Bulgaria flies under the radar

Bulgaria may be a popular holiday destination – for both snow AND sand – but remains a bit of a mystery for Europeans, not least for its Cyrillic language. Its citizens go to the polls today in the third attempt this year the country has made to find a government which can actually govern

Its neighbour, Romania, with whom it joined the EU in 2007 has more of a profile on corruption - but both are laggards on that and judicial reform. Bulgaria has simply managed to fly under everyone’s radar - for reasons perhaps not unconnected with Boyko Borrisov’s cultivation of Angela Merkel and her EPP grouping in his long rule from 2009 to earlier this year. And, perhaps, with Hungary and Poland to worry about and some political scalps to show in Romania, Brussels didn’t want to make any more enemies.

Given the importance the EU has given in the last two years to the Rule of Law Mechanism, its curious that they appointed a Romanian to head the new office of European Prosecutor. Perhaps they felt that Laura Kovesi falling foul of the Romanian government was proof of the effectiveness of her 12-year spell as Romania’s head Prosecutor. She certainly managed to put enough politicians behind bars – something which Bulgaria never managed to do.

But the notorious Securitate remains as strong as ever in the country and it is clear that Kovesi colluded with them to bring down both politicians and judges who did not act in appropriate ways. I wrote about this almost 5 years ago and was somewhat critical of an American report called Fighting Corruption with Con Tricks – Romania’s Assault on the Rule of Law – but had, ultimately, to agree with their criticisms. Both Bulgaria and Romania have dubious reputations with the European Court of Human Rights which has thrown out many of the cases the two countries have brought to them – for failure to observe “due process”. 

So the release into the public domain, in all the languages of the EU, of documentation from governments, Civil Society and the European Commission about the state of the rule of law is a highly welcome development. It certainly lifts the veil on Bulgarian practices – particularly with the release last weekend of the 100 page report Binding the Guardians from Albena Azmanova about the situation in France, Spain and Bulgaria.

And it is the Bulgarian section I want to focus on in the rest of this post – which can be separately read here (only 34 pages). Let me remind you of two things 1.  

The scope of the European Commission’s exploration of the Rule of Law. Four fields are the focus of the Commission investigations:

-       the justice system,

-       the anti-corruption framework,

-       media freedom, and

-       ‘other institutional checks and balances’. 

Azmanova rightly criticises the absence of interest in the operation of the rule of law in the private sector – the analysis being limited to the operations of the public sector. But I was delighted to see that the critical question of the ownership structure of the media is central to the investigations. The power of the corporate media is a scandal to democracy. 

2.   Four tests are suggested by Azmanova for the Commission’s work -

We suggest that, in order to effectively comply with the rule of law while conducting its annual rule of law surveys, the Commission needs to be guided by (at least) four norms:

·       clarity of communication,

·       thoroughness in addressing rule of law violations (that is, in the full range and depth of detail),

·       equal treatment of the subjects of power, and

·       impartiality in the use of power (in the sense of not having a narrow partisan-political agenda). 

Obscurity is a fertile ground for arbitrariness, omissions tacitly condone what is omitted, favoritism disempowers some, and partisan-political considerations harm the common good.

These excerpts give a reasonable sense of the report 

The overarching problem is that political forces in Bulgaria  are using the justice system, including reforms purportedly aiming at fighting corruption, to complete the state capture by the oligarchic mafia. A Specialised Prosecution, a Specialised Appeals Court, and the Anticorruption Commission have recently been set up - with an attendant ’specialised’ committee dealing with a pre-trial confiscation of property in cases of suspected corruption (the Counter-Corruption and Unlawfully Acquired Assets Forfeiture Commission). These have been set up via ‘extraordinary’ legislation by Parliament. In their area of competence, these courts have enhanced powers that lie outside of the normal legal system. As Evgenni Dainov noted in a 2018 letter to Justice Commissioner Vĕra Jourová, those implicated within the system of specialised courts do not have recourse to the normal institutions of law and order and thus suffer from lack of "due process" (Dainov 2018).

