“The Price of Government”
By David Osborne & Peter Hutchinson
Basic Books, 2004
The government is one gargantuan bureaucracy. And it remains such a huge challenge to make it efficient that “government efficiency” has sounded like an oxymoron!
In some elections here and in America, some politicians ran on a platform to “run government like a business enterprise.” Ross Perot did, but later dropped out of the U.S. Presidential race, and thus kept Americans wondering what a Perot presidency could have done to improve the nation’s finances.
Not known to many, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (more renowned for his “crisis leadership” in the 9/11 aftermath) introduced efficiency in the country’s largest city – dramatically solved crime, streamlined the bureaucracy, and improved public service.
Close to home, Lito Osmena, who once ran Cebu City as Mayor, used business principles to transform the Queen City of the South into a bustling metropolis, earning a much deserved name “Ce-boom.” Current Quezon City Mayor Sonny Belmonte applied political will to install sound management and fiscal systems may yet reap the fruits of his managerial resolve, but had so far chalked up the achievement of realizing revenues in the billion peso range.
In the past, even in a graduate business school I attended, a professor once said that one cannot compare the performance of government with that of private business – “because they are driven by a different logic.” For example, he said, a governor cannot downsize because he must promote employment for his constituents. And realistically speaking, the government cannot compete with the private sector precisely because its costs are higher (translated: it is unavoidably inefficient).
Will citizens now resign to the fact that government, by its very nature, cannot be efficient in the same way businesses are called, not only to be efficient, but to be profitable? Given the mounting deficit piling on the national government and the hidden costs of local government units, shouldn’t there be method and strategy to dismount a white huge elephant?
The good news is, there is a book, “The Price of Government,” that discusses principle and process that would liberate government from the yearly classic dilemma: How can you deal with a growing deficit, on one hand, and mounting resistance against new taxes, on the other? These and other major issues are confronted by this new book written by David Osborne and Peter Hutchinson.
The authors underscore this predicament thus: “Elected officials are always looking for ways to demonstrate their fiscal prudence while also supporting their favorite programs.” Is it possible to have the best of both worlds?
Osborne and Hutchinson want to see the budgeting process based on “desired outcomes” – and not on previous figures. “Last year’s numbers are not an entitlement” – or these budget numbers should be challenged.
Actually, more than three decades ago, the zero budgeting process was already at work in the world of private business. Osborne’s prescriptions seem to be a take-off from policies and strategies that have already made businesses not only profitable but leading-edge winners.
And yet to apply it to a huge bureaucracy and sharing a wealth of lessons learned and successes scored are remarkable feats by themselves, considering the Herculean task of virtually cleaning up the mythical Augean stables. The authors have written a piece that has both governing principles, details of execution and success stories that will make this book a valuable manual not only for planners and budget chiefs, but more so the state’s chief executive or local governors to get real results.
The book would like to see the day when budget officer’s job “shifts from padding the base to being essential players in steering the organization toward results.”
This book is not only about budgeting, though, tackling “rightsizing,” based on the principle of “the right work, the right way with the right staff.” It, however, has a word of caution: “If done wrong, downsizing can cripple performance, leading to crises of another sort: failing police departments, rising crime rates, dirtier cities, longer wait for service and deteriorating road, rails and buses.”
The book recommends something radical: “You can change almost everything, except the values.”
The authors also have a revolutionary thought about government welcoming competition. Citing an example – a water or sewer utility -- they point out: “Unless the service is a natural monopoly, the customers purchase the service wherever they choose. If it is a natural monopoly, give it a customer board and regulate its prices.”
What about performance bonuses for government officials and employees? The book calls that “gainsharing,” a profit-sharing plan for the public sector. This is largely unheard of in government!
The book, 370 pages in all, is a tour de force for authors – and readers like you and me – but there is one supreme benefit from reading it: You come away with a stronger conviction that a government that is efficient, responsive and useful to its “customers” – the citizens – is in the realm of the possible. Its call is compelling, quoting a native American saying: “When you’re riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.” Stretching the metaphor, they consider the old budgeting and planning process a “dead horse” – and thus declare an imperative: Find a new horse – “then saddle up and ride.”
