Managing the unmanageable and feeding the beast

Working on national NHS IT projects, it often feels like any progress is achieved in the face of the active opposition of the organisation we work for (currently NHS England). It's like the organisational bureaucracy in its wider sense (ie including the government department, DHSC, Treasury etc) has been designed with the express intention of preventing us making progress without enormous reserves of dogged persistence. We're in a war of attrition with a constantly shape-shifting bureaucracy.

This might not be a silly as it sounds. Many of the initiatives we work on may not have been formally adopted or approved by the senior leaders in the organisation, or only in the most superficial way. These projects frequently come from government documents like the current '10 Year Plan' or its predecessors. Others 'leak' into the organisation through direct contact between DHSC policy teams or individual ministers and delivery teams.

We need to acknowledge that the delivery teams themselves often have a vested interest in encouraging this model: wanting to pursue projects because they believe it to be a good idea or in patient interests, but needing a powerful backer/champion/patron to support and enable their work.

This puts management in the difficult position of not being in full control of the organisation's workload and priorities and with responsibility for satisfying a diverse group of stakeholders, many with overambitious or unrealistic expectations.

To this we can add another layer of patronage: between the organisation's senior leaders and their ministerial or civil services seniors to whom they owe the continuation of their role.

In an idealised world, senior managers would develop their own agenda and priorities, filtering all the demands, then harnessing the organisation's resources to deliver these. Simultaneously, they would manage expectations upwards. That would involve taking responsibility for prioritisation decisions, deciding who needs to be disappointed and carefully managing those difficult conversations.

Back in the real world, we have bureaucracy; an endless thicket of process. In theory, this is to ensure public money is spent wisely and to reduce 'waste'. In practice this acts as a filter, weeding out or more usually delaying those projects that don't reach a threshold of importance, support or have a sufficiently dogged and determined team trying to progress them. 

This removes the necessity of senior managers making potentially unpopular decisions because the decision-making is a multi-faceted thing defused across numerous individuals and committees.  And if the bureaucracy prevents an important project from making progress, the responsible delivery team can then be blamed for not negotiating the processes effectively, or for not being sufficiently energetic and dedicated in pushing it forward.

Everyone is a winner.....

But the costs of this are not trivial.  The amount of time and effort required, the person hours required just to gain approval for work that has already theoretically been agreed creates a massive cost and time overhead for any and every project. And of course, as in physics, any filter impedes all progress to to some degree.

This is where the real 'waste' is.

Ultimately, many of us are just engaged in this process of 'feeding the beast' rather than actually doing productive work.

Working for the other guy

The late Charlie Kirk wasn't the kind of Christian that many people in the UK - possibly many Christians across the world - would recognise. New Testament ideas and teachings - things like humility, compassion and forgiveness - didn't seem to loom very large in his personal philosophy and behaviour. These appear to have been shaped more by the Old Testament with its rigid prohibitions, denunciations, smitings and certainties.

In this way he was fairly typical of Conservative Christian views in the US. Biblically fundamentalist rather than in any real sense 'Christian', with more in common with the Israeli right than other Christians outside the US.

Kirk's great inspiration was the 'shock jock' Rush Limbaugh, and it showed. Limbaugh's stock in trade was using his position of power and influence as a prime-time radio host to be outrageously provocative. To say things that were inflammatory, insulting and deliberately designed to shock, usually at the expense of the relatively weak: women, ethnic minority groups, homosexuals. 

Punching down on steroids, it was also a way of normalising - desensitising the mainstream - to relatively niche views that many would see as abhorrent.  And this was build on a foundation of lies and dishonesty.  Many of Limbaugh's views, positions, statements and contentions were demonstrably untrue or gross enough exaggerations for there to be little difference. 

He normalised lying as performance art, rolling the turf for others like Kirk.

Limbaugh as a confident, articulate, fluent, quick thinking, experienced radio host was only too happy to use his superior position to intimidate and ridicule the far less capable people prepared to try their luck with him on the air through the sincerity of their beliefs. There was no respectful debate, it was all ridicule and belittlement in the cause of an extreme - and selective - version of hard-right religious fundamentalism.

Blessed with a similar skill-set, Kirk followed a similar path, except using face-to-face debate on college campuses instead of radio. He was quite literally 'down with the kids', influencing young minds en masse with a toxic mix of intolerance, racism, homophobia and misogyny with a sugar coating of motherhood and apple pie.

He was clearly a charismatic individual with an attractiveness which drew in young people, and a tech-savviness that enabled him to make the most of modern communications and social media.  

There was, perhaps the beginnings of a personality cult. I'm vaguely reminded of Chris Brain and his evangelical Nine O'clock Service in the 1980s. This connected with young people in a similar way albeit on a far more geographically constrained basis. I would not be surprised if issues relating to the abuse of power didn't emerge about Charlie Kirk as they have for Chris Brain.

