Too many meetings, too few results
If you want to lead, focus on benchmarks, not endless “restructuring”
This column is about smart, caring and decent people who get bogged down because of too much “restructuring.”
By restructuring, I mean the forced mergers of organizations or communities. I am also talking about new committee structures that are too clever or convoluted, too many exhausting planning sessions, unfocused consultants’ reports and many, many meetings.
Last month, the three priests and 13 lay volunteers on the “Inverness North Zone Planning Committee” put out a communique to the seven Catholic parishes in the zone. The zone stretches from the town of Inverness to Cheticamp.
The committee reported that it has “been working diligently over the past year to `do something new’ to provide for the pastoral needs of the parishioners in Inverness North.”
The area is anticipating fewer priests and parishioners.
After many meetings (lately every second Saturday), it is not clear in the communique what the innovations might be. The zone will soon be hiring lay ecclesial ministers, but the job posting was vague about qualifications and responsibilities. A planning retreat is scheduled for the fall.
The zone was set up by Bishop Brian Dunn in 2016. The diocese said at the time that a zone council will eventually replace the local parish councils. This experiment is supposed to spread to the whole diocese.
One immediate complication: The French-speaking Acadian parishes suddenly found themselves in the minority in the new zone, although the diocese’s Pastoral Planning Committee wrote in 2015 that “the French culture will be considered in this zone.”
Is there a different way to harness the energies and talents of the good people who have been drawn into this process?
A better approach could be benchmarking, instead of a fixed zone. What clear standards would signal that a parish (including a small parish) is vibrant? The benchmarks would describe the required sacraments, functioning ministries and youth involvement. Benchmarks would also mandate outreach to the broader community. Variations based on community characteristics and identity would be allowed. Benchmarks would speak to concrete action to reduce poverty, welcome newcomers and support people who are ill or isolated. Benchmarks would define financial responsibility and solvency.
The benchmarks would mostly look outward, in line with the Christian mission of service and discipleship. Internal committees and processes would be means to the outward ends.
The parishes would be given some time to demonstrate that they can meet and exceed the benchmarks.
If the parishes cannot attain a benchmark by themselves, they could find partners. Partners could be sister parishes, community organizations or congregations of other denominations. The partners would vary depending on the function, program or project.
The onus would be on the local communities to find creative ways to meet the benchmarks. Only in the event of failure would the diocese become more prescriptive.
Figuring out how to score well on the benchmarks would be much more exciting than trying to get a theoretical zone to function.
Benchmarking actually creates an incentive for collaboration. Partnering with another parish is no longer seen as a slippery slope to closure or assimilation, or a competition for resources, but a means to survival and renewal.
Here at Cape Breton University’s School of Arts and Social Sciences, I recently served on a working group to disentangle a restructuring model introduced by a previous dean. The model did not succeed.
Under that unsuccessful restructuring, seven departments were merged into two, each with co-chairs. But because subject areas (like political science, philosophy, etc.) still have responsibilities, new faculty liaisons were designated below the level of department. Meanwhile, some functions went up to newly created, permanent committees for the whole School.
The merged structure was more layered and less transparent than the one it replaced. It became harder, not easier, to collaborate among subject areas and to get changes and new initiatives off the ground.
To begin disentangling, we had to first come to a consensus on our criteria (benchmarks).
Prof. Andrew Sancton was my PhD supervisor at the University of Western Ontario. He wrote an excellent book called “Merger Mania: The Assault on Local Government.”
He observed that imposed structures are almost never an optimal size: They are always too big for some services and too small for others.
Policy makers who come up with these changes want to be seen doing something bold, whether or not it actually works. They waste the energy and talents of many good people. Too often, restructuring is promoted as a kind of magic fix.
It isn’t a magic fix.
“Benchmarking actually creates an incentive for collaboration.” Tom Urbaniak