As of December 2018, new legislation specifically allows the Confiscation Commission to hold on to confiscated property - even after a court declares the person innocent. Several case-studies are given in Azmanova’s report - one bringing to light the logic at work in fighting graft and corruption in Bulgaria: the victims of corruption are punished while the perpetrators, usually well-connected political figures, run free.  

Lozan Panov, the President of the Supreme Court of Cassation, says that “the rule of law and the division of powers are highly compromised and key state institutions have been captured by private interests [...] At the same time real corruption remains unchecked and pervasive. Those who are independent from power are under constant attack. Lists of ‘enemies’ and ‘traitors’ are published in newspapers. Xenophobia and hatred have become a government policy” 

The 2020 EC Report, in its commentary on the anti-corruption framework, mentions “the complex and formalistic Bulgarian system of criminal procedural law has been highlighted by different reports and analyses over the years as an obstacle to the effective investigation and prosecution of high-level corruption” — but refrains from addressing the arbitrary power of the specialized prosecution system. 

The politicisation of the judiciary in Bulgaria is endemic and pervasive. Appointments are commonly based on personal relationships and deals rather than professional merit and application of established procedures.

The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) is responsible for the appointment and promotion of all magistrates (investigators, prosecutors and judges) as well as for monitoring their ethics. A Constitutional reform in 2015 introduced a system of appointments to this body that invites political influence over the judiciary. Thus, eleven of the SJC’s twenty-five members are directly elected by Bulgaria’s Parliament—appointments conducive to political influence. Moreover, the four prosecutors and one investigator who are elected to the SJC are direct subordinates of the Prosecutor General, who is an automatic member of the SJC. This is problematic because all prosecutors are under the direct control of the Prosecutor General, while the Prosecution is strongly influenced by the executive 

The European Commission comments on the deficient independence of the SJC by noting that

·       The overall number of judges elected by their peers does not amount to a majority;

·       the Prosecutor General plays a decisive role in the Prosecutor’s chamber as well as an influence on the plenary and potentially the Judges’ chamber;

·       the “overall structure of the SJC would limit its ability to safeguard judicial independence against pressure by the executive, the legislative, the judiciary, including the office of the PG”;

·       The lack of judicial independence is evidenced by the number of judges subject to attacks and criticism on their rulings (2020: 6-7). 

However, deprived of proper diagnosis, and with a congratulatory reference to the Constitutional reform of 2015 which in fact deepened the SJC’s dependence on political forces, the Report treats the issue only superficially, as a matter of incidents, rather than as a systemic problem. 

Some of the structural issues within the SJC are acknowledged in the Report, but they are framed in a way to convey the government’s commitment to reforms and create the impression of progress amidst a reality of ‘backsliding’—that is, of deliberate and systematic assault on the rule of law by the dominant political forces in Bulgaria. The incidents we reviewed above, however, and which had been communicated to the Commission by external stakeholders are not referenced; neither is criticism included on the amendments to the Constitution of Bulgaria in 2015 which have been contested as having effectively decreased the independence of the SJC (Venice Commission 2015).

Thus, while the Report effectively addresses some of the problems and refers to Council of Europe recommendations, the criticism is framed in terms of incomplete reforms and lack of sufficient resources, not as a lack of political will to undertake the requested reforms.

Legal expert Radosveta Vassileva also points out that the Reports omit several spending scandals that have occurred within the office. Bulgaria has a long troublesome track record of losing cases before the ECHR because of severe violations by the Prosecutor’s Office and this has also been omitted in the Report

 update;  https://verfassungsblog.de/impunity/

Why the Rule of Law is fundamental

We used to take the Rule of Law for granted in Britain – although we were aware that it was a privilege unknown to billions of people throughout the world. Gradually, however, we have been disabused of the trust that we had previously put in our legal and judicial system and in the police – let alone our political class and “the fourth estate”.

