Chaos Management

RTE reports proposed changes to the Top Level Appointments process for senior Civil Service vacancies. Instead of 4 civil servants and 1 external person, the Top Level Appointments Commission will have 4 civil servants and 5 externals, one of whom will be the chair.

I went through a Top Level appointment process (unsuccessfully) in 2007. I have no doubt that the person appointed was better qualified for the job than I. However, changes to the process are undoubtedly needed. As Paul Cullen reported in the Irish Times, of 300 Top Level Appointments vacancies between 2007 and 2010, only one external candidate was successful.

Nonetheless, I’m not sure that the proposed change is the right one:

Firstly, I don’t see how a panel of nine people could possibly interview a candidate in any effective manner and sitting on the other side of a table from nine people would seem to be quite intimidating. Of course, it’s possible that a sub-set of the Commission will form an interview panel – that would be a further change and not mentioned in the RTE piece.

Secondly, it implies that all that is wrong with the process is the people running it. From my own experience, many of the questions I was asked could only have been answered ‘correctly’ by an existing or former Civil Servant. Indeed, a significant theme of the questioning was to see if I could fit into the existing system rather than contribute something new.

I fear these changes are simply putting out more deck-chairs on the Titanic.

‘If you want to create a culture of citizenship, people have to understand that they have a direct role in creating the kind of society they want, and that creating such a country is their responsibility and the ultimate goal of the country, the end results of all their efforts’

Pretty good stuff, eh? Not a quote from Fintan O’Toole, a French philosopher or the President of Ireland but from a business book. I just replaced ‘ownership’ with ‘citizenship’, ‘company’ with ‘society’ and ‘enterprise’ with ‘country’.

I just finished reading this book, ‘A Stake in the Outcome‘ by Jack Stack. It documents the amazing journey of Jack and his colleagues in SRC, their engine re-manufacturing business in Missouri. SRC is not a global brand or household name but it is famous in certain circles for their practice of a style of management called ‘open book management’.

SRC is an employee-owned business where all employees have the opportunity to become owners and are provided with the education and career development opportunities to help them think like owners and not employees. I would recommend ‘A Stake in the Outcome’ as a fascinating read on the journey of SRC. Jack’s earlier book ‘The Great Game of Business‘ describes the management system in more detail and I have that on order.

Open-book Management companies encourage ‘ownership thinking’ so that the people who work there consider the big picture and don’t focus on their own narrow sectional interests. Maybe if we had had more ‘citizenship thinking’ during the bubble years we could have avoided the worst effects of the recession?

I found numerous nuggets of wisdom in this book – some quite general and some very specific advice regarding situations I’m facing in my business life at the moment. But what really struck me was the extent to which the thinking in this book could be applied to politics or society at large.

As I mentioned, I’m involved in fundraising for Akari Software at the moment. It’s been very busy for the past while, and even more intensively so for the past couple of weeks as we perfected our 1-page summary, our pitch slides and our business plan.

I’m lucky enough to have a great network of contacts and, between myself and @eoghanol, we’ve send the 1-pager to over 30 people. We’ve been getting good feedback and some indications of interest in investing. It’s all been very positive.

The most valuable feedback, to me, has been from people who have been down similar paths themselves before. They don’t provide feedback on the order of bullet points or question why the costs go up in year X – they say things like “you’re undervaluing the company”, “you’re not being ambitious enough” and “why do you need external funding at all?”. This kind of thinking that questions our fundamental assumptions is liberating because we’ve spent so long on this process, we’ve almost forgotten that there are other paths to the same destination and, even, other destinations.

I’m looking forward to seeing where we go next 😉

What about you? What’s the most valuable piece of feedback you ever received? And did you take it on board or not?