The Civilisation Package

By Ross Fardon

All the books and essays of Ross Fardon are one in the Civilisation Package. The best we can believe and do on Earth.

 

The Science Christianity and the Will-to-Good is foundational, a set of world reality and beliefs that he cannot falsify after 80 years at it. People are struggling with "meaning" in life, whereas this

• Language: English
• Publisher: STAMPA GLOBAL
• Release date: Mar 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781951585853

Book preview

The

CIVILISATION

Package

The E-version of the books and essays of

Ross Fardon

Copyright © 2021 by Ross Fardon.

However, without further permission, parts of the book may be copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial use, so long as attributed, and wording and figures not altered, and amounting to less than 5,000 words in all.

Library of congress

See Website www.rossfardonauthor.com.au

To learn about other books and essays by Ross Fardon, visit Rossfardonauthor.com. You may download individual essays free from that site.

Managing in times of change BC is different from more stable traditional times AB. Decision making based on reality NOW is more important than tradition and experience BACK THEN. But it is also shallow, without roots in long-term business booms and busts, science, history and human nature.

This is one of three books and a series of essays, all on belief and Civilisation.

Civilisation is the organization of complex societies

for the greatest good.

THE WILL-TO-GOOD AT ALL LEVELS.

No civilization is worth the name

without ethical and effective management. See essays.

www.rossfardonauthor.com

Copyright © 2020 by Ross Fardon.

However, without further permission, parts of the book may be copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial use, so long as attributed, and wording and figures not altered, and amounting to less than 5,000 words in all.

ISBN:          Paperback:         978-195-158-5587

                     ebook:               978-195-158-5594

Rev. date: 2020

To learn about other books and essays by Ross Fardon, visit Rossfardonauthor.com.

You may download essays free from that site.

CONTENTS

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION

LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT

PART 1 BELIEFS AND CULTURE

1 VISION

2 WHAT ARE ORGANIZATIONS FOR?

3 WHAT MUST BE DONE - ASK THE BIG QUESTIONS

4 POWER AUTHORITY AND EGOS

5 VALUES AND CULTURE

PART 2 ESSENTIAL PROCESSES

6 4-STEP PROCESS

7 POSITION PAPERS

8 PERIODIC ALL-LEVEL PROJECT REVIEW

9 DECISIVE MEETINGS

10 TEAMS

11 DELEGATION

12 REPORTING

13 FORMAL PERSONAL PERFORMANCE REVIEW

PART 3 USING ESSENTIAL CULTURE AND PROCESSES

14 REFORMING ORGANIZATIONS

15 INNOVATION, DISRUPTORS AND THE MIHAI

16 TWO DIAGRAMS, AND SMALL CLEAR WORDS

PART 4 GIVE OTHER ROUTINE PROCESSES SOME VERVE

17 SAFETY

18 NEGOTIATION

19 DECIDING STRATEGY AND STRUCTURE

20 OTHER ESSENTIALS IN LIFE AND MANAGEMENT

COMMUNICATION

USE AND RESOLUTION OF CONFLICT

TRAINING, MENTORING AND DEVELOPMENT

PART 5 AT THE TOP

21 QUALITIES NEEDED FOR TOP EXECUTIVES

22 BOARDS

SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

LIST OF DIAGRAMS

WASTE VS ADMINISTRATION

THREE-MODE MANAGEMENT

WISDOM TRIANGLE

DATA-DOMINATED WISDOM TRIANGLE

CHANGE TIME DIAGRAM

VALUES

POSITION PAPERS

PROJECT STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

MIHAI

MEDAWAR DIAGRAM

BIG CIRCLES, LITTLE CIRCLES

PADDOCKS AND FENCES

THE BETTERTUDES

MANAGEMENT AND BELL CURVE

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION 2020

This ESSENTIAL replaces two Blue Books of Leadership and Management, one being for the public service specifically. The previous books were manuals of proven management from the end of World War 2 to about 2010.

However, we must refocus on ESSENTIAL decision making amid a burst of disruptive new technologies and social changes, and the promise of a flood more. At the same time shameful behavior is obvious across every part of business, government, churches and society. All this in the midst of great good all about us that does not make news.

No wonder there is cynicism about ethics and the great boon of democracy, in our younger people. They have not known either the worse times or the stabler times, have no comparisons with what they regard as normal, are taught little history or geography, and tend to dismiss anything not in accord with their Internet knowledge of NOW.

Never has 60 years of adulthood been so much more valuable than 20, but those in their forties, with the 20 years of adulthood, are blazing away on their own terms - where?

HARD NEW REALITIES ARE UPON US, suddenly in human experience. It is not that they are all bad, much is necessary, but all are out of control by public or private interests:

New technologies promise the ability to fix almost any material and health problem, and threaten that they will be unmanageable. Both trends are already obvious. The most essential thing, new technology, is the most dangerous.

The disruptions are led by geniuses, they have done enormous good, but these are focused geniuses, without the wider picture of humanity. So their game is attack and disrupt, and devil take the hindmost. And being so specialized, they make huge mistakes, assumed to be everyone else’s problem.

Modern capitalism that has made our world, is free enterprise plus government controls. And as high-tech free enterprise becomes increasingly disruptive of all else, the controls will be vital. BUT governments cannot understand or manage this complexity. Government must be increasingly manipulated by tiny expert elites, manipulating a clueless and gullible public - and making huge mistakes. This is already obvious from defence to energy and environment, IT, transport, medicine to social services. Those are pretty fundamental.

Once governments and people can neither understand nor explain what goes on, people break up into interest groups, pushing the issues that We damn well do know about! Social cohesion goes down the drain, we are antagonistic towards the wider world of business and government. This indignorance is already running away from us.

