Let the Fingers Do the Talking

One of the reasons why this blog continues is that the physical process of writing words – whether on a keyboard or on the pages of a notebook – somehow releases thoughts that take me in unexpected directions.

Let me give an example….On Thursday I came across an article which annoyed me – it was in something called the Stanford Social Innovation Review – so I should have known better!

It seemed to be about community-based solutions to perennial problems like homelessness - but talked of

 “the urgent need to eradicate social and economic ills rather than just manage them”.

Three things annoyed me on my first skim of the article – first the sheer arrogance of such an approach particularly when, secondly, it made no reference to any previous efforts to find such a "silver bullet". And, finally, that a serious university (Hertie in Berlin) seemed to take it seriously enough to offer the authors a platform – who were also claiming in aid a recent British book “Radical Help”.

Bingo, I thought….here’s a peg on which to hang a post about the importance of decentralized approaches – but not before I clear the ground to spell out some of the efforts which others have made to supply alternatives to the centralized delivery of services….

Hence the two previous posts – the first which started with Ralston Saul’s quote about democratic structures being more important than technocratic; my own critique (from 1977) of managerialism and pluralism; then the technocracy of New Labourism; and, finally, the hypocrisy of the Conservative “Big Society” and “mutualisation” programmes from 2010.

The second post was a reminder of the significance of Frederic Laloux’s book on “Reinventing Organisations” and its celebration of worker self-management…

The Kafka Brigade  

But, as I prepared for what I thought would be a detailed critical post about the article The New Practice of Public Problem Solving, I did my usual surfing and came across an amazing book with an unusual title - Dealing with Dysfunction – innovative problem solving in the public sector by Jorrit de Jong (2014). It's written by a Dutchman who had, a decade earlier, been a member of a team called “The Kafka Brigade” (!) - whose work is described in this excellent short article The Kafka Brigade – public management theory in practice; M Mathias (2015). 
This has elements of “action-research” – to which I’ve always been attracted – shades of “learning while doing”……The opening chapter of his book (see title link) puts it more precisely -

“using a bottom-up diagnostic approach, collaborative inquiry, creative problem-solving techniques and a pressure-cooker environment, the Kafka Brigade has tapped into the knowledge and experience of hundreds if public officials and clients”  

At this stage, I would normally clear my throat a bit ironically……but, hey, we all have to make a living …and the jargon isn’t all that difficult …..And he and his team readily accept that his approach has yielded both failures and successes……it is indeed a pragmatic learning process. Indeed he quotes one of the first academics to devote a full-length book about “bureaucratic dysfunctions” – Herbert Kaufman - who wrote (in 1977) that -

“what we need is a detailed clinical approach rather than heated attacks, the delicate wielding of  a scalpel rather than furious flailing around with a meat axe”!

And the heated attacks since then have included (successful) calls for “Deregulation”, “smaller government”. “stronger professional input” and “private sector models of management”.

De Jong makes it clear his approach was influenced by Mark Moore’s concept of Public Value which I discussed (all too briefly) in this post last year about the struggle in the past 20 years to offer a better model for public services than New Public Management

Mark Moore’s Creating Public Value – strategic management in Government (1995) demonstrated how the passion and example of individual leaders could inspire teams and lift the performance and profile of public services. The decentralisation of American government allowed them that freedom.

British New Labour, however, chose to go in the opposite direction and to build on to what was already a tight centralised system a new quasi-Soviet one of targets and punishment – although this 2002 note, Creating Public Value – an analytical framework for public service reform, showed that there were at least some people  within the Cabinet Office pushing for a more flexible approach.

Measuring Public Value – the competing values approach showed that there was still life in the idea in the UK – if only amongst academics eg Public Value Management – a new narrative for networked governance by Gerry Stoker in 2006.

Sadly Public Value; theory and practice ed by John Benington and Mark Moore (2011) offered no clarion call to a better society, it was full of dreadful jargon…..Who in his right mind imagines that networked public governance is going to set the heather alight???

My post also looked critically at some other competing ideas which had been offered – such as “good governance”, the “common good”, “communitarianism”, “service” and “stewardship”

All these concepts have problems – as does “Dealing with Dysfunction” (!!) – but “The Kafka Brigade”?,,,,,now there’s a powerful image!!

