An Insight into the Practice of Government, Baboon Leadership and Witchcraft

The Gnome's recent death provoked me into re-reading his speeches and writings, especially since the Thunderer's son has come out in public, referring to the Gnome as 'master builder of [Atlantis]' (in condolences) and 'like a god' (in the Sunday papers). Was the man I remember really such a 'titan' (as the Saturday papers said)?

Whatever he was, he was a perspicacious individual. He was sharp-minded and not prone to wasting time. Like all members of his family, if presented with boring and irrelevant material at a meeting, he would retreat into crossword puzzles and his own thoughts. And most of the time, he observed his colleagues and thought about how work could best be carried out.

Here is a sample of his thought, taken from a 1981 address to leaders in education:

I have therefore to explain how a Ministry works. I shall explain this not in [structural] terms, but in terms of management principles and practice. I shall not describe these principles in the abstract. Not having obtained a degree in Business Management, I am diffident about doing this. I shall therefore describe how my colleagues and I make management decisions.

There is one extraordinary fact about a government minister—here or elsewhere—which few members of the public are aware of. This is that his ignorance of the subject he is in charge of greatly exceeds his knowledge of it. Ministers naturally seldom draw attention to this, but I assure you that this is true; anyway, in my case, it is.

This is not a public confession and the position is not as alarming as it looks. In modern society, it is not possible for the head of an organisation to know more than a small fraction of what goes on within it. It may be otherwise in primitive societies. The chief of a small group of primitive savages is better informed of what goes on in his village than, say, the President of General Motors is about his corporation. The modern executive chief may be armed with a whole battery of computers while the village chief is not, but he knows less. Even so, the village chief may not understand everything, and so he usually has a witch doctor upon whom he depends when events pass his comprehension.

Perhaps the only creature who possesses a total information system of which he has complete grasp is the patriarch of a troop of baboons. I have not come across any reference in the literature to the practice of witchcraft among baboons.

A government minister or a chief executive in business obviously cannot use management systems appropriate to primitive societies or baboon troops... [Gives well-known local examples of success, e.g. 'Golden Mountain'.] How did we get by? Let me explain how my colleagues and I do our work. Since we are not tribal chiefs or baboon patriarchs, we do not try to know everything about everything, an impossible and foolish task. But a minister cannot function effectively if he remains in a state of total ignorance of his subject. He acquires knowledge partly by reading the professional literature (or rather, that part of it of value to him), and partly by engaging expert consultants; but mainly he depends on his professional and administrative staffs.

He went on to talk about how problems were solved, and about how the main difficulty was not the range of information required for their solution, but obtaining that information. And then he spoke about the two areas of weakness he found most dreadful ('there is no other word for it'): the cult of obedience and the cult of secrecy.

What did he expect from subordinates? He told them this, towards the end of that very intelligent speech:

Please remember the following. Your comments should be clear and concise. Do discriminate between wisdom and verbosity. If you must write more than two pages, send in a one page summary. You must not use the occasion to ventilate your grievances... finally, please do not pick an argument for the sake of arguing. The professional literature I have read reveals that teachers, principals and education experts in the West are only too prone to do this. These experts don't seem to agree on anything; so let us not be too dogmatic about our own opinions. But if you are convinced that what we are doing is wrong, do not be afraid to say so.

This is very much the man I remember, the one who told me that being a teacher would be a difficult job. It is because of him that the job became a professional vocation in modern Atlantis; it will be because of those who prefer the cults of obedience and secrecy that this calling is diminished and denigrated.

In time to come, the Gnome's place is assured in history. Yet, I have found inspiration to be part of that assurance. I too will write about him, and try to share the lessons I learnt from him with others.