I was at a conference this past week, with government leaders at the state and municipal levels from the state of Maryland in the U.S.
Again and again I met and heard from people who continue to act and lead from the belief that all of their problems have solutions that can be managed, controlled, and predicted.
Again and again I met and heard from people who continue to act and lead from the belief that all of their problems have solutions that can be managed, controlled, and predicted.
Note the linear process structure, and the implicit understanding of linear cause-and-effect
Never mind that when you talk with them about their problems, they clearly know that stuff like school graduation rates, job creation, water and land use management, etc. are in fact, complex.
They know that they don't know, and as yet can't find, the expert answer that will render these complex problems manageable, controllable, and predictable.
It's hard, helping people admit that not everything we want to solve is readily solvable. Hard to accept the need to be comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.
Support Collective Engagement To Adjust and Tweak
When I arrived at this conference, I met a guy who was selling his book on "Lean Labor."
The Lean improvement methodology comes from the manufacturing world, and in particular, the Toyota Production System. Lean seeks to root out every bit of "waste" and "non value-added" activity in making stuff like Corollas and Camrys.
People working in the system map out its current state (and never mind that the standard mapping tool, Vizio, is a rather rigid and linear map tool), and "envision its future state."
I asked the author two questions. I cautioned him that these were questions I have been asking Lean practitioners for five years, and that I had yet to get an answer to either -
The Lean improvement methodology comes from the manufacturing world, and in particular, the Toyota Production System. Lean seeks to root out every bit of "waste" and "non value-added" activity in making stuff like Corollas and Camrys.
People working in the system map out its current state (and never mind that the standard mapping tool, Vizio, is a rather rigid and linear map tool), and "envision its future state."
I asked the author two questions. I cautioned him that these were questions I have been asking Lean practitioners for five years, and that I had yet to get an answer to either -
- What is your method for engaging the dozens of client employees that you bring to the table day after day to do value stream analysis and future state visions, in collaborative, generative dialogue? This author's reply: "well, we, uhm, build trust with them.." Well....no, that isn't a dialogic method to facilitate collaboration and the emergence of new understanding or ideas.
- How do you define "non value-added activity" and who defines it? I told him the story of one government grant-making agency, whose grant-writers cared only about the citizens receiving the much-needed health services being funded. Efficiency? Extra time or cost? Not so important. As I pointed out, "one person's waste, was literally another person's heartfelt value." Now what?
See Beyond the Surface to Successfully Reach Your Goals
Always remember when approaching a pothole...we only focus where the surface of the problem is...not the actual bottom
So too with the "evidence-based management" and "Big Data" advocates. Later in the day I spoke with panelists at a public budgeting session. Each had talked about things like goals, measures, data, and accountability. I asked them the classic question from a literal master of data and process improvement, W. Edwards Deming.
Question: how do you know that the current processes you have, can actually result in achieving the goals you have set, especially in processes aimed at managing complex systems and issues?
A bit of nervous laughter from the panelists. "Gee, that's a good question..."
We never even got to the point that in such "management by objectives" environments, again as Deming and Joseph M. Juran rightly noted, there is a tendency to only manage to the goal, and to fudge the numbers to meet it.
Question: how do you know that the current processes you have, can actually result in achieving the goals you have set, especially in processes aimed at managing complex systems and issues?
A bit of nervous laughter from the panelists. "Gee, that's a good question..."
We never even got to the point that in such "management by objectives" environments, again as Deming and Joseph M. Juran rightly noted, there is a tendency to only manage to the goal, and to fudge the numbers to meet it.
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Note the key differences here in explicitly emphasizing... PEOPLE, VALUABLE DATA (not just "easy to measure"), and ROOT CAUSES for SUSTAINABLE IMPROVEMENT
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A process method to successfully engage in the fuller, connected system
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Break free of Newtonian worldviews
Later, I spoke privately with one panelist, the head of budgeting for a major U.S. city. I told him the true story of a government manager in .
Each year the manager had to sign a performance contract at the beginning of the budget year. It said what people, money, and resources he was getting. It said what his goals were (improving clean water access in rural India villages by drilling wells).
At the end of the year he had to write an "attribution report" explaining how he used his resources to achieve his goals. He, and the other 50 managers in the room called these " reports."
In many cases, nothing a manager could do with the processes they had, could either reach the goals, or explain the (typically complex) causal relationships between what their agency had done, and the outcomes that had occurred.
Each year the manager had to sign a performance contract at the beginning of the budget year. It said what people, money, and resources he was getting. It said what his goals were (improving clean water access in rural India villages by drilling wells).
At the end of the year he had to write an "attribution report" explaining how he used his resources to achieve his goals. He, and the other 50 managers in the room called these " reports."
In many cases, nothing a manager could do with the processes they had, could either reach the goals, or explain the (typically complex) causal relationships between what their agency had done, and the outcomes that had occurred.
Rideau Falls at the Ottawa River
The rural well guy said, "How can I know what we achieved? 27 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are doing the same work in the same areas. I don't know what impact we had, yet I have to wrote a report that says I do."
I thought a moment, and said, "Get a bucket, and get your boss. Take them to where the Rideau Canal flows into the Ottawa River. Explain that the canal represents your agency's efforts. Say that the river also includes the efforts of the 27 NGOs. Draw a bucket of water from the river and ask your boss, okay... Which part is ours?'"
We've been taught to fear that which is natural,
and in fact, vital.
Breaking free of the Newtonian worldview as applied to managing and improving complex systems facing complex challenges is Job One. Time for a change.
Bruce Waltuck, President, Freethink, LLC, and Director, I-Open
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Author, Bruce Waltuck, M.A., Complexity, Chaos, and Creativity
President & Owner, Freethinc. . . For A Change-Services on Organizational Change, Employee and Labor Relations, Collaborative Dialogue, and Story-gathering for Insights and Action. Bruce currently serves as a Director, The Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open). Box 15, 08561 Phone: Website: www.freethinc.com Now tweeting (C) 2014 Bruce Waltuck, All Rights Reserved. Non-commercial use granted to Betsey Merkel and I-Open, to be distributed under a Creative Commons license with attribution, for non-commercial use |
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