I warned you at the start of this post that, more than anything else, I would be trying to “showcase” (what an awful word!!) how I approach the blog first thing in the morning. 
I let the fingers do the talking…..   

Playing Games with a serious issue?

Part of me understands the groans (sometimes more than metaphorical!) which meet the term “public management reform” whenever it comes up in conversation…..

I have sometimes wished we could find a better phrase to do justice to what is, after all, one of the most important issues confronting countries everywhere – namely how we structure and fund the rights and responsibilities we all have ...in order to help make and keep societies secure.

So this post looks at some of the efforts which have been made in the last 20 years to find a less brutal approach to public service management than that represented by New Public Management… 

Just why and how the British adopted NPM – which then became a global pandemic - is a story which is usually told in a fatalistic way – as if there were no human agency involved. One persuasive explanation is given here - as the fatal combination of Ministerial frustration with civil service “dynamic conservatism” (as Donald Schoen would put it) with Public Choice economics offering a seductive explanation for that inertia….  A politico-organisational problem was redefined as an economic one and, heh presto, NPM went global 

The core European systems were, however, different – with legal and constitutional safeguards, Proportional Representation systems and coalition governments – although the EC technocracy has been chipping away at much of this.

”Good governance” ?

This became a fashionable phrase in the 1990s amongst at least policy wonks in the World Bank – although it was aimed mainly at ex-communist and “developing” countries and never really caught on in everyday conversation. One of the ingredients of the rather formulaic “good governance” goulash was anti-corruption measures - which I felt were always basic aspects of sound public management and not a novel add-on….  

“Public Value”?

Mark Moore’s Creating Public Value – strategic management in Government (1995) demonstrated how the passion and example of individual leaders could inspire teams and lift the performance and profile of public services. The decentralisation of American government allowed them that freedom.

British New Labour, however, chose to go in the opposite direction and to build on to what was already a tight centralised system a new quasi-Soviet one of targets and punishment – although this 2002 note, Creating Public Value – an analytical framework for public service reform, showed that there were at least some people  within the Cabinet Office pushing for a more flexible approach.

Measuring Public Value – the competing values approach showed that there was still life in the idea in the UK – if only amongst academics  eg Public Value Management – a new narrative for networked governance by Gerry Stoker in 2006.

Sadly Public Value; theory and practice ed by John Benington and Mark Moore (2011) offered no clarion call to a better society, it was full of dreadful jargon…..Who in his right mind imagines that networked public governance is going to set the heather alight???

“The Common Good”?

One of the things which struck me on rereading some of these references is how academic (apart from Moore’s original book) they are….For example John Bryson’s work on public strategies constitute the best writing on the subject eg Leadership for the Common Good; Crosby and Bryson (2^nd edition 2005) but when I look at the indexes and bibliographies of the material on Public Value, their names and books don’t appear! This shows utter contempt for the practical side of things…..

Quite rightly, the title of their latest book Creating Public Value in Practice – advancing the common good in a ….noone in charge world; ed J Bryson et al (2015) shows that their contribution is much more valuable than that of the academics….. 

“Communitarianism”?

At one stage, I thought that communitarianism – so eloquently served by the indefatigable Amatai Etzioni – held an important key……But I soon realised that it smacked of what Orwell benignly called the sandal-wearers and others, less kind, would call the Calvin sect……

Before I finish let me bring up the neglected issue of….Service.

Like Mark Moore, Chris Pollitt’s The Essential Public Manager (2003) focused on the human aspect of public management by exploring the core attributes and values of those who used to be called “public servants”… It’s a pity that more politicians don’t see themselves as “public servants” – and indeed Pollitt might consider, for the next edition of the book, replacing the word “manager” with that of “servant”; and adding at least one chapter to deal with Ministers…. ….????? And “Public Service Reform” is certainly the better phrase since it removes that offensive word “management”….and takes me to Robert Greenleaf whose On Becoming a servant leader (1996) is a book I sometimes turn to for inspiration.

