I was talking to someone I know (who will remain nameless) about the increasing bureaucratization of their job (which I won't specify) and it began to dawn on me that they experience similar problems to those that I have in my corner of the world, and it got me thinking - are we dumbing down the management of public services in particular to a point where we have lost control of the impact of the delivery of those services on those most affected by them?
When I started my career, at a point when the computerization of services was still a radical prospect, I was trained in the key aspects of my job in a classroom environment, alongside similar people, and was then encouraged to deliver those services, using my discretion to judge how best they could be delivered, with an element of sampling to check that the outcomes I was delivering were in accordance with a) the law (and we were pretty hot on that) and b) the quantity and timeliness of the delivery.
Yes, the quality of the management data wasn't very high, but what that meant was that, if you were a manager, you really needed to work closely with your staff to get the best out of them, passing on your experience, supporting them when you needed to, training them when new situations arose.
The main concern of central management was to make sure that you answered the post within a reasonable time and that all the required jobs got done. How that was managed was not so important, in that the outcome was what mattered.
Over time, that has changed, to the point where how things are done is more important than the outcome, and the importance of measurable results has become heightened. In short, a 'tick box' culture has taken over, with process mapping and standardized instructions replacing discretion and personalized risk assessing. As long as you have carried out the specified actions in the specified order at the appropriate time, the failure to achieve an outcome which might be defined as desirable is entirely excusable. The fact that, in doing so, you might have missed something otherwise obvious, or delivered a sub-optimal result, is therefore less of a personal problem than it should be - "I've done everything that I was supposed to do, so how can this be my fault?"
Individual contributors (and there's a depersonalized piece of management jargon that deserves putting down) quickly learn that a key part of their job is to document that they have carried out the specified actions in the specified manner and their process becomes almost mechanized. Fine when you're manufacturing widgets, perhaps not so good when you're a social worker, or any number of professional roles in the public sector dealing with vulnerable people.
So, why do this? Well, if you assume that the best of any cohort have highly developed informal systems to ensure that tasks get done, based on the experience gleaned over time, informal risk assessment and innate ability, you still have to deal with the rest. And the catch is that individualized management of people is difficult. They're all different, for one thing, with a spectrum of personalities, motivations, intellect and circumstances. So, it might be easier to design a process and make everyone do it the same. That way, you ensure that everyone should reach the same basic level of capability, thus protecting you from risk in the event that something goes wrong.
And, if you have a group of people who just aren't much good, this is easier than training them one on one, or disciplining them if they are genuinely irredeemable (and some people just aren't equipped to do the job they currently have). The problem is, the organisational scaffolding that supports your weakest links serves to constrain your high-flyers - they have to fill in the same forms, record the same activities, even if they do nothing to improve performance or enable greater output.
Worse still, by imposing such a straitjacket on your brightest and best, you tell them that, despite their apparent ability, you don't really trust them. You also deprofessionalize your people, because if all they're doing is following a process, they will know that virtually anyone can do that with enough practice.
The outcome? A public sector which loses the ability to apply discretion when it would achieve better outcomes than those resulting from a slavish adherence to process, a deskilling of those who deliver the services that grease the wheels of society and a steady deterioration of the human link between government and those it is supposed to serve.
You'll pardon me for saying this, but I can't help but feel that none of those outcomes are intended for delivery. But then again, I am a rather liberal bureaucrat...
In answer to the question in your first paragraph: yes.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just the public sector either.
An excellent post, Mark.
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate many years ago when implementing "computerisation of services" that few people had expectations or demands. I had to walk around and connect PCs to services that were new and simple. I got to talk with staff directly, and as the IT person on the work floor I contributed to services that allowed people to work better. If I didn't know the answer to a question, I could put the person in contact with somebody who did. I and colleagues were the transmission protocol for management data. Of course, all of the rubbish projects were other people's ideas...
Management or job training by walking around is not fashionable. On the surface, it is not efficient. In preparation for a major project, a colleague created "persona" (user stereotypes) in order for senior management to understand how juniors in the organisation performed their work. Not the ins and outs, but how junior managers were part of a system. Ouch -- senior management did not comprehend the system.
Management of production units? It is assumed that staff (including those who make decisions or deal with human beings) are interchangeable. New staff may be recruited by agencies directly or as introducers, so owing to the dominance of agency methodology, companies recruit staff who fit agency criteria rather than meeting desires of employee and employer.
Hay Group Job Evaluation? A job is about the role, and it does not matter how good you are socially or technically. If you add technical or social skills to a role that's fine, but we're not paying.