That’s why I chose to lead, in what is becoming another mini-series, with the post about the latest UK “sleaze” in a government for whom corruption has become nothing short of systemic. If the UK were still a member of the European Union, it would now be in danger of being named and shamed in the same breath as Hungary and Poland to which the previous post briefly referred - and whose transgressions are well summarised by the Commission in its latest (32 pages) report on Hungary and then its 2021 report on Poland (38 pages)

 I had mentioned an excellent report - Binding the Guardians - commissioned by an Irish member of the Left grouping in the European Parliament which gives fascinating case studies of three member countries – France, Spain and Bulgaria. The French judicial system is ultimately controlled by the Executive – which is inconsistent with the separation of powers; is hugely underfunded; and terrorist incidents have given the French State latitude to increase its powers to a worrying extent.

The MEP’s report is authored by Albena Azmanova who was initially educated in Bulgaria – and suggests 4 useful tests to use in the assessment of the quality and scope of the European Commission’s analysis; applies these tests to the Commission commentary; and finds the following problems

·       A dangerous conflation of “rule of Law” with aspects of procedural democracy

·       Vague, overly-diplomatic language

·       Restricted focus - The Commission report delimits its range to four areas: the justice system, the anti-corruption framework, media freedom, and ‘other institutional checks and balances’.

·       Failing to include the operations of the private sector 

A Blurred conceptualisation; In the 2020 Report, the Commission stipulates that all public powers should not only act within the constraints set by law but also in accordance with democracy and fundamental rights, and defines legality as implying a democratic process for enacting laws. The fallacy of conditioning rule of law on democracy is present explicitly even in some of the constitutions of EU member-states – something the Commission as guardian of the rule of law should be criticizing rather than condoning.

Thus, the preamble of the Spanish Constitution registers a commitment to “consolidate a State of Law which ensures the rule of law as the expression of the popular will” (emphasis added). Thus, the rule of law is reduced to legal provisions of democratic origin. This grave conceptual fallacy in the codification of the rule of law has already had nefarious political consequences. Thus, when trying to suspend the Catalan Independence referendum of 2017 with police violence (which was condemned by Human Rights Watch), Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy justified his actions as a matter of defending the law (namely, the Constitutional provision stipulating the “indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation”) itself an expression of the will of the Spanish people. The European Commission at the time openly endorsed this 

As an aficionado of good clear English, I very much appreciated the way Azmanova dealt with the second issue – 

Vague/diplomatic language; while the authority of the Commission is based in its non-political nature and administrative professionalism, it tends to use diplomatic language in which criticism is delivered through euphemisms and understatements. Typically, it speaks about ‘weaknesses’ and ‘needed improvements’ to refer to grave problems.

This vagueness diffuses both the responsibility of the perpetrators and that of the Commission. Thus, in its chapter on Bulgaria, the Commission writes that a “lack of transparency of media ownership is considered as a source of concern”, and “Bulgaria’s regulatory process is considered to be lacking predictability and stability due to frequent changes of the legislation.” Who considers this to be of concern? Does the Commission judge that this is a rule of law breach? The wording leaves doubts about the Commission’s stance.

To help address this, as a minimum, a clarification of the difference between violations of the law and violations of the rule of law should be offered. As we noted earlier, threats to the rule of law emerge not when the law is violated, but when breaking the law is not punished, when the sanction is not uniform, and when there is no legal and institutional framework to enable that inequities be challenged and corrected. As the Report fails to draw this distinction, it covers an indiscriminate selection of issues: from violations of the law to flawed accountability mechanisms. On the one hand, making this distinction explicit would help dispel a common misperception—that any violation of the law is a rule of law violation—especially if this monitoring mechanism is to play an educational role. 

The final two issues can really be rolled into one 

Restricted focus of the Commission report; The Report delimits its range to four areas: the justice system, the anti-corruption framework, media freedom, and ‘other institutional checks and balances’. Of course, the Commission is right to exercise its discretion in delimiting the range of the Report. However, to avoid arbitrariness in making such a decision, logical argumentation needs to be offered in justifying this choice—none is given. The Commission’s failure to offer either a thorough or well-justified selection of rule of law violations, is evidence in the following features of the Report

The Commission has chosen, without explicit justification, not to address in a systematic way “accountability mechanisms for law enforcement, the role and independence of public service media, as well as measures taken to ensure that public authorities effectively implement the law and to prevent abuse of administrative powers.” (p.5, ft20). It also states that “the country chapters do not purport to give an exhaustive description of all relevant elements of the rule of law situation in Member States but to present significant developments” (p.5).

