One cannot help but feel that Hans Christian Anderson's story, the Emperor’s new clothes is an appropriate warning.
Competence
While
government spends a great deal of time talking about the competence of
the people of of Britain and measuring and assessing it in various ways,
some effective some not, it seems that it rarely bothers to look at its
own competence.
It puts people in charge of some of the main
fields like health care and education who have no experience in the
fields they are responsible for.
These individuals then
impose their bright ideas (which are often less than outstanding) onto
the people at the coal face of health care, education and defence etc.
who then spend time trying to make it look as if its working in fear of
losing their jobs. This is a marked demonstration of government
incompetence.
Fashion and Spin
At a recent meeting I attended one of the topics was "disillusionment"
with the government, but this raises an interesting point which is that
government has its so called "spin doctors" whose specific job is to
maintain the "illusion". This has become a propaganda exercise.
We
are being told that the big issue for the next election will be
immigration just as we are told what will be next years fashion colours.
These are not predictions of choices made by consumers, these are
decisions made for consumers by government or industry. Why does the
government hope to make immigration the focus of the next election?
Perhaps because if they can spin that into the centre position of the
peoples minds they will not wake up to the real issues like energy, that
the government has no understanding of.
However even then unlike
the fashion industry where it should be driven by consumer choice, the
subjects of government attention should be determined not by consumer
demand but by a proper scientific examination of society's problems. If
government truthfully shares this research in both a summary and full
format, as its its responsibility, then the population would perhaps not
be so lost for what to believe.
It is dangerously easy for
any person in power to join the latest wave of fervour and thus win
support today, but the consequences of living today's illusions is to
live tomorrows disasters.
An extraordinary culture of
pretence is beginning to dominate the social landscape like a
competition to see which ostrich can bury its head deeper in the sand.
Anyone found not pretending is demoted while the most creative promoters
of positive fiction are given extraordinary salaries and promoted up.
No
amount of spin will solve real problems in the real world. Churchill's
sentence, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat,"
was a prime example of how the truth is better than spin.
Our
government needs to tell the truth in detail and in summary so that
those with the time and without it can have a clear picture as to what
is going on. They must not promise things that they cannot deliver and -
truth and integrity
- must be the new backbone of political principles.
Leadership
One
problem is a fundamental misunderstanding about what leadership is.
Sometimes to get things done you need leadership and sometimes to get
things done you don't. This is simply a matter of fact and in a healthy
society people tend to just naturally follow or lead the right people to
get the job done.
You cannot train to be a generic leader
because today's leader is tomorrows follower depending on what the job
is that needs doing. However in an unhealthy society like ours people
actually make it their personal objective to lead simply for its own
sake.
There are courses in leadership as if it was an isolated
discipline, as if the captain of a ship needed the same skills as the
head of an art department. Well "hello sailor" it just doesn't work like
that!
Right now many of our politicians, who are political
studies graduates, and have no experience of leadership in any
economically productive activity, are now "leading us" into a state of
social decay that it may be hard to recover from. They are focusing only
on those issues they think they can spin a story out of that will win
votes while avoiding the important issues that make this nation
function.
China, I am told, hand has a great many engineers in its leadership.
Regulation and Freedom
Regulation
is needed, but only to the extent that
it works and that is where feedback comes in. I don't mean multiple
choice questionnaires or tests and measurements, I mean actually
listening to what people have to say and having the capability to weigh
it up and do the right thing based on the experience of having run an
organisation before.
Our government currently does not
understand how to deliver quality because it simply measures what it
feels like, often choosing what to measure in order to make things look good.
As
the situation has deteriorated the
temptation is to over regulate when sometimes the removal of regulation
is what is required. As the government imposes regulation it fails to
appreciate some of the most basic principles of what rules are for.
The
objective of rules is to implement disciplines that lead to
improvements in the quality of life, and to counteract freedoms, that
lead to life degradation.
BUT; the objective of rules is NOT to
implement disciplines, that lead to degradation in the quality of life,
and NOT to counteract freedoms, that lead to life improvement.
The
balance between disciplines and freedoms is a delicate one and going too
far in either direction can lead to problems in quality, efficiency and
the pleasure in life that we all hope for.
The
application of a rule should not require more effort than it saves in
the long term, but the learning of a rules may take more effort than it
saves in the short term. This is the investment in quality we have to
make.
One of
the particular excuses for regulation has been the idea of best practice
being enforced through it. This is another misunderstood notion in that
it is not possible for a career politician to know what is best
practice in say education, health care or defence etc. and neither is it
possible for them to employ consultants who know, since they are in no
position to asses the ability of the consultants they employ, as the
disastrous health service IT project of a few years ago evidences.
Best
practice is not something to be imposed by government. Its what you get
when people meet and share experiences when teachers, doctors, nurses
and soldiers meet and share their experiences.
Many government
people seem to have the attitude that they are uniquely positioned to
control every aspect of the organisations they are responsible for in
minute detail, yet they blatantly ignore the voices of those tied up in
the regulations government creates to the point where delivery of the
service or product suffers. Clear evidence of these failures is covered
up in the spin culture created by these career politicians.
The
failure to understand the basic principles of feedback, the failure to
assess the impact of regulation i.e. see if its actually working and the
desire to cover up failure rather than expose and correct it are not
the culture of proper leadership yet are endemic in our government
system. This has to change.
There is a huge formal
structure in place for the creation and application of regulation of the
people, yet there is no formal pathway for the people to report
oversights in the regulation or to propose corrections, as would be
expected in any effective quality system such as that used by the
aircraft industry.
Part of the reason for
not implementing proper feedback mechanisms is that it might highlight
the unsuitability of our current leaders to actually lead. Of course
there are exceptions but on the whole we haven't seen real leaders like
Harold Wilson or Margaret Thatcher for along time. OK they got some
serious stuff wrong, but they at least had some vision and insight.
Probably the biggest Thatcher mistake was the idea that the free market
was the solution to all ills. Only now we can see that its application
in healthcare and defence has caused major issues while its lack of
application in education has lead to a lack of diversity.
Localisation and Globalisation
It
seems that while the government of the UK wants not to be governed by
Europe it still wants to govern every aspect of the lives of us, its
citizens. Is it not the case that the issue is that governing bodies
should endeavour to govern as little as possible leaving issues to be
handled as locally as possible? So Europe should only concern its self
with issues that are not being dealt with on a national level, and
national governments should only concern them selves with issues that
are not being dealt with on a district level and so on down to the
individual.
For any governing body there is an issue
of scope which is not just about where it governs but what it should
govern. So for example the suggestion by an MEP that they should force
down trans-European mobile phone tariffs was totally out of scope. There
is a free market in mobile phone providers and competition will do the
job. Such an individual should not be in government.
Much
political effort is national governments shirking the responsibility
that is in scope in order to pick up on the issues that can be spun to
win votes, like immigration.
There examples of where our government has stood up and done
the right thing. The push for open government and the putting of legal
statutes on the internet.
In education the
re-introduction of technical colleges as "university technical colleges"
where pupils of age 14 years have the opportunity to develop basic
technical skills. Naturally the word University in this context is
simply "spin" but the colleges themselves are a good move.
Remove
most career politicians who are exactly the kind of burden on society
that we do not need. To do this they need to be voted out. i.e. refuse
to vote for them and replace them with candidates that have some
experience.
Change the system to allow diversity and
encourage competition only where it helps. Remove moral hazards.
Nationalise the defence industry or encourage its technical achievements
to reach civilian markets.
Encourage more exciting technical challenges that place
innovators into the lime light as has been done for example with the
world land speed record. This means that innovators must be given the
freedom and encouragement to work on projects rather than be held back
by a non-adaptive school curriculum applying a one size fits all
principle.
Stop degrading specific professions that involve more labour
than thinking and start to value people for all their capabilities
rather than only their academic capabilities. Put emphasis on the
quality of work in every aspect of the
culture getting things right from baking a pizza to designing an
engine. Acknowledge and spread this culture from places where it already
resides like Rolls Royce.