Management Inbreeding

Here is the last in my current series on government accountability. I call it management inbreeding. This is when management perpetuates itself. That means that the Police Chief started as a patrolman in the same department and the Chief has always been "brought up through the ranks". Again, I'm using this as an example, it is prevalent in every department and division of government, not just the Police Department.

When a government agency promotes from within, as guaranteed by civil service, there is no real opportunity to change. There will be incremental changes as certain people change practices that they didn't like, or they realize didn't work well, but there will be no overhauls of the way things are done. There won't be any real studies to see if there are ways to do things better. Tradition overrules almost all attempts at change and since the new manager used to be "one of the gang" they won't risk losing life-time relationships to make changes that may serve the public better.

Don't think that volunteer agencies are better, in fact, they are usually worse. Since they recruit membership and are not bound by civil service regulations, they have a tendency to "weed out" those that do not share a similar vision as existing management. This is seen in the current "volunteer crisis" throughout the state of New Jersey. It is frequently bemoaned that there is no one willing to volunteer anymore, but that is not true.

This past weekend, I've spoken with three different people who took the time to go through the 130 hour EMT course and then volunteer on a local ambulance, only to become disgusted at the poor management and time wasting internal politics. The end result will be that these three people will stop volunteering and the local ambulance corps will continue to cry about its lack of volunteers. The problem is not the volunteers, they are out there in droves, its the management of the ambulance corps that lives and dies by the phrase, "We've always done it this way."

Again the question, how do we fix this? Is it time that all volunteer government agencies be headed by a paid, full-time professional? If so, who picks that person, what will their qualifications be, and how do we prevent them from becoming stagnant?

Thoughts anyone?