The other natural response to unmanageable complexity is that: They, ie the government, should damn well fix it. More indignorance. And if government is to fix and pay for all ills to the scale of hundreds of billions of dollars, then government should regulate and run all human activity including diet and social activity, and ideas. Simple! Government expands as overlord at the same time that government is incapable. Individuals are to accept controls and government-granted rights, not to take responsibility.

Under population pressure, the understanding to maintain giant agriculture, energy, transport and manufacturing, and megacities, is under stress from city slickers in their artificial world where everything is just assumed to be available.

Even in capitalist society, we have now achieved most of the noble socialist ideal: To each according to his needs. More than half the population are net receivers of government money, and with the huge public services, amount to a clear majority of takers of other people’s money. For good and ill. They do not consider themselves as takers, just receivers as of right. Money grows on trees, is not taken from others.

Leftist financial writers are now openly advocating that these net takers always vote for higher taxes on the net contributors. As usual in misguided democracy, they are after the golden egg now, not the health of the goose.

In the 1980’s, the West, especially the English-speaking countries, underwent financial revolutions to overcome the wallowing over-taxed stagflation of the 1970’s. It was necessary, but allowed the great theft of the world’s riches by financiers and executives. It reversed the growth of equality of the twentieth century until 1980. Financial speculative transactions outweigh trade a hundred-fold. Banks and financial institutions are proven as unethical as government. And as always, until corona, it is finances-out-of-control that collapse the world of honest industry into depressions. The social contract that the rich overall deserve it, and lead world enterprise, has been trashed at the same time as it is more necessary.

Age-old verities of religion, empire, war, colonialism, class and power structures, sex, marriage, family, abortion, race, responsibility and social services, respect, education, bullying, old age and death, drugs and pornography, truth itself in the face of relativism, ethics in general, are being overthrown. That, folks, is one hell of a list. Confusion breaks down the will-to-good. Corona unleashes good and ill-will and adds confusion.

Vast numbers now go to universities, which were for a millennium a fallible but blessed adjunct, guide and corrective to practical affairs. Now there is a huge artificial liberal arts society which has shed the greatest ideas and verities of humanity, is lost in whatever secondary rubbish, showing off its clevers. They refuse to study and teach the basics of civilization, because they deny civilization. They are escaping from real life, disconnected, self-obsessed and without accountability - a bandar log. This is where our arts, lecturers, judges, teachers, historians and media come from, and it is a tribute that many emerge sane.

[Here I am criticizing a whole powerful sector, and yet asking them to use these principles and procedures to improve the management of ideas? Yes folks, I have seen the insides of 15 universities and our great research institutions, as well as reading your books and annual reports. Your management of both operations and ideas needs reform. I love universities as places of light and liberty and learning, and advocate more liberal arts education. I am on your side, if we are both on the side of truth and excellence.]

There is a collapse of trust in institutions. Only two generations ago, apart from the far Left, people respected authoritative figures - parents, businessmen, clergy, judges, teachers, editors, bankers and doctors, and a significant proportion of politicians. No longer. A majority of them have always been ethical, but among them all, the majority knew what was going on in their sector, and did not fix it.

The West did not take enough note that China under Deng Xiao Ping also underwent a revolution towards free enterprise in the 1980’s, that thirty years later, allied with vast government enterprise, is reversing 400 years of Western hegemony in favour of age-old Asian predominance. As the greatest and overall best experiment in history, Western predominance fails, I am happier with Chinese filling the role than with any other. But what a gamble, how far China still has to improve freedoms and management!

I would rather not include the hideous Islamist breakouts across much of the world, and which disrupt the rest with precautionary measures - Bollard Civilisation; nor the repression that remains fundamental to Islam, making it a first order problem for humanity. Even Indonesia, its relatively moderate outpost, with a difficult past, may slide into a dangerous fundamentalist future.

Amid all this, do we cynically give away belief and confidence, ethics and sane management? Give away our civilization? Or do we commit to ethics, enterprise, management and balance as the priority of our times?

And as things change faster, everything is about speed and reliability of decisions.

Meanwhile mediocrity rules. Cynical assumptions rule through society and business, the management training industry and most literature.

Management courses teach ideas and capabilities, sometimes brilliantly, but overall, change nothing much. Business postings talk of the good idea of the week, or maybe several good ideas together! They tend to be like diet fads. Graduates of courses speak of having learnt a few interesting things, of a chance to network, while dereliction of organizations goes on indefinitely.

Big-word, vague management gobbledygook is destroying even the clarity of our language, from primary school reports to government.

This book is complementary to the training industry. It teaches leadership, decision-making, batting, bowling and fielding, and the dedication to goals, culture and process, to a degree that transforms.

We have the means for a one third increase in productivity, or more in many places. And so much that humans call good depends on productivity, in all sectors.

If all management were measured weekly against the best possible, like professional sport teams, the tenets of this book ESSENTIAL would be compulsory.

MANAGING IS THE WILL-TO-GOOD AT WORK,

MOBILISING AND MANAGING ALL THAT IS BEST IN HUMANITY

TO DO EVERYTHING BETTER.

WE MUST KNOW HOW, OR SHAMBLES REIGNS.

WHAT IS ESSENTIAL?

THERE IS MUCH CRITICISM AND TOUGH STUFF IN THIS BOOK.

BUT ALWAYS OPENLY AFFIRM ANYTHING GOOD AROUND US

FROM ANY SOURCE.

PRAISE IS ESSENTIAL TO STRENGTHEN THE WILL-TO-GOOD.

WHAT IS ESSENTIAL

?

THE PACKAGE IS ESSENTIAL

.

This is a coaching manual.

Much that is said in this book is obvious, but neglected in a climate of management mediocrity. Please bear with me, and with the PILOT CHECKLIST ANALOGY:

We want the pilot to have a long checklist in the cockpit. Every item is obvious and routine and the pilot would always do most of those things anyway. But the checklist is essential, even in a small plane, to do all of them, every time.

The same for management, which even for small groups, is more complex than flying a plane.

Every day we see some snappy comment on management. But piloting and management are not about snappy comment, however valuable as an adjunct to what is ESSENTIAL all the time, what must be done.

Please do not complain that we checklist many obvious things. Complain instead about the failure in management everywhere, to do the obvious ESSENTIAL things all the time.

LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT

An organization is a group of people with a defined aim, which by managing people, money and other resources is to achieve objectives, or exceed them. All organizations are also to do good for society as a whole. The second sentence is obviously essential, and the hardest of all for humanity to work out. It is the ethical clause, the civilising clause, or the Get out of my way while I take power or make a billion clause.

Of course leadership and management overlap at all levels. Great men are to be both leaders and managers. Time and again, how much better for customers and the organization, if only the gung-ho leaders had been better managers. The great newtech successes all depend on outstanding operating managers. At dawn it’s the idea, by afternoon it’s the manager.

The word LEADERSHIP concentrates on the vision and the ability to galvanise other people in pursuit of it. Having creative ideas, belief, and building belief across all levels. It takes personal energy and verve, but need not be extrovert. However, over and above all, a leader must get most decisions right. Reality rules, though in governments, the home of ideologies, fads can rule for a decade or a century. It is because there is much truth even in false propositions like socialism. In all ways, humanity is more speckled than black or white.

Even in the era of galley slaves, the great leaders were those who could galvanise the troops. All great religions, social movements and charities, governments, businesses, armies and societies are based on shared belief. The public service above all should emphasise belief in their goals for the entire society. It is the highest calling of all, and yet the home of the most soul-destroying management.

And leadership is by word, body language and example of commitment - continually over a long time. We know it, so show it. We wear belief on our sleeves, and keep cheerfulness and fun in the work-place. Much of the example comes from lower levels where belief in service is stronger than ambition and ego.

It is a fallacy that we cannot teach or create leadership, that it is innate. Yes everything in humanity is partly due to inheritance and up-bringing. However, Essential ways inculcate the qualities needed for leadership. Ordinary and potentially extraordinary people slowly mature into something much better. Just as bad management breeds worse.

It is a fallacy that the shop floor people have nothing to come to work for except the pay. In good organizations, much of their drive comes from ordinary people who believe in productivity, whose life is to contribute. The denial of leadership, respect and support for ordinary workers who are the salt of the earth is sad and silly.

Meanwhile the public service has a lot of mandarins selected for clever big-word answers to everything, without belief, vision or leadership, with thick manuals of policies and procedures. Or brilliant academics cannot manage people or businesses. Or, politicians or leaders of churches and NGO’s have a fine vision and no clue about the realities of the world. Or tin-pot macho managers will not share vision, opportunity or credit with the people who work for them.

MANAGEMENT is more about the doing: Having a practical vision, then setting goals and strategies, and managing people, money and other resources and timing in an organization, to achieve or better those goals. Everyone is a manager to some extent.

It has long been clear that management falls into three very different levels:

Management where we are expert on our job.

General management where we manage a range of things where others are more expert than ourselves. The failed capacity to transition from management to general management ruins many small companies as they expand.

Executive management where we decide the business, technology, ethics, major settings, strategy in which the whole organization works, and ensure the best management. Leaders are to convince the group to agree, follow and improve our plans and processes from knowledge at the coal face.

In small and big business, all settings are changing unpredictably in time and direction. Social, political, industrial and technological intelligence, flexibility, financial reserves and fast response times are ESSENTIAL. Small or large, use expert networks.

In government, hell, can anyone tell us what is going on, so we can seem to take charge?

All the great disruptive technologies of our time are based on the simple proposition of making only what people are willing to buy. That is all, it’s people who decide. Don’t ask further.

People and governments all over the world are asking further, about the civilizing clause up above. Is Facebook actually a good? And how much and where?

No-one can resolve the conflict, the balancing, between necessary gung-ho and necessary wider good, who does not have a good grasp of two things, and that excludes almost all who hold strong opinions:

the detailed effects, good and bad, of each type of new thing

alternatives.

Do we see something crucial here? Successful entrepreneurs are people with the best forward landscape of what their technology and users can do, against alternatives. They should have the best view of likely problems arising. Or they should be the first to detect and be able to fix problems - if they are interested in the ethical clause, the wider human good. We need these entrepreneurs to drive the social good clause as well as the disruption.

And the beneficiaries and regulators of enterprise have first, to affirm the drive to succeed, or the second and civilizing question does not arise. First, do what must be done to succeed. This is a fundamental issue, and so obvious that half our populations deny it. Our whole new world is being created mostly by America, the country many takers hate so much, because America is enterprise. China, Germany, Japan, Thailand might be better at cheap manufacturing, Scandinavia might be a successful regulators’ paradise, but it is America that is creating the new world, because it still can.

Who knows whether China can take over the newtech enterprise of humanity, and do better in the long run with new ideas than Japan did? To do so, it must liberate freedom of ideas that it has suppressed so far.

So in this context and that of our preface, the role of a disruptive leader is to ensure both the success and the wider good, to the best of understanding at the time. It is NOT to be left to government alone to try to work out how to achieve the second goal. Partnership is essential, from go. Just as at a more mundane level, the right to operate in mining depends on commitment to safety and the environment in advance of government regulations, not in response. The miners have long known the issues better than government. Instead, in modern bureaucracies, because of miners’ past failures, they have to accord with many thousands of detailed regulations, and serried ranks of enforcers consulting the rule books rather than reality on the ground. And in banking, it is a moot point whether the detailed regulations assist or inhibit ethical management.

We are emerging from untrammeled gung-ho from Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix and Amazon and their like, and from financiers, into exposure of failures in delivery of common good. Now we will rapidly pass to over-regulation, because regulators, once started, go on to regulate every detail they can imagine, to impress regulators. Else wherefore breathe?

