big was not bad

This is now what the area looks like - about one metre of snow at my level - more at higher reaches.

But Revenons aux moutons! Let's pick up the story line

I supported the reorganisation of local government – which, in 1974, not only literally decimated the number of municipalities[1] but created the massive Strathclyde Region[2].

I had gained visibility from the workshops held by my Local Government Unit on the various management, community and structural challenges and changes facing local government – and this, I think, was the main reason I found myself elected as Secretary of the ruling Labour Group[3] of that Region. Even at my young age (32) I was reasonably well-known – with an open, energetic and, perhaps most importantly, non-partisan look to me.
And in the same year, a Labour Government returned to power – and was to remain there until 1979.
In the 12 “shadow” months we had to prepare for our new responsibilities, we set up new-style policy groups to try to produce relevant solutions to the massive socio-economic problems faced by the West of Scotland[4].

Lessons about Leadership
The first elections of 1974 gave Labour a handsome majority in Strathclyde Region - 72 of the 103 seats. And on the first Sunday of May 1974, the newly-elected came together to choose the leadership of what was the largest unit of local government in Europe (with a staff of 100,000 responsible for services for half of Scotland's population: an annual budget of 3 million dollars).
The powers of the new Region had attracted a good calibre of politician - the experienced leadership of the old counties and a good mix of younger, qualified people (despite the obvious full-time nature of the job, we were expected to do it for a daily allowance of about 15 dollars. Clearly the only people who could contemplate that were the retired, the self-employed or those coming from occupations traditionally supportive of civic service - eg railwaymen and educationalists)
With a strong sense of heading into the unknown, a dual leadership was created - with the public persona (the President and Policy Leader) being someone fairly new to politics, a Presbyterian Minister (without a church) who had made his name in "urban ministry" working with the poor. Geoff Shaw inspired great respect - particularly in the world outside normal politics - and brought a new approach. He was determined to have more open and less complacent policy-making: particularly with respect to social inequalities([5]

Appointed as the Leader of the Majority Group (and therefore holding the patronage powers) was an older and politically much more experienced man - an ex-miner. Dick Stewart may not have had the formal education and eloquence of Geoff but he commanded respect (and fear!) amongst both politicians and officials of the Council for his ability to get to the heart of any matter and for his honesty. He readily grasped the key elements in any issue: and would not easily deviate from policy. To persuade him to change, you had to have very strong arguments or forces on your side - and a great deal of patience. This made for policy stability: occasionally frustrating but so much more acceptable than the vacillation and fudge which passes for so much policy-making! Geoff stood for moral direction: Dick for order.

Both had a deep sense of justice: and utter integrity to their principles. And the new political structures unusually adopted for this most unusual of local authorities gave them both an equal share in policy leadership.
The difference in perspectives and styles occasionally caused problems: but both approaches were very much needed in the early years. In some ways one saw the same dynamic in the early years of the Czech Republic - between Havel and Klaus. It raises interesting questions about whether - and how - such dualism could be institutionalised in local government.
Sadly, when in 1978, the Convener died, the tensions led to a rethink of the concept: and all power concentrated in the hands of the Leader.

changing the balance of power
In 1975 I gained some prominence by being one of the contributors to the Red Paper on Scotland edited by Gordon Brown - who was even then being talked about as a future Prime Minister. In that paper[6] I exposed the narrowness of vision of Labour groups controlling then so many Scottish municipalities – and in various lectures to professional associations I challenged the way they treated the public. Ironically, by then, I was part of the leadership of an organisation which managed the largest collection of professionals in the British Isles!
Influenced by John Stewart of INLOGOV, I became a big critic of the committee basis of local government – accusing it of being a legitimiser of officer control. We developed a more independent tool for policy development - member-officer groups. Being of more analytical than political stock and without leadership ambitions, I saw (and learned from close quarters about) various styles of leadership[7] - both political and administrative. These were the years of the “Yes Minister” BBC Programme - which exposed the machinations of civil servants in the British political system and I could see the same processes at work in our large Region. I became an early fan of elected mayors which I saw as redressing the balance of power better toward the electorate. My theory of change in those days was best summed up in the phrase – “pincer-strategy” ie a combination of reformers inside government and pressure from outside might produce change. All this was before the vast literature on change management....

a strategy for reform
I was lucky (to put it mildly) in having a job as lecturer in liberal studies. The Polytechnic had aspirations to Degree work but this required many years of careful preparations and, for 10 years I was required only to arouse the interest of various diploma students in current affairs. I read widely – particularly in public management - but, particularly from 1975, my full-time job was effectively the political one. And the task into which I threw myself was that of dealing with the problems of “multiple deprivation”[8] which had been vividly exposed in a 1973 national report and which our Council accepted as its prime challenge in 1975 and developed in 1978 into a coherent strategy. It was this strategy I reviewed – with the help of 6 major Community Conferences – and reformulated as the Council’s key policy document - Social Strategy for the 80s. I will talk about this in the next instalment.....