This is already problematic, as no criterion is offered for how the significance of the chosen developments is established. The Commission thus grants itself an undefined (arbitrary) mandate that enables an arbitrary use of its power. 

Letting the Private Sector off the hook; The definition of the rule of law in the Report correctly places an emphasis on the abuse of power but unfortunately it unduly restricts this to public authority (“Under the rule of law, all public powers always act within the constraints set out by law” -p.1) While concerns with rule of law indeed originated in efforts to constrain the arbitrary power of central governments, threats to the rule of law nowadays come also from powerful economic actors. This is why the Venice Commission uses in its Rule of law checklist a more expansive language: “everyone has the right to be treated by all decision-makers with dignity” (#15), noting that “individual human rights are affected not only by the authorities of the State, but also by hybrid (state-private) actors and private entities” (#16).

Thus, the Venice Commission updates the rule of law conception to the realities of the 21st century by stating that “all persons and authorities within the State, whether public or private, should be bound by and entitled to the benefit of the rule of law” (#17) (Venice Commission 2016). 

I haven’t finished! Future posts will put the European discussions in the wider context of a revival of global interest in the issue of the Rule of Law

Challenge to Rule of Law in Europe

2004 saw 10 new member countries admitted to the European Union. Just 2 countries were judged not sufficiently ready – Bulgaria and Romania – on grounds of their levels of corruption and judicial incapacity. They were both eventually admitted to the EU on 1^st January 2007 – but, uniquely, subjected to an annual inspection through a new procedure called the Cooperation and Verification mechanism (CVM).

Coincidentally, these are the 2 countries in which I have lived since 2007 – indeed I had no sooner returned to Romania from an 8 year stint in Central Asia than I took up a position as Team Leader in Sofia in a project for training regional and local officials to ensure the country’s compliance with EU legislation.   

Schengen and the Euro give Bulgaria and Romania additional reasons for feeling the smack of second-class citizenship – particularly because after more than a decade they have not managed to satisfy the taskmasters in Brussels on judicial reform. The requirement for annual reports on judicial aspects and corruption continued until 2019 when it was replaced by the Rule of Law Mechanism (RLM) which necessitates an annual report to be submitted to the Commission by each and every member country.

Bulgaria and Romania had by then become the least of the EU’s concerns - Hungary and Poland had quickly instituted significant departures from the rule of law – packing courts with political appointees, severely limiting media freedom and making political use of European Funds. And some older member countries such as France and Spain were considered to have questionable aspects to their judicial and constitutional systems 

Much of this had passed me by – what caught my attention at the weekend was the release of a critical report commissioned by an Irish MEP Clare Daley on the 2021 assessment by the European Commission - which engages in a dialogue with member countries about their submissions.

Her report – called Binding the Guardians – is just over 100 pages long and was written by a well-known political economist Albena Azmanova who basically analyses how well the European Commission is fulfilling the task of holding member countries to account for their observation of the Rule of Law. It starts, brilliantly, by suggesting four tests for the Commission’s work - 

We suggest that, in order to effectively comply with the rule of law while conducting its annual rule of law surveys, the Commission needs to be guided by (at least) four norms:

·       clarity of communication,

·       thoroughness in addressing rule of law violations (that is, in the full range and depth of detail),

·       equal treatment of the subjects of power, and

·       impartiality in the use of power (in the sense of not having a narrow partisan-political agenda).

Obscurity is a fertile ground for arbitrariness, omissions tacitly condone what is omitted, favoritism disempowers some, and partisan-political considerations harm the common good.

Azmanova then applies these tests to the Commission commentary and finds the following problems

·       A dangerous conflation of “rule of Law” with aspects of procedural democracy

·       Vague, overly-diplomatic language

·       Restricted focus - The Commission report delimits its range to four areas: the justice system, the anti-corruption framework, media freedom, and ‘other institutional checks and balances’.

