My last blog was but a short week ago, when I bemoaned the deficit behaviours of those in the media spotlight. A list of miscreants which later included those who report on the news as well as those who make it - unwittingly or otherwise. Andy 'it's (not) a fair cop' Hayman turned out to be a mere entre to the firestorm that rapidly engulfed serving senior police officers who were lunched, dinnered, or strategically advised by serving and former NI staffers.
I also wrote some time ago that the fox hunt that was developing around the NI story was faintly absurd, and so it has proved, as MPs fell over themselves to put the boot into the dying NoW and what could be a mortally injured NI. I was once told that auditors were accountants who found the front-end too hot to handle and preferred instead to roam the battlefields, bayoneting the dead and dying. I feel this about the MPs putting the boot in now. If they'd got some principles and bottle earlier, as with Chris Bryant MP, they would look less like auditors doing the bayoneting etc.
Let's see how the Select Committee goes tomorrow. Will it be tally ho! or more like being "savaged by a dead sheep", either way I hear the chattering classes are having friends around for drinks to watch it - the first time in Select Committee history surely that anyone other than policy wonks and resting actors take in its day-time proceedings. I exaggerate for effect.
What does this have to do with things like organisational culture, leading change, learning and appreciative inquiry. Well, at first sight, not a lot, then on the other hand, what are we actually witnessing here? It reads a lot more like an array of (organisational) cultural insights, e.g. what is the culture at the top of the Metropolitan Police that made these dreadful conflicts of interest (at best) and shoddy investigating so much the norm? What is/was the cultural vacuum at NI/NoW that made endemic the illegal hacking of 'phones and payments to police officers? A recent book was entitled "Where were coaches when the banks went down". Where were the regulators when the papers went wrong?
There will be so much more detail to come, that's for sure. The resignations have not ended. The reach of the scandal has a few yards yet to go. As with MPs expenses, it feels like a 'gift' that just keeps on giving. I say that however not in a sarcastic way, but seeing it as a 'gift' in the way it might encourage deep self-analysis, culture change and a paradigm shift in behaviours that we were told MPs experienced after their expenses debacle (although they were soon squealing about the new system that demanded receipts and time spent filling in forms - if you work in, say, local government, you'll think what IS the fuss about having to fill in an expenses form).
Maybe we are seeing the end of the 'grey areas' that dubious senior managers and politicians like to inhabit as if they are some special breed that can navigate these shadow areas - the public service equivalent of the 'masters of the universe' who navigated the mystical world of debt instruments, until they unhinged the whole western banking system. Maybe. These are not games to be played to 'big boys' rules, but games that should simply not be played.
These shifts of cultural norm, calls to greater transparency and improved standards of behaviour are meat and drink to many of you who have worked your management and leadership careers in many other parts of the public service. For instance, never putting yourselves at risk by accepting hospitality, at any level, (it was so much easier to simply say 'no thanks' and insulate yourself from any claims of influence, justified or otherwise, at a later date). Always seeking to be as open and transparent as practicable; pushing the boundaries of behaviour, not the dubious kind, but the kind that encompassed acceptance of responsibility, high ethical standards and appropriate loyalty to profession and community. Of course there were and are dilemmas in public service, but the need to properly investigate wrong-doing, not accept hospitality and avoid putting yourself and your team in the way of harm or conflict of interest do not qualify as dilemmas - they qualify as good professional judgement.
And the Appreciative Inquiry aspect of all this? Well, AI posits that every, (every) organisation has a positive core. How hard must we look at each of the organisations in the spotlight over the past few months to discover its positive core? I believe not as hard as we first might think. What's critical is that those charged with leading the change, altering the culture and improving behaviours, will want to work with those who remain and discover the positive core, the things that work well and must be carried forward into the future, and the 'best of what is' before they dream afresh about how great these institutions might yet become. If, however, they believe that more top-down exhortation holds the key, they will see short-term gain but long-term pain.
Trust the process and seek to capture the causes of success, not failure -we've had quite sufficient of those thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment