Strategy, risk & performance professional. I believe in a better world through critical thinking & collaboration, not ideological dogma, tribalism & division ☕
New Zealand
Joined March 2023
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I have worked in the public sector for around 12 years.
My role is impacted by the staff reductions.
I don't agree with the way it is happening in every agency. It's horrible for those impacted & I sympathise with them. I'm not a coalition voter.
But I support the cuts. Why?
- I have seen first hand unbelievable levels of waste & inefficiency in the public sector.
- I have seen first hand the lack of accountability for leaders, managers & staff failing to deliver (& worse, in many cases them being promoted).
- I have seen first hand agencies not performing (& in many cases not even able to properly measure performance) & little to nothing changing except their head-count going up.
- I have seen first hand consultancies get rich on the tax payers dime while delivering little value (& in some cases making things demonstrably worse), & agencies not instead investing in building the internal capability required so they wouldn't need consultants.
- I have seen first hand good people coming into work every day & working hard because they genuinely care about our country & want to contribute - despite working under poor cultures, poor systems, poor leadership, poor management, poor strategies, poor execution.
Yes, our agencies do deliver some great work we should all be very proud of.
Yes, we do have some great leaders & managers in the public service.
Yes, there are many positives to celebrate.
But we are a long, long way from getting the return on investment we should from our public sector.
It doesn't matter which party is in power, the public sector needs recalibrating, with a real & genuine focus on measurable performance so we can, in future, make informed, objective, defensible & transparent decisions about whether we increase or reduce their headcount.
#nzpol @auditor_general
Optimocracy retweeted
The increase in tribalism & partisan binary thinking seems proportionate to a decline in critical thinking. Seems more & more people are outsourcing their thinking to their tribes narratives & unable to acknowledge any fault in their tribe, while only finding fault in others 😕
Optimocracy retweeted
Media aren’t chasing logic, reason or consistency, they’re chasing clicks.
Tribalists aren’t chasing logic, reason or consistency, they’re chasing political points.
Until both change, we’ll continue to have a system of conflict instead of collaboration & continuous improvement.
Optimocracy retweeted
The way you will know the difference between principled people and partisan hacks is whether they have the balls to challenge lies, even if they come from their own team.
We're finding out who's who in real time.
Optimocracy retweeted
Foreign aid is the perfect metaphor for all the economic problems the West faces.
Our body politic is so obsessed with empathy at any price that we are no longer capable of understanding something that every household knows: many things that are good, virtuous and desirable are nonetheless unaffordable.
The reason you don't give hundreds of thousands to help the poor, house the homeless or save the whales is not that you hate the poor, the homeless and whales. It's that you can't afford to feed, clothe and house you own family if you do so.
Britain and America both have debts that are similar to their GDP. That's the equivalent of a household which earns 100k a year having a debt of 100k. Not only that, we add to the debt every year because we continually spend more than we earn. Would or should a household in that position be giving money to charity?
But as a society we have lost the ability to say no to things that make us feel good. Countries used to run up debts during times of war and pay them off during times of peace. Now we just print money to avoid having to tighten our belts. A society of narcissistic, materialistic adolescents who are impoverishing their own children and grandchildren.
Lot's negatives from the Tim Jago saga: victim impact, name suppression subversion for political gain, parties on both sides being complete hypocrites etc. But there is one silver lining: 'Minor attracted persons' becoming socially acceptable in NZ is now dead in the water 👍
I was recently in an (unclassified) briefing outlining the recent surge in meth in NZ is fueled by gangs giving out free samples to get (usually poorer, vulnerable) people hooked. Still, it’s lovely gangs are giving out food parcels in communities they are actively harming 🎄🎁❤️
I didn’t vote for the Coalition.
I was made redundant by their cuts.
I don’t believe Govt owe me a job.
I still believe the cuts are necessary & possible without impacting outcomes.
I want us to have a great public service.
I believe the Govt approach is flawed. Why?
Put simply, the potential for making the public service more effective & efficient is significant.
This doesn’t mean our public service isn’t full of good, well meaning, capable people. For the most part, it is. The systems & bureaucracy they work under however make it impossible to reach that potential, or to maximise the value we the public receive for the amount spent.
The Govt had a mandate to start the process of unlocking the inherent potential in our public service.
They could have taken an approach that assessed the public service system as a whole. They could have taken a little time to identify the drivers & root causes across the system & use these insights to make informed, courageous decisions.
Instead they took an ‘efficient’ approach that will generate less ‘effective’ outcomes.
Going to each agency individually & setting them savings targets misses the point that many efficiencies exist at the system level, not just the agency level.
Yes, this approach will generate savings, but at what cost?
The cuts don’t have to mean less services, more risk, or more political ammunition for critics so quick to forget Labour’s record in this space.
We don’t need the number of agencies & public service orgs we have.
We don’t need the number of seperate IT, HR, Comms, Legal, Finance, Design & other shared service functions we have.
We don’t need to cut frontline services.
We don’t need contractors to prop up core services impacted from cuts.
We don’t need to have fewer staff operating under the same systems & bureaucracy that choke their potential to cynically tick a campaign promise.
But here we are.
This is one area the Coalition could have silenced (well, quietened) its critics with measurable, demonstrable results over their term.
Instead, yes we get cuts, but this alone is a poor performance measure.
The Coalition risks turning this genuine opportunity into a millstone round their neck when they should be knocking it out of the park.
It’s not good performance improvement.
It’s not good strategy.
One of the core methodologies in continuous improvement is PDCA - Plan, Do, Check, Act.
Plan - identify & define the problem, create a plan for change
Do - implement your plan
Check - analyse the results, identify learnings
Act - take action based on the check phase
<Rinse & repeat>
I encourage the Govt to take the opportunity to embrace the ‘Check’ phase & consider the potential to enhance their approach by taking a more systems-thinking view.
That’s what good governance, laser-focused on outcomes would do. #nzpol
@NZNationalParty @actparty @nzfirst
NZ is less than 0.2% of global emissions.
Left or right, if we were carbon zero today it won't impact climate change, at all.
Wouldn't it be better to advocate for investing our efforts into meaningful, measurable, innovative interventions to address the real problem? #nzpol
If only Willie spent six years in office empowering Māori as much as he did the media 🤔 #nzpol
I've been fascinated by the contrast between Jacinda Ardern's passionate fans & haters for some time. I wanted to try explore this dichotomy honestly & objectively, & the 'so what?' for us to learn from...
optimocracy.com/p/jacinda-ar… #nzpol
Every now & then a politician provides a quote that really highlights the value of the 'bookmark' feature. #nzpol
"Sure, feelings are one thing, but again, the facts are another." - Chlöe Swarbrick
1news.co.nz/2024/07/16/facts…
Optimocracy retweeted
The most famous commencement speech of the entire 20th century took place at Harvard University in 1978.
The speaker, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, was in exile from the Soviet Union.
In his speech Solzhenitsyn gave a dire warning to the West.
22 chilling quotes from his speech🧵
Our country will be better off when everyone accepts the failures of their own team instead of only blaming the other. Put the country first, not a political party.
#nzpol
6/ Barry Marshall & Robin Warren 🦠
In the 1980s, Marshall & Warren linked Helicobacter Pylori to peptic ulcers, challenging the belief that stress caused ulcers. Initially ridiculed, their work eventually earned them the Nobel Prize & changed ulcer treatment forever.
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