bout de papier, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1996) — Fall 1996 // Automne 1996, pp. 20–21
Change in DFAIT in the last several years has, to say the obvious, been enormous. Some changes have been small — dickering with the matrix system and with the FSD’s, dropping a few traditional functions, revising appraisal forms — though the principles at work have been important. Some changes have been of great moment: immigration’s move, computer networking, country desks, combining branches and program review. Many of these have led to real improvements. However, if staff often feel confused and their morale deflated by change, it is because changes can sometimes be blind, inconsistent or ill-considered.
To those leading major change, management and organization theory provides innovative messages, models and ideas that can clarify problems and improve operations. In the short space available, I would like to take a look at some Departmental issues in the light of such theories.
Management and Leadership
In any organization, public or private, good management is indispensable. The ingredients of good management are projection of a powerful vision for the organization (what we want to be), sound corporate policies, clear, practical goals and strategies to achieve them (I commend Peter Drucker’s line that “all objectives must degenerate into work.”), and, above all, an ability to establish and revise priorities and drop functions that have outlived their usefulness.
All of these concepts are part of the vernacular now because they lie at the core of program review. They also are well reflected in the mandate outlined for the new streamlined senior management group by Phase II. So far so good. Those who have been assigned these tasks have three very big commitments on which to deliver. They need to inspire us with their vision and, sometimes ruthlessly but always persuasively, establish priorities for foreign relations and international trade. They need to keep out of the hair of the directors-general to whom they have delegated the management of organizational units. And they need to keep operations and structures under constant review because we remain a long way from perfection.
Process Improvement
This innocent-looking phrase is charged with meaning. Processes are business processes as defined in the quality management and reengineering literature (hence my misleading title), and as mirrored to some extent in the business lines in the management system that Treasury Board has inaugurated. TQM and reengineering are often dismissed as jargon. They are less honoured in our Department than in most (which is to say honoured very little indeed). However, they have much to teach us, much that we have not learned.
A business line or process is the whole collection of activities that produce a particular product or service, normally for clients. It is oriented toward results and is judged by output, the quality and timeliness of service and effective use of resources. Process theory is critical of box and hierarchical structures of the traditional organization. Processes cut across artificial organizational boundaries, not only within departments but among them. The more radical approaches to reengineering processes break box units down altogether into teams, flexible structures that promote work-flow and adapt readily to changes in priorities. Team approaches work more or less well depending on leadership and other factors, but we do not have to adopt radical models to use process theory to understand and facilitate our businesses.
What are DFAIT’s main business processes? We need to distinguish between major and minor and also between core and subsidiary. We have minor processes like consular and passport services. “Minor” is no term of disparagement. They are exceedingly important and have a large body of clients they must serve well. They are minor only because our organization is built around two bigger ones. The core/subsidiary distinction differentiates our main businesses — the conduct of foreign relations and the promotion of international trade — from the internal processes that are supposed to serve and support them, specialized functions (legal, foreign policy, economic, sectoral) and administrative and technical support.
The trade process has a clearly defined set of clients — exporters — and delivers programs to assist and advise them. The conduct of Canada’s relations with other states fits less well into the standard process model. It works toward foreign entities — states, organizations and conferences — not toward a clear set of Canadian clients. “Stakeholders” and lobbyists have an interest in foreign policy, but they are not its clients. The “customers” of foreign policy might be seen as the public as a whole or large chunks of it but seeing the public interest in terms of a client-service model is fraught with difficulty. Still, it is important to recognize that foreign relations activity is a delivery process, a production line, and to apply as much process improvement theory to it as possible in an effort to make it more effective, more measurable and more meaningful to Canadians.
Unless there is invisible testimony of which I am unaware, our corporate policy ignores process theory. Ours is one of the most traditional, hierarchical departmental structures in government. It is a pyramid of stacked boxes that manifest all the disadvantageous characteristics and conduct of such structures — turf battles, poor internal service, unwieldy coordination, lack of common cause, lack of priority for our main businesses, competition with other departments. Organizational units are independent kingdoms with their own interests and priorities that may be inconsistent with corporate priorities or do little to advance core operations.
Phase II, for example, looked at structure in the Department without basing it in any perceptible way on business process analysis. It cut out a level, which is praiseworthy, but, in its preoccupation with balance between geographical and functional organizations it gave us a slightly altered version of the same old chequered garment. The functional/geographic distinction is boringly familiar but vague and ill-conceived. For one thing, the former includes many multilateral activities that are not functional, but involve diplomacy directed toward entities that are not states. Real functional units and geographical boxes are treated as all of a piece. They all do work without distinction as to the kind of work. But, as Glen Bailey said in an article in bout two years ago, the Department often behaves as if programs exist for the sake of policy rather than the reverse. The priority of policy and issues rests on the fact that we have always been good at them. Indeed, there is a real need to get policy right, since businesses are bound to be misdirected unless it is. We are, in Drucker’s apt phrase, a knowledge organization par excellence. But we fail to see such activities correctly unless we see them in terms of the businesses they exist to serve.