It is time to stop this over-regulation by people who do not understand the technicalities, but have the power to react against misdeeds. It can be done only with entrepreneurs taking the ethical clause as Essential, immediately behind the drive to succeed commercially. We will never deregulate enough, regulators live in different universes from entrepreneurs; those who can, do, and those who can’t, regulate. But any freeing of creative enterprise is salvation for the world, as stagnating countries demonstrate by its absence.

Enlightened self interest requires this commitment to public good, from top to bottom. It is analogous with safety management. It took a century for business to own safety, and to institute minute, pervasive and primary measures at every level. So too, feedback and commitment to social good have to be pervasive at every level, and will, like safety, prove to be commercially good anyway.

Management is the powerful will-to-good in action, and this book tells how. It is a remarkable combination of reality, creativity and rigour. Are any three things more important in an age of disruption?

Our enemies are cynicism and the assumption of mediocrity as the norm.

EXCELLENCE is worth any effort. Are we too busy to consider excellence?

It allows us to raise our goals dramatically, get decisions right, and then exceed targets as we develop. Decisions take half the time. It is wonderful for all the staff, who suffer our neglect and mediocre management.

Excellence is a moving goal, always in front of us, above us. There is surprise in it. It varies for each level in the workplace.

For the ordinary workers, excellence can be described with the great Australian adjectives really or bloody. The pay can rarely be r/b good for the workers, and they know that. But the job can still be excellent, as in: Our business is r/b great, we are doing a r/b good job of it, we are r/b well trained, the pay is OK and I r/b like coming to work. My friends should be so lucky.

We still need to recognise that for ordinary people, work can be tough for long periods of our lives, while we think of the joys of other pastimes, or home worries. In many large groups, up to twenty percent of workers and even managers are in the wrong job for them. They sour the organization around them. That is one of the main reasons we work for excellence, to have our people doing well, and proud of it. The other reasons are the owners who pay us (including the public), customers, and all those affected by our actions and products.

An executive on appointment should commit to a social and productivity contract with all stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, customers, all those affected by the organization’s actions. Likewise every manager and every person, at all levels.

We develop Goldilocks organizations, just right for whatever situation, and as stable or reformist, structured or free-wheeling, tight-loose, caring or tough-as-nails, as is needed for the particular person and situation – at any time. Situations change a lot, so these settings are dynamic, and adjusted for different groups or different stages in a project, as required. They have been applied from indigenous working groups to top corporate management, from R&D to routine trucking operations.

A few words on cynicism. The most successful managers have a streak of cynicism, they have been up dry creek beds. They have seen every type of fault and deception, know that perfidy often prospers, but still walk abroad on their cynicism to create great things.

Cynicism, vision and determination can go together in individuals - see many pioneers at all levels. But outright cynics cannot be superb managers of people. We have great qualities the cynics ignore, and they are the key qualities.

One of the wise uses of cynicism is to ask of every situation:- Who pays, and who benefits? No matter what is said or agreed, assume that people will actually work for their own interests, whatever else they might do. The other use is, check everything! Murphy’s Law – whatever can go wrong, will.

TIMING

In all fields of endeavor, throughout history, groups from local shops to empires succeed or fail due to timing. Amid rapid change, timing and speed of pro- or re-action are critical.

When to start a business, when to expand, when to go into our burrows? When to raise money by equity or borrowing? When to do a deal? When to sell out? When to communicate or not, to negotiate or not, when to reform, when to delegate or hold onto authority?

Management is largely about intellectual property, power and money. They shift all the time. Use them before we lose them.

Our ways make decisions much better and faster, so we do not wallow during good times or bad. This gives us time to talk with our people and to keep abreast of wider issues, to lift our sights and to enjoy success together. Nothing could be better.

1 VISION

THE LIGHT ON THE HILL. THE GOAL AND THE HOPE

OF ALL INVOLVED.

VISION, GOALS, MISSION ARE MUCH THE SAME THING.

A vision is useful only if it is shared in one or several short sentences, and affirmed from top to bottom. Then strange things happen - people like coming to work, we energise and include each other, we enjoy our diversity, decisions are made, jobs get done, customers are happy, we hurt fewer people, goals are exceeded.

Many great organizations never formally stated their vision, but made it clear to all in word and deed. At a time of promotional sham, the VISION/MISSION must not be sham. This is a call to honesty. Just because society is cynical, is why we must not be cynical.

Vision drives pioneers or migrants in a new country, working for rewards in their grandchildren’s lifetimes; mature-age people going to university; starting a band; starting a family; starting a small business; looking to the Olympics-after-the-next; starting research; committing to good cities and hospitals, country sporting clubs, union members, industry support or the environment. And it sustains giant organizations, or they fail for lack of it.

Right now, we need to renew our vision and mission to maintain the highest civilization, the organization of complex societies for the greatest good.

What else guides and energises the long hard slog to achieve things? Family needs, power, fame and money. If power, fame and money come first, beware. They are legitimate drives, but out of control, they are subversive of management and humanity. Even in business, they should come second, the reward for excellent deals, products and services.

The organizations that do best at the hard things, the discipline and rigour, determination and decisiveness, are those that share daily in a good purpose.

We live our vision, as we talk with directors, the garage and secretaries, suppliers and customers, financiers, the unions and the media. That is integrity. Those true to a worthwhile vision always have the high ground in their dealings. And most people, given a chance, are idealistic. They want to be with leaders on the high ground.

One of the main roles of a leader is to grant a sense of vision and worth to employees whenever we meet. Lift up our heads. Spread confidence, affirmation and support. We will achieve more than our finances and our present circumstances suggest.

Treat vision the way the pioneers, young people, all those starting out treat it: Quietly, relentlessly, day by day, year by year, affirming more by action than words. But use good words, they are powerful motivators and unifiers.

For organizations, go straight to What must we achieve? Why are we here? What is our business? Name one to three goals. Do this every few years, and the answers can surprise.