The final analysis is whether Kirk left the world a better place than he found it, or at least has a Hippocratic legacy in having done no harm:

In fuelling division and polarisation, normalising lies and hate mongering, punching down against the vulnerable, providing support to a would-be tin-pot dictator like Trump, the balance is not in his favour. 

He was not doing Jesus' work in any way, shape or form. I think he might have been working for the other guy.

Velocity not speed

I spent a big chunk of yesterday in an internal workshop with the senior leadership team of the area I work in. The aim - ostensibly - was to work out how we could make faster progress. Failing that, how could we make it look like we were making better progress to the senior execs of the organisation? It was branded as a "Velocity Workshop".

The fact this latter point was clearly stated speaks volumes: this was as much an exercise in 'spin strategy' as it was an attempt to identify actual blockers and action that could be taken to resolve them.

In reality, most of the things making progress slow relate to the wider corporate environment, particularly extreme levels of bureaucracy which infect everything.  

For example, it can take more than 3 months to gain approval for a new Statement of Work (SOW) - essentially a time-boxed piece of work for a specific team - for an on-going project which already has a full business case, financing and approvals. 

The SOW needs multiple approvals within the organisation (from the budget holder, finance, senior management, digital assurance team etc etc) but then also needs wider government approvals from the Department of Health & Social Care, from the Government Digital Service (GDS) and now from a cross-government system called GAtS (Getting Approval to Spend).

This represents a massive overhead and a huge brake on progress. But, as well as these practical constraints that soak up time and effort in a completely unproductive way, prioritisation is also a major problem. By this I mean an almost total lack of prioritisation. 

Generally if you really want to get something done, you need a laser-like focus on the most important thing, and a gearing of as many resources as possible to move this forward.  Back in the real world of NHS England, there is almost no attempt to do this. Often this leaves individual teams competing against each other for resources and for priority in 'bottleneck' areas, in what is effectively a succession of zero-sum games.

Some of this derives from NHSE's business model, whereby new work and priorities are not always managed into the organisation from the top or in any kind of systematic way. Instead, individual ministers often develop their own projects or areas of interest working directly with the teams concerned, effectively leap-frogging NHSE's hierarchy.  

Add to that the tendency for individual teams - sometimes lobbied or led by external contractors - to push projects for their own interests, and you get layers of management who have no effective control over the organisation's portfolio of work.  The only levers they have are those that enable them to prevent work happening or at least slow it down.

Moving from the specific to the general, we can see several organisational traits emerging:

1. An organisational leadership and hierarchy that does not fully control its business or priorities, resulting in unrealistic and unachievable expectations
2. Organisational leaders who are never likely to fulfil the unrealistic expectations heaped on them, so must constantly decide who they can afford to disappoint
3. An organisational leadership whose main levers are negative ones exercised through bureaucratic constraints (often just the weight of 'process') 

To this you can add the type of leaders that have little or no agenda of their own beyond career advancement. They are the type of people whose main interest is in impressing those above them or elsewhere in the hierarchy who can help advance their career. Actual achievement - delivery of stuff - is a distant second. So actually taking responsibility for decisions on what is important (ie for the public for example), what needs to be done, or what can most realistically be achieved is generally not part of their mindset.

Back then to our "Velocity workshop".  Obviously some of its purpose was performative: ie so our director could look like she was doing something to address the perceived slowness of development, but without having to do anything difficult like making priority decisions that might draw attention or disappoint important stakeholders. 

It was also about shifting responsibility down to the lowest level possible. So instead of this being the director's responsibility to help speed up work by addressing the dysfunctional bureaucratic machinery (something only she has the seniority to attempt), responsibility was delegated to middle managers (with limited leverage and authority) to come up with ideas for increasing velocity and - more importantly - to be tasked with following these up.  Needless to say, most of these ideas will have a marginal impact at best.

Meanwhile there is no meaningful attempt to set clear priorities and certainly no reduction in the bureaucratic overhead. But our director can report a successful awayday, spent looking at how we can improve our velocity.

Job done.

The Big Con

I've just ordered a copy of The Big Con following Will Lloyd's review and a fascinating interview with Mariana Mazzucato - both in New Stateman. I will add it to David Craig's Plundering the Public Sector (2006) and similarly themed works, along with my 30 or so years watching the serial failure of consultancy firms to improve NHS IT. 

This includes working on the Blair era National Programme for IT (largely run by consultancies), the (largely failed) outsourcing of primary care support services to Capita and more recently the attempts to 'digitally transform' NHS screening programmes (still in the process of failing). 

I might have plenty of time to read it. I'm under threat of redundancy following the Laura Wade-Gery review (outsourced to McKinsey) recommended the merger of NHS Digital and NHS England, and the subsequent organisational re-design (outsourced to McKinsey) resulting in a 30-40% cut in staffing. 

