Category Archives: leadership

33 – Developing an organisational performance measurement system. Some ideas.

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Posted by Lancing Farrell                                                                                     820 words

I have been thumbing through ‘Improving Performance – How to Manage the White Space on the Organisation Chart’ by Geary A. Rummler and Alan P. Brache, in particular the chapter about performance measurement. In it they describe measurement is the single greatest determinant of an organisation’s effectiveness as a system, and as the primary tool for ‘communicating direction, establishing accountability, defining roles, allocating resources, monitoring/evaluating performance, and taking improvement action’.

I haven’t seen a local government that has actively used performance measurement this way. Instead, it tends to be driven by external accountability requirements. We use the performance measurement that we do to convince others that we are doing what we should. Continue reading →

30 – ‘The better things are, the worse they feel’. How so?

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Posted by Colin Weatherby                                                                         700 words

This is the title of a chapter in Richard Farson’s rather interesting book Management of the Absurd – Paradoxes in Leadership. Farson is a psychologist, author, and educator. He co-founded the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in 1958. His article on the ‘Failure-tolerant Leader’ is included in the HBR’s 10 Must-Reads on Leadership. He is a guy worth reading.

The idea that things feel worse when they are actually getting better appealed to me because of something a colleague said to me at work recently. Continue reading →

27 – Risk farming or good governance? How some executives avoid accountability.

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Posted by Whistler                                                                                          400 words

What do I mean by ‘risk farming’? It is the practice of spreading risk around so that your responsibilities become so diffused amongst various individuals and groups that you can’t be held accountable for them. There will always be someone else sharing accountability. So, how is it done?

You start by taking every matter before the Executive. Continue reading →

26 – The first 25 posts. What have you missed?

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Posted by Lancing Farrell                                                                                              1100 words

Writers have posted 25 times since the start of the year. A number of themes and ideas have been discussed. This post provides a brief overview.

The goals are set out in post 1 – track current issues and discuss the issues that are ‘everlasting, widespread and insoluble’ (using the least amount of words). A range of issues have since been covered from the daily media, day to day work life, and the things people often talk about but seldom resolve.

Post 2 and 5 discuss local government services – what we do and how we can define it. The conclusion is that local government needs to provide services that fit within legislated requirements, are responsive to broader community needs and expectations, and meet the individual purpose for each person receiving a service. Each service can be defined as a cross-functional process or value chain.

In post 3 the complexity evident in local government is discussed, including the involvement of customers in service delivery, the variability they introduce, the difficulty measuring service quality or setting service goals and measures, and the impossibility of separating service delivery from politics.

The impact of training on performance is discussed in post 4 in response to media criticism of the Australian government public service for its spending on training. The post suggests that understanding, documenting and improving processes would yield more benefit than providing more training for most councils.

In post 6 the differences between customers, clients, citizens, residents and ratepayers are discussed. Understanding which role someone has chosen to take in an interaction is important in determining the value they expect. This can be useful in differentiating between public and private value expectations.

Post 7 looks at public service job cutting and the link to productivity. Some key messages from the Centre for Policy Development report False Economies: Unpacking public sector efficiencies are discussed. The post identifies the importance of defining public value so that any changes to resource levels can be made in the knowledge of the impact they will have on the value produced.

Post 8 presents an imaginary script for an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Kitchen Nightmare’ in which he assesses the performance of local government as if it were a restaurant.   Hopefully it is both entertaining and thought provoking. What would Gordon Ramsay say?

In post 9 some emerging characteristics of people and councils are discussed. Obligatory empiricism, oblivious narcissism, and consensual lying are put forward as reasons why councils always seem to learn everything from scratch, leaders set out to meet their own needs first, and why people tell others what they want to hear for the sake of convenience.

Post 10 draws a ‘line in the sand’ with a discussion of the changes that have impacted in Victorian local government since the 1990’s. Part history lesson and part explanation of the present, the post concludes that the most influential change has been to the tenure of the CEO and their increased dependence on the goodwill of their council for survival .

Planning in local government gets a thorough airing in posts 11, 12, 18, 19, and 20. In posts 11 and 12 the current organisational planning processes is critiqued. Posts 18 and 19 suggest ways to better integrate planning. Post 20 discusses the role of the Council Plan.  All posts provide commentary on how to develop plans that are realistic, achievable and focused on delivering the value expected by the community. Constraints identified include the need to work within legislated requirements and the need for leadership to really understand ‘the business’ to be able to implement a ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ planning process.

