PROGRESS AND PERFORMANCE
FIXING FAILED DEVELOPMENT
Huge technological progress, but not so much social and economic progress for everyone
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SIMPLE SOLUTIONS DO NOT WORK IN COMPLEX SITUATIONS
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TPB PERCEPTION OF PROGRESS circa 2000
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TPB Note: The underperformance of socio-economic development in the 50+ years since the independence initiatives of the 1950s and 1960s has been dramatic ... with almost total lack of accountability for the dismal outcomes,
The graphics below were prepared around 2000, after more than 20 years of involvement in international development and humanitarian relief.
Over this period I undertook hundreds of monitoring and evaluation / supervision assignments for the World Bank, the United Nations and others and while I was impressed by the motivation of most (but not all) of the staff, I was appalled at the very low capacity for management.
For almost 20 years before this I had worked in the for-profit private sector in the profession of accountancy and as a manager in the corporate world. In this arena, good managers get good results, and bad managers become unemployed. Very little of this was taking place in Governments around the world or in development projects being funded (and supervised) by the international community.
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TURNING DEVELOPMENT UPSIDE DOWN
A Peter Burgess book manuscript from the early 2000s
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FIXING FAILED DEVELOPMENT
TPB view of the performance of international socio-economic development
SLIDE GRAPHICS FROM AROUND 2000
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TPB note: In the 1980s and 1990s I did hundreds of assignments associated with international development assistance and humanitarian relief. Compared to my previous experience in corporate management, the lack of progress and lack of effective management information was striking. This graphic series sets out some of the elements of my concern
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Incredible recent progress
For thousands of years, there was relatively little progress but in recent times there has been amazing technological progress. and this progress is accelerating. In spite this progrees in technology, the progress for society has been much less, and for some societies, very little progress at all.
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Huge progress in the last 200 years, and accelerating.
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NOTE: 'North' is shorthand for the rich countries of the world. Mostly, these countries are members of the OECD, that is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD is an intergovernmental economic organisation with 37 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade.
'South' is shorthand for the poor developing countries. This shorthand was preferred over the phrase 'Third World'.
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Development expectations in the 1960s
The rich countries in the 'North' were expected to progress, and the poor countries of the 'South' were expected to catch up significantly.
Part of the argument was that developing countries would benefit from 'independence' and the removal of colonial domination.
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Subsequent development performance
Countries in the 'North' experienced massive economic growth, and accumulations of financial wealth never before experience in history.
Meanwhile countries in the 'South' experienced economic and social decline. Essentially international 'official development assistance' (ODA) failed.
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An alternative image
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TPB prediction circa 2000
Around 2000, it was clear that the international world order had serious problems. More and more, the 'north' was failing to make friends and the 'south' was becoming more and more stressed.
It should have come as no surprise that an event like the bombings in the USA on 9/11/2001 took place. The world was angry, and the rich 'north' did not seem to care.
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Comparing potential to most likely
The idea that a small amount of progress is good enough when there is the potential for a lot of progress is, to my mind, unacceptable ... yet this is very common among policy makers and planners in the 'north'.
People like Bill Gates keep pointing out that there has been substantial progress (in for example, global health) but compared by what is possible it is rather modest and far too many people still live in appalling conditions, while just a few have accumulated an obscene amount of wealth.
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Massive underperformance
Post WWII knowledge has been enabling very rapid technical progress, and the possibility to do a wide range of amazing things.
In reality the only amazing things that have been implemented have been those that have financial profit potential ... almost no investment has been made in order to improve quality of life around the world.
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An alternative image
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Worse
A big part of technology is being used for maximum profit performance while doing significant social damage in the process.
The role of rich companies from the 'north' exploiting the resources of the 'south' is a serious issue.
Sadly this has been facilitated by the willingness of corrupt officials in the 'south' to accept bribes, and the willingness of corporate decision makers from the 'north' to pay them.
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FLOWS OF KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERTISE
SOME GRAPHICS FROM AROUND 2000
At the end of the colonial era circa 1960 there was a lot of knowledge and experience embedded in the staff of the old colonial administrations.
Some of this transferred to the new 'Development' institutions like the World Bank, the UN and other development agencies, but most was lost.
Academically trained development experts with insignificant field experience explain in large part why so many development projects failed to meet their goals.
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Interaction between NORTH and SOUTH
Since independence, most countries have received the bulk of international assistance through their government. Organizations like the World Bank, the United Nations and bilateral aid agencies are all part of a system that is dominated by government and the associated constraints.
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A Better Interaction between NORTH and SOUTH
A better way to get development assistance should be through the private sector ... but this is not always the case. The private sector of extracting profit from alll economic activity can be as damaging as the inefficiency of government.
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WHY? HOW? WHAT? and also WHO? WHERE? WHEN?
