The basis of getting things done
One way or the other, if any nation is to do well, beneath and beyond the rhetoric and the fruitless slogans, the real work has to be done by ordinary people who do not indulge in the rhetoric and who do not shout the slogans. It was ever thus.
Human nature remains the same over the centuries. Hate and fear and prejudice fuel agonies and wars now as they did in the past. Stupidity is the same through the ages. Social engineers draw up their Utopian blueprints, to no avail since all are based on the flawed assumption that man can be taught to be perfect. The good and the bad in man, though they shift a little in their proportions, do not really change. The saying attributed to the Frenchman Claude le Petit in the 17th Century is perhaps too cynical, but only just:
“The world is full of fools, and who will not see it should live alone and smash his mirror.”
And because human nature does not change, when people are faced with problems they respond in ways which bear a marked resemblance over the ages. That, I suppose, is the origin of the phrase: “History repeats itself” and also of the observation “There is nothing new under the sun.”
And so we see generation after generation of bright young men – and now, increasingly, bright young women – produce brilliant new schemes for solving the problems their elders so ignorantly left unsolved for so long. Proudly they announce this or that new order of things to take the place of the old and discredited. But they should pause and listen to old Gaius Petronius, Roman senator, writing 1900 years ago, full of common sense:
“We worked hard – but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new crisis by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralisation.”
He was right. At times of crisis, when the problems can only be tackled by hard thought, hard work, persistent application and mutual goodwill exercised over time, it is more essential than ever to beware the glib answer, the solution beautifully described on paper, the catchphrase of the moment, and the illusion of progress given by the simple device of proclaiming a new way of doing things.
I got to know the trick well from the world of business. Every so often a brand-new methodology of supermanagement was unveiled which, it was claimed, was going to solve every existing problem. Now it was “error validation theory,” then it was “critical path analysis,” next it might be “zero-sum evaluation method,” and after that “transformation ethics management.” There were a hundred others, all enjoying their day in the sun, each elaborated in a dozen text books by the academic tribe. The coming of computers, of course, spawned any number of miracle systems to manage better and produce more.
Such management tools can be useful in their own specialised way. However, what too often happens is that their value is magnified out of all proportion to their true worth. Other means of management then fall into instant disfavour and are discarded out of hand. What is worse is that sophisticated new methodologies tend to replace even pure common sense which remains down through the years by far the best tool of all in managing men, materials, and money.
The same course holds true in the public sector. Here, as Gaius Petronius warned all those centuries ago, reorganisation is too often used as the easy way in tackling problems. Mostly what happens, is that you simply re-organise the problem in an even more complicated way and confuse people in all sorts of new and contradictory ways at regular intervals.
Consider the constant battle between the centralisers and the decentralisers each determined to organise things in their own way. The decentralisers want to get more decision-making down to the grass-roots and give the people in charge on the spot more room to act, so instructions to this effect are issued. But the centralisers in their turn perceive a danger in letting people do too much of their own thing, so guidelines and norms from the centre are promulgated which stifle initiative. One set of instructions cancels out the other, contradiction reigns supreme, confusion wins the day.
The truth is that catchphrase administration is never very successful, in business or in government. Everyone gets used to dropping everything to follow whatever is the fashionable new system. Priorities change suddenly and jobs half-done are abandoned in sudden pursuit of new directives. The bath water is changed and changed again before the poor baby has even once been soaped. New initiatives throw old enthusiasms onto the scrapheap. And, as background to all this, it is naturally the poet’s words we hear, T.S. Eliot this time,
“And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.”
And in that place there will be found what was always there – beyond all the slogans and systems: the only enduring ingredients of success – hard work, common sense, prompt attention to the business in hand, a basic goodwill, integrity and tenacity of purpose.