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...
2 comments:
Quoting from "The Truth", 'From what I hear he mostly doesn't do a -ing thing!', 'Yeah, one of the hardest things to do properly, in politics'. Comments about the Patrician.
I agree with your thoughts. BT and other companies that undertook 'Busines Process Re-engineering' (totally scrapping the previous way of doing something and starting over) was catastrophic to the people in the organisation, and that carried forward on the the customer base and ultimately the bottom line. In my line of work, similarly to the NHS, politicians meddle in the day to day running. i believe that Politicians do not like the emergency services as they get blamed for any short commings however don't have any direct control. This government has succeeded in obtaining a large degree of control over the public sector via the means the public sector is funded throu targets and objectives.
Organisations need to have a long term strategy (long term = 5 to 10 year game plan) based on where they would realistically like to be in that time period. This should be reviewed at semi regluar intervals. Short term operational plans should stem from these long term objectives. In my view there is very little evidence of long termism in the public sector - more knee jerk reactions to the issue of the day and individuals basis decisions on what will look good for they're next promotion.
With an agenda for re-election and ulitimately vote winning -is a political party best to set long term agendas? Should control be returned to those who know the market they are in?
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