Don’t get more staff, get fewer managers …

Alex Wadsley
The idea of leaving expensive ‘talent’ on the shelf, as the Government did with two successive chiefs of staff is a disgrace. If these guys are actually as good as their salaries, then they could be making a real contribution to the economy in the private sector. Now that times are bad, they can learn that one of the best ways to get more done with less is to empower workers to make decisions and replace rulebooks with common sense. Rather than invite the State Executive Service for a moral boosting pep talk on retention, he should be challenging public service executives to make themselves redundant and go on holiday. If the business lobby, represented by the TCCI, says that they would rather have tax cuts then the Department of Economic Development then the DED’s mission and lavish senior executive salaries has to be seriously questioned. Could its lending and investment functions be privatised and other roles rolled into Treasury and other relevant departments?

Do we actually need a Department of Premier and Cabinet?

PEOPLE are creatures of habit; we do the same thing day after day without thinking because that’s the way we’ve already done it. The razor gang is an opportunity to challenge the power of the mindless bureaucracy, to challenge how things are done and why.

It is the efficiencies that we find during the lean times that set ourselves up for growth.

To this end Ricardo Semler’s Maverick should be read by every Government Minister, Opposition member and member of the razor gang. It is the story of how Ricardo Semler turned his traditional family business on its head by embracing efficiency, empowerment and workplace democracy in the midst of Brazil’s economic turbulence.

Michael Aird might have learnt that it is better to be cost-conscious during the good times than to suddenly have to cut spending when times go bad. Or to quote Semler ‘Any alley cat can stay lean when food is scarce; the trick is to stay lean during the good times’.

Good fiscal management means that the government would now be increasing spending, not reducing it, because it was lean during those good times.

The idea of leaving expensive ‘talent’ on the shelf, as the Government did with two successive chiefs of staff is a disgrace. If these guys are actually as good as their salaries, then they could be making a real contribution to the economy in the private sector.

Now that times are bad, they can learn that one of the best ways to get more done with less is to empower workers to make decisions and replace rulebooks with common sense. Rather than invite the State Executive Service for a moral boosting pep talk on retention, he should be challenging public service executives to make themselves redundant and go on holiday.

If the business lobby, represented by the TCCI, says that they would rather have tax cuts then the Department of Economic Development then the DED’s mission and lavish senior executive salaries has to be seriously questioned. Could its lending and investment functions be privatised and other roles rolled into Treasury and other relevant departments?

Do we actually need a Department of Premier and Cabinet?

Politicians like to talk about cutting red tape. Bartlett claims that the public sector is already ‘lean’. Here’s an opportunity, a shiny example of bureaucrats creating employment for themselves … and then complaining that they are short-staffed.

I own a block of land, I’m trying to build a house on it. The spending would be enough to employ 4 people for a year. Kevin Rudd is trying to help out with his $21,000 first home builder grant. Thanks Kev! Building a house would be my bit to help the Tasmanian economy, and hopefully create a lovely home for my wife and children. Unfortunately, the state government bureaucracy is holding me back.

The council has its usual requirements, but appears to be doing their best, subject of course to their bureaucratic requirements. The problem is they wanted a piece of paper saying I had the right to use a laneway to access my land. One might have thought that logically every piece of land has a right of access as part of the subdivision or conveyancing process. Given how many times I’ve used the road already I would have thought a common law right of access exists, but instead I’m required to get a licence to use a section of crown land from the Department of Primary Industries and Water. Not wanting to rock the boat, I submitted the application in December. Shortly before Christmas I received a letter saying that ‘The Department will let you know the result … at the earliest opportunity’.

In mid-January I call and am told that given that my neighbour has already put in an identical application there should be no trouble and that it would be going up the line very soon. I highlighted that a Development Application was waiting on the permit, so the helpful person indicated it would be marked ‘Urgent’.

It is now March, they’ve had a no-brainer request and I’ve got workers ready to start on the driveway. The DPIW workers have done their work and say it’s OK, but the permit is waiting on management and ‘the Director’ for ‘Ministerial Approval’. This is the same story I got 3 weeks ago.

Apparently they’re short-staffed and they get a lot of requests like this. I’m not surprised.

I have a suggestion. Don’t get more staff, get fewer managers. Either empower the staff to make decisions, or perhaps even more efficiently, let councils issue the license as part of the Development Application. Or perhaps we could do away with licensing crown land access altogether.

Challenge everything! I welcome your frustrations and your ideas…