Tag Archives: waste

The eternal meeting…

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We have the same meeting every two weeks. I don’t mean just a regularly occurring staff meeting or anything, but rather a meeting where we all get together and discuss the exact same issue, come to the exact same conclusions, and then part company knowing full well that we’re going to do it again in 14 days just like clockwork. Nobody, myself included, has the intestinal fortitude to recommend that we stop having this meeting so it seems possible that it will continue on indefinitely into the future, just as it has been held for as long as any of the current participants can remember.

As far as I can tell, meetings are the great enemy of government work – probably work in any large organization. I’m not saying if we cancelled this meeting that my productivity would suddenly jump by 200%, but it would free up an hour or two every week to do something, anything that might be even marginally productive. After all, when what you’re currently doing is complete dead time, even a fractional improvement in how you spend your day is a huge improvement in productivity. That’s not even counting the morale bump that would come from permanently cancelling time sucks like this one. Of course the likelihood of any of that coming to pass is somewhere between slim and none, so if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to go to.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Delicate sensibilities…

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As alleged professionals, we all have basic responsibilities beyond those things described in our job descriptions. If your job description provides a laundry list of explicit tasks, our status as professionals imparts a second list of implied tasks that we need to carry out in order to accomplish our primary role. One of those implied tasks, at least in my mind, is reading and understanding the information put in front of us.

Part of my job, from time to time, is preparing electronic correspondence for senior leaders to inform them about upcoming meetings, key decisions made at high echelons, or to provide general information about the health of their organization. I generally write those messages as if our leaders aren’t mouth-breathing oxygen thieves. According to the self-anointed gatekeeper of such correspondence, my assumption is incorrect.

Apparently, selecting “forward” on the email task bar and referring them to the appropriate section of the message will lead to catastrophic confusion in the executive suite. These are important people and expecting them to use the little track wheel on their Blackberry to scroll down is too presumptuous. I’m told that our leaders can’t be troubled to read more than two or three sentences in an email, so it’s critical that all salient facts be presented in the viewable space when they first open a message. Thanks to my colleague, I now know that our leaders are too busy to read or contemplate any message involving the slightest hint of complexity.

Call me difficult, but when the topic has been perfectly well summarized by someone already, I don’t see any value to taking 30 minutes to reword it based on the argument that the big words might confuse our leaders or that having a message forwarded might offend their delicate sensibilities. Despite my occasional arguments to the contrary, I don’t really think our leaders are that dumb and I certainly don’t think they are that delicate.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

The lies we tell ourselves…

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I’m a bit of an oddity in the ranks of the civil service; a fiscal conservative who rails against high taxation and the increased growth of government. This isn’t the first time I have realized the disconnect between thought and action that I live on a weekly basis. I’ve often thought about jumping ship to seek out greener pastures in the private sector, but the reality is even with new pay scales and pay-for-performance initiatives, the federal government is a gravy train for employees. Although similar work in the private sector comes with higher pay, companies that provide a comparable insurance, leave, and retirement package are few and far between. As an employee with nearly 5 years under my belt, I have nearly 4 weeks of annual leave each year (not including time earned by traveling during non-business hours), 10 paid holidays each year, 2 ½ weeks of sick leave per year (that rolls over each year). My health insurance runs around $100/month and the government matches the first 5% of the salary I roll into my retirement plan. Add to that the simple fact that federal employees are nearly impossible to fire as long as they are meeting very minimal standards. Why on earth would anyone leave that kind of benefits package to work for a company that can terminate them at will due to a downturn in the economy or for nearly any other reason (or for no reason at all)?

The federal budget process forces government employees to spend their entire budget by the time the books close in September. There is no reward for an office or an organization that saves money or executes its mission more cost-effectively. In fact, we must spend our entire budget or risk not receiving as much money the following year. We justify the mad dash to spend the “leftover” budget at the end of the fiscal year under the mantra “use it or lose it.” The bureaucracy couches its purchases in terms of being able to meet mission requirements and suddenly the entire office receives new 19-inch flat screen monitors. I’m no less guilty than others. I’ve enjoyed the fruits of this misguided process and cheerfully submit my end-of-year wish list each Fall. From flash drives to cell phones, laptops to desk chairs, anything is fair game in the frenzy of last minute binging.

I’ll confess that I want my new computer every three years. I want the newest cell phone. I want to knock down walls and increase the size of our inner-office empire. The question “do we need these things” never really comes up at the end of the year. The only question on the lips of employees, is “How can we spend it?”

I believe in small, but responsive government. I believe that the bureaucracy is bloated and wasteful. I also believe that the budget process used by the United States government is utterly broken. In the end, the Congress calls the tune when it appropriates the dollars. And the lie I tell myself to make it acceptable is that if I don’t spend it, someone else will.