It's A Manager's World When Passing The Buck

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday July 6, 2006

Allan Charlton

LONDON'S new Wembley Stadium has been delayed again. According to a radio report, the contractor is blaming the stadium management. Elsewhere, it was reported the stadium management was blaming the contractor's management.

In 2004, the investigation into the way that the Clinton and Bush administrations handled Saddam Hussein and Iraq blamed poor management for the poor intelligence reaching the political leaders. In this country a similar conclusion was reached. The report blamed the management of the intelligence agencies, not the politicians.

Now I'm no lover of politicians and I don't want to absolve them of responsibility, but I can recognise an obvious thread when it's pushed into my face.

What was the key finding of the Waterfall inquiry? Bad management. What is the reason for our transport crisis? Bad management. What is the reason for our hospital crisis? Bad management. Why does it take an ambulance longer to respond than a plumber? Bad management. Why did the NAB lose millions in currency trade finagling? Bad management.

Do we need any more evidence before we start asking questions?

Whenever the managers are asked about the failings, it is always someone else's fault. We should blame the contractors, the intelligence agencies, the train drivers, the accountants, or the nurses, or the ambulance drivers. We should never blame the managers.

This made me think of Geert Hofstede, one of the greatest social scientists of the 20th century. In September 2001, Professor Hofstede was awarded an honorary doctorate in business administration by Nyenrode University, in the Netherlands, and in his address he said: "In the past decades management courses have proliferated in our country, but I can see no evidence that organisations are now better managed than they were before.

"There are too many examples of managers trying to practise the things taught in MBA courses at the expense of doing what their organisation is supposed to do... For society at large, this situation produces an unfortunate rift between two cultures: the culture of the managers and the culture of the managed.

"It is reinforced by the extravagant salaries paid to some top managers. This split between two cultures leads to frustration among those who do the actual work, which threatens our society as a whole."

Hofstede was right. What's more, the problems he spoke of are still with us. Things are so bad that some people are able to make a profitable business out of finding errors in telephone accounts.

We have some new questions to ask. First, we must ask ourselves whether we have management problems in this country. Then we must ask ourselves what we should be doing about it.

Then we must ask the management profession to stand up and take its medicine.

Readers are invited to apply wit to anything that makes the blood boil. Send 600 words, with day and evening phone numbers, to heckler@smh.com.au. Submissions may be edited and published on the internet.

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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