Which is where governments differ from organisations and businesses, because they bring in a fuckwit with no idea about the department their running, screw it up, and then are replaced a few years later by another fuckwit who changes everything, still with no idea what they're doing, and no-one who ever has half a grasp of the basics for their 'department' is ever in charge of it. Even if someone good did accidentally end up in charge of health or transport or foreign policy or whatever, they'll get rotated out after a few years to ensure some fuckwit is at the reigns.
Yup. My Aunt worked for the Federal Government in the US. If someone was found to be incompetent at her workplace, they were generally promoted to another division elsewhere in the country. It was easier to do that to get them out of the location than it was to try to get them fired.
So the least capable people are often times the ones that get the promotions and then the working people basically try to work around their idiocy. Note - this doesn't mean that only incompetent people get promoted, just that it's seen as a good way to get an incompetent person out of your division in the Federal Government.
Erm, yay?
You obviously have never worked for a multi-national corporation.
I have been through buyouts and revolving doors of people in executive positions and org chart changes for almost a decade straight. Large corporations and the executive side of the government are the same thing.
Yes, you can thank the Harvard Business school for that. They spearheaded the push (back in the 80's) to do away with traditional business practice teachings (what's good for your customers is good for your business so always think of the impact on your customers) to focusing on corporate profitability at all costs. Profitability not necessarily being the companies bottom line, but how well it was doing in the stock market. They did this because their alumni were making a lot of money in the stock market and then contributing to the school of business there. That created a rather bad feedback loop and then other business schools around the country and around the world followed their example.
Thankfully, things are changing. The people that were at the forefront of that business philosophy (including tenured professors) have been let go (forced to retire) and they're trying to revert back to how business was originally taught at the college level.
Unfortunately there are a LOT of businessmen still in the workforce that were taught those business practices.
Dell is a great example of how this kind of thinking can absolutely ruin a company. But thankfully for the company Michael Dell, realizing the mistake of being a publicly traded company, managed to get enough investors to back him and take it private again.
If the stock price of your corporation becomes more important than your customers, that's a good sign that the corporation is going in the wrong direction.
Regards,
SB