For each person, ask about our personal goals and those of the unit where we can have influence. Each person wants to meld individual and work goals. What must our unit achieve? What do I want to achieve and become? What must be done?

There is more on vision in the Values section, and it permeates this book.

VISION WITHOUT MANAGEMENT IS ONLY DREAMING

2 WHAT ARE ORGANIZATIONS FOR?

Organizations are for only one purpose, to do whatever is needed, as well as we can. Make things better. Civilised society depends on three essential types of organization:

✓ Making profits by producing and selling best products and services competitively, while acting ethically and sustainably in the wider society - business and business-oriented research.

✓ Spending other people’s money for the public good - government, public service including publicly funded art and sport, philanthropies, hospitals and schools, universities, public research, non government organizations (NGO’s), aid organizations, some roles of churches. In addition there are the great private philanthropies, spending my own money for the good of others.

✓   Working together, spending mainly our own money, for the good of the members - unions, clubs from local groups to large national organizations, some roles of churches.

All add value only if done efficiently, money is always needed somewhere else, so we must use it properly. Even kindness needs to be tempered with discipline and toughness in some cases, ask the Salvation Army; but good will, or will-to-good guides us. Profit and cash-flow are built-in measures of efficiency and common-sense that apply most to business, and are a check on the activities of public good enterprises. Then we can believe in what we do.

It is daft, in fact scandalous, that we still have to emphasise the necessity of No 1, capitalist free enterprise, against the state running everything. But the balance between the three is always for discussion, as it has been from before Adam Smith.

Name a country where business is not making profits competitively and sustainably, whose activities promoting the public good are booming. You can’t. Public and private sectors need each other.

Poor countries show two related things: That NOT making sustainable profits, generating a surplus to be used for things other than survival, is among the worst failings of humanity, along with warfare and mad ideologies; and that private enterprise is rapacious without a strong legal framework, government administration and regulation. We cannot recommend free enterprise without its counterparts in roles 2 and 3, while those roles are not supported without role 1. To have all roles function well requires a sustained commitment by an overwhelming majority of the people to a high public ideal, for generations. Half-hearted doesn’t cut it.

Spiritual, financial, and social benefits to society are equally necessary. The buzz-phrase is the Triple Bottom Line – economic, environmental and social benefits. True.

History and contemporary affairs demonstrate that honourable behaviour on one hand, or ideology, hypocrisy, ignorance, lies, theft and waste, are spread fairly evenly across profit-making and public good enterprise.

3 WHAT MUST BE DONE

- ASK THE BIG QUESTIONS

Managers face the urgent driving out the important, not seeing the wood for the trees, or the fascination of bright people with showing off their daily brilliance, forgetting the one big issue that must be resolved.

The public services have so much on their plate they do not ask what should be on their plate. Regulatory or care authorities get bound up in the routine paper-shuffling and miss the one big fiasco they exist to prevent. People need to stand back from detail, ask what the foundations are like, and have broad networks. We will still fail to predict things, chaos theory does apply.

Make sure you define your real business. Who are our real customers, what do they really need, what services or products are we best at, and how? Is our customer the old lady, or her family? Woolworths, or the retail buyer? Railway executives thought their business was running big engines along iron rails; lots of engineers, no market savvy. The main business of sport clubs in country towns may be support for the community. In very poor areas, survival of the individual families impinges on everything at work.

Re selling things: People only want to pay for some actual good, when it is delivered, on time.

The first question must be: What must be done for our customers, funders, stakeholders, and for our organization? (looking outwards first). Second comes: What can we do about our problems? (looking inward.) There is a massive difference in effectiveness with this change in mindset. When the number one questions are answered, the smaller issues fall into place, and are more easily tackled.

Reformers are often asked to justify their proposals with a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of the organization as it stands - the current issues in the swamp dominate. While this is always valuable, it comes second. The real reforms are made by people who have a clear vision of what the organization must do, on the high ground.

Recognising at all levels What must be done is the beginning of reform in the public services especially. They have the highest commission in the land, the public good. However they are so bound with internal rules, procedures, paperwork, power struggles, fears of being wrong, media exposure, ministerial and policy changes, that customer service doesn’t rate.

Who is my customer? is a crucial question at all levels in the public service. At the big level, of strategy and policy, the ultimate customer is the public in general, and never forget it. But in non-criminal situations the direct customer is really the minister or secretary we serve, who decides on the public interest, and we serve their policy. At lower levels, is it the public interest in general, or the particular person or company here now? And the customer or the regulator cannot always be right; even at the lowest levels we need to exercise balance. We are striving for both/and rather than either/or.

It is my experience in the Westminster system that ministers are ineffective because they are trapped. They are rarely specialists, know community needs but in a diffuse way, not the means to meet them, and are saddled with their own creation: Fearful, process-driven public services which think reality comes from above, not from reality, will not make bold, well- tuned offerings of policy and program. Time and again governments react powerfully to proper proposals for big effective public-good programs, not for the next election.

We have oodles of people who know what to do in general, but few who know what to do now.

Timing: In changing times, the biggest issue in many organizations is to isolate the dominant success or survival factors in that year or six months. Then hammer those at the expense of lesser issues. Risks and opportunities don’t wait around, they slam doors or open doors when they like, for as long or short a time as they like.

Fund raising in public and private enterprise is a special issue, it is dominated by fad. You can float a brick when the tides are running in, but cannot float the Bank of England when the tide is running out.

The trouble is, this emphasis on the next 6-12 months is warped for executive bonuses and electoral advantage.

In asserting the urgency of priorities and timing, we confront the main objection to this type of book - real managers are so taken with doing the pressing things each day they have no time to make the organization excellent. When you are up to your armpits in crocodiles, you can’t worry about draining the swamp. Just do your job! We see the mediocrity of that management all about. We will be tough, right, faster.