·       Failing to include the operations of the private sector 

At this stage, I’m conscious that I recently took a vow of brevity and that I am about to share excerpts from the report which will double the size of this post…..so having tantalised you with the summary, I’ll continue shortly

Rule of Law under attack

One thing I know – ALL POWER CORRUPTS. I know that because I was a senior politician for 22 years and could feel and see its effects on both myself and my colleagues. And that was the 1970s when - despite the swirling doubts - idealism was still in play, understood and respected.

But power brings yes-men, groupthink and conceit. Politicians have generally been well-intentioned and, by nature, seek applause. Criticism they will attribute to malevolence – journalists are written off as purveyors of gossip who are too cynical to appreciate the good intentions of the policy-makers. Sadly, however, those with power make little attempt to run their policy ideas through critical testing - unless they are in a political system which forces them to seek consensus – such as Germany and, increasingly, mainland Europe with their coalition government.   

But the negotiation which is central to the political system of many European countries is actually a dirty word in England. Britain, like the US, has chosen an adversarial two-party system – in the belief that this can better smoke out the truth. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth – with groupthink being strongly evident in both countries. A senior Conservative Minister indeed once argued in an important lecture (in the 1970s) that the UK was “an elective dictatorship”. And that was in an era when the civil service still functioned to challenge simplistic policy ideas - nowadays the echo-chamber of political advisers has replaced neutral civil servants. One prominent political commentator put it very aptly - this Prime Minister is so weak that he has surrounded himself with  "courtiers"

The absence of a constitution is certainly a curious feature in the modern age – and british citizens were stunned to learn in 2019 that their Prime Minister apparently had the power to send parliament packing when he found it troublesome. Only an appeal to the country’s new Supreme Court by a citizen saved parliament’s skin – but a supine press which had branded such judges as “enemies of the state” gives the government full scope to rein in such judicial cheek. 

I had actually wanted to write about a great paper which was commissioned by an Irish member of the European Parliament about the rule of law in European countries (which now excludes the UK) - but find myself sidetracked by the scandal which has blown up this week by Boris Johnson’s typically ham-fisted attempt to protect one of his parliamentary friends from scrutiny.

The details are boring – what it boils down to is that not only was a British PM prepared to throw out an agreed system of scrutiny and bring in a new one simply to protect a friend but that he actually required his conservative MPs (at 24 hours’ notice) to vote that way. With some protests 250 obeyed him – an honourable few refused. When all opposition parties refused to participate in the new system, Johnson backed down. You can imagine how many of those 250 now feel about themselves....They have been made to look craven lapdogs. This was a good article on the debacle – just the latest of a long line of stupidities from the British government 

There is an Arabic expression that warns against the perils of an abundance of wealth: “Loose money teaches theft.” Britain has the dubious honour of being the home of the loose money of the global rich, facilitating its movement through secret offshore companies, setting up entirely legal means to profit from these opaque transactions. 

Taking liberties in office tends to work the same way. Loose power teaches corruption, which in turn happens through technically above-board means. That loose power broadly requires three further conditions to trigger misconduct –

·       a craven or cowed press,

·       a lack of what is seen as a viable political alternative and

·       a large section of the public made quiescent, either through apathy or tribalism. 

Sound familiar? Welcome to the global community of those living under corrupt governance. The good news is that you are not alone. The bad news is that, once corruption starts to set in, it becomes very hard to reverse. It becomes (this will also sound familiar to you), “priced in” to people’s expectations of the political class, even institutionalised. 

People in those other countries – the ones you more easily associate with corruption than your own – will explain the subtle evolution: what was before a furtive cash bribe that you needed to pay for a government stamp becomes an official fee that you are handed a nice crisp receipt for. What was before an outrageous grab of power from a democratically elected government becomes a legal process blessed by an election, perhaps one even overseen by international observers. The unprincipled will not be shunned but enriched and honoured. 

