An astute observer at any Council meeting over the past few years will have noticed from time to time a certain malaise, a tension, a sense that some Councillors are not happy with the way things are going. Some apparently feel they have little influence over the proceedings, and resort to tactics such as motions to defer or table in order to buy time for a sober second look at the issue. Some appear to arrive at the table already prepared for a fight. And Councillors often complain about how issues come before them for resolution in the first place, and how the supporting materials and decision questions are prepared and packaged. This malaise exists in spite of the best efforts of the Chair to follow proper procedure and to ensure that every Councillor’s opinion is heard.
Most recently, Council had become divided into “camps”, such as one expects to see in party politics. When this happens, Councillors who may not have strong views on an issue align themselves with whichever camp they most readily associate or wish to support. This, in turn, causes the dissatisfaction and disagreement to spread beyond the particular issue(s) in question and become attached to individuals and camps. Then we have the “voices crying in the wilderness”, who seem to object to most everything just on principle.
It is tempting to conclude that the above behaviours are the result of personality flaws among the individual participants, and that the problem would be solved if we just got better people on Council. But I believe that ever member of Council, including those appointed by government, truly wants the best for the profession, and wants to make a meaningful contribution to its governance as a Councillor.
So what’s the problem?
Fortunately for us, there is a body of knowledge in the field of organizational psychology that suggests that what appears to be bad character and/or bad behaviour on the part of individuals is really caused by a lack or breakdown of systems and procedures necessary to get any business function accomplished smoothly, productively, and correctly. I say fortunately because we can solve the problem by putting in place and maintaining the proper systems and procedures to avoid disharmony and confusion.
You have likely seen this phenomenon in your own workplace. Breakdowns in communication or in business processes lead to anger, frustration, and fault finding or blaming. They also result in errors, lost productivity and profitability, and customer dissatisfaction – which adversely affect the bottom line. Business process re-engineering techniques like “lean” and “six sigma” are used to identify and remove sources of conflict, confusion, and error with a view to maximizing the consistency of results. These same techniques can be applied to improve any endeavour, not just in manufacturing: a car dealership, a supermarket, a doctor’s or lawyer’s office, a city council, a church, even PEO Council.
In my previous attempts to deal with this problem at PEO, I have learned the following truths.
1) There are two things that must happen before Councillors are comfortable making a decision on any substantive issue: (i) they must have an adequate understanding of the issue, and (ii) they must have had an adequate opportunity to influence others, and be influenced by others, with respect to the issue. Neither (i) nor (ii) should be expected to occur during normal debate leading to the decision – if the issue is at all complex, these activities can best take place off-line. (I believe that is how our parliamentary system of having three readings of a bill before the vote came about. Legislators need advanced notice of the proposed legislation, time to digest the background information, time to identify concerns and get questions answered, and time to to discuss issues and possible improvements – probably in committee – all before they are asked to vote.) Bringing an issue to a vote before these conditions have been satisfied is a recipe for failure and an abuse of Councillors’ trust . Recently we have seen major Council decisions made literally “on the fly”. Such decisions are almost certain to result in disunity and error!
2) Councillors need to be able to trust the sources of the background information being placed before them in support of decisions as to completeness, accuracy, and truthfulness. Unfortunately, much of the information placed before Council of late is suspect in this regard. Briefing notes and motions drafted by the Registrar come to Council without have been vetted by any person knowledgable of their details, either volunteer or staff. As a result they frequently contain errors, omissions, and misrepresentations. Small wonder they are suspect out of the gate!
A few suggestions to address these requirements:
- Councillors should have Council’s overall agenda for the length of its strategic planning horizon in front of them at all times, and should be able to track the progress of initiatives from meeting to meeting. Besides avoiding surprises, this approach would prevent decisions of Council from falling through the cracks and never being impelemented, as has happened so often in the past.
- Agenda items and briefing notes should come to Council from standing committees (not the Executive Committee) and task forces, with the recommendations of all affected committees and task forces, and having been fully peer reviewed. Exceptions to this rule should be tolerated only on the rarest of occasions when a genuine crisis or opportunity presents iteself.
- When it becomes clear that debate on an issue is bogging down or that Council is becoming frustrated / politicized, the chair should adjourn discussion of that item to a later time to allow some breathing space for Councillors to deal with it off-line and come back with better consensus. Council should never be permitted to draft a substantive motion on the fly!
A modest effort to get Councillors to agree on such “rules of engagement” would play huge dividends in unity / cohesion among Council and in quality of the decisions made.
As to staff, I would simply observe that disunity and dissatisfaction among PEO’s senior staff has never been greater than it is today. I believe this is not simply a refelection of what is happening in Council, but rather it is a reflection of fundamental leadership issues which have remained unresolved for some time. Council’s Human Resources and Compensation Commmittee (HRC) needs to address these issues on an urgent basis.