ACCOUNTING FOR EVERYTHING ... MULTI DIMENSION ... MULTI PERSPECTIVE ... EVERY ISSUE
There is systemic dysfunction in the socio-enviro-economic stystem. Wrong metrics and incentives are a contibuting cause of this dysfunctional. We need measures that enable everyone to make better decisions and reward them ... a uniform universal system of true value accounting that provides accounting and accountability to everyone about everything, everywhere all the time.
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GO SlideNav-for-TVA #WHW
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THOUSANDS OF ISSUES
SYSTEM DYSFUNCTION NEEDS SYSTEM SOLUTIONS
The idea that there is a single silver bullet that will solve big problems is insane!
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NAVIGATION TO THOUSANDS OF ISSUES
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ISSUES ... what is in the contemporary dialog
NAVIGATION to thousands of textfile webpages organized in download sequence (chronological) ... a timeline of what people are writing about. These webpages contain text from a variety of sources including news reports, websites etc about issues that have a high profile at the current time.
| Open L0200-ISSUES-TextFileNav
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ISSUES ... about specific issues
NAVIGATION to thousands of webpages organized by ISSUE / SUBJECT alphabetical ... building a framework for understanding
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Open L0200-ISSUES
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GO n1-SlideNav-for-TVA #ISSUES
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SOME OF THE MOST CRITICAL ISSUES
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ISSUES - Focus on groups (clusters) of key issues
CLUSTERS OF ISSUES MOST RELEVANT TO THE PROGRESS OF THE SOCIO-ENVIRO-ECONOMIC SYSTEM
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Open L0200-ISSUES-Clusters
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ISSUES involving BANKS, MONEY AND FINANCIAL SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS
DYSFUNCTION IN BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES CAN POSE AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS FOR THE SOCIO-ENVIRO-ECONOMIC SYSTEM
| Open L0300-Financial-Ecosystem
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ISSUE ... THE PROBLEM OF SYSTEMIC DYSFUNCTION
Modern Western performance optimization is all about investors and wealth, and rather little about the impact on people and planet. Wealth creation is about the money dimension without taking into consideration the externalities that effect people and nature.
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Open L0300-Systemic-Dysfunction
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ISSUE ... UNSUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC TRENDS
Economists have identified many of the important unsustainable economic trends, but hardly any meaningful political action has been taken to solve the underlying systemic problems.
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Open L0300-Economic-Trends
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ISSUE ... IGNORING CLIMATE CHANGE
Scientific researchers have identified climate change as a major existential risk for our socio-enviro-economic system that gets worse and worse the longer it is ignored.
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Open L0300-Climate-Change
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ISSUE ... INADEQUATE METRICS
YOU MANAGE WHAT YOU MEASURE ... THEREFORE MEASURE WHAT MATTERS
Profits. money wealth, stock prices and GDP growth are measures that work for owners, but less so for everyone else. They are inadequate because they only consider the economic or financial dimension of the system, ignoring society and ignoring nature and the environment. There are many issues including the way accounting has been gamed to allow reporting that would normally not be allowed if the basic fundamental principles of double entry accoutncy were being applied.
We need better metrics for everything that is important in the socio-enviro-economic system. We need metrics to enable people to make better decisions so that the performance of the complex enviro-socio-economic is as good as possible. There are many different approaches to better metrics and many different actors involved in research and development of better metrics.
There is a mistaken idea that more organizational profit results in better quality of life when more profit is often achieved with less payroll and there is a related drop in quality of life. Less spending on pollution control may result in higher profits, but it comes at the expense of more pullution and assiated bad impacts.
PROFITS, MONEY WEALTH, STOCK PRICES and GDP GROWTH are inadequate metrics as they only consider the economic or financial dimension of the system, ignoring society and ignoring nature and the environment. We need better metrics for everything that is important. We need metrics to enable people to make better decisions so that the performance of the complex enviro-socio-economic is as good as possible.
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Open L0300-Inadequate-Metrics
Open n8-METRICS-ByIssue
Open list0300-Accountancy
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PROGRESS / POSSIBILITIES / UNDER-ACHIEVEMENT
The arc of history ... huge recent progress, but not so much in the SOUTH
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Open L070-OVERVIEW-HISTORY-1
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DATA DRIVEN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
People live their lives in a community ... and every community is different
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Open L070-OVERVIEW-HISTORY-2
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COMMUNITY CENTRIC SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
People live their lives in a community ... and every community is different
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Open L070-OVERVIEW-HISTORY-3
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RELIEF AND DEVELOPMENT FUND FLOWS
Fund flow is a key part of relief and development ... and lacks efficiency, transparency and accountability
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Open L070-OVERVIEW-HISTORY-4
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HISTORY ... PROGRESS / POSSIBILITIES / UNDER-ACHIEVEMENT
The arc of history ... huge recent progress, but not so much in the SOUTH
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Open L070-OVERVIEW-HISTORY-5
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