THE REALITY OF BUREAUCRACY
Many of us who do well in school in terms of analytical things are used to receiving a problem and relevant info points, and from that crunching a solution. In math, you’re given problems and told to solve for “x.” In business, you’re given a case study with text and charts and told to decide between rolling out in New York or Tokyo. In engineering, you’re given the value of useful variables and told to figure out how fast or how far. Problem-solving is as simple as 1) input 2) crunch 3) output.
What I’ve been learning so far at Fels, an analytical-oriented government school, is that problem-solving in the public arena isn’t so simple. The input is there, and the crunching is there, in between problem and solution are many environmental factors (not environment as in tree-hugging, but environment as in context): political forces, bureaucratic systems, public opinion, and the media, to name but four.
It can drive you to cynicism to find this out: what gets done isn’t based on what’s the right thing to do but other, less noble reasons. It can drive you to paralysis: given all the bureaucratic and political forces in play, how can anything good possibly get done.
Or it can drive you to a wizened realism: the curtain has been pulled away and I see more clearly how things work. Now let me, being aware of these many forces, consider them and even use them to achieve what I believe to be the right thing.
What I’ve been learning at Fels, in other words, is that problem-solving in the public arena isn’t as simple as input, crunch, output; but that this complex reality is not cause for cynicism or paralysis but rather wizened realism. O for more like-minded public managers to join with me in getting the right things done in the right ways for the right reasons.
Many of us who do well in school in terms of analytical things are used to receiving a problem and relevant info points, and from that crunching a solution. In math, you’re given problems and told to solve for “x.” In business, you’re given a case study with text and charts and told to decide between rolling out in New York or Tokyo. In engineering, you’re given the value of useful variables and told to figure out how fast or how far. Problem-solving is as simple as 1) input 2) crunch 3) output.
What I’ve been learning so far at Fels, an analytical-oriented government school, is that problem-solving in the public arena isn’t so simple. The input is there, and the crunching is there, in between problem and solution are many environmental factors (not environment as in tree-hugging, but environment as in context): political forces, bureaucratic systems, public opinion, and the media, to name but four.
It can drive you to cynicism to find this out: what gets done isn’t based on what’s the right thing to do but other, less noble reasons. It can drive you to paralysis: given all the bureaucratic and political forces in play, how can anything good possibly get done.
Or it can drive you to a wizened realism: the curtain has been pulled away and I see more clearly how things work. Now let me, being aware of these many forces, consider them and even use them to achieve what I believe to be the right thing.
What I’ve been learning at Fels, in other words, is that problem-solving in the public arena isn’t as simple as input, crunch, output; but that this complex reality is not cause for cynicism or paralysis but rather wizened realism. O for more like-minded public managers to join with me in getting the right things done in the right ways for the right reasons.
Comments