Examples:

One of the greatest Australians was Rev John Flynn, Flynn of the Inland. The white settlers in central Australia were grappling with the countless local problems of the remote, dry, unpredictable Never-never. Having a phenomenal knowledge of the outback, he went to the big social questions, What must be done? Access to health services, communication, and schooling were the big issues. He mobilized people across the land, from Prime Minister down, in support of the big vision, once he had made it practical. In a short period between the World Wars, this man’s vision, connections and drive created the chain of outback hospitals and the pedal radio, the Flying Doctor Service and School of the Air, all serviced by the Australian Inland Mission, an organization inspired by practical love of people.

He had also written the Bushman’s Companion, what to do about the details. Big picture and little picture, right both times. Flynn was one of the greatest examples among humanitarians of melding the vision and the detail. His counterparts in business were Kidman, the Cattle King, and Essington Lewis of BHP. The greatest example of all was John D. Rockefeller, greater in capacity, less ethical in business, great philanthropist.

Flynn also decided what not to do, for which he has been criticised by armchair moralists: He could not handle the huge problems facing the Aboriginal people. He recommended programs for them to governments, but everyone failed, and we still do. He concentrated on what he could do.

A smart guy developed a chain of butcher shops, by giving housewives confidence they could make beaut meals for the family. He trained his butchers to go around to the customer side of the meat display and talk with the shoppers about the meats and good cooking tips. Note the complete change in body language - the seller is literally on the side of the customer, we are deciding together the delicious things that the displayed meat represents.

Research groups are taken up with routine rather than their aims. Over many decades, universities, CSIRO, government and business research agencies have rejected outside research proposals that would have improved their own research in that field.

The official groups were fixated with their own programs, and outside proposals were an unwanted intrusion. This was not due to envy, the Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome, but to being preoccupied. There was neither time nor imagination to lift the eyes and ask would the new proposals, some with highly credentialed proposers and high potential, serve their aims much better than their current plodding projects. Their aim was not success, but to do what they were currently engrossed in, and sell it as focus. Bureaucratic research (oxymoron) is a very conservative business.

In exploration and research, the hourly question is, Where’s the breaks? We work in Snakes and Ladders space. Enterprise, always enterprise.

Asking, What must be done? unites technology-push (what our invention can do) with user-pull (what the user needs) in innovation. What can it do, is it value for money? Can it sell? When and how? What must be done?

We see such bright ideas, Great new electronic monitoring and control system, can manage everything in your home for you! (and cost a lot and be too complex for the benefits). Being blinded by technical potential is a great risk.

Watch the word Can. Does it mean you really can do it, or that you feel sure you could do it with another few years of development and a few million dollars, maybe? Do we have a finisher on the premises?

Australians in prisoner-of-war camps and resistance groups everywhere, had to ask whether the prime questions were how to deal with hunger, disease, brutality and spies; or whether to ask a bit more fundamentally: What must be done? The best answer was relentless: We will hold out. No matter what, we will remain human beings with our pride and spirit and mutual commitment. We will resist to the end. We will never surrender our spirit. Then, the attention to those essential second-tier questions followed – we will find the ways to handle them, day by day. If we die, we die worthy of our beliefs, our colleagues and our families far away. Those who asked and answered the right questions, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Germany to Weary Dunlop and marvellous nurses like Margaret Dryburgh in South East Asia, succeeded in life or death, and were regarded by commentators, but not by themselves, as noble.

A technical public service department was having trouble with its pretty average minister and his arrogant advisers (how many cases do you want?) It was bogged in resentment at not having its technical pride stroked, and was fighting conflicts and communication issues, forgetting the minister as customer. Asking What must be done for the State we serve, and therefore for the minister and government, and for this department? changed the attitudes to serve the government’s legitimate needs no matter what, and provide outstanding advice. Smaller issues fell into place indirectly. The arrogant advisers were run over by the positive new approach. If we really know best, leave those who don’t in our dust.

Many huge social services departments forget that their job is not the grind of procedures, but hourly care of large numbers of individuals, come what may.

Pioneers commonly persevered where later generations failed, because their What must be done? was categorical. The pioneers had chosen the piece of land, or the business, and had to go on until success, or fail near-totally. For later generations What must be done with this one chance? was replaced with What do I feel like doing among many opportunities? Focus and commitment were lost, like the lion that cannot choose which wildebeest in the stampede.

In every organization there comes a time of budget cuts, or a manager who destroys the current plan with a big bad decision, or a re-structure. The common response is to down tools in protest, including the most important tool of all, the commitment. But we can decide to maintain commitment and make the bad situation better, or lose commitment and make it worse.

If we know whom we actually work for, the stakeholders including ourselves, we have no choice. We ask, What must be done? in the new situation and get on with it. The millions who drop their bundle in the developed world because of a funding cut should look at tornado survivors and some wonderful women of the third world. They go on relentlessly, taking kicks time and again, but know what must be done for their children and grandchildren. They pick up the bits and start again. Whom do I work for? What must be done? Relentless.

Someone said to Voltaire: Life is hard. He replied: Compared with what? If we believe in something enough, we are more likely to be strong enough. The saying, What doesn’t kill us strengthens us applies while we retain the commitment.

What must be done in nearly all places is to simplify and optimise paper work. It has grown with the need for accountability and has become a weed, a good plant right out of control, a great management failure.

Paper work beats out real work: Two generations ago, we were on the left-hand side of the curve. Remote executives or owners needed more information, more control for accountability. So proper project proposals, reporting, reviews, analysis and overall surveys were introduced. Good, we moved down the curve.

However, every time anyone thinks of another control, accountability, justifying, reporting or reviewing idea, it is implemented, meanwhile taking our eyes off customers. Oodles of administrators, too few doctors and nurses and teachers. Stuff-ups and malfeasance hide behind the mountains of review and paper that were brought in to fix the stuff-ups and malfeasance. Most of that paper is never read, and most of it shouldn’t be.

