August 28, 2002
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Public Purge
It appears to me that abrush with failure can be good for public and non-profit institutions.
The article cited above describes how the NY Historical Society (disclosure - a Dreck family member works there) is outperforming other museums in New York as a result of its restructuring several years ago and a renewed sense of mission since September 11. Ridding itself of the fat and mission creep that built up in the 1970s and 1980s has done wonders for the place.
One of the reasons the public sector underperforms the private sector is that, free of market forces, government agencies rarely undergo this kind of purge. Elections and scandals may rotate chairs at the top but the bureacracy never shrinks. The NYHS nearly went into the non-profit equivalent of bankruptcy and it did them a world of good.
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at August 28, 2002 1:00 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksUnfortunately true... Wasn't it Parkinson who said burocracies grow at a fixed rate, independent of the actual work needing to be done? Quoted some figures from the British Admiralty too... While the number of ships and sailors halved, the burocracy quintupled over the same period!
Comments are Closed.