A member of the city manager’s office in one American metropolis indicated that his own office “became desperate to make the organization more responsive to a society that demanded more efficient service.” However, these demands are often contradictory and in flux, hence cannot be readily addressed by one large, bureaucratic agency. Furthermore, public institutions rarely have sufficient resources or expertise to address these needs, and the current employees in these bureaucratized organizations often resist and have acquired few skills that are relevant to the new needs. Government administrators are asked to become more collaborative in their dealings with their employees and various public interest groups. Often it is because governmental agencies are unwilling or unable to provide adequate services, that new Intersect organizations have grown up which are small, highly flexible and efficient. City governments are now contracting with private organizations for fire protection, criminal detention facilities, waste disposal, education—and even, potentially, energy.
As early as 1969, Drucker predicted the coming privatization of governmental agencies. Twenty five years late, Drucker (1989, pp. 63, 65) observed that:
A government activity can work only if it is a monopoly. It cannot function if there are other ways to do the job, that is, if there is competition. . . . [If] there are alternative ways to provide the same service, government flounders. . . Government can do well only if there are no political pressures. The Post Office and the railroads did well as long as they had a simple purpose. But very soon, perhaps inevitably, the pressure builds to misuse such services to create employment, and especially employment for people who otherwise would find it hard to get jobs. . . And as soon as a government activity has more than one purpose, it degenerates.
Thus, there has been increasingly the need for new kinds of organizations that blend the governmental mandates for the provision of public services with the private capacity to offer these services in a cost-effective manner.
I personally was consulting recently with a major American city. I was asked to be the major speaker at this city’s annual meeting of all employees. I agreed to be the speaker but only under the condition that I could provide an appreciative perspective by identifying and speaking about recent successes of this urban government. Rather than offering ways in which this city might improve its functioning (the usual “motivational” speech), I wished to help members of the city government identify ways in which they are already effective so that they might engage this effectiveness even more frequently. If I was going to be an “expert” then it would be as someone who helped identify existing strengths rather than weaknesses.
In preparation for this appreciative speech, I asked chief administrators of this city to convene a series of focus groups to identify major successes during the past year. More than fifty successes were first identified. Then winnowing took place and a final set of eight successes was identified. I asked members of the focal groups to offer presentations on each success during the annual meeting. I concluded this presentation by noting that six of the eight successes involved partnerships with nongovernmental organizations. This came as a major surprise to the leaders of this city government. I produced a “Book of Success” for use in future planning (and new employee orientation) for this city government. This small book offered a brief description of each success and a general pronouncement concerning how this government had already been effective. The theme of intersectional collaboration stood out and it was to influence future priorities of this city government. Dragons did indeed dwell in this city and intersectional strategies were implemented to successfully engage these dragons.
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