Quantifying Qualities of Bureaucracy and of Entreprenial Effort
I sat in sales class several months ago. The pitch line pushed was about being unique. The theory was that most sales persons are merely selling commodities. Each sales orgnaization must work to make itself unique in order to stand out with its commodity.
The solution proposed was to coin a new phrase, "I am different because I am an intrapreneur." The theme was that an intrapreneur does everything he can within the system to serve his client.
I was reading an article in the Washington Times this morning. The theme was that the State Department is broken because the inmates are running the asylum: the Foreign Service is running the Foreign Service.
At first blush, this seems inherently wrong in a democratic republic: why have elections and officials appointed by the elected if the elected can't run the system. The canned answer is that the system exists to avoid the patronage system that ran amok in the post-Civil War era.
So if I am to understand this argument, in the 21st century, we should keep an answer to 1880's problem. This is wrong.
Government has a very easy measure of good management -- are we stuck with the same people for years? The Washington Times article gives the stats. My conclusion: we are stuck with the same old Foreign Service. Why is this a problem?
Look at any private enterprise and compare. In private enterprise you can look at the system and you will find that the staff changes. Some due to death (yes, foreign service officers do die, this and sickness are about the only similarities), some due to better business offers at other companies for promotion or money or location, some due to the desire to create another new enterprise, some due to firing for incompetence or misconduct or incongruity with the new management. I have not studied enterprise in a systematic manner but I would suggest that the Washington Times is slightly off in comparison. I would bet ththat very few terminations can be explicitly identified as incompetence. Most of those terminations are by forced resignation to "spend more time with my family" or to "pursue other opportunities." Yet the numbers departing are probably far higher than in government service.
The biggest causes of change in personnel are that new management usually wants to seed the system with its own men and women. This seeding process is what is missing in the Foreign Service.
When a new president is elected, too few persons are appointed that want to carry out his agenda and too few can be terminated simply because they are not the new management's men.
This continuity of personnel is not healthy. The Foreign Service and the Civil Service need to have some risk of losing jobs when administrations change so that the president can more quickly and efficiently implement his agenda.
The problem is that the government is run by mostly members of the Civil Service who happen to be members of the largest union in the country, the federal government employee union. Who do you think they vote for and support? Easy, Democrats. Who do you think is going to fight to keep their personnel in place?
The Democrats don't need patronage. They already own the government. And you want to know why government does not work well whether in the Foreign Service or the Civil Service. We need a new system that has greater likelihood of change with new administrations. The greater the change in management, the better the result. Let the clerical and non-decision-makers stay, but be more at risk to termination and management change alone will be effective.
