Every government in Pakistan has one agenda point in common – administrative reforms. But the reforms have remained a mirage. What causes the mirage to persist? Lack of political will? Or is there a thread running through the reform reports that renders them unimplementable?
Every government in Pakistan has one agenda point in common – administrative reforms. But the reforms have remained a mirage. What causes the mirage to persist? Lack of political will? Or is there a thread running through the reform reports that renders them unimplementable?
Year after year, all these voluminous reports written by eminent experts wilt away in a whimper, giving way to a downsizing /rightsizing exercise.
A review of some of the recent administrative reforms reports shows a common theme running through them – ambitious government-wide reforms are not the answer. The bulk of improvements and efficiency and government operations come from a number of modest incremental reforms rather than from grandiose schemes.
These ideas and concepts are actually the core ideas of a management philosophy which has been obsolete for over forty years now.
Till about the late 70s, it was believed that most organisations (including government organisations) were very complex and that there were high levels of uncertainty related to identifying the underlying causes of poor performance or necessary conditions for success. It was, therefore, difficult to predict the impact of any reforms on the performance of the organisation as a whole.
Most senior managers who ascribed to this view dealt with the complexity and uncertainty by breaking the organisations into smaller sub-units or departments where cause–effect relations were better known or certain. They then aimed to improve the performance of each department individually. The assumption was that the sum of these local improvements of these individual departments would add up to the improvement for the organisation as a whole.
Creating smaller units or departments also meant that large bureaucracies were required for control, coordination, communication and consolidation of outcomes from each of these departments.
So, this philosophy of splitting organisations into smaller departments to reduce complexity and uncertainty and to improve performance also resulted in the creation of additional bureaucracy.
In the early 80s, new insights into the science of management revealed that complex systems like organisations are governed by inherent simplicity – that the majority of the problems or poor performances are caused by very few underlying causes (Pareto Principle) – the leverage points in the system.
The new thinking professes that a system’s performance improvement is not equal to the sum of all local improvements, but simply the result of improvements of only those few departments not working (performing at the level of ‘good enough’).
In the early 80s, new insights into the science of management revealed that complex systems like organisations are governed by inherent simplicity
This thinking based on a holistic approach acknowledges that in the same way that the strength of any chain is limited by the strength of the weakest link, the performance of any organisation is limited by the performance of the system constraint – the organisation’s weakest department.
Improving any of the non-weakest links /departments will not improve the organisation while improving the weakest link will always result in an improvement to the organisation as a whole.
It is therefore possible to improve all parts of an organisation or a system without splitting it into smaller sub-units. However, the key to achieving ongoing efficiency and stability for any organisation is finding a way to focus their scarcest resources (management time and attention) on only that part or department that is currently limiting or blocking further improvements – the system constraint.
In essence, the new science of management aims to show that the core problem in improving poor /low performance in any organisation is our erroneous assumption about what to focus on (and what not).
Over the past 40 years, this new thinking has been applied to every type of organisation imaginable. Each of these success stories has shown that when management tried previously to improve all parts of their organisation, the possible became impossible. But when they started focusing their time on identifying and improving only those parts that currently constrained performance – the highest leverage points – suddenly the impossible became possible. Achieving more with less in less time.
In the last few years, like any other science, the science of management has also seen exponential developments. Unfortunately, institutions in Pakistan have not kept pace with developments in management sciences.
As a consequence, we keep churning out administrative reform reports, year after year, based on an obsolete philosophy, which if implemented would further deteriorate organisational performance. Downsizing/ rightsizing is therefore the only ‘reform’ that we are aware of and that is undertaken every year.
The absence of genuine administrative reforms for decades has seriously affected the functioning of government machinery. The bureaucracy has grown too large, it costs too much to run and is inefficient.
It is time, therefore, to earnestly plan and execute administrative reforms based on current reality and new insights in the science of management.
The writer is a freelance contributor. He can be reached at: miansalimuddin@gmail.com