In post 13 the role of policies and strategies is discussed. Are they becoming convenient but ineffective solutions to difficult problems, devices to avoid doing something that needs to be done, or just a way to be seen to be doing something?

Post 14 is an attempt to explain why councils stick with conventional organisational structures and avoid dealing with cross-functional processes; why systems seek to control risk and increase compliance without regard for producing public value; and why council culture encourages people to avoid making decisions. The discussion centres on what an organisational culture survey, an ABEF organisational self-assessment, and the Executive’s risk appetite can reveal.

Four books that should be read by every leader in local government are discussed in posts 15 and 17. The books are Recognising Public Value by Mark H. Moore, The Whitehall Effect by John Seddon, Improving Performance – How to Manage the White Space on the Organisation Chart by Geary A. Rummler and Alan P. Brache, and The Leaders Handbook by Peter R. Scholtes. Each book has a different focus and there is a mixture of public sector and business reading.

Post 16 discusses the rate capping proposed for local government in Victoria. The history of rate capping in Victoria and the long-term effects of it that are apparent in NSW provide a backdrop to a discussion about what councils can do in response. This post covers the potential for shared services and the potential impact on capital and operating budget cuts.

In post 21 the way councillors feel about their role is discussed. Do they feel inundated and manipulated or respected and influential? The difficulties they face as volunteers and in becoming skilled in their role, working together in an adversarial system, and coping with very demanding workloads, are covered. The message is stop complaining and support them more effectively.

What does a high performance local government organisation (HPLOGO) look like? In post 22 a methodology is proposed to define and create a HPLOGO. Based on the work of Andre de Waal, a set of characteristics of a HPLOGO are described (as actions) and prioritised.

Post 23 is a bit tongue in cheek. It is an attempt to pick up on the ‘chip on the shoulder’ prevalent in some parts of local government. Is local government a plaintive country tune or a majestic aria?

In post 24 an article by Frank Ostroff from Harvard Business Review (Change Management in Government) is discussed in relation to making high performance happen. He describes four unique barriers to change in the public service related to leader skills, leader tenure, rules that create inflexibility, and stakeholder resistance to reform.

Finally, post 25 looks at local government budgeting and how it is focussed on the past and has difficulty coping with improvement and innovation.   The need to balance investment in compliance with improving customer service and developing new services is discussed with reference to Christopher Stone’s work on public sector efficiency.

21 – Inundated and manipulated, or respected and influential. How do your councillors feel?

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“Politics is the answer that a liberal democratic society has given to the (analytically unresolvable) question of what things should be produced for collective purposes with public resources”.

I was reading this quote from Mark H. Moore (Creating Public Value, p.54) and I thought it might be worth discussing some of the issues relevant to the sometimes uneasy relationship between politicians and the administration in local government. Politicians have a tough job to do. In Victorian local government, the job is made harder for several reasons that are worth some consideration.

Councillors are volunteers. They receive what is effectively a stipend for their many hours of work in representing their constituents. They may have no political experience or skills when elected. They often don’t know the other councillors elected with them and have no relationship with them. If they do, it could be because they have competed with them at previous elections. Often, councillors are elected who have diametrically opposed platforms – they believe their mandate is to achieve the opposite outcome to another councillor.

This situation is quite different to other levels of government in Australia where politicians usually belong to a political party, they know each other, and they share political views and ambitions. If elected to govern, they work as a team towards their goals (or they should do). They are also much more likely to have political skills or experience (sometimes acquired as a local government councillor). They are also paid enough to enable them to dedicate their time to the role, and it is expected that they will do so.

When local government councillors are elected, they have an immediate workload – develop a City Plan within 6 months, approve contracts outside the CEO’s delegation, etc. At the same time, they are learning about the responsibilities of their role – conflicts of interest, meeting procedure, the Local Government Act. And it goes on. Imagine starting a new job (which, by the way, is in addition to your current full time job) and having to learn how to do it while you do it in front of a public audience. It is worth remembering that the public nature of a councillors work is a key factor in the decisions they make.

The skills and abilities of individual councillors and the dynamics of the group are critical to the performance of a council. You often hear people saying that the councillors should ‘act more as a team’; however, a council cannot always function as a team. In fact, the community often expects the opposite. They want to see councillors challenge each other and vigorously debate issues. If councillors do caucus and/or if they always agree in the council chamber, they are often criticised. The local newspapers rely on contention in the council chamber to help maintain readership and will often do their best to create it if it doesn’t occur naturally. In some ways, representative democracy works best when politicians pursue different agendas and there is conflict between ideas, so long as the debate and decision-making processes enable the best ideas to be adopted.

So what does this all mean for the council administration?

For a start, don’t expect councillors to be highly skilled in the role, willing to work cooperatively with each other, or prepared to agree with one another. Be pleased if they are, but don’t be disappointed if they aren’t. Plan for the most likely situation. Support the councillors in developing the skills required to participate in formal meetings, publicly debate and issue, and deal with the demands of their constituents.   Create processes that are tailored to councillors needs and effective in informing them about issues to enable informed and vigorous debate. Make them feel respected and empowered. Not inundated and manipulated. Allow the time required for the council to understand issues and make considered decisions.

In saying this, I am mindful of the workload of councils. They have a lot to do and limited time to do it. I have often thought that the main capacity constraint is the time available for councillors to meet and be informed or make decisions. It is a challenging ‘finite capacity’ scheduling problem and probably should be approached in that way. Ask the councillors how often they would like to meet and for how long. This will give you the available time for briefings and meetings. You now know the available capacity.

Then list the statutory decisions that the council must make (e.g. elect the Mayor, adopt the budget), estimate the decisions council must make that cannot be delegated (e.g. approve large contracts, adopt policies or strategies), and then estimate the time that the administration believes it needs with the council to discuss matters that cannot be delegated without direction (e.g. changes in the operating environment, major strategies or projects). Subtract the time required from the time available. You now have the ‘discretionary’ time available for the councillors to pursue their agendas or debate topical issues of interest to them. It won’t be as much time as they want.

Discipline with time is often not a strength of councillors and they can be inefficient in using time because of the group dynamics. But they have choices. For example, they could choose to increase the time available by meeting more often or for longer. There are limits to this, particularly for councillors in full time employment. Another option is to choose to work within the available time and accept the restrictions that this places on them in terms of choosing what is discussed. They will need to priorities as a group and in collaboration with the CEO to optimise the use of time and meet all obligations. A further option is to delegate more decision making to the CEO and the administration. This requires trust and an initial investment of time in ensuring that the policies guiding delegated decision making are acceptable to the council.

In practice, councillors are constantly under time pressure and often they have not been presented with all their options in a way that makes them feel that they are in charge and making the decision. They get swept into the business of dealing with issues and making decisions, feel under pressure to make decisions (sometimes with political consequences), and their trust and confidence in the administration is eroded. Resolving the problem then becomes much harder.

Councillors are asked to make tough decisions under difficult circumstances. Be reasonable in your expectations and plan to support them in ways that meet their need to feel respected and influential.

Parkinson

Moore, Mark 1995. Creating Public Value.

17 – Interested in local government management? Four books you should read and why. Part 2

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This post continues my discussion about the books that I discovered in 2014 that I think should influence management in local government.

3. Improving Performance – How to Manage the White Space on the Organisation Chart by Geary A. Rummler and Alan P. Brache. Published in 1995, this book is quite different to the other two books recommended. It is not about the public sector and it is a hard core management book. The authors have developed a way of thinking about organisations and their performance that is very relevant to local government. Topics covered include managing processes and organisations as systems, linking performance to strategy, redesigning processes, and designing a performance measurement system.

Rummler and Brache apply their systems view by discussing the interdependence of nine performance variables shown in the diagram below.

the 9 performance variables

The levels of performance and the performance needs are described:

  • Organisation level – the organisational strategy, goals, and organisational structure.
  • Process level – how work flows across functions in the organisational structure.
  • Job/performer level – the people doing the work in processes.
  • Goals – the customer’s expectations of service quality, quantity, timeliness or cost, etc.
  • Design – of the organisation, processes and jobs to achieve the goals.
  • Management – the practices in place to ensure goals are current and being achieved.

It is a simple and powerful way to think about organisations vertically and horizontally. In a diverse organisation like local government, understanding the performance variables is critical to improving cross-functional services and reducing the ‘silo effect’ in which functional goals are put ahead of the goals of processes that deliver services to customers.  Read it if you are interested in cross functional processes and improving service delivery.

4. The Leaders Handbook by Peter R. Scholtes. Published in 1998, this book is also a serious management text. Written in an engaging way with lots of diagrams and case studies to illustrate points, it is accessible and easily read. So, don’t be put off. For someone who believes in systems thinking, it contains gems, such as this one below written in the context of performance appraisal and why Scholtes believes it isn’t effective;

“Successful work requires having a consistent and reliable set of systems, processes, and methods by which you and your people design, develop, and deliver what the customers need when and how the customers need it. Systems are created, sustained, and improved by insightful and interactive work on the system, not by using carrots and sticks. Measurable goals do not improve systems. Improving systems improves systems (p.303).”

Chapters cover a wide range of topics including, systems thinking; giving meaning, purpose, direction and focus to work; leading by asking good questions; and performance without appraisal. It is clear that Scholtes (a colleague of W. Edwards Deming) values systems and statistical thinking, relations with people, and learning to master improvement. He sees organisations as ‘complex systems of social networks and technical processes in which simplistic approaches will not help resolve complex problems’. He identifies 6 leadership competencies:

  1. Systems thinking – understanding the difference between systems and structure or policy; and seeking systemic causes, not culprits.
  2. Variability at work – knowing the difference between common cause and special causes of variation.
  3. Learning – understanding when a statement is theory or opinion versus fact, and acting accordingly; and knowing the difference between change and improvement.
  4. Psychology and human behaviour – understanding and applying the concepts of internal versus external motivation and demotivation.
  5. Interactions – seeing the interdependencies between systems thinking, variation, learning and human behaviour.
  6. Vision, meaning, direction and focus – providing clarity of purpose and developing and continuously communicating a clear sense of direction and focus.

Scholtes sets out a new paradigm for leadership for complex socio-technical systems.  Local government, with its political and organisational challenges, is nothing if not complex (as discussed in post 3).

I challenge you to read these books and then decide whether you think about your organisation as a system and if it is really focussed on creating public value by fulfilling customer-defined purpose through effective and efficient processes where variation is understood and performance is measured.

Lancing Farrell

14 – What can a culture survey, an organisational self assessment, and your Executive’s risk appetite tell you?

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In local government, we like to survey our culture and develop plans to move from the current culture to the preferred culture. It is a very idealistic exercise. In Human Synergistics’ terms, the target culture is often highly constructive and devoid of the competitive and avoidance behaviours currently evident. Typically, the culture of a council in Australia will operate on the basis of ‘keep your head down and fly under the radar, if things go wrong blame someone else, and if there is no one to blame say you were just following instructions’. In a more competitive culture it starts with blame.

An organisational self assessment (the starting point for using the Australian Business Excellence Framework) will probably reveal an organisation where the drivers for the activities of the organisation that fare the best during the assessment will be those that have a legislative compulsion behind them or that have been developed in response to a problem that has a significant consequence for failure.   The focus will be on compliance, not organisational strategy, innovation and customer or community value. This is understandable because councils do have lots of legislated responsibilities and accountabilities that have consequences for non compliance.

Now to the last and, I think, the most interesting piece of evidence – the risk appetite of top management (the Executive). This is interesting because it often isn’t documented and when it is, the context is usually the preparation of a risk management plan and the knowledge isn’t used to reflect on the decision making of the Executive, the organisation they have created, or its culture.   Leaders shape the organisation through what they say and do. If they have a low appetite for risk, especially in a sector that is inherently risk averse, this will be reflected in their decision making. What can you expect to see as a result?

  • A conventional organisational structure that emphasises functional accountability and avoids the risks associated with a focus on cross-functional processes.
  • Organisational systems that are controlling to reduce risk and increase compliance because there is no reward, and potential sanctions, for doing otherwise.  The Executive makes the decisions and policies in accordance with their risk appetite.
  • A culture where people avoid risk and don’t make decisions or just follow the rules rather than take risks to ensure that value is created.

So, if you are wondering why you work in an organisation where there are dozens of forms that need countersigning by each level of authority, where decisions are increasingly being made by the Executive, and your culture surveys keep telling you that you are big on avoidance, maybe you should enquire about your Executive’s risk appetite.

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9 – Obligatory empiricism, oblivious narcissism and consensual lying. Have they become three hallmarks of local government?

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Now, you might think I am drawing a long bow here, especially if you don’t work in the sector or if you haven’t worked there long enough to identify underlying patterns. I will elaborate.

Empiricism is the theory that knowledge comes only from primary experience. It emphasises the use of evidence from direct experience in the formation of ideas, rather than using other knowledge not gained from experience or ideas passed down over time. By obligatory empiricism I am referring to situations where people must experience something themselves before they can use that knowledge to develop their ideas.

A recent article by Kat McGowan suggests that human progress has occurred using cumulative knowledge gained by copying each other, rather than episodic, transformational acts of creative genius by individuals. Imitation, not genius, has driven innovation. The challenge is maintaining what we already know, not creating something new. By the way, this ability to copy each other is not shared with animals. According to McGowan, they are obligatory empiricists and must learn everything through trial and error. When they die, the knowledge dies with them and successive generations are doomed to reinvent the wheel.

How many of us have experienced new ideas being introduced without a serious effort to look at how well they have worked for others and whether there is anything to learn from their experience?   How many times have you suggested an idea from a previous organisation, only to be told ‘that won’t work here, we are different’, without any real explanation of what is different? Why is it that every council has different ways of doing the same thing? These are potential indicators of obligatory empiricism. As a sector, we seem to focus on being ‘special and different’, rather than accepting that we have more in common and sharing systems and ideas.

Narcissism is a concept that most people are familiar with and there is increasing evidence of it in individuals and society today. Anne Manne has recently written about narcissism and the many forms it takes in our society. One form that attracted my attention is ‘oblivious narcissism’, in which the people are completely unaware of their narcissistic behaviours. It attracted my interest because narcissism is often associated with leaders. In healthy measure it is an important ingredient. In unhealthy measure, it can manifest itself in undesirable behaviours. Oblivious narcissism is evident in ways often associated with positive behaviours in local government.

Have you experienced leaders in your organisation who are extremely nice and accommodating, apparently sincere in their interest in the needs of others, and politely uncompromising in their pursuit of their personal goals? More and more, people who are exceedingly nice seem to be finding their way into local government leadership roles. As a result, you could be dealing with an oblivious narcissist in your organisation. Their lack of self-awareness makes them particularly difficult to deal with in local government setting, where niceness is often put ahead of performance. If you are a leader you are unlikely to be sacked for incompetence or lack of performance but you will be dealt with immediately if you are rude and upset people.   While narcissism is a general concern in society, it has significant consequences when it is present in organisational leaders and they are not aware of it. At least you know what you are dealing with a leader who is obviously narcissistic.

Consensual lying is a concept that I recently discovered at the thinkpurpose.com blog site. The writer describes consensual lying as flourishing in systems where management makes ineffective decisions but they will be told otherwise. Surprisingly, a search for consensual lying in organisations on Google found nothing on the topic. The blog author describes the best type of lying as ‘the type that doesn’t know it is a lie after a short while’. The lies are based on assumptions of what management would like to hear, and they are accepted because it is convenient for everyone involved. Then the lying goes further up the organisation.

Have you ever heard people give reasons for lack of performance or achievement that sound lame and flaky to you but are accepted by senior management? ‘I couldn’t complete the work because I didn’t have the resources’. This is a good one because allows everyone involved to shift the problem upstairs (somewhere) to the people who control resources. What about, ‘I couldn’t complete the project on time because the stakeholders wouldn’t cooperate. Another good one. There are always lots of stakeholders in public projects and it can be hard to pinpoint any one that has been a problem. Consensual lying is convenient and allows everyone to feel good about their role in a dysfunctional system.

I don’t want to sound too critical or bleak about local government. There are lots of fine organisations where good people are working hard and delivering great services. But there are many more that share some or all of these hallmarks. If you are in an organisation that is locked into learning everything from new, or led by people focussed more on their own needs than those of the organisation, or where consensual lying is widespread, you will face significant challenges in achieving high performance.

Colin Weatherby

Manne, Ann 2014. The life of I.

McGowan, Kat 2014. Brilliant impersonators, in Aeon magazine.

thinkpurpose.com. http://thinkpurpose.com/2014/08/22/do-you-have-a-joke-job