Category: public administration
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Going beyond “Management by Exception” – introducing “Management by Inaction”!
If you have heard or read a little about management/administration theories, then you must have heard about “Management by Exception” (MBE). This simply means that the managers or bosses intervene in the work of their subordinates only when there is a deviation from the set goals/standards/parameters. Until and unless, the subordinates are achieving the set…
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Are you abiding the law- as a matter of convenience, obligation or duty OR not at all?
If you stand at any general traffic signal in any typical city of India (apart from the major big traffic signals), you can observe following different of behaviours with respect to compliance of traffic laws and rules: First, is the category of people, who only follow traffic rules when there is traffic police to monitor…
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Easy to build but difficult to maintain, when it should be vice-versa!
If you look around any major construction work like metro, highway, airports, etc., you would notice one thing that the maintenance of these public infrastructures is most of the times shoddy, improper and not up-to-the-mark. It seems that construction of such large projects is easier and there is so much fanfare around the inauguration that…
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Treading a fine line is very important in a democracy!
The recent Gen Z protests demanding accountability for the fallouts in conducting entrance examinations and educational reforms, have again put the focus on the importance of asking questions to the powers that be and ensuring the answerability of the government representatives to the people of the nation. With the recent turn of events following the…
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Policy-making- is this an exercise for organized anarchy!
If you happen to visit a rural area or an unplanned city, you see that the development (or underdevelopment) happens on its own pace even if there is no planned policy guiding the development of that area. For example, if there is no proper road, then the local government or even the locals residing in…
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Good planners, but bad executioners- the missing link?
Since independence, there is one area where we have done great job! It is in planning things for welfare programmes, developmental initiatives, law & order, administrative reforms etc. For example, “Gareebi Hatao” as a policy goal was expounded in 1970s. When it was announced, there was much fanfare around it, elaborate planning would have been…
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The internal resistance to change- but can it really stop reform?
Long-time back I read a book called “Who moved my cheese?” by Dr. Spencer Johnson. It was a short book telling the interesting tale of two mice, Sniff and Scurry, and two “littlepeople” (of the size of mice) Hem and Haw. This tale was about acknowledging that- “Change is the only reality in life that…
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Acknowledgement of failure- the first step towards accountability
In a risk-averse society as ours, there is a general inhibition to acknowledge and accept that there was some failure or error or act of omission or act of commission on our part which led to some bigger failure later. Take a simple example, when you were a kid and you went to someone’s home…
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Means more important than the end?- the curious case of Bhishma Pitamah
I have had the fortune of learning from some of the great teachers. One among them was Prof. Satya Chaitanya, who was a faculty at the famous XLRI, Jamshedpur. We had 1 week of Management Development Programme (MDP) during our training at TATA Steel, which was hosted by XLRI. And there we met many legendary…