We were trying to change both an organisational system and a social condition and were very much feeling our way. Social inclusion has now – 30 years on - developed a huge literature but there was little to guide us in those days. I therefore drafted and published reflective pieces about our work, assumptions and learning in various national journals and books[9] – and was heartened with the invitations I received from other local authorities to speak to them.
The Tavistock Institute[10] also included the Region in a research project on inter-organisational relations and invited me to serve on the steering committee. This encouraged my interest in organisational development. And the dissertation for the policy analysis MSc I took in 1983 was on “organisational learning”. So, in a way, I was already preparing the ground for my subsequent move into consultancy.

[1] Changing a 4 tier system of 650 local authorities to a 2 tier system of 65.
[2] Covering half of Scotland’s population and employing staff of 100,000 (we were the Education, Police and Social Work authority)
[3] A position which allowed me to participate in the informal meetings which would decide key issues ahead of the weekly cabinet meetings. This position was voted in 2 yearly elections of Labour councillors – and I held the position successfully for 18 years by virtue of not belonging to any political clique. There were four of us in various key leadership roles and we were known as “the gang of four” – an allusion to the Chinese leadership of that time!
[4] Helped by the work of the West Central Scotland Planning group – but the publication in 1973 of the national study “Born to Fail?” was the catalyst to action.
[5] See Geoff by Ron Ferguson.
[6] “The Red paper” was seminal in raising radical political and economic issues about Scottish governance. It appeared in the middle of an active political debate about devolution of powers to a Scottish parliament and questions about how the new Regions would fit with a Scottish parliament. The title of my paper - “What sort of Overgovernment?” – was trying to suggest that a more profound issue was how those with power treated the powerless.
[7] Leadership was all the rage in management books – but the best book, for me, remains The Leaders we deserve Alaister Mant (Blackwell 1985).
[8] Now known as “social exclusion”
[9] The first 2 major articles (10,000 words apiece on multiple deprivation and how to tackle it; and second on the different strands of community development!) appeared in Social Work Today in November 1976 and February 1977 - thanks to the perspective of its new editor Des Wilson whose “Cathy come Home” documentary had exposed the scale of homelessness in UK. In both pieces, I showed the importance of “policy framing”. The second paper was subsequently reproduced in the book Readings in Community Development ed Thomas
[10] Influenced by people such as Fred Emery and Trist – and Walter Bion

seminal reading and experiences

Honore Daumier

Smuggler
Watch him when he opens
his bulging words – justice
Fraternity, freedom, internationalism, peace,
Peace, peace. Make it your custom
to pay no heed
to his frank look, his visas, his stamps
and signatures. Make it
your duty to spread out their contents
in a clear light

Nobody with such luggage
has nothing to declare
Norman MacCaig (1966)

So continues the account of my life and lessons - a modern Candide

The 1960s presented – through books, articles and official investigations - a tremendous critique of British society. The most famous book of that era was one by Michael Shanks called “The Stagnant Society” (1961). The title said it all – but it was also official Government Commissions in the late 1960s which concluded that our civil service, local government and industrial relations systems, for example, were not “fit for purpose”[1]. My university degree in political economy, sociology and politics had given me the arrogance of the iconoclast – although reading of people such as Tony Crosland[2] and Karl Popper[3] had made me an incrementalist rather than a hard leftist which was in fashion. I was, however, an avid reader of the New Left Review[4] and active in the Young Socialist movement.

