Thread by @PGolka

A week ago, I left my job with the in-house consulting firm of the German gov/ public sector. I am deeply grateful for privileged insights and manifold opportunities to learn over the past ~2 years. Some of the things I learned 👇
1/
#twitterverwaltung #organization #mgmttwitter

Public authorities are over-individualized and “under-cultured”. Personal opinions, position and portrayed performance matter a lot. In fact, public authorities put in surprisingly large efforts into consensus-building. I’ve spent at least 30-50% of my work time doing that. 2/

Yet this does not mean public orgs have a deep understanding of organizational culture as a strategic resource. This starts with buildings designed for an almost Fordist, individualized work process with a chronic lack of meeting spaces, let alone a welcoming atmosphere. 3/

While team culture is rare, evaluation culture is ubiquitous. In contrast to private firms’ focus on responsibilization, in public orgs it is about the formal correctness of produced artefacts. I've literally spent more time discussing a comma than the content of a draft text. 4/

This paradoxical view of the individualized org can currently be observed in the German debate on the proposed study of police racism: Officials attempt to defend individual values, rather than engaging in a discussion on collective processes and organizational mechanisms. 5/

The individualized org also has difficulties with complex problems that require interorg. cooperation. Besides negative coordination, I have not seen institutionalized tools for collective decision-making. Thus, proposed solutions rarely exceed the often minimal common ground. 6/

Particularly in terms of #digitalization, this is often combined with a lack of essential skills and complex procurement requirements. This leads to frustrated staff and high personnel rotation, which further complicates the internal generation of knowledge. 7/

This is an opportunity for consulting firms claiming to bring in expertise, further cementing the public org knowledge gap. Based on decades of shared history, consultants and public staffers often have strong ties, leading to projects staffed with favorites from various firms.8/

The competition of consultants is detrimental to project results, as firms try to reframe the to-be-solved problem in their favor. This leads to frustration among senior mgmt and hence rotation of consultants, too. In effect, complex projects start over multiple times. 9/

IMO, beginning to value the strategic potential of their org. culture, and investing into it, will help here. For example, a focus on teams rather than individuals may lead to practices of knowledge-sharing that allow for progress despite personnel rotation. 10/

This would also result in a shift away from individual performance measurement and towards a valuation of the everyday #strategizing practices performed by public servants who aim to solve problems. @heimstaedt and me have recently written about it. 11/
osf.io/preprints/soca…

Eventually, such a transformation needs to affect the whole architecture of public authorities. Beginning with physical infrastructure that centers the human, collective factors at work, formal rules will also need to be adjusted to allow for investments into culture. 12/

As economists showed, Germany had net-negative public investments for years. But although the tide is changing on the legislative, the executive too often returns the funds unspent. To make German authorities capable of investing, IMO they first need to invest into themselves. N/

Ping: @gegenhuber, @dr_erikschaefer, @leonidobusch, @JMarienfeldt, @ThuridHustedt