ownership in the public sector
Posted: Fri Apr 10, 1998 10:39 am
I am fascinated by the ongoing discussion on this list about "ownership,"
"buy-in," what we used to call "implementation," and what in a larger context
we could call "social change" or even "paradigm shift."
I have several questions for those of you who have developed wisdom in these
matters from business consulting:
Would your experience translate directly into the public sector? If not, what
would have to change to create significant systems insight and change there?
Given that many of the most dysfunctional systems and inadequate mental models
and insufficiently long time horizons are outside of the business world, how do
we go to work on those?
Given that the business world itself is imprisoned in an increasingly
dysfunctional super-system, namely the market with all its externalities,
success-to-the-successful loops, blindness to nonpriced values, growth
fixations, shrinking time horizons, increasing monopolies, and growing hubris,
where are the levers for "buy-in" for systems analyses of the market?
The way I see it, the businesses so many of you are successfully working with
are embedded in larger systems that REALLY need help. I dont think I need
elaborate for this list the many global trends that are accelerating in
terribly destructive directions, some of them driven by perfectly logical
business decisions. No matter how successful you are in transforming the
behavior of a single business client, the client is still forced by the larger
system into behaviors that are disastrous for society (and ecosystems) as a
whole, and therefore, after a lot of long-term feedback loops come home to
roost, disastrous for that business as well. The Natural Step is trying hard
to enlarge the context of business thinking, but can those who are trapped
within a system really challenge the basic structure of that system? Dont we
need to spend at least as much time and energy on public sector clients and on
the general public?
How can we direct more excellent systems analysis and change-expertise to the
big systems (where the money isnt, where there are no obvious single clients,
where there isnt a whole lot of perceived need for change -- at least not on
the surface, and where the very mention of change or the honest discussion of
problems causes instant loud denial)?
What is going to happen if we dont?
Is the predominance of industrial consulting in our field due to the greater
immediate financial rewards? Or to the fact that we have given up on the
overarching, difficult, ultimately determining systems?
Donella Meadows
From: Donella.H.Meadows@Dartmouth.EDU (Donella H. Meadows)
"buy-in," what we used to call "implementation," and what in a larger context
we could call "social change" or even "paradigm shift."
I have several questions for those of you who have developed wisdom in these
matters from business consulting:
Would your experience translate directly into the public sector? If not, what
would have to change to create significant systems insight and change there?
Given that many of the most dysfunctional systems and inadequate mental models
and insufficiently long time horizons are outside of the business world, how do
we go to work on those?
Given that the business world itself is imprisoned in an increasingly
dysfunctional super-system, namely the market with all its externalities,
success-to-the-successful loops, blindness to nonpriced values, growth
fixations, shrinking time horizons, increasing monopolies, and growing hubris,
where are the levers for "buy-in" for systems analyses of the market?
The way I see it, the businesses so many of you are successfully working with
are embedded in larger systems that REALLY need help. I dont think I need
elaborate for this list the many global trends that are accelerating in
terribly destructive directions, some of them driven by perfectly logical
business decisions. No matter how successful you are in transforming the
behavior of a single business client, the client is still forced by the larger
system into behaviors that are disastrous for society (and ecosystems) as a
whole, and therefore, after a lot of long-term feedback loops come home to
roost, disastrous for that business as well. The Natural Step is trying hard
to enlarge the context of business thinking, but can those who are trapped
within a system really challenge the basic structure of that system? Dont we
need to spend at least as much time and energy on public sector clients and on
the general public?
How can we direct more excellent systems analysis and change-expertise to the
big systems (where the money isnt, where there are no obvious single clients,
where there isnt a whole lot of perceived need for change -- at least not on
the surface, and where the very mention of change or the honest discussion of
problems causes instant loud denial)?
What is going to happen if we dont?
Is the predominance of industrial consulting in our field due to the greater
immediate financial rewards? Or to the fact that we have given up on the
overarching, difficult, ultimately determining systems?
Donella Meadows
From: Donella.H.Meadows@Dartmouth.EDU (Donella H. Meadows)
) I wanted