After University, I worked briefly and unhappily in both the private, central and local government and consultancy sectors until I was appointed Lecturer in social studies at a polytechnic in 1968 – the same year I became a Labour councillor – on a town council which the Liberals had recently taken over. The rump Labour group was somewhat demoralised and - as an energetic middle class graduate - I immediately became its Secretary – thereby skipping the normal “apprenticeship” which new boys normally serve.
The student riots of 1968 may have passed – but the literature which was coming from the anti-poverty programmes[5] on both sides of the Atlantic painted an ugly picture of how systems of public administration treated the poor and marginalised. Books such as Future Shock[6], Beyond the Stable State[7]; Dilemmas of Social Reform[8] and Deschooling Society[9] were grist to my mill – sketching out, as they did, the impossibility of the bureaucratic model of organisation continuing. Robert Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” and Saul Alinsky’s work also made a lot of sense to me! The first – written from Austrian experience at the beginning of the 20 century - showed how power corrupts trade unionists and social democrats; the second – from a mid century Chicago base – showed how the powerless could change things.

Management theory was beginning to percolate through to us – but in a rather simplistic way. These were the days when Drucker had it all his own way in the bookshops[10]. Better management – in both the public and private sector - was seen as necessary although initially this was seen to come more from coordinating structures rather than new skills or perspectives.
I was in the system – but not part of it – more a fly on the wall. The title of an early paper I wrote – “From corporate planning to community action”[11] reflected the attempt I was making to ride the 2 horses of internal reform and pressure group politics (always uncomfortable!).

I was beginning to understand how we all play the roles we are given – how the roles are masks we put on (and can take off). A cartoon I had on my wall during university years from the left-wing New Statesman said it very well – it depicted various stern figures of power (judges, generals, headmasters, clergymen etc) and then revealed the very angry and anguished faces beneath.[12].

1970/71 was a seminal year for me. I took on my first serious public responsibilities – becoming chairman of the Social Work Committee for a poor shipbuilding conurbation of 100,000 people. Scottish legislation had just given social work authorities an invitation to “promote social welfare” – and to do so by engaging the public in more strategic work to deal with the conditions which marginalised low-status and stigmatised groups. And the area I had represented since 1968 on the town council certainly had more than its fair share of such people. An early step I took with my new authority was to institute an annual workshop of community groups to identify and help deal with key problems of the town. I find it sad that this approach is still being discovered in Britain as “cutting edge” stuff!

The community groups I worked with were very effective in their various projects concerned with adult education and youth, for example, but one of the most powerful lessons I learned was how much many professionals in the system disliked such community initiatives[13]. It was also quite a shock to realise how suspicious my own Labour colleagues were of the people they were supposed to represent and support - working class people like themselves! Instead they echoed the reservations and criticisms of the officials. One of the things I was learning was the subtle and often implicit ways those with power made sure they kept control – whether in the formality of language used or in the layout of meetings. A national programme set up by the Labour Government (the Community development Programme) was beginning to produce radical critiques which chimed with my experience - although labour politicians (national and local) found this work threatening.

One of the most interesting individuals in the UK trying to help community groups was Tony Gibson[14] - who developed simple planning kits to level the playing field. Suspicious even of the community development work we were doing as part of Social Work, I negotiated Rowntree Foundation support for an independent community action project in one of the areas I represented. At that stage I forged a curious alliance with the Leader of the national Liberal party (Jo Grimond) who was also a Rowntree Trustee and who would faithfully attend the project's Steering Committee meetings in a desolate council flat! At one and the same time I was the Leader of the local social welfare system and also part of a system which was challenging such systems. I immersed myself in the literature on community development and was seen as a bit of a maverick by my labour colleagues.

[1] The Royal Commissions set up by the 1964 Labour Government played an important role -looking at such problematic areas as Civil Service (known as Fulton after the Lord who chaired it – ditto for other Commissions); Local Government (Redcliffe-Maud in England and Wales; Wheatley in Scotland); Broadcasting (Annan); Industrial Relations (Donovan); Local Government Finance (Layfield); Devolution (Kilbrandon) etc[2] The Future of Socialism (1956) and The Conservative Enemy (1962)[3] Although first issued in 1941, it was not until the 1960s that “The Open Society and its enemies” became well known in the UK  [4] www.newleftreview.org
[5]  In UK the more sedate language of “community development” was used.[6] Alvin and Heideh Toffler (1970)[7] Donald Schon (1973). This was the book which followed from the 1970 Reith lecture he delivered on BBC. Along with Gaitskell’s defiant Labour Conference speech (of 1961), this was the most riveting piece of media broadcasting I have ever heard.[8] Marris and Rein (1973)[9] Ivan Illich[10] Now, its a real challenge to recommend best buys for (a) understanding organisations and/or (b) challenging and changing them. But I do attempt this in one of the key papers on my website.[11] In the series of ruminations from my local government work I published under the aegis of the Local Government Research Unit which I established at Paisley College of Technology. The most important of these was a small book in 1977 "The Search for Democracy – a guide to Scottish local government". This was aimed at the general public and written around 43 questions I found people asking about local government.[12] Georg Grosz gave these figures (in Weimar Germany) an even more savage treatment – see http://www.austinkleon.com/2007/12/09/the-drawings-of-george-grosz/
[13] Education, police and leisure were the worst offenders – as is clear from the small book about work in one of the communities - View from the Hill by Sheila McKay and Larry Herman (Local Government Research Unit 1970) See David Korton’s example...page 11 The Great Reckoning (Kumarian Press 2006)[14] People Power

