Discussion Topic #4 - Deconstructing the Obviously Rediculous

Within the recently completed course on budget management we were presented with a comical video that has stuck in my head. Perhaps discussing it will help me not dwell on it so much.

It presented a middle aged, middle manager making a ridiculous argument against public parks.

If I recall correctly the actor was white, overweight, balding, and in a non-descript brown suit. He was complaining that since the new city manager arrived, the city had been getting all these government grants for parks and recreation projects.

This was a terrible thing since it meant he had to do more work actually building parks or implementing recreational programs. This devolved into a rant about how any parks were a bad thing since the government shouldn't be in the parks business at all. His preferred approach was to privatize parks like the "Chucky Cheese" model.

At the end of the video, we all agreed this video made a great point about how necessary government services were and how ridiculous the chucky cheese model was. The instructor even asked for any discussion on the subject and no one replied. Potentially since to advocate on behalf of the managers position would seem ridiculous and to advocate against it was unnecessary.

I've thought about it since then, and have some of the following observations that I would love to hear further discussion on. I will try to note them with minimal editorial opinion so as to not accidently place myself in the defense of the ridiculous manager.  After all anyone who could even slightly agree with the loser manager, must be one himself.


But a little deconstruction and discussion would be fun.

Discussion Topic #3 - Term Limited Employment

As a discussion topic, I would like to explore further the concept of term limiting employment in the public sector.  What would be the pros and cons of making employment hires under the condition that the job will last no longer than 10 years.

Certainly, some of the details would need to be refined.  Perhaps providing substantial bonuses at the 5, 8 and 10 year marks.  Retirement accounts would need to be adjusted, but probably along the lines of the current movement towards defined contribution plans.  Jobs could be staggered to avoid any single mass exodus.  And potentially, provisions could be made to give the agency an option to retain the employee for an additional 4 years.  And the transition from our current system to this model would require a thoughtful approach with all the stakeholders.

The con’s that were presented in class seem to be losing institutional knowledge and difficulty in attracting top talent.  I will attempt to address those first.

Institutional Knowledge 

Working with the understanding that an employee was term limited would create more of a focus on documenting institutional knowledge.  This was a primary incentive behind our discussion for succession planning.  And given today’s free agency mindsets, should management not always be preparing for any employee to leave at any given time?

Attraction of Talent

The second objection to the concept was the difficulty in retaining top talent with the prospect of service being limited to 10 years.  Do we, or the top talent, believe they will want to be in any one position longer than 10 years?  We need to be challenging that top talent to grow and develop.

In contrast, is a top talent that has been doing the exact same job for 10 years, really ideal?  I was just reading recently HBR's When It;s Time For the CEO To Go that identified the CEO's optimal time to be 7 years plus or minus 2 years.

Other Considerations

Additionally, how many job descriptions, written 10 years earlier are likely to still be relevant.  This would give a great way of reassessing needs periodically and also of intentionally finding talent to meet specific needs.

One running joke in our HR class was that there was no problem in the HR field that could not be cured in 30 years.  Wouldn't it be prudent to cut that by a third? 

And how many of my CPM class cohorts, instructors, or lecturers have held one single position, without significant advancement for more than 10 years.  From what I know, that number is probably pretty small.  That is just becoming less of a reality for the Gen X/Y demographic. 

Finally, this might provide a great counter balance to bureaucracies intrinsic desire for self preservation described in the first installment of this discussion series.  In this model self preservation becomes building skills and talents that are valuable for the employee in the future, not hoarding institutional knowledge so as to become irreplaceable?

Discussion Topic #2 - The Function of Government

Being removed from the academic arena of the political science field, I suspect this discussion would be one for which any discussion generated will be particularly enlightening to me.

Let me postulate the following discussion topic, "What is the Function of Government?" 

Could there be a simpler answer than the following:  "The coercion of a constituency to do what they otherwise would not."

A corollary to this concept would be to describe a government's two most basic activities as the ability to tax, and the ability to enforce its decrees.

To expound on that thought, anything that it spends money on, is in essence a determination the authoritative body has determined is sufficiently necessary to require that people be coerced to pay for it.

I could list multiple examples and instances, and then describe how they align with the provisions.  Utilities and public works, public education and welfare programs, land allocation and record keeping, criminal law, licensing.  Even international relations boils down to making agreements with other nations based on what the represented government can require their constituency to support.

Providing the security of a contract, which seems to be another general category of governmental functions, is really a bi-product of the potential that one party will not meet its obligations and must therefore be coerced into upholding that agreement.

