[Policy Making] Integration and Diversity

Policy Making is a very good instrument that any organization can use to communicate to its participants and help further the organization's goals.

Policy - in a nutshell - is the course of principle of action proposed by the organization or entity.

Why do we care

Consulting, in a lot of ways, has to deal with processes.

There are processes that as consultants, we need to be aware of and respect in our client organizations. There are processes that we have to work around and eventually suggest replacing or retiring.

All of these are a lot simpler if we understand policy making better.

Under what constraints or conditions was a specific policy made? Why is it still relevant?

There are many more questions that we need to ask as consultants.

Organizational structure and Policy Making

Policy making pushes through lot of desired changes and some undesired changes in the way the organizations structures itself. This is not the formal structure that can be documented, presented and analyzed upon later.

Policy Making helps provide a good lens to understand why organizations structure the way they are now.

One aspect of policy making that is one of my pet topics is Integration and diversity.

Integration and Diversity

There are several examples of organizations and countries following the basic tenet of integration. This principle has got at least 3-5 millenia of precedent to it.

It starts all the way back to the Egyptian empire, China to the latest examples of United Kingdom and USSR.

Integration helps in making sure that all parts of the organization - in this case civilization - have the same institutions and hence can make sense of policies in the same way. There are no second guesses and hence enforcement is easy.

However, Integration does not always work and is very costly. Diversity is often a better policy making instrument, though not apparent and most of the times counter-intuitive.

Take the example of a bigger organization acquiring the smaller organization. The managers often pursue the policy of integration and hence lose several key learning and other intangible assets of an organization.

This is true with countries as well. Any country that wants to expand uses integration as a policy making instrument rather than diversity.

The reason is because they lose sight of the longer term goal of an organization being a going-concern. They try to show immediate results for the actions they have taken that are more tangible but actually destructive in the longer run.

Conclusion

There are several policy making instruments that policy makers can use. The choice of instruments has historically been to show quick results and hence are not true to the real goals of policy making.

Why do they make these choices ?

Consultants learn and be aware of these scenarios when we are on a client assignment is very important to learn.