fathers

my father - a painting commissioned from Yuliana Sotirova (who worked only from a black and white photo!)

We are all shaped by our upbringing – family; neighbourhood; and education. My father was a Presbyterian Minister (in a Scottish shipbuilding town) whom I would like to have known better. Last year I found myself discussing the possible establishment of a series of lectures (better perhaps “conversations”) which would celebrate my father’s passions and values. These can be tentatively but not adequately expressed in such words as understanding.. tolerance.. sharing.... service....exploration.... reconciliation.... and also, in pastimes, such as "boats, books, bees and bens".

The discussion involved me drafting the following thoughts - partly in an effort to clarify why I felt my father's memory deserved "resurrection"; partly because I was aware that he represented a world we have lost and should celebrate. And partly, I realise, because I was trying to find out what being Scottish now means to me. Scotland's Minister of Justice suggested - in his defence of his recent, controversial release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber - that there distinctive Scottish values....

Memorials are normally for famous people – but the point about my father is that he had no affectations or ambitions (at least that I knew about!) and was simply “well ken’t” and loved in several distinct communities. It was enough for him to serve one community (Mount Pleasant Church in Greenock for 50 years) and to use his time on earth to try to open up - to a range of very different types of individuals - the richness of other fields of knowledge. So he tutored in ancient languages and history – he was a prison chaplain – he was chairman of Greenock’s McLellan Gallery and Philosophical Society – latterly he was a lecturer on a British circuit about his travels (which included an expedition to Greenland in his sixties!). In all of this, of course, he was quietly supported by my mother - about whom I will write separately.

His well-known passions for books and travel were expressions of his passion for the world. His service as an independent (“moderate”) councillor (and Baillie) on Greenock Town Council equally showed his lack of dogma and his openness. When, in my late teens, I became both an atheist and socialist (offending some of our West-end neighbours) I felt only his quiet pride that I was, in my own way, searching for myself and, in different ways, living up to his values[1].

1. Serving the community – love and professionalism
My father was much respected by people – the support and service he offered to his those in trouble; his modesty; the quiet way he wore his learning. Like many other similar people he received little official recognition. Strathclyde Region’s first Convener, Geoff Shaw, was also a Church of Scotland Minister who struck a chord with so many people in the mid-1970s – coming into politics late from a "community-based" ministry - but then died so tragically early. Just as appreciated – but behind the scenes - was the old miner (Dick Stewart) who actually led the Region politically for its first decade.

They were perhaps the last generation which made Scotland what it is. The last 25 years have celebrated a different – more ambitious and greedy – global ethic.
I noticed a wonderful piece in Scottish Review in 2008 - by Kenneth Roy - about how people like the radical Rev George McLeod influenced the shop steward Jimmy Reid who led the Clyde shipyard sit-ins in the 1970s. We need more of these intellectual vignettes.

The importance of such role models has, of course, been rediscovered recently – and integrated into government strategies. And the importance of communities and service has been stressed incessantly by government agencies for 30 years in Scotland – but perhaps government is now too dominant and impatient a partner?

Like other sons (and daughters) of Scottish Presbyterian Ministers, I threw myself into politics – but this took an unconventional route as my mission was to try to reform what I saw as a centralised system which denied a voice to many people. Community development was the name of the game for me.
I continued my belief in social engineering in the new career I developed from 1990 as an EU adviser to central European and Asian governments as they tried to restructure their systems of government. Very much moving on the periphery - a balancing skill I learned at my parent's West-end house as I cultivated the East end!

