Culture eats strategy for breakfast
By Editor on Category:Governance
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Following a conversation with Ramesh and Swati Ramanathan over dinner, Emily Miles shares her thoughts in her previously published blog post on civil servants deflecting and resisting change when a country is ready for it, and how ‘You have to change mindsets to change the culture!’ The post made for very interesting reading so here it is, ready to be shared with you.
Changing mindsets has been part and parcel of what I and others have been doing at the National School of Government for the last few years. Along with others, I’ve taught senior civil servants system thinking tools so that they understand A. That there is more than one point of view, ESPECIALLY the point of view of the service recipient; and B. One’s own understanding of the problem is limited by the frames one imposes on it. I.e. A. Pluralism, and B. Holism.
I described this to Ramesh and Swati, but also pointed out that while the civil servants went away from these learning experiences enthused, I doubted that their commitment to thinking holistically and pluralistically remained steadfast. I know of a couple who got so enthused they went on to learn more and more about systems thinking (some will even be reading this post!) but I fear that is the exception.
When the minister is demanding ‘answers’ and ‘announcements’, offering a ‘process’ to build consensus and listen to plural views, isn’t exactly the most attractive proposition. Ramesh described my teaching experience like a steroid injection: a good effect, but it wears off quite fast.
So there’s culture. And there’s structure. And sitting here in my hotel room near the Mahatma Ghandi Road in Bangalore, I realise that I knew that already. In fact I teach it. (“You teach best what you most need to learn” said Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.) I adapted the 2x2 table below from Ken Wilbur’s ‘Theory of Everything’ and applied it to a government context, and I’ve used it in several ‘Achieving More With Less’ seminars recently. In effect, Ramesh and Swati were talking about interventions in the ‘external’ column, and I was talking about interventions in the ‘internal’ column.
The point, of course, is that if you want an organisation or a system to think more holistically, you need to intervene in all the domains: internal, external, individual and collective - even with the Ford insight that 'culture eats strategy for breakfast'. The citizen participation law that Ramesh and Swati have promoted is in the external/collective box. My teaching is in the individual/internal box, with the hope that that will effect the internal/collective box.
So what would be the interventions that would be structural (external/collective) to promote collaboration and a whole system view? “How do you create mechanisms to undermine the dominant culture”, asked Ramesh. Ones that we covered last night...
• A credible ‘independent voice’ or NGO that sits in the governance structure and provokes the system. Their role is to be ‘an irritant’ with power, but if possible with little vested interest save for that of the citizen.
• A senior political champion and a senior bureaucrat champion (Swati reflected that without one or the other, you stood the risk of things going awry in a hierarchical system)
• Strategies and plans with accountability and ownership, - as long as they are well followed up at senior levels and not just seen as bits of paper. One way of doing this is Swati’s twin track approach. In Rajasthan, every month, the Chief Minister reviews the short-term projects (the flyovers, the museums, etc... and there can be no more than 10 on the go at anyone time), and the long-term reforms. This reminded me of the Prime Minister’s stocktakes that I used to administrate, where he chose 10 priorities for delivery and relentlessly pursued these.
• An ‘Office of Administrative Innovation’ whose job it was to harvest all the good ideas and share them. This office would champion innovation and celebrate shared systems thinking. A bit like what IDEA are doing in the UK, but working at the federal or national level rather than just for local government.
• Following up the training on systems thinking with the participants committing to an intervention in their own work that would create a tangible outcome for that experience.
And that’s just the beginning...
- Emily Miles
The rest of the post can be read here at Emily’s blog `Leadership across boundaries’ http://systemsandleadership.blogspot.com/2011/05/culture-eats-strategy-for-breakfast.html
About Emily
Emily has been a civil servant since 2000, in the Home Office, in Downing Street, in the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit and now in the UK Border Agency. She has worked in both home affairs and health policy. Before joining the civil service she did degrees in English Literature and in the International Law of Armed Conflict, and worked for the Quaker United Nations.
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