More Government Talk

One of the thing that happens in Government, and probably in all big bureaucracies, is the fear of failure replaces the desire to succeed. These are by no means the same thing. Failure is best defined in Government by not having done anything wrong. Part of the problem is that the criteria for success is often too difficult to measure. In private industry, you normally have one primary consideration, did you make money. Of course, as any business grows, you start to add human resource, accounting, and other support groups where the connection between the necessary services they provide and the bottom line is either non-existent or extremely difficult to quantify. Well, effectively the entire Government consists of support groups with the exception of our Military who are in a different category (still not P&L people).

So what happens? There is an old Chinese proverb that states "the nail that sticks out feels the hammer!". Well generally that best describes most Government. You need to make sure that just about everyone, or certainly your superiors, agree with what you advocate. Now, this isn't totally unique to Government, but in Government it reaches levels not found elsewhere.

So what are the consequences? The primary consequence of this is that you get slow but safe reaction to almost everything. This of course can become catastrophic if what you need is fast and risky reaction (i.e. Katrina) but in most other situations it ends up being the middle course of the prevailing administration theme of the day.

So, we have an economic crisis and swift Government action is required. Not very likely. In those instances where anyone did stick their head out, the nail of congress or an oversight committee soon hammered them back into compliance. So when you review the stress test results, remember, everything in Government has to pass the Goldilocks test, can't be too hard, and it can't be too soft.