Article 36. False Assumptions by government Leaders

The following list of false assumptions are not universal some government Leaders are better managers than others. 

1. Every problem requires a funding solution.
This simply is not true some problems can be resolved without spending any funds.  However most major problems should be researched to find the most “bang for the bucks”.  If the legislature were to use a Lean team this is where you would find the most innovative solutions. 

2. Across-the-board spending cuts treat all Agencies alike.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. Agencies that manage their budgets well will experience difficulty but badly managed over staffed organizations will not feel the pain. Public safety issues arise by cutting police and fire protection. The consistent practice of across-the-board-cuts promotes over-staffing in all agencies and is a real drag on budgets.

3. All agencies need an Organization Chart describing the jobs that the agency does. 
Ostensibly this is done so that those outside the agency can find the proper person to approach for a solution. The problem is that the person in the org box may have a job which occupies less than a full time employee.  I recommend that bureaucracies be organized as teams with functional groupings not departments more on this later.

4. Difficult problems brought before law makers are sometimes resolved by funding the formation a new agency and passing the problem to it.  
The result is many agencies have out lived their usefulness yet continue to be a drag on state and federal budgets.

5. When a new agency is formed a bureaucratic organization chart is the first thing made.                                                      Then each block on the chart is filled. Each block in turn creates its own org chart etc. This is a top-down created agency an ever expanding bureaucratic maze before any work is actually done.  I recommend the bottom-up approach used to grow private businesses. Start with the formation of a top level Steering Management Team (preferably with Lean training) with each of its members leading a self-managed Functional Team of employees who are actually doing the work of the agency. The agency is grown efficiently from the bottom-up only expanding when there is a need to get something done

6. Budget cuts automatically result in reduced services. There may be some truth to this if the budget does not reflect the true cost of the service.                                                                       The fact is that nearly all state budgets are Top-Down budgets that reflect little of the real costs associated with a service only by Work Measurement resulting in a Bottoms-Up budget can the real costs be known. Once the real costs are known budget leaders will know exactly where to make cuts and still keep wanted government services.

7. An agency can be made to be more efficient if productivity is measured.                                                                                       The absolute worst thing you can do is to try to measure public services without standards especially those that have variations in their processes.  What you can do is to find the best way to do a function using Lean then use Work Measurement to determine the correct staffing.  Establish self managed Functional Teams empower them to innovate and make continuous improvement to their jobs.   Then get out of their way.  Don’t waste their time by trying to micromanage their jobs. 

8. With extreme pressure to balance the budget the legislature should only concentrate on finding all the savings that can be found.                                                                                              Wrong, this is usually not going to be enough to balance the State Government’s budget short falls. Major government reforms using Enterprise Lean should be implemented with due haste. This means the implementation of Lean Teams throughout government agencies leading to Work Measurement with subsequent staffing and a Bottoms-Up budget. This will determine where cuts can safely be made to continue needed government services.

9. To increase the efficiency of an agency first fix their IT problems.                                                                                     Dead wrong. The correct approach is implement Enterprise Lean Teams to study the overall problem determine how best to provide these services organize for the best solution and only then consider automation. The false assumption  in starting with an IT solution is that the organization is assumed to be already operating the best way it can.

10. Contracting government services to private vendors is the best policy.                                                                                    This is not always the best policy. IT contracting of public services in several states has failed in: Indiana, Texas and Virginia. The false assumption here is that private contractors know best how to do the job when the reality is that agency personnel are closer to knowing the real problems than a private contractor. The agency needs to remain in control of these services and only subcontract for IT services which it cannot provide. But again the agency should always use Enterprise Lean to determine the best way to do the job before automating it. 

11. The application of manufacturing methods to government processes improves productivity.                                                 Yes, but only where they apply. Most manufacturing production lines are a set of non-varying processes that produce a product. Most government and office services have varying processes where Enterprise Lean can be applied but not without supporting history data. 

The Most Costly False Assumption Made by Government Leaders
The single most costly false assumption made by government leaders is that Bureaucratic Government Operates Efficiently. Nearly all government leaders seldom give the efficiency of bureaucratic government a second thought or at least they think that nothing can be done about the problem. The fact is that all Bureaucratic organizations are inherently inefficient in management in two areas: being overstaffed by as much as 20% or more and by the bureaucratic failure to prevent waste, fraud and corruption.

This assumption is made every time we find related that there is only two ways to reduce budgets either “cut programs or raise taxes”.  This completely leaves out the third alternative of making government more efficient.  This is deeply engrained in our culture nearly all Politicians and Reporters regularly make this mistake of a two choice alternative cutting programs or raising taxes.  We hear this all the time repeated on TV.

This false assumption that bureaucracies operate efficiently comes from an even greater lack of understanding of the concept of efficiency and what it means for governments to operate efficiently.

Politicians make this assumption when they defend giant bureaucratic organizations such as Medicaid and Medicare from the recent budget cutting efforts. Some feel that there is enough public support for the services of these organizations that the opposition can’t win. Others are well aware that services provided cannot be sustained in the future and want to reign in the costs of these programs before doomsday. This kind of confrontational behavior is based on the single false assumption that bureaucratic government operates efficiently and therefore there are only two alternatives cut Medicare or raise taxes. Government Leaders who know about the inefficiency of Bureaucracies seam to be in agreement that nothing can be done about the problem. 

Congress should focus its attention on reforming government bureaucratic organizations using Enterprise Lean to get the highest efficiency possible. The method I propose Right-Sizes the Bureaucratic organization and changes it to a Team Managed organization. This is a major change in the way that these organizations are managed practically eliminating the current fraud and corruption with the help of today’s new computer systems. The benefits of this method is that democrats and the public get to keep the services provided and Republicans get the budget cuts they want and Medicaid and Medicare survive, at least for now and everybody wins except the bureaucrats.

It is clear that the third option of increasing the productivity of government is not well understood. In fact it is not understood at all by most state legislatures and congressmen who continue to pursue cutting programs or raising taxes as the only two options. One of the reasons for not buying into over staffing is that when I say nearly all bureaucracies are over-staffed by 20% or more they simply don’t believe it.  The reason is that nearly all politicians are regularly confronted by examples of over-worked government employees while some government employees have almost nothing to do.   

The Biggest Widespread False Belief About Government
The biggest widespread false belief about government is that “what it does” is somehow different from  “what normal business does”.   For every function found in government you can find something similar in business even voting.  But yet government appears to be fundamentally different from business.  This is because the political trappings of bureaucracy has created this mystique.  This belief is widespread in our culture.  I recall the famous quip by an astronaut who had just finished his day of training “That’s good enough for government work”.
  
If you can accept that this as true -there really is no difference between what government does and what business does -then you can begin to understand the mystique of bureaucracy.   Bureaucracy has brainwashed us all into thinking that if there is no profit motive then there is no reason to be concerned about the bottom line.  This has left us with the sad fact that it is nearly impossible to fire a government employee.  And as for laying off a government employee if there is no work to do it is totally out of the question.  This is one of the basic reasons that Bureaucracies are over staffed.