The debate around centralisation / decentralisation can never be fully resolved. Both have benefits and costs. Often the costs from disruption, especially in the short-term far outweigh any benefits. The same is true of mergers.

But usually those who propose these restructures, mergers etc are not so much interested in the actual outcomes as the proposed outcomes. Boards like to suggest that there will be big savings (increases in shareholder value) from mergers which will result from ‘operational efficiencies’.

Now the moribund and outrageously incompetent Rees NSW Government is about to play the ‘proposed outcomes’ card in its desperate effort to come up with a credible Budget document:

A CHAINSAW is hanging over the NSW public sector with the State Government considering a plan to cut government agencies from 102 to 12.

Oh yes a ‘chainsaw- – makes it sound like there are a lot of savings on offer from this ‘historic’ restructure. Be sceptical, we’ve heard it all before.

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Read more ….

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Another reason why you should stress about your corporate culture.

When I was a “senior executive” in Canberra in the early nineties the go was leadership, team-building and myers-briggs test. I once had a week on this stuff in a motel in the southern highlands. Nice work if you can get it. I found it to be completely useless because there was no attempt to implement the ideas systematically in the Department. Just a caution on the phrase “senior executive” even though my designation was senior executive service band 1 there was still many layers of management above me. 

Anyway, Martin Seligman, this American self-help book author and founder of the positive psychology movement that Gillard’s department imported to cheer them all up, is also the originator of the idea of ‘learned helplessness’:

Seligman developed the theory further, finding learned helplessness to be a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to act or behave helplessly in a particular situation – usually after experiencing some inability to avoid an adverse situation – even when it actually has the power to change its unpleasant or even harmful circumstance. Seligman saw a similarity with severely depressed patients, and argued that clinical depression and related mental illnesses result in part from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation 

This all seems to be particularly relevant to the public service I knew. Many of the public servants I worked with knew, or perceived, that their role in life was to get blamed for anything that went wrong. They were into risk adverse behaviour and when things went wrong they just sort of accepted the blame and moved on. Naturally, this did not make for a cheerful work environment. And it was widely acknowledged. I can remember SES conferences in places like Mollymook where there was always a kind of gallows humour about the public service blame culture.

The point is that it wasn’t the individuals that had the problem. It was the system and it was management. Money was spent on leadership, team building and being creative all of which was constantly undermined by senior managers shifting the blame around so they didn’t get left holding the parcel labeled ‘responsible’ when the music stopped. 

Bringing out americans to teach you to be optimistic won’t matter a jot if your work situation is crap and if you can’t change it and you’re stuck there for life. That’s enough to depress anyone and no amount of fancy psychologising is going to change that. 

Since that time whenever I hear about managers training staff on leadership (or god forbid happiness) or anything else I know that there’s a problem and it’s at the top of the organisation not the middle or bottom.

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Kathie Muir, “Worth Fighting For: Inside the your rights at work campaign”, UNSW Press, 2008.

There were two campaigns against the Howard Government in the run-up to the last election: the ALP campaign and the ACTU campaign.

These books complement each other insomuch as they provide ‘insider’ accounts of these interlocking but in many ways separate and differing campaigns. Much of the content of each book is based on interviews with participants and both books suffer a bit from being captured by the people their authors interviewed.

Muir, a former union official now an academic, is unabashedly a fan of the union movement and of the Your Rights at Work campaign. In the preface she describes her approach as ’standpoint research’ or ‘engaged journalism’ but nevertheless independent and critical. Although her book is easy to read (’accessible’ in publisher jargon) and a valuable source for anyone interested in contemporary political campaigning, it falls well short of its claim to be a critical assessment.

Muir pretty much always goes with the inflated claims for the campaign made by her union informants from senior ACTU level all they way to grassroots activists. In addition, Muir’s chapter on the Government’s campaign is noticeably weak, reflecting perhaps a lack of access to the other side of politics. 

Christine Jackman, a News Limited journalist, provides a much racier account. She brings a novelistic flavour to the exercise which unfortunately rarely rises above the “It was a dark and stormy night” variety. There are descriptions of one ALP official ‘pacing the grimy streets of inner-city Sydney at dawn’ and so on.

In some ways, these books provide very different world views. Muir’s account is full of touching accounts of the ennobling effects on ordinary people of their participation (often after life-long political passivity) in a great and historic campaign. In Muir’s universe, there is a lot of emphasis on ordinary people having conversations about the issues. Happily, the campaign has helped to re-invigorate the union movement and to empower a new generation of activists.

