Bureaucracies: How they FAIL

Insights about the W.H.O. provided by two scientific experts in the Pandemic crisis.

Long ago (circa 1990), I provided my expertise as a top-performing IT recruiter to the Vice President of Travel Agency services at America Express Canada. He managed a department of specialists who designed, developed and deployed online Travel Agency systems. The software they produced automated all of the online tasks that travel agents performed in order to book for AMEX’s Canadian customers their business and recreational flights, hotels, etc.

The Rule Of Seven

When I met this VP in his office, I asked him about the size and structure of his organization. I was surprised when he said that he only had 7 staff and that they were all PL1 programmers working on an IBM Stratus fault-tolerant computer. He then taught me about his Rule of Seven:

“The size of team for optimal productivity is 7. With the addition of every new person beyond 7, you get a steady decline in per-person productivity. This occurs because each person’s individual efforts are increasingly diverted to cope with progressively more internal communications and administrative overheads that eat into the time spent on assigned duties. The key, of course, is to find and hire the very best people for your team of 7 and supply the best tools they need to perform at their highest level of productivity. By focusing on building and leading a small team of persons with exceptional talent and expertise, you can achieve very ambitious results without having to build and manage a much larger organization.”

This VP had engaged me to fill a vacancy with someone who possessed the very rare level of talent that his team needed to continue performing at its extraordinary level of productivity.

Productivity and Competence within Public Institutions

As I listened to the conversation between Dr. Robert Malone and Dr.Geert Vanden Bossche (see link) about their past dealings with the World Health Organization (WHO), the words of the AMEX VP were ringing in my ears. They echoed my own personal experience as an employee of IBM Canada in the late 1970s in which I observed how inwardly focussed the organization had become with its 10,000+ employees. In addition, my professional interaction with many governments departments over 3 decades reinforced the wisdom of the Rule of Seven as an explanation for the legendary reputation of disappointing government service levels.

My core message as a Libertarian candidate in each election.

When I advocate for Less Government, I do so with the understanding that huge bureaucracies suffer greatly from their own navel-gazing. Government departments could be enormously more productive in delivering timely and effective “public services” if only their department heads were motivated and incentivized to adopt the Rule of Seven for organizational planning and management.

Unfortunately, the incentives for government department heads are exactly the opposite - to build larger organizations with bigger budgets each year under Human Resources policies that reward seniority over exceptional job performance.

Headwind —The Debate: Dr. Robert Malone vs. Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche

https://link.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/headwind-3-the-debate-dr-robert-malone-vs-dr-geert-vanden-bossche_4496817.html