.
It’s blindingly obvious that countless armies of diplomats and international officials need tough-love public speaking coaching and training. How to get it to them?
Recently I had three vividly contrasting experiences of international process at work.
Exhibit A
I was asked to give a public speaking course to an Embassy in London, emphasising witty speeches appreciated on the UK diplomatic circuit. After an email or two to pin down the date, time and format (and fees/expenses) all was settled: “no contract needed”. Course duly delivered. Wild acclaim. The fee arrived in my bank account three days later. Bang. Done.
Exhibit B
An international organisation invites bids for a communication skills courses for senior colleagues. How long is their document spelling out what would-be training providers need to do merely to make a bid for this important but essentially straightforward and inexpensive work? Over 50 pages.
Exhibit C
I have provided a public speaking course for an international organisation. Now I selfishly expect to be paid for it. More paperwork! It is not enough that I have sent them my bank details. I need also to send them a ‘letter from the bank’ confirming those details.
What is going on here?
Here is Crawford’s First Law of Useless Process: the amount of paperwork involved in a transaction is inversely proportional to trust. Trust in others. And (importantly) trust in yourself.
So transactions that get things done with minimum process show a high degree of mutual trust. Transactions involving page after page of bureaucracy show minimal levels of trust, and beyond a certain point the complete abandonment of common sense. Why? Because if there is no trust, there is nothing ‘in common’ to allow ‘common sense’ to do its job.
Suppose that you are an international organisation wanting to get in bids for senior public speaking support. You reasonably want different bids, in part to see what’s out there, and in part to avoid any accusations of favouritism by awarding the contract to a colleague’s cousin. It makes sense to say clearly what the applicants are bidding for: (say) six courses of two days each in 2016/2017, for 16 people each. You describe what you want to achieve, and the values you expect the training to promote. You set out a standard framework for applications, to compare them quickly on likely expenses, fees, substance, format and so on. And finally you ask for a couple of good contacts for references and give a deadline for bids.
All that should take about two sides. Anything much more than that is a pure waste of time, both for the applicants but also for you. What you might gain from piling on laborious detail you lose in deterring sane applicants, and in the time you yourself spend creating these rambling tender documents then poring over what is submitted.
As contracts get big, different factors of course come into play. A tender invitation for an $80 million contract to rebuild HQ needs to set countless technical standards and lay down an impeccably transparent procedure: the sums of money are such as to tempt all sorts of crafty corner-cutting. But for relatively small contracts, such intensity of process is oppressive.
Apart from anything else, once you start piling on process where does it stop? It’s not enough that they sign the bidding letter. They need to sign every page of the bidding letter! And send copies of their passport details, witnessed by two people not involved in the bid! Bank details are not enough. A letter from the bank is needed too. And a letter from someone higher in the bank, confirming that the person who sent the first letter is in fact authorised to send it! And, for good measure, a letter from the national banking authority - certified by a notary public - to confirm that that bank in fact exists!
This proliferation of process can then be used to press for a much bigger budget to employ lots of people to sift through all this paperwork looking for mistakes or omissions, all claiming that they are ‘busy’. They are indeed busy, in the sense that people who dig holes to produce piles of earth for people to carry to fill in other holes are busy.
The argument for limitless process is that it reduces the scope for corruption: the finer the net, the more fish are caught. But does it really do much more than reallocate corruption? If you create a jungle of process, it’s easy in a different way for corrupt insiders to work with improperly favoured outsiders to nudge the process so that the ‘right’ contact wins, by finding technical flaws somewhere in inconveniently impressive bids. Or you create processes that only some prospective bidders can follow, to stack the deck for your friends.
It’s all like road signs in the UK. If an accident takes place here a new sign goes up to alert motorists. This eventually creates a horrible roadside environment by having so many signs that motorists get confused. Risk is not reduced, but displaced.
In short, from those of us aspiring to help international organisations improve their public speaking and presentation skills, two simple messages that apply to the process these organisations use for allocating the work as they do to the eventual public speaking training itself. Always trust your audience. Less is More.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
a global affairs media network
Baffling International Bureaucracy
October 22, 2015
It’s blindingly obvious that countless armies of diplomats and international officials need tough-love public speaking coaching and training. How to get it to them?
