Following a recent enjoyable lunch with a friend I started
to more clearly understand why many bureaucratic organizations have so many
problems. They generally subscribe
to the “scarcity model,” and don’t handle the management of it well.
The general idea of this model is that there is a limited
size of the whole pie, and therefore, it’s in the best interest of each
department to get the largest piece of the pie as possible. Thus, department heads spend large
amounts of time in political maneuvering to obtain as much pie as possible.
The department’s employees and other stakeholders quickly
jump on the bandwagon. They also
see that their fate is tied to getting more of the pie, so they join in the
maneuvering. This results in such
behavior as “sandbagging” budgets and similar budgetary games. Another similar behavior occurs when
the department’s budget is cut.
The department head often will cut the most publically visible service
so that the public will scream and the budget will be reinstated. That is often why parks are closed,
trash is allowed to rot on the street, or classrooms are filled to
overcapacity.
The solution is relatively simple. The organization must start with mutually agreed upon
mission, vision, and values. The
governing board of the organization must agree on these. Then, each member of the senior
management team must agree on a set of mission, vision, and values statements
that will work for the whole organization. From there, each department has its own set of mutually
agreed upon mission, vision, and values statements.
Just having the statements in place won’t completely solve
the problem. In the collaborative
culture, department heads are the connectors between the departments they run
and the departments of which they are a part. For example, the chief financial officer is probably a
member of the senior management team and also the head of the financial
team. The senior marketing officer
is also on the senior management team and the head of the marketing team.
One of the most important values of the teams has to be that,
when forced to make a tough decision, the team leader must realize that his or
her loyalty to the team of which the person is a member must be greater than
the loyalty to the team or department the person heads. The CFO must go with the decision of
the senior management team even when the decision may adversely affect the
financial team. Likewise, the
senior marketing officer must go along with the decision of the senior
management team even when it will hurt the marketing team.
That does not mean that the department head will, throw the
team under the bus. The department
head will argue with passion for the department, but when consensus is reached,
he or she must go with what is best for the organization.
Scarcity does exist in all organizations. We can’t get around that. But, with this type of thinking, the
organization gets through the scarcity in the manner that best serves the goals
of the total organization and not just that of the department.