The press will contradict what you have seen with your own eyes. Conspiracy theories will begin to flourish because everyone is in the business of making up narratives, so the truth becomes a matter of spinning and selling the most convincing lie. Ministers might even, after attempting to rig a regulatory system in their favour, tell you that their government is trying to “restore a degree of integrity and probity in public life”. It will begin to exhaust your sense of outrage and warp your sense of right and wrong.

Eventually what will begin to settle is a sense that you as an individual have no control, no matter how many freedoms – voting, protesting – you feel you can exercise. Those rights will feel like levers that aren’t connected to anything. And so you give up. The main political emotion I grew up with in the Middle East and north Africa was not that of suffering oppression, but of jaundice – a sort of cultivated cynicism that protected us against the despair of life under regimes that stole from us and then remade the rules in their favour. 

I have felt this creeping up on me in the UK. It is an impulse that I recognise in the continuing support for the Conservatives, or the tepid resistance to them despite their proven malpractice, their endless scandals, their failure to deliver on what were once considered basic criteria for governments: that the state does everything it can to protect its citizens’ lives in a pandemic, and that most people’s material circumstances get better with time.  

Once the state withdraws from that role of honest broker and facilitator, the result is a fatalism: we must carry on and make do with what we have. 

I will return in the next post to the European aspects of the attack on the rule of law

Cultivating Change

Hanno Burmester is an interesting young German, a disappointed activist in the mainstream SDP before working at his own organisational consultancy for almost a decade, who has now produced a little book which argues that we need a “triple transformation” – in ourselves, in our organisations and in our social systems.

Nothing if not ambitious! But the scale of the global crises we face requires nothing less 

The book has an intriguing title - “Unlearn – a compass for radical transformation”. Whenever I’m enticed by a book’s title or marketing I resort to some annoying questions – for starters, does the author take the trouble in the Introduction to try to persuade me that the book deserves my precious time?

His answer is short and clear – few books deal with all three levels. Go into any bookshop and you will be directed to three different parts of the bookshop – self-help, business studies and politics/social change. 

A second question I pose involves the reader going to the back of the book to find the “further reading” which, ideally, should explain why the author has selected the various titles. I need this to give me a sense of the author’s view of the world. In this case, I was simply given a list of a dozen books – half of which I knew but the other half not. They are –      

Tomas Bjorkman The World We Create 2019

Fridjof Capra The systems view of life 2014

Lizabeth Cohen A Consumer’s Republic 2003

Andre Gorz Farewell to the Working Class 1980

Amitav Gosh The Great Derangement 2017

Robert Kegan In Over our Heads – the mental demands of modern life 1995

Naomi Klein This Changes Everything 2015

Frederic Laloux Reinventing Organisations 2016

Jonathan Rowson Spiritualise 2014

Otto Scharmer Theory U 2007

Roberto Unger Democracy Realised 2000 

I very much appreciated that the list puts the anglo-saxons firmly in our place!

You would have thought that, when an author is dealing with three intertwined issues of such magnitude, he would need three times the text to conduct the argument ie a book of about 750 pages. But this one comes in at 135 pages!!

Surely a lot has been sacrificed? 

But perhaps that just reveals my age! My generation was the rationalistic one – and expected things to be proven – by detailed argument. HB is more generous and..well…spiritual and rests more on appeal to values – and stories. He’s pretty strong on self-analysis and, in his comments on organisations, I can hear the voices of Frederic Laloux and David Graeber. His final section on social transformation, however, does perhaps rely too much on the collapse of will of communist regimes in 1989-92. 

His basic argument is that there is a “core self” which warns us when we are going against our nature and that we should listen to it. As individuals, organisation and societies we are too comfortable with the status quo and ignore the multiple signs of stress around us – be it depression, suicide, protest. His section on “things that hold us down” makes some good points.

And the point of his title is that we all – at whatever level – need to prepare properly for what is involved as we make the necessary adjustments to our values and behaviour 

But he doesn’t seem to recognise the strength of the effort which the corporate system is putting into the fight to maintain its privileges.

And – if this is a compass – then I would have wished him to attach a few more pointers and resources to help us on his journey. 

