However. The elephant in Auckland's room continues to be Auckland Council itself.
It keeps on growing.
Getting bigger. Employing more and more highly paid professionals. Consuming more and more resources in existing and accommodating its ever-expanding self, eating further into rate-payer dollars, becoming even less productive when measured against outcomes that matter to Auckland's residents.
The recent review of CCO (Council Controlled Organisation) letters of expectation presented one of the few opportunities that exist to councillors to reduce operating costs, and to begin reversing the growth of the elephant. Before reading on have a quick read of another of today's postings: "Levithan Part 1: Auckland" - which is the start of an analysis of mass organisation culture in New Zealand. An upcoming post will examine the relationship between Auckland Council's growth, Auckland City's population growth, immigration growth, and central government economic growth plans - and the inter-dependencies.
The Council report (to Tuesday's meeting - 13 December) that introduces the letters of expectation to CCO Chief Executive and their Boards tells Councillors this:
General messages for 2017-2018
As council moves into the third term since amalgamation, there is a need to reset some of the expectations on the CCOs about their participation and commitment to a whole – of – group approach. This year’s draft LOEs therefore outline a number of general expectations, and send a strong signal that Council will be giving significantly more attention to the degree to which CCOs are delivering outcomes for Aucklanders. These expectations are set out below.
• CCOs need to take active steps to reinforce accountability to council. This will require strong leadership from Boards and chief executives, to build cultures and behaviours which recognise their organisations’ responsibilities to residents and ratepayers. Greater transparency in financial reporting is an important element of this. Additionally, CCOs need to work with council to develop new performance metrics which genuinely measure our success in achieving outcomes.
• CCOs need to align their operations with council strategies. A key plank of this is participation in development of the refreshed Auckland Plan.
• A stronger sense of collaboration in the council group is needed. This means collaborating across the other CCOs, and with council itself, to achieve group outcomes, and to maximise investment opportunities. As part of this, the shared services model and participation in group - wide policies remains important.
• CCOs should develop a stronger focus on customer service. One aspect of this is engaging more actively with Local Boards.
None of these expectations discusses the need to reduce spend, economise, to prioritise expenditure on infrastructure investments and maintainance ("outcomes" are not defined or differentiated). What these expectations do describe though, and require, are just the sorts of activities and tasks that professional middle managers love and can make a real meal of, and grow the elephant.
For example: "take active steps to reinforce accountability to Council". That means more internally focussed professionals, bean-counting, writing reports, being audited and checked. It also means more staff employed by CCOs to monitor goings-on-at-Council, checking the grape-vine, snooping at the rumour-mill, finding out who's saying what, and plotting and advising how to fix it. None of this is productive (as far as ratepayers are concerned) but it is deeply rewarding work for many professional managers (they love it). And in the same sentence being asked to "build cultures and behaviours". Man. What a great job that will be for highly qualified Business Administration experts and others with similar degrees and experience. And then there's "develop new performance metrics". Again, the science of mass organisation managerialism is summoned. How big a team will be required for this? And how much overseas consulting will be required? These are great jobs if you can get them. Look great on the CV. Passport to a senior role in MBIE I'm sure.
One that really tickles me is that "a stronger sense of collaboration in the council group is needed". Fat chance. The CCOs are at war with each other for the affections of Councillors and Council. Very senior managers spend a good chunk of their time in relationship management - but not relationships with "customers" - they are far more concerned about relationships with family members. Because it's all about affection, keeping in good with Council's CEO, not rocking the boat even fractionally with a noisy councillor, and at all times keeping heads below the parapet until you've got a really good story to crow about.
Which brings me to a CCO output that deserves as much attention as the proposed new Auckland slogan. Every CCO has a public relations and public affairs and public communications and relationship management function/team/office/budget. How about centralising that function Mr Mayor and Councillors. That would result in fewer highly paid communications managers, reduce costs in an area that is embarrassingly over-resourced and capable of inter-group conflict, and would be a positive way of implementing the expectation of a "shared services model and participation in group-wide policies".
But then, as noted in my Leviathan post, Councillors would likely find themselves out-thought and out-witted by the managers they employ through their CEO. Hiding to nothing maybe.
Blunt weapon would be a capped annual budget for each CCO and require them to cut the coat to suit the cloth rather than create all these soft jobs for boys and the girls who do little more than gossip and watch each other's tails, generating more heat than light, and leading to less productive investment on the ground.
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