The above-stated headline screamed across Today front page
showing that the government has finally recognized that a system
based on purely on grades, scholars, meritocracy and talents alone
may not work well in today's highly competitive world as posted by
forumites in this feedback channel earlier.
However, the intention to recruit insurgents who can manage tasks
with creativity and entrepreneurship and people-oriented or
problem-solving approaches is really nothing new as a similar
recruitment exercise was supposed to have taken place sometime ago
to induce mid-career private sector employees to join the civil
service to challenge past assumptions and practices.
In order that the civil service will be revolutionalized as
suggested in this headline, it is critical to understand the
psychological constraints affecting the civil service.
The first important constraint is the existence of tangible fears
by civil servants should they try to solve on-the-spot problems
based on their own creativity and entrepreneurship or
out-of-the-box solutions, they may incur the displeasures of
seniors.
There may be the fears too that in the event of any complaints
about disparity of treatments due to such entrepreneurial
management, civil servants concerned may be consequently taken to
task by anti-corruption agency unsupported by their seniors.
To overcome such psychological barriers, the civil service must
therefore unambiguously decentralize certain decision-making or
operational work processes to empower and enable frontline
departments or civil servants in exercise of a creative or
problem-solving approach.
At least, the civil servants will be supported by the department or
senior for exercise of creativity or entrepreneurship within
certain established frameworks. Otherwise, there will be simply too
many dangerous snares or booby traps inherently created by certain
overwhelming past policies or directives from the seniors.
The rationale of adopting a decentralized empowering managing
process as described below I hope will be published to help
overcome such psychological problems:-
SHORTCOMINGS OF EXISTING MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
First, a quick overview of some secrets of success.
According to Mark Twain, ?The secret of getting ahead is to get
started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex and
overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks and then starting on
the first one.?
However, many people today still manage tasks from their minds or
intuitions making decisions on hunches instead of
result-oriented,or empowered accountable or transparent work
processes.
There is still the constant harping on individual qualities like
Leadership, talents, Positive Work Attitude, Foresight &
Insight etc leading unwittingly to complexities, justifications,
self-centeredness hampering doable and practical solutions.
On the other hand, it is already well proven that many tasks today
are efficiently performed in the advent of computers and
technologies in divided component processes self-regulated by
internal quality-time-cost relationship as in on-line banking,
e-trading, travel-ticketing, CAD-CAM designing, online
transportation, logistics, stock-trading, accounting,
telecommunications etc.
DOABLE WORK PROCESSES
Hence, there is no doubt that works can be planned in decentralized
doable work processes to enable or empower civil servants to carry
out their works professionally in steps such as: (1) Study of
Ideas, (2) Enquiry, (3) Securing Contracts and (4) Contract
Administration (Operations), to solve problems on the ground.
Operations can be developed like project management in doable core
activities in ten departments, namely: 1.(General) 2.(Human
Resource) 3.(Revenue) 4.(Accounts) 5.(Marketing) 6.(Services-all
outsourced activities) 7.(Facility) 8.(Enforcement) 9. (Production)
10.(Compliance) with monitoring in one-page department reports
supported by detailed quality-time-cost work forms.
Once such decentralized work processes are set, task performances
can be easily assessed to provide data and information e.g. ?1?,
?2? or ?3? (or percentages) being ?non-attainment?, ?attainment?
and ?excellent attainment? of internal task relationships with
corrections made to variances of "1" in a two-way communication
task-line.
SEQUENTIAL WORK FORMS
The decentralized work processes can be planned and performed in
accountable and transparent manner with coordination and knowledge
applications by all civil servants to avoid all the top-down
conceptual or policy approaches.
Top or senior management should decentralize tasks in (1)
administrative forms, - head office (2) department reports -
operations (3) work forms - detailed works to attain
problem-solving and result-oriented management excellence.
All civil servants should be able to practise their crafts and
expertise in every field with openness, equity, accountability and
transparency to produce results and good governance.
For general discussions of alternative views of governance by all
forumites please. 