But I enjoyed the book – it is engaging and well-written/translated.

More importantly it made me think – and scribble notes to myself – always a tribute to a good read. For example I could see the link to older material such as Building the bridge as you walk on it (2004) by Robert Quinn about whom I have written several times here. And the triple transformation is also a theme which crops up in Robin Skynner and John Cleese’s Life – and how to survive it (1993) where a therapist and leading British comic 

have a Socratic dialogue about the initial stages of everyone’s development – as babies weaning ourselves from our mothers, learning about the wider environment and coping with our feelings. They then use this understanding of the principles of healthy (family) relationships to explore the preconditions for healthy organisations and societies 

But any reference to such texts would have made the text much longer – and the beauty of the book is its brevity!

Update; I'm remiss in forgetting to thank The Alternative website for alerting me to the book and they also have a feature on Tomas Bjorkman who is the first of the authors on Burmester’s short reading list

Know Thyself

The last post was a bit of a confessional one – which still managed to conceal something. What I was really trying to get off my chest was that I have to recognise that I have always been a bit “distant” in my relations with others. Indeed, as a young politician who was quickly given responsibilities, I was seen as a bit arrogant – when that was the last thing I actually felt. It was rather a defence mechanism. Ernest Schumacher (author of "Small is Beautiful" put our usual approach into superb perspective in 1973 when he wrote - 

"There are four sorts of worthwhile learning

· learning about things
- learning about oneself
· learning how others see us
· learning how we see others"

I was slow to learn about myself – let alone the other dimensions. Despite undergoing some sessions of psychotherapy in the late 1980s, I was too much of a “word merchant” to allow mere words to get inside my brain and challenge my being. 

It’s only recently I’ve been willing to be open about that experience all of 30 plus years ago which, at the time, it wasn’t possible to discuss. Philip Toynbee was one of the rare people who had actually written about it – I learned later that Winston Churchill used the euphemism of “black dog” to refer to his episodes. And about the only popular book about the subject was Dorothy Rowe’s Depression – a way out of your prison (1983)

How times have changed – with credit being due to characters such as Stephen Fry and Alasdair Campbell who were amongst the first to go public and to encourage others to be open about a condition which touches most of us at some time in our lives. 

One of my favourite books is Robin Skynner and John Cleese’s Life – and how to survive it (1993) A therapist and leading British comic have a Socratic dialogue about the initial stages of everyone’s development – as babies weaning ourselves from our mothers, learning about the wider environment and coping with our feelings. The understanding the principles of healthy (family) relationships and then use these to explore the preconditions for healthy organisations and societies: and for leadership viz -
- valuing and respecting others
- ability to communicate
- willingness to wield authority firmly but always for the general welfare and with as much consultation as possible while handing power back when the crisis is over)
- capacity to face reality squarely
- flexibility and willingness to change
- belief in values above and beyond the personal or considerations of party.

It took a massive change of role and circumstances before I came across an early edition of “A Manager’s Guide to Self-Development” by Mike Pedler et al which made me aware of a range of self-evaluation tools such as the Belbin Test of team roles which you can try out on yourself here. When I did it for the first time with my team of the moment, it was quite a revelation. I had assumed that I was a “leader”. What I discovered was that I was a “resource person” ie good at networking and sharing information – which was exactly right. 

Harrison and Bramson’s The Art of Thinking (1982) was also a revelation for me - indicating that people have very different ways of approaching problems and that we will operate better in teams if we understand (a) what our own style is and (b) that others think in different ways. The authors suggest we have 5 styles – “synthetist”, “pragmatist”, “idealist”, “realist” and “analyst” and, of course, combinations thereof. I regret now that I was such a late learner - the question I now have is how people can avoid my fate. Is it enough that there are so many books around for people to stumble on? Or should it now be an integral part of undergraduate work? Perhaps it is?