From the union leadership, John Robertson, then Unions NSW, now part of the Rees Government, is quoted in both books talking about re-inventing politics, re-engaging people and so on (see Jackman, p. 129). Robertson was apparently attracted to Rudd’s similar desire to re-invent politics. Much of this re-invention seems little more than a reversion to older (pre-Accord) styles of union activity. Muir quoted officials being amazed at how happy their members are to talk to them (well d’oh).

Jackman’s world, however, is populated with battle-hardened campaigners who believe that winning is (just about) everything. Her ‘characters’ often talk like they are in a ‘Cliff Hardy’ novel: “Oh f*ck. Oh f*ck” (p2). Another character (p194) is from the Left: “the side of the party most protective of its ideological purity – but being pure of heart and out of power had lost its appeal by 2007″. Many of Jackman’s ‘insights’ are similarly tired and lame e.g. on p.105 she tells us “But in politics, perception and mood are at least as powerful as reality”. There you go.

Both books confirm some significant changes in the union movement’s role in politics, and this is the real value of these books for me anyway. The union movement:

• has to be a political power in it’s own right and can not rely on the ALP to secure its agendas
• is more of an interest group than a class-based movement albeit the largest and richest in Australia, this reflects the way ordinary people think about unions as much as anything else and a growing move towards individualism and away from collectivism
• recognises that campaigning solely on workplace issues doesn’t work, these issues have to be linked to people’s family and community concerns
• campaigning on behalf of ‘vulnerable’ workers is much more effective than talking about wages and conditions for the better-paid 

So who won the election?

Both books put a strong case for believing that Work Choices was the issue, along with a general mood for change, that brought about Howard’s downfall. And no-one seriously doubts that the union campaign did a lot to make Work Choices a potent issue.

But did it as one activist in Muir’s book says ‘hand ALP victory on a plate’? If it did, of course, then Jackman’s cast of brilliant campaigners were really doing nothing more than playing an unbeatable hand.

Jackman’s insiders make it clear that they had to distance the ALP from the unions. People believe in rights at work and not union power. Mark Arbib, now a Senator says (p137):

“We did a lot of things that unions were hostile to and still very much resent. But it was part of trying to find a way through, to find a balance. It wasn’t a deliberate attempt to say, “here is Betsy the old sacred cow now let’s go slit her throat”.’

It is pretty clear that the ALP strategists saw the union campaign as generating a ‘protest vote’ at best (p128), one that may or may not deliver victory. They believed that the opportunity was there but that the party couldn’t win without a leadership change (p.53). With Rudd as the new, fresh leader (notably without union links) the campaigners had their chance to finally beat Howard. A lot of the campaign was about convincing voters that they could trust Rudd.

Tim Gartrell, then ALP National Secretary, was in charge of the ALP campaign. He gets a lot of coverage in Jackman’s book. In Muir’s book he gets just one mention, right at the end (p.206) where Muir points out that the ALP, including Gartrell, did not give the unions and their campaign any credit for Rudd’s victory. Despite this Muir says the union activists know that “It was the unionists wot won it”.

A costly workplace blunder has turned into a brush with fame for a Brendale painter. 
When Clayton Coughlan of Wet Paint-ting at Brendale was contracted to paint a house on the other side of town, he did not think twice about sending his third year apprentice to the job. 
“He was two days into the job when the owners came back from holiday and it turned out he was painting the wrong house,’’ Mr Coughlan said. 
But the blunder turned into a boon when Mr Coughlan won a radio competition which had music legend Paul Kelly turn up at his Brendale business on Tuesday to perform a set, including his song “Dumb Things”. 
The then 21-year-old apprentice Kyle Walters said he was horrified when the error was discovered. 
“I was crapping my daks … I thought I was going to get fired,” he said. 

A lot of this mentality is the outcome of industrialisation which was great because it promoted wealth for ordinary people but it has become a treadmill which focuses on acquiring huge amounts of (mostly disposable) stuff. We feel rich when we’re buying new stuff and we feel poor when we’re hanging onto old stuff we once loved. Which is kinda weird. This attitude has also weaved its way into the popular desire to cram as much into our brief lives as possible e.g. 100 places to see before you die. As if life was a competition. We feel more important, more successful when we’re busy. Look at all those blackberry addicts in the airport with you.

Anyway, I’m in favour of productivity 2.0, or any other ‘work smarter’ idea, but I just can’t see people getting over the ‘more is better’ idea anytime soon and employees, employers and managers all have to respond to consumers and how they perceive quality and value; and, right now, they want lot’s of stuff, they want it in a hurry and they want it cheap (although the current economic climate might cause some stalling). We won’t be able to ‘work smarter’ until we start ‘living smarter’.