Greenleaf was a thoughtful senior manager with corporate giant AT and T who took early retirement in 1964 to set up a foundation to develop his ideas about leadership - which had a clear influence on writers such as Stephen Covey and Peter Senge. These two management gurus preached/preach in the 90s a softer approach to the subject – while avoiding the explicit critique evident in the later work of, for example, Canadian Henry Mintzberg, one of the rare management writers to break ranks  and call big business to account – in his 2014 pamphlet Rebalancing Society – radical renewal beyond left, right and center. As early as 1970 Greenleaf wrote an article which set out the main elements of his approach - The Servant as Leader (1970). His continuing influence on at least some management writing can be seen here

In conclusion

This has been quite a romp – which has taken me longer to craft than my normal post. But, from my point of view at least, has been very useful….

 “Good government”, “Public service reform”, “networked public governance”, “public value”, “communitarianism”, “the Common Good”……what is it to be????  Perhaps I should do a straw poll?

But it has left me with one conclusion….that there are two significant sets of voices we don’t hear in most of these texts – the officials who run the services and the citizens who experience them. Last week I discussed the notion of public service ventures in the shape of cooperatives; and this is an issue which really does need to be pushed more strongly…….

 Further Reading

From NPM to Public Value (2007) – a useful academic overview

Public Value and Leadership; 2007 – a mercifully short and clear paper on the subject

Public Value; conjecture and refutation (2010) – a good academic overview with an emphasis on ethical consideration

Appraising public value; past, present and futures (2011) is an excellent review of the literature in the first 15 years of the concept’s life

Stocktake of a concept (2015) – a clear exposition of the development of an idea

Designing the model of public value management; (2015) How the concept is seen in Romanian academia

Creating Public Value in Practice – advancing the common good in a ….noone in charge world; ed J Bryson et al (2015), 

Comparison of public value frameworks (2016) a good academic assessment

To be continued

Plain text; and the 21st Century Public Manager

Readers will have noticed my growing impatience with the academic output about public services in the past 30-40 years. About the only writer I exempted was Chris Pollitt whose The Essential Public Manager (2003) is, by far and away, the best book to help the intelligent citizen make sense of this field. It’s friendly; brings in individuals to play roles illustrating contemporary debates; clearly summarises different schools of thought on the key issues; and leaves the reader with guidance for further reading….

Most authors in this field, however, are writing for other academics (to impress them), for students (to give them copy for passing exams); or for potential customers in senior government positions (to persuade them to offer contracts) – they are never writing for citizens. As a result, they develop some very bad habits in writing – which is why this new book should be in their family’s Xmas stocking this year. It offers priceless advice, including -   

1." Bait the hook“ When you go fishing, you bait the hook with what the fish likes, not with what you like.” An obvious principle, easily lost sight of. Putting yourself in the audience’s shoes governs everything from the shape of your argument to the choice of vocabulary. Ask what they do and don’t know about the subject, and what they need to; not what you know about it.
Ask what they are likely to find funny, rather than what you do. What are the shared references that will bring them on board? Where do you need to pitch your language? How much attention are they likely to be paying?

This is what Aristotle, talking about rhetoric, called ethos, or the question of how your audience sees you. And the best way for them to see you is either as one of them, or someone on their side. As the speech theorist Kenneth Burke wrote – another line I never tire of quoting – “You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, identifying your ways with his.” 

2. Be clear A lot of style guides, with good reason, tell their readers to write Plain English. There’s even a Plain English Campaign that does its nut, year-round and vocationally, about examples of baffling officialese, pompous lawyer-speak and soul-shrivelling business jargon.Plain English (the simplest word that does the job; straightforward sentences; nice active verbs etc) is far from the only style you should have at your command. But if you depart from it, you should have a reason, be it aesthetic or professional.

The plainer the language, the easier the reader finds it; and the easier the reader finds it, the more likely they’ll take in what you’re saying and continue reading. Surveys of the average reading age of British adults routinely put it between nine and 13. Trim your style accordingly. Steven Pinker talks about “classic style” (he borrows the notion from the literary critics Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner). This, as he sees it, is a variation on Plain English that compliments the reader’s intelligence and talks to him or her as an equal.

He gives a cute example. “The early bird gets the worm” is plain style, he says. “The second mouse gets the cheese” is classic. I half-buy the distinction; though much of what Pinker credits to the classic style is exactly what’s asked of any good instance of the plain. And the examples he offers convey quite different thoughts, and (a bit unfairly) attribute a cliche to the plain style and a good joke to the classic. 

