I've been giving some thought of late to how groups of people are run, not just at a team level but at an organisational or even a national level.
I've been trying to draw lessons from out politicians past and present. Not many of the lessons have been how to do it well...
One of the major things that have come out of this thought is the dynamic tension between change and stability. Notice the words that I have used, another way of expressing it is the tension between chaos and stasis.
An example of this is the NHS. It is obvious to all politicians that something must be done. The trouble is they never seem to get the something quite right. The old NHS worked as well as it did before the politicians started fiddling because the patients, nurses, doctors and administrators had worked out a modus vivendi. They had discovered ways to work around the grossesr of flaws and it more or less worked. Unfortunately for the NHS it has become a political football, a month doesn't go by without some new announcement. This change is done with the best of intentions but it never gives the participants a chance to settle into the new practices and so the grossest of flaws never get worked around as new ones are introduced the whole time.
Change is essential, especially in this day and age. New technologies, new ideas and new social groups all mean that many of the old ways of doing things do not remain correct. You can't stand still.
But neither do you have to keep running.
I think that the lesson that we and our politicians need to learn is to moderate the rate of change. The real skill comes in introducing changes that only do what is needed and no more. The necessity is to fine-tune the structures we have and only do significant restructuring when absolutely necessary.
This even extends into my domain. It is very tempting to completely re-write systems from the ground up with no regard for the havoc that those changes will cause. All in pursuit of some perception of perfection.
Lasting perfection is unattainable in a dynamic world. All we can ever do is approach it by making sensible, minor changes to proven, stable systems.
The real skill may be in knowing when not to do something...
