47 Incremental, cumulative change or drastic disruptions?

It’s common to hear that things need to be changed drastically, that the whole existing structure has to be thrown out, a whole new generation of people has to be brought in, and so on. This attitude developed especially during the 1980s onward, when leaders like Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the US attacked the entrenched interests and structures that were resisting the open or liberal economy. With the  collapse of the soviet socialistic bloc and the exposure of the weaknesses of centrally planned economies, many other countries, even communist China in the 1980s and quasi-socialist India in the 1990s, decided to switch to less controls, more free market in their economic systems. The initial success of this change-over encouraged people to search for those critical ‘game changers’ that were required to set them on a totally different growth path. Thus the tendency during the recent decades for the drastic transformation as the spirit of the times, bolstered by ideas such as the American economist Schumpeter’s concept of the ‘destructive creativity’ of capitalism.

But here’s the thing: in our daily lives, we may not have such opportunities all the time. There are some situations in which, perhaps, a sudden and drastic change of the set up is possible and even desirable (my favourite example is using a change of place to stop habits like smoking!), but mostly drastic changes are a big challenge and an imposition in themselves, rather than a boost to a whole new trajectory. So much of the average person’s effort and ingenuity has to be dedicated to just arranging matters again after a change The transactional costs, in other words), that little is left over for a grand new venture. Indeed, one has to use all the strengths and resources garnered in the old system to stabilize the new structure, so there is no thought of jettisoning the old completely. The more the change, the more of the same thing, as the wag so wisely remarked (I think it was Oscar Wilde, in French). As we grows older, the range of possibilities also contracts inevitably and inexorably, so once again we’ve got to work with what you have rather than dream of starting afresh on a clean slate.

Each one of us has a severely limited scope of drastically transforming our circumstances. Mostly, the external world is a given, and we have to settle for some idea of our place in it and the extent that we can draw support from it. It may appear that a drastic change of job, or place, or spouse, would open up our lives, but it may be more resource-effective to instead list out the positives in our exiting situation first ‘before giving up our day job’, as the saying goes. This does not mean that we should never embrace change; the point is that we should check first whether we have really extracted all that is possible from the existing situation, and whether we honestly expect something more or better in the new situation. If we have been ineffective or neglectful in addressing difficulties and bottlenecks in the past, how are we sure that similar obstacles will not crop up in the future scenario as well?

That is, we should avoid the blunder of comparing the worst of our existing situation with the best of another (mostly) imagined set up. A sober analysis should include both potential losses and gains, the ‘pros and the cons’ of each alternative, and then strike a balance. Unfortunately, as societies modernize, the individual is freed more and more to pursue their individual, private search for the best deal, leading to such social changes as higher divorce rates and lower commitment to others’ interests, and so on. Psychological disorders, stress, suicides, and so on  are often indicators of this (futile) quest for the ‘pot (of gold) at the end of the rainbow’. Alas, there is no end of the rainbow, not pot, no gold, but perhaps beneath your feet at the very place you are standing on, there is something, a possibility of improvement.

I can cite a couple of examples. A new ruler, they say, starts by rearranging his generals. A modern state does not have this luxury of seeming action, but there is a great temptation to start ‘new’ institutions. I put that in quotes, because, as Oscar Wilde hinted it’s very often the same old same old, just dressed up in new colours to fool a believing public. A classic example (for the Indian context) is the winding up of the Planning Commission of India by the Modi  (NDA) government, maybe because the new PM felt that the Commission’s petty functionaries had exercised too much budgetary control on the elected state political leadership. But here’s the irony: they went ahead and set up a new institution called the National Institute for Transforming India (acronymed NITI, which means ‘policy’ or ‘strategy’ in Hindi/Sanskrit), but with the same staff and infrastructure. They could as well have saved themselves all the trouble and bad press, and just clipped the mandate of the original Planning Commission -- an incremental change (see this article of mine on forestry in the Planning Commision). Of late, the ruling party has come round to the realization that they can’t bulldoze through drastic changes without taking the opposition along, and they seem to be climbing down from a ‘game-changer’ to an incremental mode! The previous UPA government, too, was a captive of the ‘game-changer’ syndrome, as they tried to repeat the success of the 1991 liberalisation strategy in the 2000’s; the tendency was to berate existing institutions like the existing civil services, the research institutions, the public sector undertakings, the existing infrastructure, schools, colleges, and so on, trying to shift much of this to the private sector and NGOs, and so on. The constant criticism of existing structures only served to spread a pall of gloom about the country’s situation, so that indeed the UPA government could be said to have snatched a resounding defeat from the jaws of victory in the 2014 elections.

Unless you’re a leading business magnate who can hire and fire regardless of other considerations, you will have to pursue change within the constraints of keeping the existing institution going --  it may be a corporation, a lab, an academic institution, or anything. Take a research institute: you may think this one has to be closed down and a new one started ithout all the baggage, but there is no doubt that the new institute will also suffer from the same problems, whether it is budgetary support, or recruitment of the best personnel, or lack of financial delegation, or interference from others, or whatever. Much of the administrative effort   in setting up a new institution – getting the statutory clearances, finding land, finances and other resources, setting up a management structure, procuring hardware, and so on – would be a waste of time, as you would only end up again at the beginning, at ground zero, as it were, and would have to face all over again all those problems that bedevilled the old institution.

It might well be a much wiser use of the limited managerial resources, and your own limited time and tenure, to actually deal with the real problems in the implementation of the ongoing programmes of the existing institution, in an incremental fashion. Trying to wind up the old institution would not only sap your own energies and waste your own time and talents, but also create a huge hostile force that would have a stake in your failure. The corrosive effect of the negative ‘narrative’  required to trash the existing institution would also have far-reaching, and damaging, effects on the credibility and morale of the new set up as well.

Of course, if you are mentally decided on  a change, then perhaps no rational analysis is going to slow you down; but would be advisable to limit such impulses to the relatively minor decisions like getting a new car or computer or smartphone!