When you want to reform government from the toxic bureaucracy of FEMA (see Article 109) to that similar to the top place that Americans want to work, NetApp and Google (see Article 116) you will find resistance. This is a bold broad step that even most of private industry has not yet made. In private industry all you have to do is convince the CEO that the change will bring big savings and innovation to the organization. But in government the state’s governor may not have the clout needed to change long standing bureaucratic agencies.

These agencies have power from the state legislature and can out last a governor faced with the need to be elected and with term limits. The key word here is POWER. Bureaucrats love power it is reflected in the various levels of an organization’s career path. With each promotion a bureaucrat gains more and more power over his fellow workers and to make his own decisions. If those who work for him fail to follow his bidding he can always manipulate their performance appraisals. Remember during the Katrina hurricane when mayor Nagin of New Orleans made a plea to FEMA for supplies and he said on national television “all they want to do is to get me to sign off on their org chart”.

The approach I recommend is to look for an opportunity which will provide a chance of successfully bringing change. The best opportunity is in a time of tight budgets such as most of the states are currently going through. State Legislatures across the nation are looking for ways to cut back their budgets. I would start with this small crack in the bureaucratic armor and force the implementation of Lean Teams to study an make recommendations on cross functional problems and Functional Lean Teams within functions at the bottom level in the agency. This can be done if the head of the agency approves the implementation. He may reluctantly do this at first as a result of pressure from the legislature for reform but he must eventually give his full support to the implementation.

Once Lean Teams are installed at the high level and at the lower functional level in the agency the door is open to install Work Measurement through Process Flow Charts as I have suggested elsewhere (see Article 103). Work Measurement will provide the budget for the real work that the agency does separated from the management budget. Now the power shifts to the budget committee in the legislature because there is no debate as to how much work there is to be done within the agency.

The reform of the agency is begun by first eliminating one or two layers of bureaucratic management and forming the organization into Steering and Functional Management. When the Steering Management Team is formed over staffing will become obvious when they try to squeeze a large number of managers into a single conference room for the first meeting. This restores budgeting power with solid numbers to the legislature.

See the following:
Article 113. Private Versus Public Budgeting Practices
Article 151. The Promise of Going ‘Lean’
Article 152. The Process of Replacing Bureaucratic Management With Lean Teams