bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1990), p. 2
Can we do better with less in the 1990’s? This was the topic that drew a capacity crowd of 200 to an evening seminar on February 6, including all 3 Deputy Ministers and many senior managers. Facing the growing demands of the 1990’s with limited or shrinking resources is not an issue unique to the Department of External Affairs and International Trade. We therefore invited prominent guests from outside the Department to participate in a panel discussion and working dinner.
Jack Manion, former Treasury Board Secretary and now Principal of the Canadian Centre for Management Development set the tone as Moderator of the Panel which included Dr. David Zussman, Dean of the Faculty of Administration, Ottawa University, Timothy Plumptre, Management Consultant and a former Foreign Service officer, and Arthur Kroeger, Deputy Minister, Employment and Immigration Canada, also a former Foreign Service Officer and the founding Treasurer of PAFSO.
A lively discussion followed the panel presentation over a working dinner. The following includes some of the points flagged by David Malone, speaking for rapporteurs of the 20 round-tables on the principal themes raised during dinner.
• Concern about management, particularly human resource management (“People in this building manage issues, but more often they manage their managers.)
• Widespread belief that managers attach little importance to understanding their staff and even less to rewarding them. Communication on management issues was clearly felt to be inadequate.
• Conclusion that where work is effective and rewarding within the Department, it is often carried out in small teams with limited hierarchical burden.
• Need to weed out ineffective managers. Our current appraisal system does include assessment of managerial capabilities and skills; however, it was widely held not to be working. The message again and again was that people move ahead (or not) with insufficient reference to their managerial competence.
• One example cited of poor management and poor communications was the introduction of new technology in the Department, notably COSICS. It was recognized that new technology is necessary for improved productivity essential in an era of shrinking resources. But how much attention, it was asked, has been given to urging newly trained personnel to focus on re-shaping the responsibilities of secretarial staff? (“Many in the Department are feeling newly marginalized and valuable resources are being under-utilized”)
• Absence of a clearly defined and widely understood Mission for the Department. Ongoing work, quarterbacked by George Haynal towards a Departmental Mission Statement, came as news to many; hope was expressed of hearing more about this. Communications broadly on this issue will clearly be a challenge.
• Need for better priorizing in the Department. It was asked for example, “While all know there must be new initiatives to respond to sudden needs, who exactly is going to decide what it is that we are going to be doing less of?”
• Flexibility in the allocation of human resources was felt to be urgently needed. (“We are correctly perceived as not very responsive to emerging trends and sudden developments in international affairs. We have adopted a resource allocation system relying on man-years. Would man-months not be more appropriate? At headquarters we should consider reassigning staff throughout the year to meet new priorities, not just in the summer posting season.”) There was also some discussion of the UK experience with swat-teams, assigned to newly-emerging issues.
• In assessing the Department’s corporate profile, it was thought that “our strengths are experience and expertise, but our most glaring weakness is that process has taken over in the Department at the expense of the substance of our work.” An exciting evening with much discussion, but where do we go from there? Priori-zing? More delegation? Greater accountability? Mission statement? Achievement awards? De-layering? A special assignment pool? Swat-teams? More satellite missions? Golden hand-shakes? Privatization? More contracting out? Cost recovery for services? On December 15, the Acting Under- Secretary announced a Corporate Review of the entire Department, at home and abroad “We are going to look at all of the things we do and how we do them to see if they should be done differently, or need to be done at all. We must decide what the Department is prepared to stop doing. We will be looking for new approaches, options and ideas”. Where this may lead will not be known until May or June. However it is already clear that we must find within ourselves the answers for the 1990’s.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1990), p. 2. Read the rest of this issue →
