Bureaucratic Outcomes Don't Matter...People, the Environment, and Animals Do

I spent over 25 years working in government bureaucracy. Sometime it was out of desire - when I followed my Dad's footsteps and worked for a fire department - and sometimes out of necessity when it was the only decent paying job around. But I learned a lot about public service and I've seen how it has become more burdensome and lethargic over the years. It's grown exponentially, despite the economy's ups and downs, and has evolved into an ersatz "business" where its focus is no longer public service, but rather self-perpetuation.

Public service managers - many prefer the term 'leaders' - have tried to borrow the language of the private sector and shill the line that they are operating government like a business. In the 1980’s and 1990’s there was the great discovery that business practices such as Total Quality Management, Performance Management, Reengineering, Benchmarking, and Process Management – along with loosely-defined ‘market forces’ and ‘private sector’ philosophies – could be applied to public sector operations. “Make government run like a business” was the mantra. There were some marginal successes in limited areas: primarily infrastructure development and personnel management.

However, in the first decade the this century, the new business-like focus became “outcomes” and “deliverables” for all government programs and, on the surface, this seemed laudable: if we’re spending public dollars, we should expect measurable benchmarks and provable beneficial outcomes. The new mantra is, “Are we getting our bang for the buck and can we prove it?”

When I worked for a Social Services agency in county government, there was considerable discussion of including tangible and specific "outcomes" and "measurable deliverables" as a basic operational – and contractual – philosophy. They 'leadership' adopted it and, based upon the latest consultant's ideas, we included specific and quantifiable outcomes in our contracts for service providers and in measuring our own performance with clients needing mental health, public health, and children and family services.

Outcomes and deliverables could work when counting the number of vaccinations given or road-miles paved. However, how do they properly quantify and take into account the complexity of the often fragile, confused, and suffering persons Social Services deals with on a daily basis? These persons and their needs cannot always be easily boxed into a fixed number of expectations; they and their problems are unique and Social Services can be the final safety net for them and/or their children. Viewing the individual as a quantifiable measurement and setting arbitrary limits for service ("you've exceeded the established benchmarks for family team meetings...sorry") diminishes their humanity and reality.

Consider the following: Margaret Wheatley is a well-respected leadership speaker and expert. She has a doctorate from Harvard and specializes in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy, with a focus on organizational behavior and change. In an 'Emerging Leaders' program (led by a highly compensated consultant), a paper was handed out where she quoted an essay by Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and one of the most influential writers of 20th century. The quote, which has particular application when dealing with many of the social services' clients, was:

"Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything."

Adding to Merton's quote, Wheatley - a guru of leadership and organizational management - stated simply: "Outcomes don't matter. People do."

The expansion and efficiencies - and, yes, 'outcomes' - of government bureaucracies should never come at the expense of the people who look to a public agency for vital services. People do matter...and I would certainly add that environmental regulations and anti-cruelty laws relating to animals certainly matter as well. If we can't defend the voiceless or the helpless then we are sacrificing our humanity on the alter of efficiency and we all lose.