Monthly Archives: January 2016

199 – Missed the quiz? Don’t worry, here are the answers (apologies to John Clarke).

Posted on by

Posted by Whistler                                                                                                          680 words

john clarke

Mr John Clarke

There was a huge response to the ‘Giant Local Government Utopia Quiz’. Not unexpectedly, the winner was Gordon Brittas, star of the Brittas Empire (a 1980’s documentary series about local government). For the record, here are the answers:

  1. True. Public servants have an implied constitutional right to express private political opinions but the opinions mustn’t be expressed to anyone else. This is because it is widely acknowledged that allowing public servants to contribute to public discourse could undermine the infeasibility of political decisions and confuse people with logic.
  2. False. TotalPave is not a municipal engineering project to cover the world’s surface with concrete with 1% fall. It is the innovative idea of some college students in the U.S. that we will studiously ignore in Australia. Well done.
  3. False. The ‘Women of Bologna’ is not a new municipal sitcom showing on Netflix. No, women in Bologna have joined forces to work with local government and care for public infrastructure, forcing the creation of the innovative and precisely worded ‘The Regulation on Collaboration Between Citizens and the Administration for the Care and Regeneration of Urban Commons’. Citizens are now helping their cash-strapped council instead of strapping their council for cash. Amazing really.
  4. False. Public value, best value, value for money and value-adding are all related ideas that your council may talk about but it will have no real idea how to make happen. These terms are often heard in conjunction with innovation, efficiency and cost saving – more ideas that councils have very little idea about.
  5. False. Despite occasional conjecture to the opposite, John Seddon and Mark H. Moore have pretty much wasted their time since the last century writing about the problems with current public sector management and proposing alternatives. Never mind, there is always next century.
  6. False. Slacktivism is rife in local government. It is becoming an epidemic. Anyway, it beats face to face engagement or any other form of engagement that requires effort and for people to be accountable for their views.
  7. True. There are no followers in local government, only leaders. Everyone is a leader. Many of those leaders are highly innovative and do not conform to traditional leadership practice, which dictates that when something goes well the team is given credit and when it goes badly the leader takes the blame.   It is one area where local government leads.
  8. True. Local government rate capping is not the equivalent of knee capping, window capping or introducing a new player into the Australian cricket team. It is an attempt to stop the most accessible and responsive level of government from being accessible and responsive when inaccessible and unresponsive levels of government have successfully been inaccessible and unresponsive. Well done again.
  9. False. Because councils are asking families to obtain permission to use public parks and then charging a fee for a permit, does not mean that councils believe people are not smart enough or don’t have sufficient wit to work it out how to share a park themselves. No. It is simply saying that councils reckon they are so much better at working these things out. In fact, all governments are. Letting people make decisions and sort matters out for themselves has led to conflict all over the world. Government intervention is the answer.
  10. False. The Strategic Triangle is not the local government equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle, where people and ideas are mysteriously lost without trace. It is a simple to understand and even easier to ignore idea about the fundamental relationship between politicians, public administration and the community in the use of authority to create services that the community finds valuable. Never mind.
  11. False. Wanksy is an internationally celebrated artist whose ephemeral and inspirational works are quickly obliterated by councils in accordance with their road management plans. Like his namesake Banksy, his work has challenged public policy and the way councils respond to illegal artworks. I say bring on more asphalt.
  12. False. This quiz was not intended to highlight the systematic failure of local governments to think about what they do and take heed of information and thinking that is freely available. It is simply a bit of fun.

198 – Essay No. 5 – Local government and leadership.

Posted on by

Posted by Colin Weatherby                                                                         1300 words

Mark H Moore strategic triangle

Mark H. Moore’s ‘strategic triangle’ – the basis for value-led public sector management

I have been thinking about leadership a lot recently. It has been a recurring theme in posts on this site. Reading Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book has challenged my thinking about how leaders work and what motivates them. It has reinforced some of my scepticism about leaders and why they do what they do. I tend to agree with Peter Drucker’s questioning of the distinction between leadership and management. Ultimately, organisations, particularly in the public sector, have to be managed. The idea that somehow managers aren’t leaders or that leaders aren’t managing doesn’t make sense.

Having said that, I can think of organisational leaders I have known who couldn’t manage. At some point they just ticked the leadership box and assumed the position! Pfeffer explains how and why everyone then goes along with it. Once you are a leader it seems you can get to stay there without any real scrutiny and accountability for your performance. That has definitely been my experience in local government.