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Tap the Power of Emotion to drive corporate change
“The Heart of Change”
By John P. Kotter
Harvard Business School Press, 2002
The myth that denizens in the corporate world are rational – or cerebral -- has long been shattered. But, the way our corporate leaders manage organizations and people betray their hard-to-break habit of going into long-winded analysis, dishing out cold facts and colder figures.
Thus, they succeed more in boring their peers and subordinates rather than in igniting their enthusiasm for goals to be achieved or, at the very least, for the job at hand.
But times have changed – or have they? Has the bastion of cerebral managers been demolished by the decisive march of “resonant” leaders. A landmark book titled “Primal Leadership” by Daniel Goleman (who also authored an earlier work “Emotional Intelligence”) prompted renewed interest in the power of emotions to move and lead people.
And yet resonant leadership was – and is -- demonstrated by leaders in times past and present – from Moses to Mandela, from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, from George Washington to Winston Churchill, from Simon Bolivar to Tony Blair, from CEOs Jack Welch to Bill Gates.
It is thus appropriately not a discovery, but a re-discovery, of a type of leadership that “connects” to the hearts of people. Someone said that a leader is allowed to fail in many things, but never must he fail to “inspire.”
The more recent beneficiary of this return to “resonant leadership” – one that inspires people (as opposed to “toxic leadership) – is the science of managing and effecting change in corporations. A book, titled “The Heart of Change,” addresses issues and narrates real-life stories about change campaigns that worked in large enterprises simply because they decided that “the heart of change is in the emotions.”
Kotter, the author, is categorical about the message of his latest book: “People change … because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.” Kotter bats for shocking, or grabbing the attention of, people so that, first, they “sit up and listen,” and then are suitably empowered to embrace and initiate change.
This is an engaging and useful book, since it lives up to the promise of its sub-title which runs, “Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations.”
The narratives revolved on the Eight Steps for Successful Large-Scale Change. The steps are as follows: Increase Urgency, Build the Guiding Team, Get the Vision Right, Communicate for Buy-in, Empower Action, Create Short-Term Wins, Don’t Let Up, and Make Change Stick. Kotter calls these steps “a flow in a successful change effort.”
Every point made by the author on the Eight Steps was illustrated by a number of stories written by real people – some named, some not.
In the first step, “Increasing Urgency,” the book tells of a story titled “The Videotape of an Angry Customer.” It’s the story of a customer suitably frustrated by the seeming lack of listening skills of the front liners of a company. The narrator, presumably a top manager, decided to video tape the “angry customer.” He did not use the usual memo or speech extolling the virtues of customer relations, but showed the video tape to the firm’s managers and employees who got the complaint in the raw. Result: Most agree that they must do something about it.
Another success story, this time dealing with the refusal of people to change a work process, is about building an aircraft. A guy called Koz (author failed or decided not to give him a title) wanted to change the way an aircraft is assembled in many locations – resulting in ineffective quality control, delay in delivery of parts and high costs. In a management meeting, he announced: “We are not going to move an airplane until it is complete in its position… Until the plane is done and done right, no movement. Period.”
Kotter’s immediate commentary: “Everyone thought Koz was off his rocker.” But since Koz cannot be moved to abandon his decision, people followed his orders. As a result, quality has gone up and all aircraft have not only been on time, “they’ve been early.” Until today, says the book, the “story is still being told.”
Stories abound in this book. The tale of “Gloves in the Boardroom,” where 424 types of gloves were displayed at the large expensive table, delivered the urgent message to change a policy among division presidents of a conglomerate. There is story of a courageous CEO who refused to hang his portrait alongside portraits of former CEOs of a company since 1885. He did even more to shock the old timers: He removed the other portraits and, in their place, showed pictures of customers’ stores.
What the book is saying in stories and commentaries is that people respond to the need for change if they are confronted the truth – in a compelling or shocking way. That’s driving change through the gut.
And when you succeed in introducing change, improve processes dramatically, and evolve a completely new culture – how do you make sure the resulting changed culture stay as such. The book offers stories to illustrate the ever-present risk for people to revert to “good old tradition”. The tale, “The Boss Went to Switzerland,” is so familiar it could happen to a CEO who was successful in his role as “change leader,” only to come back after a three-year absence that the people went back – if I may say so – to worshipping the Baal of bureaucratic fat and smugness.
