We're also sending a recent review of our book from THE HILL, a widely read newspaper on Capitol Hill, that you may find interesting. If there's one thing the experts have told us about the failure of government in the 1990s, it's that people aren't the main problem.
Systems are the problem.
The most dedicated public employees in the world lose their ability to function in a bureaucratic environment hobbled by mindless rules and an illogical organization chart. In fact, though, the idea of blaming the system has a considerably longer pedigree than that. It is central to the work of W. Edwards Deming, the founder of Total Quality Management, who proclaimed that only about 15 percent of the problems in the average organization are caused by the workers and the managers. The other 85 percent are flaws in the process. Change the process, and many of the problems vanish.