Leading from the front – Part II

I recently met up with a person who was in Hotel Taj on that fateful 26/11 (in fact he is the only one person whom I personally know who was involved in this tragedy). He came out unscathed and could narrate his experience of escape. He was in that part of the hotel where the action was limited and the policemen were getting the guests out using fireman’s ladder. His neighbour was an old lady of about 75 years old and she was also offered a ladder to get down.

Then they realised that while the ladder offered to my friend was extendable (which meant it could retract so that there was no need to climb down), the ladder extended to the old lady was of fixed length (which meant that she had to climb down all those steps). Looking at the difficulty faced by the old lady, my friend suggested that the retractable ladder be offered to her and he would use the fixed ladder. However, the people handling the ladders were not willing to oblige. Because, they had to get an authorisation from the senior officers to make this change and at that time they were not available. The old lady and my friend realised that it is not worth arguing about and she, with great difficulty, climbed down to safety.

A more ridiculous example of bureaucratic delay is the example quoted by Arun Shourie in his book ‘Governance” . He explains in detail the long winding journey, across multiple ministries, of a clarification about what ink colour officers can use in the file noting. At the end of the journey that lasted almost 12 months two procedural clauses were added to the ‘Manual of Office Procedure’ which contradicted with each other.

We often associate such penchant for technicalities and bureaucratic delays in the working of the government. But this is not an exclusive domain of the government only. This kind of behaviour is seen in the private sector too; especially when an organisation gets larger.

What are the key drivers that determine the extent of this bureaucracy?

Result Vs Function Orientation

It is the normal tendency of a majority of people to see their roles limited to their functional silos. They seldom see or feel that they are part of a process to serve an end client. They get married to the rules and SOPs with a limited appreciation of what these rules and SOPs are meant to achieve. Compliance to procedure becomes more important than the substance of the policy.

They fail (are scared) to interpret exceptions in the light of the first principles and get stuck in a ‘case for which no sub-routine is in place’.

Distorted incentive structure

Very often the performance evaluation and incentive structure do not encourage freedom of interpretations. Rather you get punished for such initiatives. It is in such structure that informal incentives become the primary drivers for initiatives.

Over-Regulation

The same distorted incentives and function orientation among the regulators also lead to punitive measures which fail to take into account the intent and belief behind the actions i.e.; purely on rules and not the principle behind. This becomes a vicious cycle. Often this gets augmented by the ego trips that accompanies positions of power.

Sensationalism

These days the over-drive of journalistic sensationalism acts as a source of adrenalin and in certain cases and reason for retracting into a shell in some other cases.

What are the ingredients that compensates for these?

It is like the stock market; many factors quantifiable and non-quantifiable contribute. In my experience, of all the factors, the most critical factors are leadership with courage & integrity as a culture are the two founding pillars and also the most difficult to build up.

Leadership with courage

If an organisation is lead by leaders who are confident of themselves and have the courage to stand up for what they believe in, then none of these can be major drags. Like Thomas Jefferson quipped “Democracy is one man with courage”

Integrity as an organisational culture

Courage can act as a narcotic and result orientation can fail to be watchful about the means and sometimes the end. Often the management let these practices flourish as it also brings in the business. Then when the 'shit hits the roof' you are forced to make out of court settlements and this can happen even to the best of organisations.

The only check against this is the integrity level you have cultivated as a culture.

If we closely look at any successful institutions you will surely see these two.

This is the legacy that Mr C B Bhave left for NSDL (the institution that he built from scratch)