Another day, another black eye for Nanaimo’s municipal government. This time, the screw-up involved an improper release of confidential information, allegedly by councillors and one or more senior members of staff. B.C.’s privacy commissioner has hinted at court action if those involved don’t get their act together.
But can they? There have been endless manifestations of cluelessness and worse.
At one point, councillors were preparing to sue the mayor. The former chief administrative officer allegedly threatened some council members (that case will be heard in October). And the chief financial officer left for reasons that council refused to disclose.
The entire scene reminds you of a bad day in a primary-school playground.
But what interests me is how you would go about improving what is obviously a dysfunctional mess.
They say a fish rots from the head down. That appears to apply here.
But what about the rest of the organization? You don’t normally see this sort of thing in the private sector. A company this messed up would go bust and that would be that.
Employees would be dispersed to the four winds, and would hope to find a better landing ground elsewhere. But governments, municipal among them, can’t just declare bankruptcy and disband. Life must go on.
You would assume there will be new faces around the council table come the municipal elections in October. But my own experience in government is that a cleanout of elected officials doesn’t come close to solving the problem.
Unproductive behaviour at the top is passed down to the executive, then the middle ranks and from there all the way to the basement.
I’m not suggesting that staff in Nanaimo’s administration are inept or ill-intentioned. I’m sure they are doing their best under extremely difficult circumstances.
But when the fifth floor is in flames, everyone down below runs for cover, and that unavoidably affects their performance.
One obvious start is to hire a management team that knows what it’s doing. But here, a head-scratcher arises.
In just about every arena of the public sector, there is a nationwide merry-go-round of senior executives who left their last job in less than aromatic circumstances, and turned up smelling like roses elsewhere.
It might seem reference checks would put an end to that. But if you are desperate to get rid of a low performer, and a head-hunter calls, what do you do? Praise the guy to the ceiling.
Then again, current labour law enables just about any walking disaster to hide damning evidence, short of a criminal record.
Nevertheless, let’s say a new senior executive is installed who fits the bill. Your problems have only begun.
Staff lower down will have adopted the kind of behaviour taught them by the outgoing team. It’s called the chameleon effect. Employees take on the colour of their surroundings without thinking about it.
If you called them out, they would be shocked to hear their actions were misdirected. It’s the norm they’ve been living with for years.
So we don’t just need new management, we need a determined show of leadership. That has to start at the top, with the executive giving repeated demonstrations of how staff are expected to behave, and doing so every step of the way.
I hate the term “coaching,” because we’re not talking about a football team. But it does have meaning here.
It’s not enough to tell dispirited staff what to do, you have to show them how to do it. And that will take at least a year or two.
Of course, none of this matters if the current council is re-elected. In that event, all that remains is to turn out the lights and padlock the doors.