3. Prefer right-branching sentences Standard-issue sentences, in English, have subject-verb-object order: dog (subject) bites (verb) man (object). There are any number of elaborations on this, but the spine of your sentence, no matter how many limbs it grows, consists of those three things.

If you have a huge series of modifying clauses before you reach the subject of the sentence, the reader’s brain is working harder; likewise, if you have a vast parenthesis between subject and verb or even verb and object. The reader’s brain has registered the subject (dog) and it is waiting for a verb so it can make sense of the sentence. Meanwhile, you’re distracting it by cramming ever more material into its working memory. “My dog, which I got last week because I’ve always wanted a dog and I heard from Fred – you know, Fred who works in the chip shop and had that injury last year three days after coming home from his holidays – that he was getting rid of his because his hours had changed and he couldn’t walk it as much as it wanted (very thoughtful, is Fred), bit me ...” 

4. Read it aloud Reading something aloud is a good way of stress-testing it: you’ll notice very abruptly if your sentences are tangled up: that overfilling-the-working-memory thing can be heard in your voice. The American speechwriter Peggy Noonan advises that once you have a draft, “Stand up and speak it aloud. Where you falter, alter.”

I was about to write to Chris Pollitt to encourage him to produce a new edition of his book (which is 14 years old) but, magically, came across The Twenty First Century Public Manager - – a rare book which, like Pollitt’s, looks at the complex world facing an individual public manager these days and the skills and outlook they need to help it survive.

Which took me in turn to The Twenty First Century Public Servant - a short report which came out in 2014……and reminded me of a book which has been lying on my shelves for all too long – Public Value – theory and practice ed John Benington and Mark Moore (2011) which is put in context by a very useful article Appraising public value 
In fact, the concept of “public value” was first produced by Moore in 1995 in Creating Public Value – strategic management in government. This celebrated the role of strategic leaders in the public sector and tried to explore how, in a climate which required strong verification of performance, the public sector might be able better to demonstrate its legitimacy…. Here is how one british agency understood the challenge in 2007 and a short summary of the debate there has been about the concept. As you can imagine there’s at least one dissertation on the subject….. ’

I can’t say I’m greatly convinced that all the “sound and fury” has produced anything all that substantial…but, if I can keep my eyes open long enough, I will go back to the 2011 book by Benington and Moore (which does include chapters by interesting characters such as Colin Crouch and Gerry Stoker) and let my readers know…..

Leaders of change

New readers should note that this blog is a great resource for those concerned about the apparent collapse of key elements of our core systems – and what we should be doing about it. My blogs rarely comment on the trivia which passes for News these days (although I couldn’t resist the recent grilling of Rupert Murdoch by a UK House of Commons Committee) and try to strike a reasonable tone. They alternate between the professional and political aspects of improving governance (particularly in "transition countries" – a combination which gives these posts a distinctive slant. Most of my posts give direct links to papers which give hard evidence of my points. A bit like Google Scholar, I try to stand on the shoulders of giants. Indeed one of the reasons I keep blogging is that I find it is a great way of organising my reading. Anything which impresses me gets worked in; without the blog I would be wasting time trying to find a paper which I knew said something important. Now all I have to do is punch a keyword into the search engine on the site – and hey presto! The blogs are therefore (I hope) more like perennial flowers which can be enjoyed even if a couple of years old. And I am pleased to see that some of my readers do that without being urged.
Exactly a year ago I had a lament on impotence of democratic politicswhich shows you what I mean.

From October 28, I devoted a series of posts to the issue of the role of training in improving the performance of state bodies in ex-communist countries. I was pretty critical – particularly of the EC funding strategy.
The second post in the series summarised my critique and suggested three paths which those in charge of such training in these countries needed to take to make an impact -

1. to signal that the development of state capacity needs to be taken more seriously – by officials, politicians and academics – and to give practical examples of what this means
2. to try to shine some light on the role of training in individual learning and organisational development – to show both the potential of and limits on training and to have the courage to spell out the preconditions for training which actually helps improve the performance of state bodies
3. to encourage training institutes to cooperate more with change agents in the system - and with academia

