LITTLE ROCK — HOW PR, how PowerPoint, how Bottom Line! The new secretary of state for Arkansas-his name is Mark Martin-is going to spend $54,500 in your tax dollars to get a consulting outfit to, well, consult. Whatever his critics are saying, it might be a good idea. Especially when you hear the whole matter explained by those who are cutting the check and those endorsing it.
You’ll be interested to know, Long-Suffering Taxpayer, that the S. of S. has signed off on the money to be paid to the Soderquist Center for Leadership and Ethics, an impressive name with even more impressive things to say-inpure consultantspeak. The SCLE-may we call you SCLE?-is going to do a “values-based strategic planning” process. Which will take several phases, each no doubt with cookies on the table and Cokes in the back.
Ah, good old Value-Based Strategic Planning Processes.Nothing like them to utilize synergy and streamline smart-sourcing objectives to align core values and the agency’s mission.
What’s that we hear? The sound of lecturers at a retreat. To management consultants, it’s the sound of spring, of checks to cash, of a singing mockingbird. To the rest of us, it’s the sound of a mockingbird hitting a window.
Secretary Martin explained all this to our reporter: “We run into things where constantly upper management has to make a decision about what’s occurring, and then it’s a decision process with people that have only been in the office, at this point, 90 days, really. So upper management has to make decisions where there’s not any process documented where they can make clear, informed decisions.”
Upper management has to make a decision about what’s occurring. Yes, indeed. It’s called doing upper management things. It’s amazing that upper management at other agencies-say, the state’s other constitutional offices-get away with making decisions without a Decision Process that documents other processes. Our poor governor must just be flying by the seat of his pants.
The people at Soderquist-even if they don’t talk like real people-say they work with government all the time, not to mention corporations and non-profits. And we don’t doubt that a bit. Who wants to bet a dollar somebody there has connections with Gannett? Some of us still shudder whenever we hear an editor call the paper The Product. Or when we’re told by management consulting types that we aren’t doing anything right, but could if we just tried a little yogaand-most important-hired them for $54,500 of somebody else’s money.
Not that PowerPoints are free. Somebody’s got to pay to be bored out of their chairs. Why not the taxpayers? Here is Chuck Hyde, chief executive of Soderquist, explaining the need for his outfit to come to the aid of the secretary of state’s office:
“They have a vision that they see their office contributing in the role they have in the state, and they’re basically looking for facilitated help on how they can best achieve that.”
Yes, facilitated help. As opposed to the other kind, no doubt. Any resemblance between management-consultant speakand plain English tends to be purely coincidental.
Wait, if the secretary of state’s office already has a vision of the role it has in the state, then what’s Soderquist for? Don’t answer that. It might involve solutionary information logistics.
Mr. Hyde also said theprogram is “pretty standard, strategicplanning work” with a special emphasis on the office’s values.
The office’s values? Like the price of the curtains?
Mr. Hyde explains: “We believe the values of an organization-whatever they believe, whatever they hold true-should influence their decision-making. A lot of times strategic planning in traditional roles is only with certain goals in mind . . . . We bring the organizational values into that conversation as a starting point, as a point of reference.”
All that would doubtless empower the going-forward dynamic and leverage the framework of the office to stay ahead of the next generation’s paradigm shift. Naturally, the secretary of state’s office should immerse itself in proactive and diverse mission-critical best practices for management visibility in this new economy. And, at the end of the day, focus on its core competency.
At $54,500 a pop.
Strangely enough, none of the other constitutional offices see the need for all this elevated gibberish. Only Mark Martin’s office. And by now nobody in Arkansas can doubt the man needs all the help he can get. We just wish he wouldn’t always send the bill to We the already overburdened People.
When you recall that Secretary Martin started out by spending $70,000 from a fund for legislative redistricting he didn’t quite have permission to spend, Mr. Martin’s first few freespending months on the job have been impressive indeed-just not the way he might have intended. This much, however, is beyond doubt: He sure knows how to write checks.
Editorial, Pages 12 on 04/21/2011