By John P. Kotter
Harvard Business School Press, 2002
The myth that denizens in the corporate world are rational – or cerebral -- has long been shattered. But, the way our corporate leaders manage organizations and people betray their hard-to-break habit of going into long-winded analysis, dishing out cold facts and colder figures.
Thus, they succeed more in boring their peers and subordinates rather than in igniting their enthusiasm for goals to be achieved or, at the very least, for the job at hand.
But times have changed – or have they? Has the bastion of cerebral managers been demolished by the decisive march of “resonant” leaders. A landmark book titled “Primal Leadership” by Daniel Goleman (who also authored an earlier work “Emotional Intelligence”) prompted renewed interest in the power of emotions to move and lead people.
And yet resonant leadership was – and is -- demonstrated by leaders in times past and present – from Moses to Mandela, from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, from George Washington to Winston Churchill, from Simon Bolivar to Tony Blair, from CEOs Jack Welch to Bill Gates.
It is thus appropriately not a discovery, but a re-discovery, of a type of leadership that “connects” to the hearts of people. Someone said that a leader is allowed to fail in many things, but never must he fail to “inspire.”
The more recent beneficiary of this return to “resonant leadership” – one that inspires people (as opposed to “toxic leadership) – is the science of managing and effecting change in corporations. A book, titled “The Heart of Change,” addresses issues and narrates real-life stories about change campaigns that worked in large enterprises simply because they decided that “the heart of change is in the emotions.”
Kotter, the author, is categorical about the message of his latest book: “People change … because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.” Kotter bats for shocking, or grabbing the attention of, people so that, first, they “sit up and listen,” and then are suitably empowered to embrace and initiate change.
This is an engaging and useful book, since it lives up to the promise of its sub-title which runs, “Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations.”
The narratives revolved on the Eight Steps for Successful Large-Scale Change. The steps are as follows: Increase Urgency, Build the Guiding Team, Get the Vision Right, Communicate for Buy-in, Empower Action, Create Short-Term Wins, Don’t Let Up, and Make Change Stick. Kotter calls these steps “a flow in a successful change effort.”
Every point made by the author on the Eight Steps was illustrated by a number of stories written by real people – some named, some not.
In the first step, “Increasing Urgency,” the book tells of a story titled “The Videotape of an Angry Customer.” It’s the story of a customer suitably frustrated by the seeming lack of listening skills of the front liners of a company. The narrator, presumably a top manager, decided to video tape the “angry customer.” He did not use the usual memo or speech extolling the virtues of customer relations, but showed the video tape to the firm’s managers and employees who got the complaint in the raw. Result: Most agree that they must do something about it.
Another success story, this time dealing with the refusal of people to change a work process, is about building an aircraft. A guy called Koz (author failed or decided not to give him a title) wanted to change the way an aircraft is assembled in many locations – resulting in ineffective quality control, delay in delivery of parts and high costs. In a management meeting, he announced: “We are not going to move an airplane until it is complete in its position… Until the plane is done and done right, no movement. Period.”
Kotter’s immediate commentary: “Everyone thought Koz was off his rocker.” But since Koz cannot be moved to abandon his decision, people followed his orders. As a result, quality has gone up and all aircraft have not only been on time, “they’ve been early.” Until today, says the book, the “story is still being told.”
Stories abound in this book. The tale of “Gloves in the Boardroom,” where 424 types of gloves were displayed at the large expensive table, delivered the urgent message to change a policy among division presidents of a conglomerate. There is story of a courageous CEO who refused to hang his portrait alongside portraits of former CEOs of a company since 1885. He did even more to shock the old timers: He removed the other portraits and, in their place, showed pictures of customers’ stores.
What the book is saying in stories and commentaries is that people respond to the need for change if they are confronted the truth – in a compelling or shocking way. That’s driving change through the gut.
And when you succeed in introducing change, improve processes dramatically, and evolve a completely new culture – how do you make sure the resulting changed culture stay as such. The book offers stories to illustrate the ever-present risk for people to revert to “good old tradition”. The tale, “The Boss Went to Switzerland,” is so familiar it could happen to a CEO who was successful in his role as “change leader,” only to come back after a three-year absence that the people went back – if I may say so – to worshipping the Baal of bureaucratic fat and smugness.
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