bout de papier, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1984) — June 1984 // Juin 1984, pp. 14–15
Last year, when first I applied for educational leave to attend the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, my objective was to learn management techniques for government agencies. Looking at External and other agencies I was familiar with in Ottawa, I thought it should be possible to manage “better” but I didn’t know how. I had no basis of comparison to evaluate how well we do manage ourselves. By going to the leading center of research in public policy in another country, I hoped, first, to be exposed to ’the state of the art’ in public administration and, second, to see how techniques used elsewhere might be applied to the Canadian system.
I have found it immensely valuable to study in the United States, if only because it has given me a perspective on the scale of the challenge facing public administrators in the United States compared to Canada. We are incredibly fortunate. My American classmates eloquently describe the problems of public administration in the United States – public hostility to “bureacrats”, spiralling costs, overlapping mandates at the federal and state levels, central agency regulations which gag innovation, decaying communal infrastructure as a result of years of neglect. The same problems exist in Canada, of course, but the problem is 100 times bigger in the United States. This exposure has left me more optimistic for the future of third world nations than I am for American inner cities.
I was also amazed to discover how inward-looking American society tends to be. One of my first discoveries was that the Kennedy School faculty was, in its own way, as parochial in knowledge of public administration as I was: Generally unfamiliar with developments in other countries, their real world experience was frequently limited to what they had learned in their last jobs in Washington. One professor was astounded, for example, when I told him that we had collective bargaining for wages and benefits in the Canadian public sector. (Well, at least in good years). But the faculty’s limited experience is more than made up for by the presence of students from over 30 countries at the school, leading to lively discussions on different national approaches to administration. The American students are invariably amazed to discover that some nations do things other than “the American Way”. I remember after a discussion of the British and German legal systems one student said disapprovingly: “well, that’s not how we do things in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!”
The extensive experience of other students is certainly the school’s greatest asset. The best professors recognize this and make their classrooms communal teaching as well as learning experiences. In my foreign policy course, for example, we had diplomats from eight countries, a brace of international economists and lawyers, six politicians, two award-winning journalists and several career military men.
Another major asset of the program has been the Kennedy School’s flexible approach to cross-registration at other schools. Virtually every course available in the Boston area can be taken for credit at the Kennedy School. In my first term, I participated in a superb course in personnel management at the Harvard Business School; this term I’m studying organization theory at MIT
A revolution is under way in the art and science of management. Books like “In Search of Excellence” and “The Art of Japanese Management” are only the tip of the iceberg. Better people management is seen as the key to the productivity gains which will be necessary if the private sector in North America is to regain its competitive edge. A renewed sense of organizational loyalty, combined with a collective approach to labor-management relations, the redesign of organizations around working teams and quality circles, greater flexibility in career planning, job rotation and benefits packages are seen as the keys to improved job satisfaction and enhanced productivity. The skepticism of traditional managers is rapidly being eroded as study after study documents the effectiveness of these techniques in such giant companies as GM and IBM and the dazzling new entrants in the airline and computer industries. The public sector in the United States is not moving as quickly to adopt these ideas but their influence is already being felt in the US Armed Forces and in the Federal Aeronautical Agency.
Judged by these standards, our foreign service is in remarkably good shape: we are already a career service; as individuals we demonstrate a deep sense of commitment to External Affairs; we enjoy a high degree of personal and professional mobility; and the assignment system is a remarkably supple tool to respond to the agency’s personnel requirements.
Our core skills are going to be in increasing demand as well. At the Harvard Business School, the message is that future managers need strong negotiating and communications skills, the ability to analyze masses of ambiguous data, and acute sensitivity to international and domestic trends. As industry becomes increasingly automated, more and more agencies are going to look like External Affairs: filled with ‘knowledge workers’ whose performance will be evaluated on their analytical and communications skills. Automation is certainly not going to be putting us out of business.
My studies have given me useful insights as to areas of improvement and techniques we could be applying at External. PAFSO’s professional committee has already put its finger on one problem area, professional training. A great deal more could be done as well in involving personnel, including support staff, in planning the department’s future.
One important lesson I’ve learned, however, is that it is enormously difficult to innovate from the top. The time and energy of top management in any organization is inevitably consumed by crisis management and protecting the agency from external attack. Exciting new ideas almost always come from rebels and entrepreneurs in the middle or the bottom of the pile. The moral of this is that we have to stop waiting for management to take the initiative. We make up the organization; its future belongs to us. If we want to change things, we can’t afford to wait for our next assigment, next promotion or next year to do it.
While I’ve found Harvard the perfect place to pursue my own interests in management techniques, I’ve taken advantage of the wealth of opportunities here to pursue other interests as well. was fascinated to discover that a great deal of work is being done in negotiation techniques, obviously a rewarding area of study for the foreign service. The Kennedy School, the Business School and MIT are important centres of research in government-business relations, industrial strategy and international trade. The Kennedy School is also a major centre of research in arms control and disarmament. Above all, given the exposure to Americans involved at all levels in public policy and politics, it is the ideal environment to learn about American politics. Any of these themes could become the basis fora rewarding year-long program.
But if all this sounds like all work and no play, I should add that Boston is really a delightful place to live. We have been plundering the wealth of museums, concerts, plays and festivals available here. My courses, too, have had their lighter moments. My favourite essay assignment was a treatise on whitewater canoeing as a group leadership activity. Imagine going all the way to Harvard to write an essay on “How I Spent my Summer Vacation”!
For any of you who may be interested the following is a list of books on management themes which are “must reading” here at Harvard. All come highly recommended.
Allison, Graham, Essence of Decision, Little, Brown and
Company, 1978.
Drucker, Peter, Managing in Turbulent Times, Harper
& Row, 1980.
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, The Change Masters, Simon
and Schuster, 1983.
Kidder, Tracy, The Soul of a New Machine, New York,
1981.
Levinson, Daviel J., The seasons of a Man’s Life,
Ballantine, 1978.
Maslow, A.H., Motivation and Personality, Harper &
Rox, 1954.
McGregor, D., The Human Side of Enterprise,
McGraw-Hill, 1960.
Musashi, Miyamato, The Book of Five Rings, Bantam,
1982.
Editor’s Note: bout de papier congratulates Lucie for this excellent piece from Harvard. “Letters From the Capitals” will be a regular feature of bout de papier. We welcome entertaining commentaries on life as it is — any aspect of it — where you are. Send your contribution to bout de papier c/o PAFSO.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1984) — June 1984 // Juin 1984, pp. 14–15. Read the rest of this issue →
