the public sector for the answers. Governmental agencies may
be evaluated according to their financial measures, but those measures are
almost always inputs (budget and staffing) rather than a valuation of
outputs (see the book "The Budget's New Clothes" by Merewitz and Sosnick
for more detail on this). The absence of profit and price as
organizational focal points creates a vacuum that is filled by politics.
In this atmosphere we see all kinds of apparently irrational decisions
that are easily explained when we use Meg Wheatley's filter. This raises
an interesting question: Is it possible for large public-sector agencies
to be learning organizations?
James continues (my comments interspersed):
>>So Joe, to answer your questions;
>
>>Q. What are the linkages between our key processes and business results?
>>A. Profit Margin (money)
In the absence of money, it devolves to the potential for processes and
results to reflect well on the leader or manager of the organizational
unit(s) in question.
>>Q. What are the trends?
>>a. Less emphasis on quality, more on profit margin (money)
In the absence of money, the trend is toward adapting quality concepts to
the daily political life of organizations. The emphasis is never fully on
quality because survival in public sector positions does not depend on it.
Survival depends on keeping the pathways of information and power
well-lubricated (or plugged up, depending on your perspective).
>>Q. What are the problems that we are seeing?
>>A. Not enough profit margin (money)
Money is indeed important, but in the absence of profits and prices, we
see organizations that do not know which way to turn. Enlightened
agencies that work hard to save money by streamlining processes get their
budgets cut along with everyone else, only more so because there's more
"surplus" to cut. And in the absence of clear performance measures,
agencies worry more about their budgets (those pesky inputs again) because
only by maintaining their resources do they have any clear indication of
their value. I can't imagine a public sector manager taking credit for
eliminating a program that he or she was responsible for because it didn't
meet customer needs. What I think we would typically see is a shift of
resources toward some other problem (perhaps a new one, created to absorb
the extra resources). Governmental managers tend to be derided if they
are seen as unsuccessful in resisting the budgetary axe; it comes down to
whether a person is able to do the job - of maintaining his or her status,
as measured in financial terms. This is particularly obvious at the level
of the legislature: how many legislators would be re-elected if they
campaigned on a platform of bringing LESS money back to their
constituents? Again, it's the issue of status, as measured in financial
terms.
>>Q. Are we publicly discussing the problems in clear terms, not Microspeak,
>>without worrying about blame?
>>A. No. Fixing problems takes time away making money, and blaming someone
>>means you can sue them for money.
Fixing problems in the public sector raises the risk of people losing
their jobs. So solutions, in essence, take time away from more important
activities - assuring one's own status and thereby survival.
>>Q. Rather than just living with the situations, are we determined to get
>>better?
>>A. As long as getting better means making more money.
Getting better often means getting more resources, since there are really
no other measures of public sector organizations' performance. If an
agency is growing, that's a pretty good sign that it has value. If not,
that points in the other direction.
This is surely a biased perspective. I would be delighted to learn that
what I've described does not characterize the dominant trends in the
public sector.
Cheers,
Dave
-- David E. Birren Organizational Consultant, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Ph: 608-267-2442, Fax: 608-267-3579 <birred@mail01.dnr.state.wi.us>** Silence is the voice of complicity. **
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>