This is bizarre . . .

“Vancouver city hall has hired its first-ever “change manager” and is conducting its first-ever employee survey this week as part a drive to reshape its 10,000-person bureaucracy.”

Am I reading this correctly Frances? 10,000!

Losh! That’s an awful lot of people running around with a stash of paper under their arm.

I assume it does not include the people who fix the pipes and dig up the roads: they are not bureaucracy.

Ms (sic Dr.) Ballem has. . . pushed staff to write streamlined reports . . .

Despite . . .

. . . the 700 non-union staff association in which representatives stressed that the “new style of management” isn’t working . . .

Isn’t that sort of sending the dear Dr. a message?

Does she need an . . . “organizational change consultant, Susanne Matheson of Tekara Organizational Effectiveness Inc.”

and hire . . .

“a full-time change manager, Matt MacEachern.”

“Ms. (Dr) Ballem also commissioned the Hay Group to do the city’s first employee survey.

Invoking a comment from SFU Professor Gervase Bushe, “What happens when you change something, it launches many people into a grieving process . . .”

“Grieving!” Sir you godda be kiddin’! More like utter astonishment that the good doctor, hiring all those, out-side, witch doctors, is way, way out of her pay category . . .

“… the Vision Vancouver administration has been making… significant changes internally to create an organization more like a provincial ministry – attentive to what the political leaders want, centralized and more top down, quick to react and focused on efficient communication.”

The part that is true is “attentive to political leaders, top down and centralized.” Actually that is all understated. The workforce is politicized to greater depths than ever imagined by previous administrations and it’s not pretty. Do you want your permit held up because some councilor knows somebody who needs theirs in a hurry? Do you want the bureaucracy so centralized that decisions take months longer than they did before? Don’t you think professional staff should earn their pay by applying their professional judgement?

The part that is not true is “quick to react and focused on efficient communication” unless you mean quick to react to anything that might be in the press and reflect poorly. Otherwise, the nitty gritty business of running the City is grinding nearly to a halt as reports get edited and re-edited endlessly, often in the end with important facts removed because they might cause the public/media to protest.

The other irony is that the natural leaders in the organization, the change makers who gave us some of our best policies and strategies in the last 10-15 years are the ones who are most disillusioned. These are people who want to get things done and who embrace the very issues Vision purports to espouse. But we have seen this Council talk the talk but decidedly not walk the walk on green, social and accountability/transparency issues time after time.

In other words, they are trying to fix the parts that weren’t broke and the parts that were cracked they have smashed to smithereens.

Change is long overdue in the Hall and we are all enduring the whining of a group that has controlled City Hall for many years under NPA regimes. To cry out that the current administration is politicizing the workforce is laughable. We have witnessed years of political appointments to management positions in this organization. The outcry at the hall from our hard done by managers is a result of the fact that their buddies are not in power any more to protect them from their nice gigs. The “leaked” memo is a calculated response from a group that is fearful of the changes that will be coming to City Hall once the Employee survey released and the services review is complete. We are seeing people being called into account. We have lobbied for change for a long time here and now we are beginning to see it. Many of us approve of what is going on. Let’s hope this new guy really knows what he is doing.

My My.

I can only conclude that Nurse Ratched has taken over City Hall.

Voodoo Change Artist. Enough to make you puke.

That is it. I voted fro Gregor, but it is time to kick him and his loony beanies out on their ear.

The change management I would want to see is better oversight by the elected representatives.

They could start with the planning and development consultation process then we ordinary taxpayers might believe change management is occurring
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As I wrote in my comment on the G&M site, I cannot say from my vantage point whether the specific changes being made at City Hall are good are bad. However, my hackles go up every time I hear managers and their advisors from the change industry go on about how Change! Is! Good!, and the only possible response to any change is to love it, get over it, or quit. I have seen a (governmental) organization where I worked some years ago literally cease functioning – with a full third of the staff on stress leave, processing of urgent applications taking three months rather than the usual one, and the telephone system collapsed under an overload of angry client messages – because of changes that were forced on the objecting workers with just such language.

Fred Hume was the mayor when I arrived. He was very popular because we could see his Christmas lights on his home in the British Properties: he didn’t even live in Vancouver.

But his city was thriving. We all had good jobs and we could afford to live in town and move up to West Van with our families. Hallistas were seen but not heard: they did their job. Our future was rosy.

Mayor Rathie’s reptilian eyes scared the hell out of me when a group of us CAC people proposed our ALLEYBACK plan to literally take back the alleys from garbage cans and festooning power lines. He being a trucker was unimpressed. The city was becoming brittle on his watch.

I went by myself to talk to mayor Campbell about FCN, that I thought then, and still do, was not going the right way. With mayor Campbell we were seeing the introduction of empty jargon: world class, paradise, etc. I left his office feeling I had been run down by an ice road trucker.

I haven’t met Mayor Robertson but, despite his knobbley knees and kilt, I’ll bet he can toss a haggis farther than he can toss a caber: unscottish-like he relies too much on apparatchiks.

Dr. Penny Ballem is a very pretty lady although she looks, recently, grey and very harrassed: she is nevertheless the consummate apparatchik and I do not thinq that is working for her, the mayor or the city. Change for the sake of change is never good.

A bureaucracy will always be dysfunctional by the very nature of its efficiency pretensions: it will never live up to expectations. As for this current bureaucracy, we have elevated it way higher than its ability to satisfy our delusions.

And Dr. Ballem calling in these disparate, outside change experts is just an admission that she has dug her hole way over her head.

You have very generous retirement package Dr. Ballem: use it before you get beaten up.

Come sailing with me and I’ll have you rosy cheeked in time for Michaelmas . . .

Fred Hume was popular because there was money galore from the post-war boom in housing and building generally. Thus the Granville Street Bridge Highway etc.

He had been mayor of the first (1858) great city, New Westminster (1933-1942) before that of Vancouver (1951-1958). And the terms were one year long in those days. Hume also was a dollar-a-year mayor in Vancouver. That seemed good in those days.

Not to be compared to Mayor Meggs/Robertson.

In response to “Insiders at the City” I am a Real Hall Worker. How about you?
Some people have had a real good thing for a long time and now the cat is out of the bag. It seems to have hit a nerve.
I question which staff feel pressured to respond to changes despite “reality” Realtity is change is coming and the party is over.

In response to “City Hall Insider”….I too am a city of vancouver employee and agree with alot of your comments. The Change has finally arived @ the city of vancouver and unlike our past city manager the present Dr Ballem is actually listening. The findings of the Hay report will be coming out soon and just like our superintendants “leaked” there 700 exempt staff report out to the media so will we .The taxpayers of vancouver can finally know truthfully what is going on @ city hall and manitoba and national yards. The gig is up …to those of you who go on 1 hour coffee breaks , play games on your computers and make fun of your labourers that work underneath you as they say adios………………………….

Oh My, right on.

hey Roger,
Call mike jackson cupe 1004 president ……604 324 2440 and ask him about city hall management playing computer games and watching movies during negotiations.The truth will make you a “believer” …………..