There is a lot of talk about the cynicism with politics and politicians – Robert Michels[2] warned more than a hundred years ago of the dangers of professionalization[3]. Perhaps, however, some of the fault lies in the arrogance embodied in the ideology behind the social sciences which came of age as I did in the late 1960s and underpinned the claims not only of the new financial system but of the new public management which was forged here in Britain and has been so assiduously marketed abroad.
Scotland served in the 1990s as an important example to other European countries about community regeneration; its new parliament took up the theme of social inclusion which some of us started 30 years ago; and Strathclyde University is the centre, for example, of a very important network which shares information and best practice relating to the massive EU Structural Funds.
But what does this all really mean for the hopes and dreams of the people a parish Minister or priest deals with? The language in which the business of government (and think tanks) is conducted excludes many people. And there can be no communities without shared language – one of Greenock’s most neglected figures[4] was very eloquent about this. And much policy discussion is conducted without reference to lessons from previous periods or places.
There’s an issue struggling to get out here – I can’t quite define it – “How to act when we are aware of the counter-productivity of good intentions?” “How inject dose of humility into political and administrative class?” “Evil in government[5]?” Various figures – such as Bob Holman and Alaister McIntosh[6] – might be invited to contribute to such a debate.

2. Reconciliation and understanding
My father was one of the first Scottish Ministers in the late 1940s to establish contact with a German Presbytery (Heiligenkirchen; Detmold; Bad Meinberg) and to organise mutual exchanges. The network this created continued until my mother’s death in 2005.
Now such European exchanges are two-a-penny, institutionalised and achieve exactly what? Their equivalents these days would be exchanges with mosques in Bosnia, Iran, Indonesia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan – who’s game?

One of Scotland’s self-acknowledged weaknesses is reflected in the “Wha’s like us!” cry. Of course, we refer with pride to the “Auld Alliance”[7] and the links we established with the European Commission in the 80s as signs that we are better Europeans than our southern neighbours; and a Scottish Parliament and Executive is able to give Scotland a more official range of international contacts. But perhaps they are being used for too selfish and immediate ends? Of course Scotland has become home to various refugee groups – and their support and integration is taken very seriously by statutory and voluntary agencies. But, as a society, have we really embraced and learned from them?

My father was a passionate (and single) traveller – almost in the mould of Patrick Leigh Fermor – certainly in his travels (with camera and in kilt) in the hinterlands of Greece in the 1970s - when he had to update his biblical Greek!. Austria was also a favourite haunt – although more sedately with my mother. Not content with the voyage itself, he wanted to pass on the experience to others and arouse their interest in “others”. And so he photographed – and became active in a national lecture circuit. He passed these passions to me – and was, for example, indirectly, responsible for me being there on the wrong side of East Germany as the Soviet tanks sped to support the building of the Berlin wall in August 1963. And the passion for travel and photography have been passed, in turn, to my daughter Hilary.

The 1990s opened up Central Europe to me – what a shame he was no longer there to share the discoveries with me. I was very taken to discover the role which a Scotsman - Robert Seton-Watson - had played in the early part of the 20th century in creating the 2 countries of Slovakia and Romania which have become particuarly dear to me. My father would also have been fascinated with my seven years in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan – where the Scottish track is not so easy to find. But the UK Ambassador in Tashkent (Craig Murray) was driven to his confrontation with the Foreign Office by Scottish values – and people and songs in poor and mountainous Kyrgyzstan have such strong similarities with Scotland!
But how can travel give such meaning in these very different globalised and ecological times? What can Scotland contribute?

3. Bees, bens and boats
Coming to Greenock (from Kilcreggan and Helensburgh) just before the outbreak of the second World War, it is hardly surprising that my father developed a passion for boats – and, during the war, served on the small naval boats which patrolled the River Clyde and Scotland's west coast. Apparently my birth was announced to him on one of these patrols. And one of my first holiday memories is a small boat he had hired (“The Elspeth”) to take us to places like Tighnabruaich! And the motor-boat which was our life-line for 4 glorious summers in the early 50s between Calve Island in Tobermory Bay and the shops. Colonsay was another site for memorable childhood holidays. Another memory is his tending his bees at the bottom of the manse garden.
My father was not only a keen hill-walker but knew and climbed with some of the early writers about Scottish Mountaineering – such as Bennie Humble. Needless to say, he never had a car.
Now we have writers and books such as Robert McFarlane’s “Mountains of the Mind” which rediscover the meanings behind such passions.

