I initially struggled with making this a private post to Bob or sending to
the list...in the end, I thought there might be others who could add to
(or correct!) what I have to say, so to the list it goes...
Bob Williams wrote:
[snip]
What I want to know is where the governance/management paradigm
came from, where is it being effectively challenged, and how does it
relate to "learning organisations" ?
[end snip]
Bob,
As to your first question, I am reasonably certain you are bumping up
against the most fundamental paradigm of the British political system: the
Westminster Parliamentary model--which is not surprising given your
country's status (like mine) as a member of the British Commonwealth. If
I'm on target with this assessment, any political science text book should
be able to describe the model and its origins. As well, you might want to
look up any discussions of the Reform Movement of the late 19th and early
20th centuries because the governance/management paradigm underwent some
significant modifications/improvements during this period. Please let me
know if this is what you're getting at.
As for your second question, it seems to me just about everyone I
encounter is proposing some sort of radical change to the model!
Overall, I find your questions interesting because we are currently
experiencing "much turbulence" in our organization (The City of
Winnipeg--for whom I am not a spokesperson I might add) over this very
issue. However, as I see it, the problem is not the model itself but that
we've blurred the lines (not that they're absolute, or plainly visible to
the naked eye, by any means) between the policy setting body (governance)
and the policy administering body (management). In other words, in our
city, politicians want to be managers while managers want to be
politicians. This has created, for us, some huge problems (ie: lack of
clear direction, micro-management, lack of accountability, etc., etc.).
As a result, a recent multi-million dollar "mistake" blew up in the local
media. There was much finger-pointing on all sides. The politicians then
commissioned an independent inquiry which basically found that the
confusion over the differing roles of these two streams of government was
a major factor in the fiasco. The report laid the "blame" at the feet of
both government and adiministration for neglecting their respective
responsibilities. In the end, an administrator was asked to resign (more
may still go) and yet the fundamental problem was not addressed, which is:
clarifying the respective roles of the political and administrative
pieces. So, it seems my experience is significantly different from yours
in that it's not so much the model that's problematic but that we've not
implemented it correctly.
If you are interested, I'd recommend John Ralston Saul's book: Voltaire's
Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (in particular the
chapter entitled "In the Service of the Greater Self") which talks about
this very phenonmena at the macro level in Western Civilization.
As to your third question, in my view asking these kinds of questions is
absolutely necessary for creating learning organizations because it forces
us to start to surface our most fundamental (and therefore most important)
assumptions/mental models: "What's the role of government?" "What is the
public good and how can we determine it?" "What's the purpose of
business?" "How do the public and private sectors best work together for
the common good?" "Are there some businesses that no one should be
allowed to conduct?" "Can we conduct sincerely non-self- interested
dialogues?" and so on.
I'd be interested to know what you think about all this. Am I way off
base?
--Bill Ayers Human Resource Specialist The City of Winnipeg 100-510 Main Street Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3B-1B9 ph: (204) 986-2519; fax: (204) 986-3299 wayers@city.winnipeg.mb.ca
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>