Where Good Ideas Go To Die

by Kent Aitken

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A year ago, I wrote a post about how and why good ideas face resistance (see: Renewal and Resistance). Today we still can't swing a good idea without hitting a Clay Layer*, and I thought that it was about time to revisit it.

The Clay Layer is this amorphous, eternal layer in the middle of organizations "through which no light shall pass,” and to which no one admits being a part of. It is where communications and good ideas go to die. People send ideas on journeys down or up the chain, seemingly with all the supplies needed, but never hear word from the destination.

Here's how it works: The President of an organization has a Great Idea. They instruct their lieutenants, the VPs, to make it happen. The VPs turn to the directors, who tell the managers, who tell the supervisors, who implement it with their employees.

Except they don't.

This Machine

In some organizations the Clay Layer may actually be a management layer. In others, it could be people, policies, or processes. But my contention was that it is more so a mathematical inevitability.

Hierarchies and ideas just don't get along. If there is anything less than unconditional support for a given idea, every layer in an organization represents an opportunity for support to break down. Worse, the chance for resistance, or non-support, at each layer compounds, multiplied by each additional layer.

So, the chance of meaningful implementation of that President's Great Idea is equal to:

Where x is the chance of support and y is the number of nodes in a hierarchy. It's y-1 because presumably, the President has 100% support for the idea.

Expanding this example, with 6 nodes (a President as node 1 and an employee as node 6), and a 85% (dare I say high?) chance of support for an idea:

0.85*0.85*0.85*0.85*0.85* = .44

So, 85% of the people in this organization would individually, if they ever heard about it,support the President's idea. But when the machine manufacturing it is a hierarchy, it has less than a fifty-fifty shot at success.

Or:

The Solution

The Clay Layer isn't a management layer, it's a function of the organizational system. So if there is a shred of truth in this, the approach seems clear as we try to get Great Ideas' success rates as close as possible to 100%:

• Minimize y: reduce the number of layers involved by flattening organizations
• Maximize x: ensure high rates of support for ideas through compelling presentation, cultural norms, and sheer persistence and reinforcement of key ideas

But there's an unfortunate corollary to our equation. The President will systematically underestimate how much they need to reinforce ideas (maximize x), because progress reporting has the same flaw: any inaccuracies in reporting compound at each level of the hierarchy. And every node has an incentive to overstate their level of support, and the level of success.

So, one has to disrupt the features of hierarchies. If the President receives feedback from multiple levels, they can better understand the implementation of their ideas, and adjust their approach if needed. Likewise, if the President can directly engage multiple levels and empower them in the implementation, the assumptions on which this equation rest dissolve.



*Nick has written about the Clay Layer at least once before. 

Actually, for that matter he also wrote a post called Where Good Ideas Go To Live And/Or Die.

Moving Public Service Mountains, Part II

by Kent Aitken

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A couple weeks ago I wrote about an possible upcoming tectonic shift for the Canadian Public Service [see: Moving Public Service Mountains, Part I]. In the italicized intro, I noted that I'd expand on why I believe seizing opportunities to strengthen the public service is wildly important.

And I scratched the surface, getting into some less-than-rosy perspectives on public service careers and the relationship between public servants and the public they serve. But I left some loose ends to clean up.

Office Space

All large organizations have their issues. The deft skewering of cubicle culture in the movie Office Space needed no bureaucracy for inspiration. But, in the private sector, systemic issues mean that organizations eventually get supplanted by others, better run. On the other hand, in the public service things change slowly (try contrasting with this amazing visualization of the organizational changes at Autocad since 2007). The public service is actually too big to fail, and the absence of failure is not synonymous with success.

Too Big To Fail

The public service has to be good. An effective bureaucracy can create an economic competitive advantage for countries, and in aggregate, government has a dramatic impact on people's lives. Good policy helps people pursue their own well-being, and smooth functioning helps people when things unexpectedly go awry.

I was struck by this post on Govloopcalled Why in the World Am I Still in Gov't?, by Jeffrey Levy:

“So why am I here? I could've done lots of things that probably would've netted me more money. 

Ultimately, it comes down to this: I'm helping save the frickin' world. It's not so much about external validation, although that's very nice to have. In my first EPA job, the world-saving was a little more direct, as I worked to save the ozone layer. But even now, in communications, I help people understand why all of this matters and help inspire them to take care of the planet.”

Han would jump in and admonish us not to get delusions of grandeur, of course.

But consider this as an example, about the effects of the U.S. recession on the suicide rate:

“In a new book, we estimate that 4,750 “excess” suicides — that is, deaths above what pre-existing trends would predict — occurred from 2007 to 2010.”

That's from an op-ed titled How Austerity Kills. And while we could argue about their figures, the principle stands. Economic policy, such that a recession's effects are avoided or minimized, is crucial to people's lives. Yes, it must be weighed against such considerations as intergenerational fairness (we cannot saddle our children with debts) and environmental health (for many similar reasons). But that's why we need phenomenal analysts who we can trust to get that balance right.

On a one-to-one basis, it is hard to say what factors will greatly impact a particular person. But public policy is, on the whole, basically guaranteed to. Particularly for those 9% of Canadians, or over three million people, considered by Statistics Canada to be in the after-tax low income category. The delicate economic balance matters greatly.

And economics is just one example. I'm sure you all have case studies – or counterfactuals – from your own experience.

Why In The World?

I wrote an entire (and lengthy) post about why I'm a bureaucrat. It is likely never to be published, but here's the long story short:

I believe that the potential for public servants to have an impact on the lives of others is nearly unparalleled.

I can imagine the holes that could be poked in that statement. For it to be true, we need to consider an  investment horizon longer than our own careers [see: The Adjacent Possible in Where Good Ideas Go To Live And/Or Die]. We have to consider a multitude of possible relationships over that horizon between politicians, public servants, business, and citizens. We have to consider the roles that we play now, and imagine the roles that we will play at many different points in time.

And we need to be good.

We, writ large. So if there is the slightest crack in the door to help shape the future of the public service, we need to take it seriously.