Measuring Failure

Instinctively -- when you encounter one -- you know that you are looking at a bloated bureaucracy; the real question, is how to prove it?

We obviously need some simple form of cost-based accounting, that gives us a decent metric on which to compare various organizations and their effectiveness. The key here is the the measure be simple and that it cannot be subverted by those trying to apply it. Clearly, it is in a bureaucracies best interest to hide its own inner ineffectiveness; that is the very essence of why the organization is defective in the first place.

To keep it simple we only need to deal with two basic observations. The first is that at the end of the day all organizations produce either products or services, nothing else. Regulatory monitoring for instance, is just a service for the public to insure that the rules are followed. Building roads is a product, while maintaining them is a service. Everything falls into one or the other category.

The second observation is that all organizations have a cash intake. Internally they can play around with hiding pools of money from previous periods to 'alter' the appearance of getting more or less money, but in an absolute way these are just various ways of applying a debt financing service to the structure. Each period they collect a fixed amount of money, which at the end of the period is entirely known.

So applying our understanding, we can easily create a product/service accounting model that fits over each and every organization. We do this by setting forth a limited number of categories for the product/services. The less, the better. The creation of new categories needs to be tightly controlled, as it is the place most likely to be subverted by those who are reporting. So there is a very limited number of these 'official' categories.

Each category was a name -- such as "road building" -- and a metric -- such as kilometers. For each category, we find out exactly how many kilometers were built for that organization, for that period.

Say for example, a provincial government created 10,000 kms of new roads over the course of a year. There is nothing difficult in gathering that number, if there were, then it would show a serious problem with the organization's internal structure that needs to be immediately fixed; if your paying people to build roads, but you don't know how many they have built, your in serious trouble.

To each category a portion of the incoming cash flow is assigned.

That may be a little more difficult, but generally you can figure it out via capital expenditures and various budgets. Again, the powers that be will try to subvert this, so the rules about subdividing up the cash into the various product/service 'buckets' needs to be formal and tightly controlled. You can't for instance shift some of the cash onto other services, if the underlying budgets don't confirm the percentages.

There are of course two main difficulties with these ideas.

The first is administrative overhead, while the second is variable pools of money. In the first problem, most organizations will attempt to shift the various portions of their overhead around to make them look more or less effective. To counter thing, the allocation of monies to various categories should not vary significantly from one period to the next. Where expenditures are absolutely provable, they cannot be shifted to other categories. Both of these rules will have to be able to track the effectiveness of changes over an extended periods.

Organization budgeting is often extremely complex. The idea here is not to get 'tricked' but that complexity. If an organization sets aside money for later, that in itself is a service. If an organization borrows money to fund a project, that too is part of a service. Then for example is we get $100, and borrow $20 the incoming cash is $120, which is spend on whatever original service we were performing and also a debt service that is costing us a rate such as 10% per year, put whatever costs were incurred to arrange the debt.

The key idea in this accounting approach is that all of the money is allocated to a limited fix set of products or services. There should be nothing left over that isn't allocated. It all has to go somewhere. The mechanisms for allocation should be simple, and they should consistent. If we get a result that one government is spending $200 per km to pave roads and another is spending $400 dollars, the inference that the second organization is twice as inefficient should be correct; there might be differences in 'conditions' or the 'environment', but the underlying relationship is truthful.

Once we have these metrics in place, finding and fixing the problems in our organizations will be easier. Bureaucracies will no longer have the option of putting 'spin' on their results. They will no longer be able to bury their mistakes, errors or corruption. They will be open and visible. Instead of watching as these organizations steadily decline, we'll be able to assess their health and whether or not specific changes are improving or making it worse. We'll be able to compare two organizations with similar services and see which one is operating more effectively.

We will finally be able to fix the unfixable.

Anonymous Beings

Lonely in a sea of humanity? Urban dwellers encounter so many forgettable people on a daily basis that they feel entirely anonymous. It is funny to be surrounded by people, but to not notice. Faceless faces.

Within that sense, we tend to not care much about about our behavior in public. People who would never be rude to their friends or acquaintances, have no problems behaving horribly towards strangers. They feel they won't ever see them again, so why bother being polite.

The bigger the city, the better the odds of not seeing those people again. As more people congregate in larger groups, their behavior when they are alone degenerates.

It can be wonderfully horrible in a big city to observe just how low people will let their behavior slide. It is not just that sense that the other people don't matter, so you shouldn't bother to be nice to them; some people actively go out of their way just to behave poorly to others.

On crowded city streets it is noticeable, but it reaches its zenith in big repeating crowds for things like buses, or subways. Constant aggravation makes people cranky. Stir and repeat, and then they get ornery.

Sadly, their distemper, frustration and rudeness only make bad situations worse. It can spread through a crowd like a bad cough; feeding on itself as it grows. Tired cranky zombies marching back and forth between their occupations and their lives.

If you really want to see humanity at its absolute lowest point however, you need look no further than the roads and highways. If people feel anonymous in a big city, they feel invisible and anonymous in their big cars. Nothing is stupider than an impatient driver whipping around nearly a tonne of metal, plastic and glass in an uncontrolled frenzy simply because they are five minutes late for dinner. Why more people don't die in automotive accidents is a great mystery. Even just a bit of congestion and the crowds go wild. If it wasn't for the fatal consequences, streets would become totally unnavigable during rush hour. It is always such a low for humanity.

Most of us make our own problems in life. And so many of us together make our own misery. It is this strange obsession in modern life about trying to get ahead, and maximize our potential that fuels our angst. When you are too focused on the little aggravations in your life, you miss those big grand wonderful things floating around you. Trying to be a little less rude, each and every day is a great way to combat the funk that people are in, and to increase ones own karma. We all feel some need to contribute in a positive way to humanity, which we can actually do with the smallest of efforts. Making the world a better place starts with not pushing people out of the way while bordering a bus. It is not a difficult concept.

Just the Facts, Jack

What is it with people wanting to believe the craziest things? Given a bunch of presented facts, they'll pick and choose only those few which bolster their position. These, they will cling to forever, while ignoring all of the rest. We seem to decide first and then look towards reality to backup our position. Having a truly open mind seems to be rare if not impossible.

There are always trade-offs to be made within subjective frameworks depending on one's needs and opinions, but I guess because people like flexibility they want to make trade-offs in accepting concrete and unassailable pieces of information. A fact is by definition an absolutely true piece of information. The sun rises every morning, that's a fact. The clock strikes twelve twice a day, that too is a fact. An alteration of either of these would likely mean you are not on the planet earth anymore, or your somewhere so remote it is just weird. For most of humanity, most of the time, these two things are indisputable facts.

Given a few contradictory observations there can be room for some interpretation, but you can't base your world view around anomalies. If humans mostly tend to behave in a specific manner, than the 'mostly' is significant to the fact. We may not want it to be that way, but in the end we are left with only what is known to be true, and what is thought to be true. If we build our arguments and hopes only on our desires, we will likely be disappointed. You ignore the facts at your own peril.