Everyone has experienced peremptory dismissal at the hands of these organizations, has heard that you do not fit into their priorities. The slimming of administrative and financial organizations has helped but they remain independent empires in their own right. However, whether you could dismantle functional and support activities and subordinate them to the main trade and political business lines is moot. Specialization may require a critical mass to be useful and professional identity may be an important element of performance. But all functional and support units need to be seen as internal services. Their personnel need to be able to float to where there is an operational need. Although we bureaucrats are adept at avoiding threatening ideas, we should consider seriously the Australian and New Zealand models in which services are “bought” by users. If no one buys them, the product is not needed or not good enough and the organization can wither away. The senior manager’s cutting tool is then easy to wield.
Internal Client Service
The most notable example of internal client service established in recent years is the Client Services Bureau. I have no hesitation in commending the open, accessible, “store-front” system or the client service staff who operate it. This is an improvement that deserves to be recognized. Nevertheless, the system is flawed and half-baked. If client service is really the name of the game, it is surprising we do not see more resources and more seniority on the front lines. Managers of retail outlets work on the floor; they do not cower like ours in barricaded offices behind the lines. The authority of client service staff, moreover, is exceedingly limited. Experts, say on the FSDs, continue to sit behind the curtain and pull strings. Of course, this raises a bigger issue, the continuing inflexibility of the FSDs, and other control-driven systems that cost more than they save, despite such modest but sound reforms as the simplification of FSD 50.
Country Desks
The formation of country desks is one of the most imaginative efforts to integrate our main processes ever undertaken. On balance, I am in favour because they (a) solve the “trade policy problem”, making it a cooperative rather than a competitive affair, (b) ensure coordination of country-oriented objectives and relations, (c) ensure the primacy of Canadian economic interests, (d) apply a team approach in an innovative way, and (e) use resources efficiently and in an integrated manner. However, there seems to me to have been very little attention given to the differences between the two processes that have been combined. Even integrated into desks, we need to differentiate them conceptually, as this is the only way to ensure the right outcomes and measure effectiveness. We need to avoid confusing programs by blurring their objectives. Finally, it is disconcerting that an initiative designed to make more efficient use of resources has not saved money or bodies. But, then, in independent kingdoms, budgets never shrink.
Human Resources
Last year a much improved appraisal form came into use, ridding us of the inflated and corrupted system of tick marks and focusing more on accountability. Our system of promotion to grade rather than to position, moreover, is a fairer, more flexible one than exists in many government organizations. However, it has many flaws. The promotion system has become a fiasco. Too little room for advancement exists for it to be an incentive to those who are deserving. Given the many who are barely distinguishable in merit, the process, fair as it is in principle, is not capable of being fair in practice (just as it is impossible to have a fair distribution of goods in an impoverished society). Our system is cumbersome; it is designed to serve hierarchy, not effectiveness. We are forced to invent levels — deputy director, section head — to give people “experience in supervising”, because that is their only route to success. Finally, our pay system rewards people for what they are rather than for what they do.
There is talk of increasing the number of grades to give people more promotions, and therefore more incentive, and elongating the FS category vertically to reward people for non-managerial merit. However, this is going in the wrong direction. What we need is a radical simplification of the system. A simplified grade structure — three levels, not counting senior managers, is plenty for FS and EX-1 and 2 categories — with a modest base pay (perhaps half current pay levels) based more or less automatically on experience and qualifications. Bonuses amounting to half or more of total compensation should be based on performance, results. The total cost of the payroll would not be greater than now — it could be less — and it would reward the right people, the performers. “Performance pay”, of course, has a bad name. It has always worked to inflate salary costs and there are questions about its fairness and accuracy. However, we have never had a system geared to reward performance. Almost all our resources go into investigating qualifications for promotion. They could be redeployed. Except for a modest nod toward seniority and knowledge, people should be rewarded for what they achieve, not for what they are. Compensation is not an entitlement but a material reward for productivity.
The promotion issue is secondary, however. The real issue is how we use and motivate people. The lack of a credible distinction between many EX’s and FS-2’s, for instance, suggests that we could be deploying all of them more effectively. This raises far-reaching questions about box structures versus teams, the need for so many EX’s, the role of managers and the “empowerment” of talented staff, questions I will leave up in the air except for this parting comment. Our present system commands initiative and leadership from nearly everyone but then often suppresses it in favour of the power of a chosen few.
There is nothing easy about running a ministry such as ours. I have not touched on the complexity of foreign operations nor the huge role played by the political level in setting our priorities. I have said little about the role of information technology, which, regardless of its flaws, has transformed the way we do business, created global networks and radically altered our technical work force. I have been too FS-centred and not given enough due to the many other experts and service workers who make our work possible. I have not said enough about our interface with other departments nor about the quality of my colleagues. I do think, however, that there are much better ways to use, develop, reorient and reward them. Creating the organization geared for change is not a matter of inspirational messages from senior management. It requires a more basic overhaul of structures and attitudes than has yet entered mainstream thinking.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1996) — Fall 1996 // Automne 1996, pp. 20–21. Read the rest of this issue →
