My father has a lot of interesting ideas that condense to short acronyms. This is one of his newest and one of my favorites because it is something I see very often. You will see the same faces regularly in every arena of life, not because of merit, but because most bureaucracies venerate the status quo. This is the theory of “Same Ten People” (STP), or two, twelve, whatever, the point being that the same people always participate.
In my congregation at church, the older group of men is full of people who have held every position of responsibility imaginable, sometimes multiple times. When the time comes for them to choose someone to replace our bishop, they will probably reach back into this same pool of demonstrated and known entities and recycle someone to a position of responsibility. My father noticed the same thing in his congregation- when the time comes to ask someone to do something, they pick one of the Same Ten People to hold a position, to host a party, to accompany an outing, to donate materials, or whatever. Rarely do they go find someone who isn’t part of the GOBNet. It suits us just fine.
At work, I find the same thing to be true. I remember a few years back when the search opened for a new college president. One candidate, upset after the chosen candidate was taken from a lower position in the institution complained, “Why bother to go through the charade of competing the position if you’re just going to hire one of your own?” This is particularly arduous because we move people around in departments and can count on the next college president coming from the current executive vice presidents, and I think I know which one it will be. It’s “his turn”. For my part, professors habitually turn to me to do things that are not my job because they can count on consistent quality and reliable delivery. I am a known entity, and they like that. I have since trained others to do what I do, knowing that I may oneday make myself extemporaneous. I’ll survive.
Politics also is rife with this. We move people around from position in a municipality to the state and then the federal government. They “move up the ranks” as it were, and the same names are always on the ballot as if there are no other qualified or interested or influential people in the state or nation to do that job. Frequently, it’s people who studied political science or law, as if homogeneity is an advantage in representative government. I have had enough Bushes in politics, and if another Adams were running, I’d be tired of that too. Especially upsetting is when you discover that people obtain appointed positions due to connections rather than qualifications because they initially didn’t qualify to be city attorney or because they were about to be fired from another position. It is malversation at its finest, and it holds us back from actual achievement to recycle the same people, ideas, or GOBNets. Even when you rotate your tires, eventually you must replace them.
The problem is that it restricts growth and presumes that the choice made is the best choice. When I applied for a job with the highway patrol, they rejected me because I didn’t have a criminal justice background. Despite my attempts to argue that my background brought diversity (something they ostensibly celebrate), they look to a consistent, albeit low quality, pool of applicants to keep from upsetting the apple cart. I know the Sergeant who interviewed me probably feared that I would give him a moving violation despite the brotherhood of blue, and if so, he was exactly right. So much of our hiring is done internally because we already know the people, the quality of their work, their connections to other employees and their propensity to fit in, but as we see with JC Penny, Apple, and scores of other companies, sometimes the best thing is to bring in someone to shake things up and save the day. Even worse, we see nepotism rear its ugly head as if genetics automatically makes one better (can anyone say divine right of kings?).
Good leaders surround themselves with people who are experts in their fields. When you surround yourself with your friends or patrons, it evinces a lack of confidence in your position or a lack of regard for people who are not part of your inner circle. If you want a set of bobbing heads, don’t waste your time appointing a Cabinet with whom you will never meet; just go get some bobblehead dolls and save us all money on salaries and benefits. If you’re wrong, the popularity of an idea doesn’t make it right. It just makes it popular. Sometimes you need someone who can see things from a different angle or ask a different question, because they are not like you and can find something that someone like you cannot find. This is why diversity matters; diversity of ideas and experience and perspective adds more real achievement than diversity of melanin or testosterone content. The value of a man is not in his genes; it is in what he does with them.
When I see them pick from STP, it makes me sad. I know we ignore qualified and motivated people in favor of things only tangentially related to the task at hand. As bureaucracies venerate the status quo, they continue to turn to STP, or the same cast of characters, who produce the same quality of work. Sometimes that’s good, but it does not help us progress unless the STP are actually the best people available. Otherwise, it becomes a self-licking ice cream cone that eventually consumes itself and leaves everyone out on the street looking for something new. Fortunately for me, most of these folks will retire within the next five years, paving the way for a new set of STP. We’ll see how that plays out for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment