Public Management-The Bush Administration II

On New Year's Day we had two questions:

Question One: What is the single most important thing a leader can do to motivate the workforce?

Question two: In survey after survey of both workers and managers, what is the greatest impediment to making change and building teamwork?

Since that time, John Hunter posted a comment in reference to W. Edwards Deming:

Newt Gingrich is also a supporter of Deming's ideas: "I'm a disciple of Edwards Deming. I really believe in a culture and system of quality."

Any time I find myself in the company of Newt Gingrich, I become a little concerned, especially since he tends to bounce around and not 'drill down' to learn how things work. In addition, I don't accept all of Deming's teachings as universal truth.  If anything I am more a student of Peter Scholtes, a Deming student who wrote the invaluable The Leader's Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done

I would never disagree with Gingrich or Deming about developing a culture focused on quality.

I think there is a lot to be learned from Deming, his work is undoubtedly the most important in the area. Even if there are disagreements with Deming, we are working from the same plan.

I am concerned about two aspects of his teaching:

• At times his followers can take on a 'cultish' devotion to his work and ignore important contributons from others.
• Deming did not have an appreciation for the democratic nature of government, and did not acknowledge that the kind of decision making that takes place in the public sector may have both legal and ethical requirements to slow down the advance of 'quality.'

That said, the answer to question number one is: Build trust. The workplace must be a place free of recrimination and where the review of mistakes is to learn, not to punish or humiliate.

The answer to the second question: lack of trust.  In survey after survey of public employees, at all levels of the organization, no matter how the question is asked, "What is the greatest impediment to change, to making things better, getting better results, improving the workplace environment?" the answer is always, "lack of trust in the organization." And that is where I would agree with Deming.  To improve an organization, we must drive out fear.

Returning to the gang in Washington, from Bush to Brown, Cheney to DeLay; we know that driving out fear is the last thing on their minds.

Comments

[John Hunter]

Actually Deming did acknowledge that the United States government was not designed to be as efficient as possible. From page 198 of Out of the Crisis "Government service is to be judged on equity as well as on efficiency." He then quotes Oscar Ornati "We have forgotten that the function of government is more equity oriented than efficiency oriented."

Deming did not focus on the nature of government extensively, but my recollection is that he acknowledged the wisdom of the American style of government (with checks and balances and fairly complex process for creating legislation) even though parts of that system intentionally makes change difficult. My recollection is that he understood the wisdom in designing the system in this way to optimize long term benefits to the whole society, even though that creates sub optimization of certain aspects of the system.