4. Mapping, collecting and sharing-
And of course the McLellan Gallery which my father chaired for how many years! This marking his passion to share the beauty and richness of the world. I noticed the books then – more than the paintings. Now I can appreciate both. I remember a shop in Venice in the early 1980s – which had been making paper for 6 centuries. I stumbled in 1989 on a small print shop in Berlin with a poem celebrating bookmaking (in the non-Greenock sense). To him I owe the love I have developed for visiting European art galleries – particularly the less-well known of Germany and Belgium. Recent examples are encounters in remote Slovak and Bulgarian villages with custodians of amazing collections of paintings – eg Moymirovce and Smolyan – who have no resources for their preservation let alone websites. And the incredible, unknown Uzbek art (bought up now undoubtedly by Moscow (snake) oil tycoons. How does a rich society like Scotland support such work?

5. Fathers
Why do we take so long to appreciate our fathers? When he was alive I found it difficult to communicate with him at any other than a superficial level. That was my fault.

Possible contributors
Apart from those mentioned above, I think of someone like Neil Ascherson who wrote initially about Poland (and tracked the rise and victory of Solidarity). Who knows about the 16th century Scottish community of Gdansk? Ascherson then extended his musings to the fascinating area of the Black Sea (including the influence of the Greeks) and wrote latterly about "The Stones of Scotland".
Christopher Harvie’s contribution as a commentator on Scotland’s history - with his 20 years at Tubingen University and now in the Scottish Assembly.

[1] I will never forget his quiet welcome when I returned home one evening in the early 1960s with Pat Arrowsmith in tow – then one of the most prominent (and female!) practitioner of non-violent demonstrations against the H-bomb.
[2] The Iron Law of Oligarchy
[3] And JP Saul’s Voltaire’s Bastards on the evil of technocracy
[4] The poet WS Graham
[5] Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation is the key reference for this
[6] http://www.alaistermcintosh.com/
[7] Which Scotland had in 17th and 18th centuries with England’s enemy - France

making bureaucracy transparent and accountable

In all the complex discussions about accountability of public systems we sometimes miss the simple examples - which require individual integrity and the stubborness which comes from a belief that one's actions can and will produce results. Today brings such an example. The Scottish Review is a website driven by a retired Scottish journalist - which E-mails you 2-3 articles every 3 times a week (and some gloriously quirky photogarphs of Scotland). A week or so ago he identified a withdrawal from the public domain of the identity of 300 members of a tribunal for mental health and conducted a small campaign - which was today victorious. The names are back on the website.

It confirms my view that it only needs a few determined people to make enough (rational) noise to beat the bureaucrats. The EC Delegation in Macedonia seems to need such treatment. Bids for EC projects are valid for 3 months - and this period expired earlier this week without any news of the results of a project I was interested in there. I had written earlier to its Procurement Supplies Head to ask about progress - pointing out to him that it was normal to know the results within 1 month and that, if we experts observed strictly the 3 months' availability commitment, we would have periods of unemployment of at least one year. I got a reply which indicated they were not interested in this - but only in "obeying rules" (shades of the Nuernberg defence).

When I wrote to him yesterday to tell him that the Delegation was now in breach of those rules; and that I had heard that a cowboy company had won the contract, he replied the very next day. I appreciate this (many would not reply). But the reply included a veiled threat - "I am surprised that you claim to have information on the outcome of the procedure and hope very much that your remark on the assumed winner will not fall back on you (if you happen to be the lucky one) or that another company will not take it too seriously . Otherwise you might face eventual pursuits". Clearly the guy is not used to be spoken to bluntly. That is one of the weaknesses of the bureaucratic status. Maybe Mao had something when he laid down the requirement for work in the fields!

By the way, the reason there are so many postings today is that I am snowed in. Overnight the mountains collected a metre of snow - and it has been snowing all day around the house to about half a metre.

writing to make sense of things

The sublime Mario Zhekov (1898-1955) - only Nicolas Tanev and Z Boyadjiev surpass him in the Bulgarian pantheon. But he is my favourite - and I boast one of his paintings.

God (like Kanter) had 10 Commandments – Stephen Covey identified 7 “habits” of effective people. Osborne has 5 strategies for “banishing bureaucracy”[1]. At the other end of the scale Robert Greene has 48 laws of power and Hood and Jackson identified no fewer than 99 different prescriptions and rationales for better public management[2] which have been used over the centuries - each of which has its equally plausible opposite.
The format of prescriptions is evidently a good one – at the very least in disciplining the thoughts of the writer. But seven-ten prescriptions, however, seem to be as many as people can handle.

