On Mar 19, 2016, at 7:41 AM, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
at the end it all boils down to money. spending all money available and wanting more money never has been a problem. if there is dissent it was always about who has the say what the money is spent on, and where it is spent. i am convinced if we get the responsibilities right, the dissent will stop, and the output will be better.
sizing organizations and distributing responsibilities on a global scale seems to be a very difficult task, close to the soviet empire's task to plan its next 5 years. one could argue to resolve it via setting a financial targets, just as multinational companies do. two simple long term key performance indicators might already do the trick for the wikimedia movement: first "maximum 50% of the money is spent on persons whose life depend financially on the movement", which is employees, or long term contracting persons, organizations, foundations, enterprises. and second, "50% of the money stays in the country where it is donated." the rest will auto-organize, and auto-change. finding intelligent spending for the rest of the 50% should not be a too difficult task, there is sufficient universities and students around the world who would be happy to compete for this money. the success, means and outcome will change over time, in areas and ways nobody can predict today. the 50% are a made up number, a little bit influenced by public spending of 40% - 50% in many industrialized countries nowadays. it seems people accept such a ratio.
I... This line of thinking worries me.
In Programming / IT / information companies, there are a number of well known examples of organizations with legendary ineffectiveness measured on a per dollar or per employee basis.
Logic of "we will just control or manage the money flow" is focusing on the wrong end entirely. We need organizations that are effective, and secondarily (for a host of reasons) which people enjoy working in. Neither of those is a result of any accounting focused reform or management approach.
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone