Management Commitment LO8070

arthur battram (apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk)
Mon, 24 Jun 1996 10:26:57 +0000

Replying to LO8042 --

>The important thing is our values-in-action. These are what people will
>judge us on, not what we say.

absolutely! thanks for your post.

I did a lot of work on 'what are local government's values? in the
context of 17 years of legisation designed to 'change' local government,
a project for my employer the Local Government Management Board, when
Iwas working on competence-based qualifications [NVQs and National
Standards] in professional areas. Ifound that not only were values only
'really' expressed in action, certain values were excluded and certain
values foregrounded depending on the topic:

discuss 'service delivery' at an Education committee ' and 'equality
might get a look in, but at a budget meeting it wouldn't: 'value for
money' would reign supreme. The result: % cuts which seem 'fair' but in
reality massively discriminate. An example: suppose we have to cut 20%
from the youth clubs [which come under education] in our town. The
chosen method is to cut staff by 20%. The larger, more established
clubs lose some part-timers, reducing the choice in activities they
offer. Smaller clubs, will have to close on some nights, because they
only had one part-timer on duty most nights anyway. Guess what? the
Asian youth clubs only got started 5 years ago so they only have
part-time staff...they're now on a diminishing returns downward
spiral... This is how equality issues are squeezed out- it's a sort of
values equivalent of Blanchard's situational leadership - 'call it
'situational values'.

Anyone else interested in these ideas?

How about a 'values in action' thread, Rick?
[Host's Note: fine with me. ...Rick]

--
from Arthur Battram, organiser of  'Tools for Learning', assisting local
authorities to apply complexity concepts to learning
apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk    "simplicity is out there..."

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>