No matter: I'll be perfectly positioned to make use of the government's network of 50+ Champions to help me back into the workforce, and possibly the Restart scheme (outsourced to Serco, G4S and Maximus).

I'm not sure how much I'll learn from The Big Con or whether it will just provide some intellectual and theoretical flesh to the bones of experience. Books like Craig's Plundering are essentially journalistic descriptions of what went wrong.  Anthony King and Ivor Crewe's The Blunders of Our Government is about more than the specific failures of management consultancy, but also provides rather more analysis of why governments fail so spectacularly in their policy aims, covering things like operational disconnect as well as the lack of internal expertise.

So I will read The Big Con with interest, and hopefully provide a review in due course.

Long live the Republic of Barbados

 Tomorrow (30 November, 2021) Barbados will become a republic, severing its last ties to the UK and appointing Sandra Mason as president. This is a wonderful thing and something that any country which still has Queen Elizabeth II as head of state should be considering.

To be sure, since gaining independence in 1966 Barbados' links to the UK have been minimal and largely ceremonial or sporting. Aside from the Queen, the position of high commissioner was the most obvious manifestation of colonial legacy. Membership of the Commonwealth long ago ceased to have much meaning outside of Buckingham Palace, with the Commonwealth Games being about the only genuine benefit of membership.

A symbolic act perhaps, but symbols are important for all sorts of reasons. This is a great demonstration of self-confidence and self-determination by Barbadians. They are demonstrating they have the confidence to assume full responsibility for every aspect of the governance of their island. Good for them.

In doing this, they are doing the UK a favour too. Few people in mainstream society either know or care about the British Empire, but there are still a few - particularly amongst wealthy elites - who still cling to the idea.  For some it may be sentiment or nostalgia, but for some it marks something more problematic: a hankering after a time of British superiority and exceptionalism that many assumed the end of empire had consigned to the dustbin of history. This is a poisonous legacy and needs to be neutralised as quickly as possible.

I’m sure the Queen is in the sentiment and nostalgia camp, having grown up in a very different world. She would have been brought up with concepts of the ‘white man’s burden’ and her supposed responsibility to lead the nations of the Empire. The Commonwealth is merely the continuation of this idea ‘by other means’. It allows the palace and others to avoid having to confront directly the reduced status of the UK or the monarchy in the real world.  But sparing the Queen's feelings is no basis for policy.

The sooner other commonwealth countries follow Barbados’ path and put an end to this shadow empire, the sooner the UK will be able to size up its real status in the world. It would then be impossible for those clinging to ideas of imperial glory to maintain their delusions: they would have to confront the reality that we are a middling country of no great significance by ourselves.

In the meantime, it would be wonderful to see some of those from former slave owning families like Richard Drax respond to the zeitgeist and gift their land holdings in Barbados to the Barbadian people. The amount of goodwill that act would generate would far outweigh any financial loss to such a wealthy person.  It would constitute the merest drop in the ocean of reparations that ought to be paid by the wealthy. Sadly, I can't see that happening.

So I say to the people of Barbados, good for you and the best of luck. Long live the Republic of Barbados!

Book review: Unfinished Business: the politics of dissent in Irish republicanism

Marisa McGlinchey offers a fascinatingly detailed account of the thinking of what are commonly referred to in the press as ‘dissident republicans’. The author prefers the label ‘radical republicans’ as these are largely people that kept faith with core principles when the republican leadership (represented by the Provisional IRA and Provisional Sinn Fein) changed tack in the 1990s and joined the peace process. As with most things relating to Irish politics and history, it’s more complicated than that….

The book reads a bit like a Phd thesis in both the writing style (rather clunky and stilted) and the structure. Stronger editorial oversight from Manchester University Press might have helped the author work the material into a tighter, clearer narrative. In particular the quotes from interviewees could have been integrated into the narrative more elegantly.  I found some of them slightly ambiguous out of context.

Stylistic gripes aside, it is a very thorough analysis of the thinking of groups and individuals outside of the republican mainstream based on extensive interviews with key players. It also draws some insightful conclusions about the wide range of view and ideas that exist outside the mainstream, and the fact this plethora of groups is partly a function of Sinn Fein’s intolerance of alternative views. The interviewees often seem blind to the fact they are perpetuating the same narrow-mindedness. Or just how much of their testimony is reminiscent of the Life of Brian’s ‘People’s Front of Judea’ scenes (Splitters!).

Overall I’m not convinced the mainstream-dissident split is the most significant fracture in contemporary republicanism. Certainly, the strands of thinking represented by some of the more cerebral interviewees – Anthony McIntyre and Tommy McKearney for example – is radically different from those of groups like Republican Sinn Fein (RSF), the 32 County Sovereignty Movement (32CSM) or Soaradh. This is not only in their attitudes towards the use of violence, their analysis of the problems and solutions are also radically different.