I keep imagining myself working in an organisation with an effective leader who manages the organisation for high performance (not career advancement). One that provides clear strategy, direction and goals.  One who coordinates effort to  across the organisation to achieve those goals. In particular, I have been thinking about how they could do that in local government. Continue reading →

197 – Blogging – some introspection and reflection.

Posted on by

Posted by Lancing Farrell                                                                              550 words

blogging for learning

It has been an interesting 12 months of blogging. Many things have been learnt. What started out as an opportunity to get a few things out of heads and onto ‘paper’ has turned into a tremendous professional development process. The ideas being written about have generated a response that has informed practice.

So, what has been learnt?

The objective was to use the posts to tell a story, say what it really means or reveals, and then what could/should be done to make a difference. Some posts have been a bit darker and tended to show how ideas are progressively compromised or eroded until they are ineffective or counterproductive. Some posts have been persuasive in support of an opinion or course of action. Hopefully all have been entertaining and/or informative.

Readers’ interest in different topics has been evident though the number of views of each post (hence the ‘Most Popular Posts’ page). There were over 6000 views for the year. The ‘likes’ show which posts have particularly appealed to readers. ‘Comments’ indicate further interest and have led to posts being written in response to matters raised. The growth in ‘Followers’ indicates general interest in the ideas being posted. Overall, it has been a satisfying response and it has encouraged writing.

It has been surprising that readers have come from such a large number of countries (113 and counting). The majority are from English speaking countries with a similar system of local government (i.e. Australia, USA, UK and Canada).

The posts have changed over the course of the year in response to feedback. Images have been added, questions have been posed, there have been several series on a topic, and there have been the long reads. The idea has been to engage with the readership in different ways.

Multiple viewpoints have been presented – explanatory, teaching, positive critique, negative critique, the voice of reason – sometimes on the same topic. This has created a certain tension but has hopefully ‘rounded out’ thinking on the topic.

After the first 25 posts an ‘index post’ was created to briefly discuss each post and then to describe the various themes covered in the posts. Later a ‘syntopicon’ was created covering all posts to allow new readers to quickly find posts on different themes. Hopefully it has been useful.

The ideas for posts have come from daily work interactions, colleagues in networks, blog ‘supporters’ providing comments and feedback, newspapers, newsletters, other blogs – anywhere. The intention has been to link theory with practice from the viewpoint of middle managers.

The lack of interest in reading across the sector, especially top management, has limited posts (mostly) to 500 to 1000 words with the ‘long reads’ (2000 to 4000 words) for those with the fortitude for a deeper discussion of a topic. Posts discussing books of relevance have been popular and links to articles are often used. Some people are up for a good read.

The limit of 200 posts has been set to avoid blogging for the sake of blogging or becoming involved in the egotistical and delusional blogging evident on some sites where the author had something to say but after a while they seem to have just started writing to maintain their following.

There is only so much of your introspection and reflection that you can impose on the rest of the world.

196 – Making local government organisations simpler to manage – why is it necessary?

Posted on by

Posted by Colin Weatherby                                                                         1700 word

complexity knotted rope

I was at a meeting recently where the team charged with conducting an organisational self assessment (OSA) and preparing an organisational improvement plan (OIP) using the Australian Business Excellence Framework were evaluating progress. It was an interesting meeting of a diverse group of people. By the end of the meeting we had reached a common conclusion – a council organisation is complex and systems need to be disentangled and simplified so that it can be managed effectively.

The OIP actions were developed independently from the outcomes of the OSA. It was only after 12 months of effort to implement the actions that the high level of congruence between them became apparent. Very few actions relating to core organisational systems could be implemented without impacting on each other – they overlapped. Attempting to deal with them one by one wasn’t going to work but joining them all together would create a large and very complicated action.

There is an earlier post on complexity which describes some of the sources of complexity in local government. It helps to know what you are dealing with but that doesn’t make it any easier. This was reinforced by reading former Victorian Premier John Brumby’s excellent memoir ‘The Long Haul – Lessons from Public Life’. In reflecting on the last four years in which he has viewed politics as an outsider, Brumby comments on the lack of trust that ‘permeates almost everything we see and hear about politics today’.

He believes that part of restoring trust and credibility in politics is to give the public a better understanding of the complexity of the issues.

“When I first sat in the federal parliament, an older and wiser member told me: ‘For every complex problem there is a simple solution … and it’s always wrong’. We live in a world where the questions are becoming more complex, while the public appetite is for ever simpler answers: the kind that can be summed up in 140 characters or less”

My question is, do you think that people want to be bothered by the complexity involved in getting what they want through political processes? Continue reading →