Part V tried to put us in the shoes of a Director of the National Institute of training of public servants in these countries – facing incredible constraints - and to expand on these three points. Part VII switched the focus back to the funders and tried to reduce the critique to a few bullet points - "Wrong focus; wrong theory"; "context" and "leadership" and then went on to give an illustration of the sort of cooperation which might pay dividends for a Director of a Training Institute.
A final post backtracked a bit to ask what we actually know about the process of developing the administrative capacity which I had made the core of my argument.
It also noted that I should now explore why on earth anyone facing the sort of political and budgetary constraints which exist in the Balkan countries (widely defined) should ever wish to put her head over the parapet and "think big and reach out” as I had earlier suggested . So here goes……

I did make the point very strongly in the posts that each country has to make its own way – each context is very different and requires something which resonates with its key actors. Locals who bring foreign experience (like most think-tankers) are generally just trying to make a name for themselves as can be seen in this (otherwise interesting) book of case studies from the countries which were in the more direct influence of the Soviet Union.
But I am who I am am; my context (at least for the first 25 years of my working life) was the strong bureaucratic system of Scottish local government – which owned the vast proportion of the housing and transport system. I challenged this system – before Margaret Thatcher appeared on the scene – but from a new left and participative rather than privatising perspective.
And I had a lot of allies – first in men and women (more the latter) who worked in impossible circumstances of low income and insecurity – but who had the guts and energy to try to make a better lives for those around them. And, secondly, in a few officials who realised that if they did not use their position, skills and knowledge to try to make things better, then we would soon hit rock bottom. Mark Moore tried to legitimise the work of such committed officials in his 1995 Public Value book.

It is extraordinary people who make things change – sometimes, of course, for the worse. We have been brainwashed in the past 2 decades to believe that change was always for the better – the default option in the dreadful language. I linked yesterday to a Monbiot article which quoted from an important recent book identifying the psychotic element in so many corporate leaders – which has been a theme since Alaister Mant’s Leaders We Deserve. Malcolm Gladwell shows that even the recently deceased and highly regarded Steve Jobs had many elements of dysfunctionality in his pursuit of perfection.
And psychotic management seems to be in an even healthier state in ex-communist countries – although at least one book has tried to celebrate local heroes willing and able to make a difference.

In 2000, Malcolm Gladwell’s famous book The Tipping Point argued that the attainment of the "tipping point" (that transforms a phenomenon into an influential trend) usually requires the intervention of a number of influential types of people - not just a sinle "leader". On the path toward the tipping point, many trends are ushered into popularity by small groups of individuals that can be classified as Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.
Connectors are individuals who have ties in many different realms and act as conduits between them, helping to engender connections, relationships, and “cross-fertilization” that otherwise might not have ever occurred.
Mavens are people who have a strong compulsion to help other consumers by helping them make informed decisions.
Salesmen are people whose unusual charisma allows them to be extremely persuasive in inducing others to take decisions and change their behaviour.
Hopefully my next post will be able to make proper use of all of these references!!

Partnerships

Delegation is a great thing! Yesterday morning a cameo role at the start of one of the many workshops being held in Bulgaria by the project of which I am (nominal) Team Leader – a one-day one on Private Public Partherships (PPP). All I have to do is to turn up at the odd workshop and check all is going well – and, in the process, I learn a bit about the subject matter in hand. Take yesterday’s. In the 1970s and 1980s we blazed a trail in Glasgow on PPPs with various regeneration projects bringing a variety of public agencies together with community groups and the private sector. I remember speaking at places as far apart as Colorado and Maastricht about what was in the 1980s still an unusual structure and experience. But the term has changed its meaning since then – and, in EC hands, it seems to have become a neo-liberal tool to prepare the ground for the commodification of public services. This is, for the moment, a suspicion on my part – so I limited myself to a comment to the the two Bulgarian trainers and will now do some catch-up reading eg a critical review of a 2004 EC Green Paper on the subject from the
Public Services International Research Unitat Greenwich University which has been doing a good job over the last decade of tracking the privatisation bandwagon.
Another good public admin resource which I have come across is this wiki page created by a graduate student from which you can download quite a lot of useful articles – eg on the concept of „public value” which was flavour of the month a few years back when NPM was apparently going out of favour (emphasis on „apparently”) and even attracted a UK Cabinet paper on the subject.
Political scientist Gerry Stoker probably gives the best assessment
This time last year I was musing on departmental silos.