Submitted by Charlton Stanley (Otteray Scribe) Guest Blogger
“Nobody is in charge.”
“Low and middle level bureaucrats have no power to make anything happen. The only way they can have any sense of personal worth and power comes from their ability to obstruct.”
– Dr. Dwight W. Allen, Dean Emeritus, College of Education, University of Mass., Amherst.
In 1971, I was having lunch with Dr. Dwight Allen. The conversation was wide ranging, but he has strong views on educational institutions, school boards, why irate parents are irate and making institutions more accountable. At that time the Vietnam war was dragging on, and his views on entrenched power structures applied to our difficulty extricating ourselves from that as well. He co-authored American Schools: The $100 Billion Challenge, with one of his former doctoral students, Dr. William H. Cosby. You may have heard of Dr. Cosby.
Some people use the term “bureaucrat” as an epithet. When George Wallace ran for President in 1972, he railed against “bureaucrats,” saying he was going to take all their briefcases and throw them into the Potomac. Wallace conveniently ignored the fact as Governor of Alabama, he was in charge of a huge bureaucracy that had exactly the same problems he said he was going to fix.
Decades ago, Dr. Laurence Peter pointed out that all organizations with a hierarchical management structure are bureaucracies. Dr. Peter analyzed those structures, and reported many of the same issues Dr. Allen shared with me over lunch. He coined the term, “Peter Principle” to describe how otherwise competent people rise through the ranks until they achieve their “level of incompetence.”
Recently, we see those observations applying to people who are caught up in a Kafkaesque drama at city hall and municipal traffic courts. Public officials and offices are not the only culprits. There are countless tales of woe from people trying to deal with big banks, mortgage companies and faceless collection agencies. Those are problems likely to have more direct effect on us personally than global events in Washington, London or Kabul.
Let’s take the case of Capt. Dave. Dave Petrich, of West Seattle, WA mostly navigates boats around the Puget Sound area rather than vehicles with wheels; hence’ his nickname, “Capt. Dave.” The good captain restores old wooden schooners and runs maritime-history tours. As he put it, “I like to put old boats back to work.”
Continue reading “Capt. Dave and the FarmBoat: Trapped in Limbo When Nobody is in Charge”