Date: 2025-04-08 Page is: DBtxt003.php L0913-TVM-MMW-000003
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TrueValueMetrics ... Peter Burgess Manuscript
Making Management Work for Relief and Development |
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Chapter 3
Poor Performance. How and Why? |
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Getting beyond mere description
There are libraries of data that describe what is wrong, but rather less about how and why there is relief and development failure. It is impossible to address problems with much hope of success until there are some honest attempts to figure out the how and why. How? I have been asking the question “How has relief and development failed?” for a very long time. I used to ask a similar question when I had profit responsibility in the corporate world and when I was a corporate CFO. When you know “how” something is happening it becomes relatively easy to figure out what to do about it. After looking at this question from many, many different viewpoints over a period of 30 odd years and working to “connect the dots”, I have concluded that there are two big reasons. These are: (1) that some of the fund flow has never been delivered to practical activities because it got mis-applied on the way ... in other words corruption and fraud; and, (2) the resources have been used legitimately but in a very ineffective manner. These two reasons explain how the relief and development sector performance has been so poor. In the relief and development sector organizations the “How?” question seems to be “off limits”. I remember (in 1978, now almost 30 years ago) being briefed by a World Bank staff person about the expectations they had of other staff and consultants ... “you NEVER criticize other staff or other consultants.” It did not seem such a bad rule or modus operandi at the time, because, after all, we were a team, and we were doing important work for the benefit of society. But like so many rules, the abuse of the rule became the norm, and used to avoid addressing important professional issues. In my own work in the relief and development sector I have been asking “How?” whenever I have been on an assignment, and just as often when I see things that put me on inquiry. With so much money flowing into development ... recently some $50 billion a year and now growing, by some accounts, to upwards of $100 billion a year in 2006 ... and yet so little to see for it. How has the fund flow converted into so little tangible benefit? How? In part it is corruption. In part it is incompetence. In combination, and with weak accounting and financial controls, there is great scope for diversion of funds and for using funds ineffectively. Why? Why has the relief and development performance been so poor? Why has corruption and fraud not been stopped? Why have ineffective activities not been terminated and replaced by effective activities? Once again there are two big reasons: (1) senior people in the relief and development sector organizations just do not want to go head to head to stop fraud, corruption and ineffective activities; and, (2) the leadership and the staff do not know how to change the prevailing practices that are failing to produce good results. Both of these reasons are bad reasons. Bluntly put, people are making the sorts of choice that suits them, without shaking up the system so that it can make the relief and development sector a success. I contend that some of the staff in relief and development sector organizations just do not want to go head to head to stop fraud, corruption and ineffective activities because it is not in their self interest. There are a whole range of levels of not wanting to rock the boat, and a big range of personal self interest. Few people in big jobs in the relief and development sector want to put their salaries and retirement benefits on the line, and those that are heavily into ripping off the system do not want to end the gravy train. The general public does not know very much about the type and the scale of the rip off in relief and development sector organizations. These organizations have a history of using government style fund accounting (cash based) systems. This accounting makes it relatively easy to make rip off look like a regular approved transaction. As long as the accounting stays this way rip off will be facilitated, and those on the gravy train can go on living happily. Society gets to pay the bills and the disenfranchised poor quietly suffer the catastrophe of failed development. But while it might be expected that the general public does not know, the internal management information in relief and development organizations does not inform the staff very much about performance either. Most of the staff have no information about the “performance” of the organization as a whole, even if they have some data about the work they are engaged on themselves. Good loyal staff honestly believe that they are working hard and doing a good job ... and are going to go on believing this as long as decent management information is non-existent. But it gets worse. There are big questions about corporate ethics, and the role that the corporate world has in facilitating inappropriate aspects of the global economy. It takes a lot to explain how people can be in so much poverty when their land is being exploited by international oil and mining companies. Something ... actually many things are clearly wrong. As long as there is nobody to rock the boat the system can sustain itself, but the results in terms of relief and development progress will not be very good. And as things are at the present time, and have been for a long time now, those that do not want change do not need to be much concerned. The people that want change for the most part do not know how to change the prevailing practices that are failing to produce good results. Making change is not easy, and certainly making change in big and bureaucratic institutions is really tough. Making change that is going to have a significant impact on the prevailing corrupt gravy train and international corporate profit bonanzas is not going to be easy, nor is it going to be safe. But it is surely worth doing. |
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