What the Calgary flood taught us
Re: Canada Has Become A Nation Of Managers, Bill Watson, June 27.
Over the past few decades, I held various management positions in both the private public sector, where I observed a deterioration in ethics, professionalism, innovation and problem solving. While the private sector has some mechanisms for self-correction, the public sector does not, leaving it dominated by soulless, incompetent managers who are more concerned with image than with effectiveness and problem solving.
A case in point is the recent flood in Calgary. After the last Alberta flood in 2005, which I intimately experienced, what did our leadership do? Nothing that mattered. An effective manager would call a bunch of hydrologists, urban planners and other experts and ask them for blueprint for infrastructure improvement. That did not happen. It took close to six years to get a committee report.
With this year’s flood, our Premier made some motherhood statements and threw money at the problem, before patting herself on the back. The only sight of some managerial leadership was from Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who came to see but then decently stayed out of the way and from Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who passed on some practical advice to citizens.
In a meantime, many citizens started to ignore the “managers.” I was cooped out at home, without power or Internet, listening to our managers on an old transistor radio, hoping for a bit of useful information. None came, but just the message: “Trust us we know what we are doing!”
In Canada, our public sector management is full of itself, too slow to act, devoid of common sense, totally adverse to failure and hugely expensive. No wonder our democracy suffers. We must demand better.
At some point in my managerial career, I decided to call it quits as a manager and become a shopkeeper. A great decision, I must add.
Alec M. Bialski, Calgary.
The picture accompanying this story, “Canada has become a nation of managers,” shows seven university graduates carrying their diplomas — and six of the seven are female. Hmmm, is something wrong with this picture?
David Saul, Toronto.