Taken from the opposite point of view, consider the statement, "Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought. Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us; to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."  (The quote has been attributed to Abraham Lincoln though I have not found a definitive source.  Several similar statements are quoted from prominent individuals including Pope John Paul II.)

Notice how the statement dovetails with the above proposition.  Freedom is doing your duty without coercion.  As a populace undertakes its duties willingly, the need for governmental coercion is minimized while personal freedoms are maximized.  The counterbalance to a society unable to fulfill its duty, governmental authority becomes more necessary.

Based on this proposition, what implications can we draw?

Can we say that as government is expanded, the coercion of the population is correspondingly increased and personal freedoms are decreased?

Is it also fair to say that as a citizenry loses is ability to accurately understand its duties and the fortitude to carry out those duties, a governments prominence will increase which will directly lead to a decrease in individual freedoms?

 

Discussion Topic #1 - Bureaucracy's Primary Function

The primary function of any bureaucracy is self preservation. – Steve Solters*, circa 1998


After a brief discussion of this statement in class today, it seems that this was a statement suitable for further exploration.  Perhaps it shouldn’t seem so surprising given that the class consists of government employees might take offense at disparagement of the concept of general bureaucracy.
In the hopes that this will be a subject suitable for raising an initial discussion, I present it here for my classmates further development.  Particularly since the last arguments presented in class on the subject seemed to me entirely unpersuasive.

If I recall the final argument was that if some hypothetical state commission or agency announced to the legislature that it wanted to cut its mission and budget in half, the legislature would immediately dismiss the suggestion and perhaps the messenger too.  Specifically, because we assume the legislature finds the public service being provided by such agency to be of such vital importance that cutting it in half would jeopardize the health, safety, security, prosperity… of all state residents, economies, cultures, environments....

This argument almost makes my point in the following ways.

First, is anyone claiming that the any commission or agency as currently structured, is of such optimal size so as to eliminate all of the bad/evil/ill that it was created to thwart.  I find that difficult to fathom.
Second, given that some bad/evil/ill in the targeted area remains, it would seem that the people of the state (as represented by their duly elected representatives) have accepted a level of functionality based on a cost/benefit analysis factored against a law of diminishing returns.

So under what scenarios would we anticipate any agency advocating for a lower standard of service. This entails individuals with vested interests in a cause not wanting to advance that said cause. Especially if that decision were to imply that their job was un-necessary.

Linking this thought to other concepts discussed today almost develops a theme. The inability of “Smart” people to find their own weaknesses and to naturally act defensively when challenged. Or the inability to institute "True Change" without being acted upon by an external force in the quote by Demming? [sic] as Dr. Fraser alluded to.


And yet, given a finite amount of resources (my tax dollars), it would seem at least plausible that in many cases, the ideal cost/benefit ratio for most of the state residents would be at cost levels below those presently employed.

Not that many taxpayers or even elected representatives would be knowledgable to assess what that ideal ratio would be.
Of course, accepting a reduced level of service by a legislative body, has feedback loops of its own. The appearance of historically overfunding an agency would not be attractive. Or that any governing body would be willing to oppose whatever vocal minority would be impacted by any marginal reduction. Or that a governing body would want to be tied politically to whatever bad/evil/ill may potentially have been prevented by said agency without the reductions.


Hence, even in this argument, it would still seem that the primary function of any bureaucracy would be to justify its own existence and to preserve itself. Making other arguments to support the statement and extending them to beyond the applications to public governments would not likely be difficult, but is beyond the scope of this particular article.


Conclusion and Challenge

Is it then any wonder that we have a governmental system that tends towards growth and expansion? Are we then surprised that one of the few ways of cutting government size within our system has been indiscriminant cuts across wide swaths of government driven by rather extreme crisis?


So how would this relate to students in a Certified Public Management Course? One of my reflections on the excellent Supervision Essentials I course I took a few months ago, was that this subject was never even touched on.

I would propose, that as leaders in public service, seeking to manage resources entrusted to us by the public (or extracted from the citizenry in the form of a tax), we need to be always challenging ourselves to do the un-natural. We need to be asking ourselves “How can we do less?” or “Why is it so imperative that my agency undertake this function on behalf of every taxpayer?”



*Steve Solters was a friend and favorite project manager of mine when I was working in NY. I doubt the thought is original to him, but with the high esteem I hold him in, I appreciate the chance to mention his name and give him as much credit as possible.