This book, while not light reading, is an important work. It is one of the best investigations into the Challenger disaster out there and will be appreciated by those interested in that story from history. This book, however, is not just a history book. It explores how bureaucracies work and why they often fail. It reminds the reader that a bureaucracy's failure is not necessarily the failure of one man in particular, or a result of gross incompetence at any step in the decision making process... that, often, these failures are rooted in the systems and cultures within which people work. That message can be eye opening, and is applicable to better understanding the workings of other government bureaucracies, and even, perhaps, our own private employers. This is one of those rare books that can change the way you look at the world around you.
Showing posts with label policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label policy. Show all posts
Thursday, November 28, 2013
The Challenger Launch Decision by Diane Vaughan
This book, while not light reading, is an important work. It is one of the best investigations into the Challenger disaster out there and will be appreciated by those interested in that story from history. This book, however, is not just a history book. It explores how bureaucracies work and why they often fail. It reminds the reader that a bureaucracy's failure is not necessarily the failure of one man in particular, or a result of gross incompetence at any step in the decision making process... that, often, these failures are rooted in the systems and cultures within which people work. That message can be eye opening, and is applicable to better understanding the workings of other government bureaucracies, and even, perhaps, our own private employers. This is one of those rare books that can change the way you look at the world around you.
Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; Or, Why It's Amazing that Federal Programs Work at All... by Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky
If only every policy maker and every voter would read this book! Pressman and Wildavsky dig in and show how the best of intentions, and even seemingly great plans, fall apart when it's time to implement them on the ground. They show the difficulties in coordinating the many stakeholders that governments have to bring together, in synchronizing steps carried out by an array of public and private organizations, and of keeping everybody on board over the course of the time it takes to execute plans. They show that even if each step in the implementation of a policy seems like a no-brainer, a long series of steps that are, individually, almost certain to succeed can be almost certain to fail! The human mind sees a series of steps that have a 95% chance of success and thinks that the process is likely to work... we rarely appreciate that if there's a 95% chance of each of 15 things working, there's a less than 50% chance that they all work. And when you need to coordinate them to all work on a tight timeline, forget about it! Pressman and Wildavsky's Implementation shows, in both human and theoretical terms, how these miscalculations caused government policy in Oakland to fall apart. A reader will have no difficulty finding parallels in current news (no matter when "current" is for their reading).
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