My fellow blogger Dave Pollard has these questions to ask ourselves

Mea Culpa

OK – message received! Readership figures have this month plummeted – despite posts continuing to come in every second day or so. I admit that too many are on the long side. So I will (try to) take a vow of BREVITY. After all, the blog is 12 years old – surely I’ve said most of what I need to? Except it’s not as simple as that – most blogs have a specialist focus, be it economic, political, sociological or cultural and apply that lens to the latest fashion of the day. This blog celebrates the butterfly approach viz it depends on what what catches my fancy – generally a book or article, sometimes an incident, painting or piece of music. And I like to offer excerpts from the books and articles I feel positive about – as distinct from offering opinions. 

It’s time clearly for another of these stock-takings about the blog. When it started – in 2009 – it set out three aims -    

·       “This blog will try to make sense of the organisational endeavours I've been involved in; to see if there are any lessons which can be passed on; to restore a bit of institutional memory and social history (let alone hope).

·       I read a lot and want to pass on the results of this to those who have neither the time nor inclination to read widely.

·       A final motive for the blog is more complicated - and has to do with life and family. What have we done with our life? What is important to us?” 

The first two objectives are still important. After 12 years, it’s fairly obvious from the unfinished nature of my books on administrative reform (“Change for the Better?”) and on social change (“What is to be Done?”) that there’s still work to be done – although I often feel I’m just going round in circles.

And I’m still finding fascinating books and continue to have this urge to share relevant insights with posterity. But I should probably stop imposing these rather forbidding reading lists.

But I have to recognise that the blog has been weak on the final purpose. Indeed a friend once queried the absence of the personal touch – feeling that the tone was too clinical and aseptic. And it’s certainly fair comment that the blog is a bit “scholastic”. A couple of other friends have indeed called me a “scholar” – which I used to take as a compliment. But perhaps they meant “bloodless!?

As I move through my “autumn days” and feel the approach of winter, the “settling of final accounts” (in the spiritual sense) should, certainly, loom larger. Charles Handy is a real inspiration here – someone constantly challenging himself and making fresh choices every decade or so about where to put the energies and skills he’s been endowed with. One of my favourite fellow-bloggers is Canadian Dave Pollard - a few years younger than me - who is constantly offering valuable insights from his life experience. A lot of this touches on inter-personal relations – one of my weak areas. In that spirit let me apply the Johari Window 

	strong                               Known to me                            weak
Strong     Known to others     Weak	Open   “The Arena”	Blind   The “blind corner”
	Hidden  “The Façade”	Unknown

 Our public self is something we try to control – but rarely succeed at. People notice things about us which we ourselves are not necessarily aware of (our blind corners). Friends should be helpful here – but we often resent critical comment and they soon learn to shut up… 

For 20 years I had a nomadic life – living in some ten different countries – generally leader of teams in which I would make a few new friends. Both the contexts and my particular role were very different from those in which I had spent the previous 20 years. But I was very aware of this – even so, it took me almost a decade before I was fully up to speed and confident that my skills were producing results. Those skills were broadly the same mix of political and scholastic I had used in my previous life - but the context was so very different. And my new skill was being sensitive to that and making the appropriate adjustments to the tools I used. 

As a Team Leader, I had, of course, to be sensitive to the strengths and weaknesses of the members of the team – but it’s almost impossible to shake off one’s cultural assumptions and I carried the baggage then of a Brit still proud of what our democratic tradition had given the world (!!!). It's only perhaps in the past decade in Bulgaria and Romania I've really deepened my understanding of cultural contexts - and am still learning..... 

I write in English – but literally a handful of Brits read the blog. Americans are its biggest fans making up 30% of readers (for which many thanks!!) - with Russians, curiously, coming in next at 15% and no other country having more than 5%. But the scale of non-English readership is an additional argument for making the posts shorter. 

And because I have the time to read widely; live on Europe’s edge; and have been out of my home country for more than 30 years, I have perhaps developed a bit of the outsider’s perspective….But I remain painfully aware of my shortcomings in the inter-personal field - I learned so much when I first did the Belbin test.... 

Comment; This is supposed to be a shorter post???? Will I never learn????   

Charles Handy's Inside Organisations - 21 ideas for managers includes the Johari window as one of the ideas. It's a delightful and easy read which I strongly recommend