Big organizations thought that good review, policy and strategy require layers of policy people on top. Rubbish. That clogs the organization. Bureaucrats think executives are like enzymes that can perform only one specific function, so if you have ten functions you need an executive for each. Rubbish, executives should handle strategy, planning, operations, policy and review. Make the people who run the place do their jobs better and review as we propose later. Some of private enterprise has woken up, governments and academia have not.

One administrator does the job. Two talk to each other about it. Any more, and they commission reviews from consultants, and review the reviews.

We leave out decision theory and risk management, as vastly overdone management tools, in favour of better decision-making ways. Risk management and quality control are in the fabric of all management, they are not separate professions - like tacking on quality control as a separate function over rotten manufacturing processes. Our ways are built-in to deliver superb decisions and risk management, and manage opportunities.

Every manager (everyone) must ask many times a year What must be done? The monthly reports are a good time, as is time of significant conflict, as is every major decision point. But also, ask it each morning, and at the beginning of each 4-STEP process.

Concentration on what must be done for the stakeholders and customers helps overcome internal conflict in the service of something bigger. When the Martians come, we Earthlings unite.

What must be done does not ensure the right thing is done, just the most effective thing according to our beliefs and current information. Lenin and Sayyid Qutb, one of the founders of the deranged Islamist violence movement, both wrote powerful pieces that used the call, What is to be done? They and Marx and Engels, Hitler and Mao made my point – they broke down the complexity to lead people to get on with their main game. However, we have different ethics from those gentlemen.

Deciding What must be done deliberately decides what is less important, what not to bother about now. In the public service, most programs and functions are thought of as immortal, but CEO’s must drop the low priorities.

How to decide what must be done.

See the chapters on Position Papers, the 4-STEP, Periodic All-Level Review and Decisive Meetings. However, the whole book applies to decision-making.

We involve those of our staff who know things relevant to decisions, to use their range of knowledge, and to bring them with us in commitment. Modern staff are more educated and they see what happens on the shop floor and on customer faces, they listen to the phones.

To involve everyone is a recipe for disaster if our processes and culture are not up to it. However in most organizations of any size there are factions, not just personal opinions, that have to be reconciled in order to decide what must be done. Some factions, called silos, last for decades. They stymie decision and action, or force desperate over-rule.

These factions are rarely stupid except in social policies where ideology can cloud rationality. If the factions last a long time, it is because the case is a lasting one. Not necessarily correct, but strong enough to command followers for a long time. So we have to master this entrenched complexity to achieve excellent solutions.

Without belief in our goals that is stronger than opinions on lesser things, strong enough to get factions to work together for the best, not just compromise, we have to resolve matters by rejecting one faction. We lose the good in its case as well as the bad.

We start with chapters on attitudes and organization culture because we need them first, to make our processes work.

To make big decisions, most big organizations involve staff and consultants from a wide geographic range, commonly several continents. All this expertise, unless marshalled together, can confuse or delay the decisions rather than help. Just assembling their reports or running a seminar will not do it.

Believe me, this book was written from experience of failures by experts.

4 POWER AUTHORITY AND EGOS

TIMING AND STYLE OF THE USE OF POWER

ARE SECOND ONLY TO BEING RIGHT

Shared commitment to our goals and people has to be stronger than private ambition - or the two should be merged to strengthen each other. Can we actually involve the contributions of all, yet strengthen the effectiveness of the leader on top? Yes. We confront common situations:

Power is exercised too soon in decision making, or overbearingly so that others shut up: Why won’t he listen before he decides instead of after making the mistakes? The top dog assumes too much knowledge and disregards the very people who are there to advise.

Or power is exercised too late: We all know what has to be done, why won’t she act? The top dog is not sure enough of herself, not confident that strong different views have been resolved.

Or people are confused: Our section leader told us the opposite! Who’s in charge, who do we believe? The top dog is not managing decision-making roles clearly enough.

With the more open decisions-making ethos and processes in this book, we fix all these as a matter of course. An enormous amount of stress is taken out of the group.

It is not true that all power corrupts. Authority properly exercised with people is ennobling and satisfying for most. It is a pleasure to see authority being exercised openly above, beside and below us throughout the group. And there is the proven old saying, It’s amazing what you can achieve if you are willing to let others get the kudos. The higher you are, the easier to achieve this, but the top people are too often there to promote their own kudos. It is all about ethics as well as management nous.

As a rule, where power and kudos are shared the total in the group grows. Where they are hogged, the total in the group diminishes.

Another problem at the top level of ambition and ego: The very purpose of discussion is not to arrive at truth but to establish dominance. The worst I ever saw of this was at Mt Isa Mines, which went from a company worth several billion to be shambolically taken over, due to egotistic management on top of very good people. They were full of world-class expertise but could not manage their own executives or resolve entrenched silos of contending technical opinions. The role of leaders is to prevent this sort of thing developing.

However, power plays extend even to secretaries and storemen, when people are not managed to make decisions honestly together.

Most conflict resolution books are about lower levels. When conflict is resolved at the top, it usually means that the loser has to go, if the differences are big enough. That is where chairmen and boards are to exercise judgement and authority.

We honour the expertise and vision of the leaders, they still have to lead. Sharing leadership can be disastrous if done wrongly, the inexpert tail wagging the dog.

And there is no more important word for any leader than NO! Properly used, it is no more a negative word than when used with infants near stoves. It is to save us from a world of wrong ways around us, the railing to keep us on track. I have never thought a wall around the top balcony is a negative thing.

One of the main jobs of a manager is to curb false enthusiasms from the staff. Experience. The processes below do that routinely, but often the manager has to step in to replace the hopeful with the doable - but not too soon. In times of change, putting lids on hopes is the last thing in the review process. The first thing is supporting ideas.

