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Highlands Today

County Management

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William E. Clagg

Published: February 20, 2008

Our county government is a mess. They change committees to suit their agenda. If the results are not to their paradigm, they change the rules or committees.

Example, they first decided that a new "CEO" a.k.a. county administrator, should be hired after his or her staff has been hired. What a colossal error. I can only think of one reason for this. They wanted to be sure that their special people were promoted to these higher-paying jobs. But when the committee sent the second selection of the new directors' jobs, they were not all that happy. So they just changed the rules and the next ones will be a group of finalists.

The new multi-layer of management is not only very costly, it is the most ineffective type of management. I would have thought that the military style would be proof enough. All the ones at the lower end of management will never send up negative news. It will be filtered so much by the middle managers, who want to keep their high-paying jobs, that the top, in this case the HCBOC, will only receive positive news whether it is true or not.

As a teacher and consultant on Total Quality Management, I see the local commission using the system called "Ready, Fire, Aim." By the time they realize they hit the wrong target, they just reload and fire again, and again without aiming.

When I was hired to do a capability analysis of a manufacturing facility of a company or corporation, I usually read the employee handbook first. A large percentage of the time I quickly recommended that they change the rules. What I told them is: "you don't want strict rules that are loosely enforced, but rather reasonable rules that are strictly enforced." Example, the instant messenger mess the county is in. Three different managers handed out discipline, and all three were handled differently, resulting in being loosely enforced.

I will wager that the members of the county commission do not run their personal businesses the way they run the county's business. Mainly because their own personal money is involved, and not taxpayers' money.

William E. Clagg
Lake Placid

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