A dinosaur in this context is anyone who has been in a large organisation for long enough to have lost their desire and ability to truly innovate, create or just improve products, service, systems, process or reason for being.
We are either disrupting or being disruptive; we are either challenging the status quo or we are defending it.
The dinosaurs are being disrupted and are defending the status quo.
Right now we can see volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) heaving its way across the ‘workscape’.
There are some dinosaurs who see the need for transformation but ensure it happens from the middle down or bottom up, safeguarding their last few years in the status quo, unwittingly or uncaringly guaranteeing wasted effort and the survival of the status quo.
The loss of talent from the dinosaurs’ organisations in the commercial/private sector and the inability to transform and perform will demise the organisation, taking out the dinosaurs as well.
The same won’t happen so easily in government organisations. The dinosaurs of the public sector will stay until retirement, promoting emerging dinosaurs along the way.
Some real talent in this public sector will leave, and the too few committed professional public servants will stay in spite of the reign of the dinosaurs, serving their public but not able to change the culture.
Unlike the commercial sector where it’s perform or perish, the public sector will survive regardless of performance.
One wonders what it will take for the public sector to truly transform beyond the cosmetic and the rhetoric.
Perhaps it’ll take courageous senior public servants who care more about their higher purpose than themselves, supported by courageous politicians who actually know what they are doing.
