Knowledge Matters™

In the last 15 years in Australia public-sector organisations have been down-sized, right-sized, reorganised, restructured, united, bisected, and sometimes like Defence are now up-sizing! All have had grand visions, strategic business plans, roadmaps, outsourcing plans and so on. Most of these initiatives have failed to realise the expected efficiencies or significantly improve competence. Why?

I think the leaders of these organisations wish for simplicity even when it is not possible to avoid inherent complexity. In particular they put in place piecemeal business solutions and fail to recognise they are part of a wider system. In short they don’t understand their system boundaries or their cross boundary relationships, and don’t give the change initiative time to work before embarking on another. I think many public-sector organisations would benefit from a systems thinking approach to management. ...

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In my 30 years of work in or around public service departments I have noted that seven attributes must be in alignment for an organisation to be effective. (Note I didn’t say efficient, which will be the subject of another blog). They are responsibility, authority, accountability, knowledge, experience, resources and systems, which I call the RAAKERS™ Framework.

The first three attributes - responsibility, authority, and accountability – are essential for individual and organisation success. Too often I see people given the responsibility for an outcome, but they don’t have the organisational authority to make it happen, or worse still are not accountable even if they have the authority. I have also seen the paradox where a sub-department is accountable for a series of outcomes, but doesn’t have the authority or agreement to implement them in other sub-departments, and so is not responsible for the foreign sub-department implementation. Equally one can be responsible to implement an outcome, but not have the authority to implement it, and ultimately not be accountable for the success or failure of the initiative. Task and outcome success are therefore dependent on responsibility, authority and accountability alignment, both at the individual and organisational level. ...

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Introduction

This page contains a list of links to sites that I find interesting or useful. It is arranged alphabetically and is grouped according to my interests.

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It may have been possible in the past, for things to have happened in isolation, but from this time forth, the world must be seen as an organic whole, everything affects everything

Polibius

Hierarchy adapts knowledge to the organization; a network adapts the organization to the knowledge.

George Siemens

A holon is an identifiable part of a system, or a system in its own right, which has a unique identity yet is made up of subordinate parts and in turn is part of a larger whole. A holon exhibits both autonomous and cooperative behaviour, and can combine to form another holon, thus forming a hierarchy called a holarchy.

Arthur Koestler