The world is full of foolish ideas - the more so in changing times. Since people started managing, they know that managing change, the new, the never-tried before, is the biggest problem.

We are in changing times, so this warning is one main reason for this book, dealing with innovation and reform that are required of leaders more and more.

5 VALUES AND CULTURE

THESE ARE THE SOFTWARE TO MAKE EVERYTHING WORK.

THEY ARE NOT JUST THE NICE THINGS,

THEY ARE THE EFFECTIVE THINGS,

DOING WHAT MUST BE DONE.

THIS CULTURE ENRICHES THE USE OF POWER

AND ENRICHES THE LIFE OF PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE GROUP.

Bad culture, as much as bad strategy and structure, is the reason for things going wrong.

We need more dynamism in decision-making than control management delivers. Use every source of information and ideas, especially our own people, who often have a wider perspective between them, than one boss. And shared commitment beats demanded accountability, though both are required. A leader brings vision, experience and wisdom in making decisions on top of all this.

Consider the difference between:

Plans imposed on people, against plans developed with, committed to and constantly improved by all who can.

Reporting systems imposed on people rather than developed with them so they are effective both ways, and improved as we learn.

The failure of performance evaluation imposed one-way by management, rather than two-sided and honed by manager and reportee, both committed to excellence.

Scrappy planning and project review by managers isolated in layered organizations, against review with advice from all who can give it from any level.

These problems contribute to business losses in the billions, and to government that rules, but uselessly and without respect.

Most managers know that some of the processes discussed later, like All Level Review, Do not work! They speak of places without the right culture, because we make them work brilliantly. Bad culture beats good systems and people.

Professionalism has to overcome the vices associated with love of power, status and face.

We are the toughest and fastest team on the patch, and that includes weeding non-productive managers. Even charities and churches must not tolerate wasteful people. The poor need money spent effectively even more than the rich, and it is dreadful to see hospitals badly run.

The healthier the garden the less need of weeding. Get it right first time. An organization where excellence and motivation have to be driven by managers has not arrived; they should be flowering all about.

And we leap boundaries between management and staff and unions, between suppliers and customers, even sometimes between competing groups, all for wider integrity and effectiveness. Business is best with competing business about, hospitals best amongst a good hospital system, sport amongst well-organised sport, and so for churches and charities. The greatest tragedy for churches is an untouchable priesthood.

Effectiveness depends more on continual improvement, secondary decisions and reform than demanded accountability under original plans - demanded accountability is crucial, but can often stunt a group in times of change.

Every corporate plan is a base case to improve as we go. That improvement rarely depends solely on the brilliance of a manager, it requires the eyes and ears and brains of all the people at the work face - and communicated instead of kept to themselves. The greatest entrepreneurs are the exceptions, and even they rely on a broader range of advice than popularly thought.

Engage all of the knowledge and creativity of our workforce instead of asking them to leave half their minds at home or engage in reverie about other concerns.

SOME SLOGANS

Always talk with and involve the workers. Why should we have to say this? Both lose when managers and workers face each other across a line rather than united, both facing outwards towards the goals and the hurdles in the way. The best executive engineer I ever saw, Vince Gauci, always went to the shift bosses as well as the executives on the project, and mixed with unionists as an honest human being, defusing the disastrous antagonisms that rule.

On a complex plant, always go to the electricians who have to look and feel in dark corners and behind facades, and who find what ought to be known, not hidden.

Best managers are right in there with workers, not holding back and being accountable afterwards - too late. And walk the talk.

Getting the right people is half the job, getting the best results from them is harder. If the culture and processes are wrong, all the experts are as likely to contest for status rather than for resolving technical issues. Culture, commitment to goals rather than status, and processes are all needed. What can be more useless than listening to every good idea without marshalling them properly?

Shared commitment beats demanded accountability. Demanded accountability does not overcome problems of status, power, arrogance and fear, or the misunderstandings between management levels that may be seen best from the higher or the lower level. And shared commitment works faster, more directly, and more honestly. And it gives kudos where it is due, and importantly, allows laughter with each other rather than resentfully against each other across levels.

Accountability is demanded by stakeholders and the board and all managers, and by all of us of each other; but in management ranks, shared commitment rules. Once again, professional sport teams are the most obvious examples.

Our policy is always excellence, not existing policy. What could be more scary if handled wrongly? But with the right decision-making, we never let up on improvement, properly decided along the levels of authority.

Never let the sun go down on a good idea. The supervisor must immediately can the idea from greater experience, or take the first step to testing it that day. Cynics say this stops anyone thinking after about 4pm, but good places thrive on it. It is a natural corollary of the fact that no decisions are perfect, and even if they were perfect last month, things are changing fast.

There is a tragedy in the bureaucratic public services especially, that policies are set, accountabilities are set, they always outlast their use-by date, and people are told, That’s policy, stupid, just do it! It is partly because too much detailed policy is set by consultant forays, external to the day-to-day workings where people can see the problems and the solutions in detail, but lack the authority to change.

It is amazing what we can do if we do not mind who gets the credit. And there is enough kudos in achievement to spread it about, so affirm people at all ranks and see everyone shine more.

My team is determined by the task. It is all those who are needed to make it work, and to a greater or lesser extent, all those much affected. Forgetting the second lot is a recipe for failure, from customer feedback to acknowledging whole sectors of society affected by major government policies. And as everything keeps changing, we must stand back regularly to ask again, Who is my team now?

We have too many little boards and managers who are scared of involving the real team, including advisers who might show them up. Confident leaders are delighted to involve someone who can show a better way, and give credit. It is human nature however, to prefer to remain wrong or second best and seem to be in full charge.

Treat problems without blame while fixing them. Blame is then a separate issue, and to be analysed carefully anyway - cause analysis almost always surprises everyone. Even when someone blew up the plant: Where were the training, the procedures, the back-up, the supervision, the