I do not know at this stage what do’s and don’ts will emerge from the reflections I'm drafting about the lessons from my work of the past 40 years.

For me writing is not initially about communications – but rather organising thought. I think I know something - but it becomes evident during writing that there are gaps and inconsistencies in my thinking. There’s a very wise saying that, “if you want to learn about a subject, write a book about it”. One of the mistakes I made early on in my life was to think that, if I read enough books, I would absorb knowledge. But first you have the questions.....

Another thing about writing and books is that it is contextual. At University, I initially found it difficult to read Hobbes “Leviathan” but, when I understood more about the times in which it was written, I became more interested. It’s the same for me about poetry – I wish there were more comments from the poets about the context in which they had written these tight, concentrated stanzas.

That is why, in Part I of my "Reflections on 40 years of fighting bureaucracy", I first sketch in the context – not only the particular roles I was playing but the intellectual currents which affected me.
I have identified three key stages[3] – the initial encounter with bureaucracy and politics and the shaping of a reform position (1968-1974); the period of “strategic leadership (1974-1991); and “nomadic consultancy” (1991 - the present).
The focus for the first 2 stages was a combination of “social exclusion” and “managing change” – at a time when these were not the disciplines they have become. I quickly saw how deadly party government was - and, with the help of community workers and their thinking, "went native". Curiously, however, that removed me from the faction fighting which was the essence of the Labour party then - I was seen as belonging to no faction and therefore a good second vote in internal elections to positions of power. For 18 years I therefore triumphed in the bi-ennial elections to the key postion of Group Secretary - and had my pick of positions.

For the last 2 decades, the focus of my work has been more generally that of “building administrative capacity” – of state bodies in “transition countries”. And, again, I was in at the beginning of a venture for which there were not then the writings and tools apparently now available. For example a paper on public sector reform on a website recently established by the EC - http://capacity4dev.ec.europa.eu/concept-paper-public-sector-reform-introduction
Also on the website is a useful paper on capacity development

For each stage, the draft paper on my website describes context and events - and then some lessons are drawn. Generally these are the lessons I felt at the time – as reflected in a piece of writing.
I notice that the text is fairly personal initially – but becomes less so from 1990 when my role changed from being an “insider” to an “outsider”. Although I consider that I have always been a bit of an outsider! I have always been inter-disciplinary – working in no-man’s lands[4], building bridges - but remember vividly the central European joke about bridges – “in peacetime, horses shit on them - and, in war-time, they get blown up!”

Part I uses the language in which the various issues of social exclusion, community development, managing change, capacity building are normally discussed. Part II tries to see the commonalities of these disparate languages. I remember being puzzled in the 1970s by the separate path education and social work people in the UK took to the discovery of the importance of the social process of learning – with two completely different (and rival) disciplines (community work; and community education) being established.

[1] in Banishing Bureaucracy; the five strategies for reinventing government (Addison 1997)
[2] in Administrative Argument (Aldershot 1991)
[3] There are supposed to be seven stages to life! See also Bridges (Transitions) etc
[4] the social scientists in the Tavistock Institute coined the phrase "reticulists" for those of us who straddled the boundaries of party, NGO and academia....

Brecht and Candide

an uzbek painting

One of my favourite poems has been Brecht’s “In Praise of doubt”

Deafened by commends, examined
For his fitness to fight by bearded doctors,
inspected by resplendent creatures with golden insignia,

admonished by solemn clerics who throw at him a book written by God Himself
Instructed by impatient schoolmasters, stands the poor man and is told
That the world is the best of worlds and that the hole
In the roof of his hovel was planned
by God in person
Truly he finds it hard
To doubt the world

There are the thoughtless who never doubt
Their digestion is splendid, their judgement infallible
They don’t believe in the facts,
they believe only in themselves
When it comes to the point
The facts must go by the board. Their patience with themselves
Is boundless. To arguments
They listen with the ear of a police spy.

The thoughtless who never doubt
Meet the thoughtful who never act
They doubt, not in order to come to a decision but
To avoid a decision. Their heads
They use only for shaking. With anxious faces
They warn the crews
of sinking ships that water is dangerous....