Recently I had three vividly contrasting experiences of international process at work.
Exhibit A
I was asked to give a public speaking course to an Embassy in London, emphasising witty speeches appreciated on the UK diplomatic circuit. After an email or two to pin down the date, time and format (and fees/expenses) all was settled: “no contract needed”. Course duly delivered. Wild acclaim. The fee arrived in my bank account three days later. Bang. Done.
Exhibit B
An international organisation invites bids for a communication skills courses for senior colleagues. How long is their document spelling out what would-be training providers need to do merely to make a bid for this important but essentially straightforward and inexpensive work? Over 50 pages.
Exhibit C
I have provided a public speaking course for an international organisation. Now I selfishly expect to be paid for it. More paperwork! It is not enough that I have sent them my bank details. I need also to send them a ‘letter from the bank’ confirming those details.
What is going on here?
Here is Crawford’s First Law of Useless Process: the amount of paperwork involved in a transaction is inversely proportional to trust. Trust in others. And (importantly) trust in yourself.
So transactions that get things done with minimum process show a high degree of mutual trust. Transactions involving page after page of bureaucracy show minimal levels of trust, and beyond a certain point the complete abandonment of common sense. Why? Because if there is no trust, there is nothing ‘in common’ to allow ‘common sense’ to do its job.
Suppose that you are an international organisation wanting to get in bids for senior public speaking support. You reasonably want different bids, in part to see what’s out there, and in part to avoid any accusations of favouritism by awarding the contract to a colleague’s cousin. It makes sense to say clearly what the applicants are bidding for: (say) six courses of two days each in 2016/2017, for 16 people each. You describe what you want to achieve, and the values you expect the training to promote. You set out a standard framework for applications, to compare them quickly on likely expenses, fees, substance, format and so on. And finally you ask for a couple of good contacts for references and give a deadline for bids.
All that should take about two sides. Anything much more than that is a pure waste of time, both for the applicants but also for you. What you might gain from piling on laborious detail you lose in deterring sane applicants, and in the time you yourself spend creating these rambling tender documents then poring over what is submitted.
As contracts get big, different factors of course come into play. A tender invitation for an $80 million contract to rebuild HQ needs to set countless technical standards and lay down an impeccably transparent procedure: the sums of money are such as to tempt all sorts of crafty corner-cutting. But for relatively small contracts, such intensity of process is oppressive.
Apart from anything else, once you start piling on process where does it stop? It’s not enough that they sign the bidding letter. They need to sign every page of the bidding letter! And send copies of their passport details, witnessed by two people not involved in the bid! Bank details are not enough. A letter from the bank is needed too. And a letter from someone higher in the bank, confirming that the person who sent the first letter is in fact authorised to send it! And, for good measure, a letter from the national banking authority - certified by a notary public - to confirm that that bank in fact exists!
This proliferation of process can then be used to press for a much bigger budget to employ lots of people to sift through all this paperwork looking for mistakes or omissions, all claiming that they are ‘busy’. They are indeed busy, in the sense that people who dig holes to produce piles of earth for people to carry to fill in other holes are busy.
The argument for limitless process is that it reduces the scope for corruption: the finer the net, the more fish are caught. But does it really do much more than reallocate corruption? If you create a jungle of process, it’s easy in a different way for corrupt insiders to work with improperly favoured outsiders to nudge the process so that the ‘right’ contact wins, by finding technical flaws somewhere in inconveniently impressive bids. Or you create processes that only some prospective bidders can follow, to stack the deck for your friends.
It’s all like road signs in the UK. If an accident takes place here a new sign goes up to alert motorists. This eventually creates a horrible roadside environment by having so many signs that motorists get confused. Risk is not reduced, but displaced.
In short, from those of us aspiring to help international organisations improve their public speaking and presentation skills, two simple messages that apply to the process these organisations use for allocating the work as they do to the eventual public speaking training itself. Always trust your audience. Less is More.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