It’s possible a more pertinent split is between those republicans whose thinking has evolved and developed in some way - even where this is in very different directions – and those that have maintained rigidly fixed positions like RSF, 32CSM and Soaradh. To my mind the slavish adherence to republican dogma (and self-identification as the only true believers etc) indicates ossified mindsets where re-cycling well-worn rhetoric is rather more important than either progressing the rights of nationalist people in the north or developing any pragmatic strategy that could lay a path towards reunification. They have prioritised gaining republican brownie points over any kind of progress.

Within this the dogged insistence of many radical republicans of framing the issue as one of British ‘occupation’ plays a pivotal role in oversimplifying both the problem (British colonialism) and the solution (British withdrawal). Crucially it avoids radical republicans having to face the awkward reality of around 1m of their neighbours who do not wish to join their idea of a republic and are unwilling to be forced to at gunpoint. This was the root of unionist rejection of home rule in the early 20^th Century (along with the original threat of armed resistance to it) and remains the root of the problem now.

No less importantly, the 'occupation' framing allows radical republicans to avoid the other awkward reality that whilst the Irish Republic may be emotionally in favour of reunification, the reality would be far more problematic and fraught with complexity, risk and cost.

The 1916 proclamation implied there was an artificial division between republicans and unionist sewn by the dastardly Brits for their nefarious colonial ends. If the Troubles teaches us anything, it is how wrong this conceptualisation is. The desire of unionists to remain both British and Irish is both deeply held and sincere (as Richard English has demonstrated – at least to my satisfaction). 

Recognising this reality was one of John Hume’s greatest contributions, as was selling it to Gerry Adams as the basis of progress across a broad nationalist-republican front.  Ms McGlinchey’s book illustrates that some radical republicans steadfastly refuse to accept this, preferring to cling to comfortable simplicities and ancient dogma instead. They are stuck in an intellectual cul-de-sac from which they show no sign of emerging.

Book review: Blanketmen by Richard O'Rawe

See Amazon

Richard O'Rawe deserves huge respect for such an honest account of this pivotal episode in Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’.  Most of the key players in the republican movement have been neither open nor honest about events that occurred and their role in them.  Perhaps that is to be expected.  It does make this book stand out from the crowd and means the author stands head and shoulders above his comrades for even trying to shed some light. 

Like the best war memoirs, Blanketmen represents the author trying to process the events he participated in; to make some kind of sense of them, to ‘do right’ by his comrades and achieve an accommodation with his conscience.  I’m not sure that process will ever conclude, but it’s a worthy endeavour.

I disagree entirely with O’Rawe’s politics, but it’s possible to relate on a human level to the situation the prisoners found themselves in, the decisions they and others made and the appalling consequences.  Ironically the excessive blokey banter is no different from that you would find in a group of British squaddies, although the Blanketmen strike me as a more diverse and thoughtful group.

It seems fairly clear O’Rawe’s central contention is correct: the hunger striker’s lives were deliberately sacrificed to further a political objective. This needs some context:   PIRA had considerable form for treating the lives of its volunteers – and the public - with callous disregard.  If the hunger strikers were used as cannon fodder by the army council, that was neither new nor out of character.  The IRA themselves didn’t take prisoners, they executed anyone they caught.

More interesting is how much the decision to drag out the strike was made by the army council, and how much was Gerry Adams’ decision alone.  After all, the army council had opposed the hunger strike, and would have contained members deeply hostile to the expansion of political activity, in line with republican orthodoxy.  It is also likely (as the author surmises) that Adams had recognised the limitations of the armed struggle years before and had a long-term project to redirect the republican movement towards politics.  In that context, the hunger strike and the opportunity afforded by Bobby Sands’ election was too good to waste.  It’s at least possible that Adams way playing his own game, manipulating both the army council and the strikers to further his own political agenda.

So were the hunger strikers misled?  Was their struggle for special category status used as a trojan horse for a shift from the Armalite to the ballot box? Perhaps, but the prison campaign was itself a form of proxy war – the armed struggle by other means – so there’s a kind of logic in the longer-term outcome.

Ultimately I have to agree with Professor English in his introduction: that this book’s real value is in the wider insight it provides into the republican movement, the individuals involved, their characters, motivations and relationships, as much as illuminating the events themselves.  For someone who grew up regarding the Provos as the enemy, it’s made them rather more real and a little more comprehensible.

I still think republican ideology is fundamentally wrong-headed and Provo methods execrable.  But you can’t fault the dedication, tenacity and bravery of the Blanketmen and hunger strikers themselves. Whether they knew it or not, their sacrifice helped to move things in the right direction.  It’s a sad inditement of the time, the place and the politics that these men’s effort and talents couldn’t have been better employed.

Richard O’Rawe has done a great service by shining the light of honesty on a very dark chapter.