Rowan's Future of Choice

What's the question?

A while ago I wrote about the federal government ceding homeland security leadership to private industry. The current "wisdom" in Washington is that industry is better equipped for change and innovation than the federal departments. Nearly all politically appointed officials, who direct procurement decisions, are from the business world, and will return there after their tours of booty duty.

Faced with tough problems such as fencing the southern border, who better than a Lockheed or a Raytheon to conceptualize, document, and build the solutions? It gets worse:

“In the past, corporations could depend on the fact that government defined the answers...business leaders are afraid that “government doesn’t even understand the questions.”         

    --Stephen Merrill, former governor of New Hampshire

My earlier post; Strategy+business report, The Megacommunity Mainfesto; photo

What has "Government by the People" come to?

The U.S. federal government wants private industry to tell it how to secure our borders, because the feds do not have a clue how to do it. Our elected officials and civil servants have ceded to private industry nearly all responsibility and leadership for protecting our borders. One might ask, why do we need them?

Historically, federal programs have done nationally what private industry should not, or can not, do itself. For example, social security, food and drug safety, and national defense.

These programs are managed by career civil servants and implemented by teams of contractors with the necessary processes, systems, and workers. The decisions to create federal programs, and the requirements for carrying them out, have been the responsibility of the Administration and Congress. This has changed.

Gradually over the last 30 years—punctuated by September 11th—the new program area of "homeland security" has emerged to address new threats and dangers at and within our borders.

Michael P. Jackson, former Lockheed executive and current government official serving as deputy secretary of homeland security, recently said to an industry poised to implement the huge Secure Border Initiative:

We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business.

I suspect that industry will not actually answer that question. It will respond instead with the usual shopping cart full of expensive gadgets: "virtual" fences, helium-filled airships, and motion-detection video equipment. None of which anyone believes will do the job.

If not government, and if not industry, who will decide how our homeland is effectively secured?

NYTimes article, Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors for Border Control; Jackson's bio; Gettysburg Address; poster.
 

Twas the night before elections...

One of my readers asked me to comment (from a decision-making perspective) on a question to Maureen Dowd in last Saturday’s New York Times, and on her response. Times reader Steve Henry asked:

How hopeful are you that America will be an example of innovation and forward-thinking once again?

Ms. Dowd responded:

We're in a dark ages now, with the government pulling science backward, and suffocating research on stem cells, and encouraging the idea that Intelligent Design is a legitimate alternative to evolution studies. This is a long way from JFK's New Frontier attitude. But I think most Americans like to be on the cutting edge of culture and science, and will want that reflected, sooner or later, in our leaders.

Leadership is relative: America used to be a more obvious exemplar of innovation and forward thinking because we perceived that the rest of the world was not. We are still prodigious inventors of products and ideas; we have lagged in some areas. If Mr. Henry is asking if the America "brand" will regain preeminence for innovation and thinking in new ways, I do not know or much care. Setting aside the importance of discovery for a moment, I do know that we have room for improving and benefiting from existing knowledge. The point Mr. Henry implies about America setting an example is valid, but not in the way I believe he intends it.

I say Ms. Dowd's crack about America being in the dark ages is pure polemics. I also say that no Americans get what they vote for because the whole process is not set up to listen and represent us.

For example, what American consumer would ever shop at a store that had only two products for sale, few differences between each product, deceptive packaging and advertising, no performance guarantee, and no returns allowed? For decades, American democratic elections have been one candidate away from being autocratic. Once the slim majority "buys" their product—a new leader, we are saddled with an entourage of special interest advisors, experts, and opportunists that were not disclosed during the ad campaign. This is high stakes governance-supporting-leadership gone mad. And don’t get me started about the current administration!

What if we had a la carte elections based on issues? What if we could vote both for the right to bear arms and for women’s choice…without having to compromise our views with one candidate? What if the aggregated results of a la carte elections became the de facto mandate for the winner? No more asking them what they would do if elected. Millions of us are going to tell them exactly what to do and the consequences of not performing. All cabinet choices, deputies, and other officials are held accountable for the leader’s—and thereby our, success.

Wow, that puts a lot of trust in American voters. What is wrong with that?

IT governance and decay

It is startling how adaptive most large information technology (IT) organizations can be. Have spotty leadership? Let’s form a committee to advise our executives. Are our users or customers unhappy? Let’s create a special working group to address their issues. These and other seemingly innocent responses are part of the growing trend toward formal IT governance.

Governance may be defined as the framework of people, policies and processes for helping managers make decisions and take action. IT governance is about managing the organization’s effective and efficient use of its people, computers, data, applications, and communications. Sounds like a good idea.

There are lots of sticky decisions for IT shops to make: Who should we outsource? What policies do we need for employee instant messaging and blogging? How do we get the business units to pay for architectural standards?

Formal IT governance has grown so pervasive that organizations need charts to show who does what. Governance groups have weighty names and acronyms, such as Architectural Review Board (ARB), or Administrative Systems Management Group (ASMG). At first blush, these groups suggest thoughtful processes, group consensus, and logical decision making. In reality, most IT governance groups fail to supplement leadership gaps, and disable decision-making by those most equipped to decide. They are signs of decay, not health.

What can IT executives and managers do? Either let leaders lead without committee advisors, or find new leaders. Let those who know the most about the customer or business problems make the IT decisions. Provide incentives and consequences for those decisions. And finally, ask to participate in the business, instead of merely supporting it.

"Pull" systems upset the cart

User-built systems such as e-learning and linux projects are upending traditional centralized decision-making. Open system users make decisions when and where they need them—no design team pre-determines their activities as part of requirements definition.

The McKinsey Quarterly has more here.