I have worked with several governments over my career, and one of the things that amazes me the most is the phenomenon of trying to improve the quality of what a government does by massive reorganization.  One of the most frustrating things about it is the fact someone almost always gets elected and decides to totally reorganize a state, city or county government, right after people had stabilized and started to be effective after the last time it happened.

In my home state of Indiana, I have seen this over and over and over again.  Actually, I could have said over several more times, but it would have been really boring.  I am seeing the effects of blanket reorganization in some other states now.  For those of you who haven't observed it, this is what usually happens.

The state gets a new governor, or a city gets a new Mayor.  Driven by a need to improve the obviously awful organization and services put in place by the previous administration, the new one decides to come up with a completely different way of renaming bureaucracy, breaking things up, getting rid of dead weight, and magically improving government.  Usually as they go, or afterwards, they make a case to the media that they have saved costs and the new way will save money.

In truth, what happens is a little different.  The new administration appoints people to head up areas of service who may have been competent in previous positions, but have no idea what they are doing yet in their new ones.  These people proceed to come up with "new" ideas, which are actually ideas which have been largely tried and failed in previous reorganizations, and cram those ideas down the throats of people who have been in place for years, know their jobs and remember the failures the last time this was tried.

Usually, people with expertise get forced to retire, gutting the organizational wisdom, moved to positions in which they don't have expertise and have to start all over learning their jobs, or a combination of both.  A year after the organization, there is little to know effective organizational culture left, people who really know what works are no longer working in their areas of expertise, and people spend years getting back to the potential for quality they had prior to the beginning of the process.  

People do, eventually, develop expertise in their areas of work, begin to do a better job, and some even develop high levels of expertise.  Unfortunately, those with the highest level of expertise will leave, retire, or be forced to retire in a few years when a new administration goes through the process again. 

True quality improvement starts with the strengths of an organization and uses the organization's talent, along with customer feedback, to drive positive change.  When you bring your talented people into the process, they can then develop new talent and continue the improvement efforts.  I don't know why politicians, especially those with corporate backgrounds don't get this simple truth.

Of course, reorganization might just be about putting into place a power base and have nothing to do with improvement.  The skeptical side of me leans in that direction.  In this next round of elections, we need to ask how our new mayors, governors and presidents intend to build on what works when they go about change.  I bet we will find they have no idea.