Hi I'm back on line after a year or so absense. I met some of you guys in San Fransco a couple of years ago. I'm still facilitating Open Space here in Perth, Western Australia. I went off line because I got overwhelmed by my email load so I really like this new daily batching idea. Thanks to whoever invented that. I've recently found myself back in a federally funded academic institution (beauracracy) on a part time temporary contract. It's interesting looking at things 'from the inside' after working as an external facilitator/consultant for many years. I'm trying to look at the lens of self organising principles. One of the things I've immediately come across is the huge compliance load faced by this place. So what happens is that people are here largely because they love their subjects and love to teach and/or do research. But they are also being constantly hit with administrative and auditing requirements. Each individual requirement is, of itself, sensible. Could be anything ranging from Equal Opportunity to Health and Safety, to professional standards, to government stats gathering. The latter, of course, is related to the legimitate desire of government to reassure the tax payer that the education dollar is being well spent. But lot's of small 'good' things can add up to an overall undesirable outcome. So what happens is that the system (people) self organises by pushing the compliance load out to 'anyone but me'. The person who ends up carrying the 'responsibility' (because they've been given the legal instruction to do the work by the senior executive (usually a 'committee)) has very little 'passion' for the work. A great recipe for generating passive resistance, stress and a generally dodgy job (is that an Australian expression? 'dodgy'...meaning 'poorly done'). It seems to me that passion and responsibility get split from each other. Unless "passion" is the wrong word? When I was talking with a senior service department head (one who has been told she is responsible for getting a lot of busy academic staff to meet yet another compliance requirement) she simply could not relate to my vocabulary of 'caring' or 'passion'. When I asked the question, 'does anyone care to do this', her response was 'it's not an issue of caring. We've been told to do it!' And on one level she's right - it's a legal requirement. And on the other hand - the end result for people is as described above. I suppose this is not an unique issue for large organisations. One beauracratic response to this kind of thing is, 'you simply write the requirement into people's job descriptions and you run a training/orientation program'. But as we all know, writing something into a job description, and weilding punitive sticks, does not necessarly achieve changed behaviour. Not does telling people that they need to show up to yet another compliance program training program (another half day or full day out of the busy schedule). My response to this particular compliance issue has been, 'well, if we do have to do it, let's open a space and invite anyone and everyone to come along who has any level of 'care' and 'responsiblity' (willingness to contribute) and we'll see what emerges'. At the very least we might, together, come up with something that rolls out simply and is relatively easy to use, because people have had some say in designing it. That's my hope. Is that all I can do at this point? Anyone with experience of working 'on the inside' got any thoughts about compliance and the resulting buck passing and disconnections between passion and responsibility that can occur and what can be done about it? Michael Perth, Western Australia
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