You who are a leader
of men, do not forget
That you are that because you doubted other leaders
So allow the led
Their right to doubt

The "best of worlds" reminds one of Voltaire's Candide - or rather the Panglossian philosophy which the book derides. In our post-modernistic hubris, it'seasy to forget that so much of what we think are profound new insights have been said before - and in a better way (see the Eliot quotes in the previous post). Hans Christian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes" remains for me one of the most inspiring stories (about groupthink) - and Tolstoy's fable "Three Questions" about the importance of living in the present. I was amazed to find that theme in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations! Perhaps, instead of drafting my own lessons, I should simply quote from these older texts....??

O lucky man!

An Uzbek graphic

"O Lucky man!" was a left-wing British film of the 1970s with a great theme song by Alan Price. I consider myself a fortunate man – given opportunities to take part in the mysteries of governing at an early age and not succumbing to cynicism. Essentially – I suspect – because I’ve played several professional roles since I left university – 17 years teaching (latterly in urban management) overlapping with 22 years of strategic leadership in first local and then regional government; and, finally, 19 years of consultancy to governments and state bodies of the transition countries of central Europe and central Asia. And, in each of these roles, I’ve faced conundra such as -
- what can government systems realistically do to deal with the huge problem of social exclusion?
- whether a new type of public management can be created which is more sensitive to citizen needs
- the role of external adviser in countries trying to create pluralist systems

Since 1970 I’ve tried to make sense of the challenges I’ve been involved with in various countries by writing about them – relating the various projects to the wider literature in the field – and generally being lucky enough to have the results published. This way I have certain “reality checks” on the way I was seeing and thinking about things along the way.

But we have a saying - “Those who can, do – those who can’t, teach”. And it’s certainly true that leaders of organisations do not make good witnesses about the whys and wherefores of the business they’re in. Most political and business autobiographies are shallow and self-serving. Even with the best of intentions, it seems almost impossible for an active executive to distance himself from the events which (s)he’s been involved in to be able to explain properly events – let alone draw out general lessons which can help others.
And, on the other side, can the teachers actually teach? Academic books and articles about the reform of government have churned from the press in ever larger numbers over the last 50 years. Do they tell a convincing story? More to the point, do they actually help the aspiring reformer? Or do they, rather, confuse him and her – whether by style, length or complexity? Indeed, how many of them are actually written to help the reformer – as distinct from making an academic reputation? And quite a few give the sort of directions an Irishman is famed for giving some tourists who stopped to find the way – “Sure and if were you, I widna start from here!”

what’s the question?
In the first 20 years of my work (in Scotland), my questions related to structures of power in local government – between officials, politicians and community activists. How could we structure better dialogue to produce results for marginalised groups? Some of the answers I felt I had by the mid 1990s can be found at section 6 below. I was, however, fighting against the tide in Thatcher Britain – whose agenda for change was rather more brutal. Truth be told, I had some sympathies for her approach – there was too much complacency in the various professions but she did throw the baby out with the bathwater....I sometime say that I was a political refugee – from Thatcher’s Britain – since she was emasculating the local government system to which I was committed (if ever critical) and I was happy to accept an invitation in 1990 from the Head of WHO (European Public Health) to help WHO try to build constituencies for reform in public health in the newly-liberated countries of central and east Europe.

In the last 20 years, the questions for me have been even more fundamental – how to create a language for reform? I have, since 1991, been living and working in countries where English was a foreign language; and in which there were few shared professional concepts. To those, however, who argued that I could not understand the local context I simply replied that I recognised so well the bureaucratic syndrome from what I had seen and worked through in the West of Scotland in the 1970s. In that sense, my life has been a fight against bureaucracy. My first book was written to throw light on the workings of the new system of Scottish local government in 1976 – it was called “The Search of Democracy”. It’s sad that – 30 years on – people seem still to be looking for it!
For the longer draft, of which this is the opening section, see "key papers" on my website 

snow

Less than 5 months after the last heavy snow, it's back! It's not quite as thick as shown here but this gives an idea of what it will be like within a few weeks here at 1,300 metres.
The weather broke while we were in Sofia - a superb run down from Bucharest on Sunday with the sun blazing down. I thought of giving Sofia a miss and driving another 5 hours to Thassos on the Aegian for swim! We ate in the open air on Sunday evening - and walked happily on Monday - through to after midnight. But during the night, the wind rose and the temperature dropped to zero!! But the drive back was good - sorry to leave Bulgaria which we love so much. Both nights we dined with friends....