On Mar 19, 2016, at 7:41 AM, rupert THURNER
<rupert.thurner(a)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