Thursday, September 06, 2007

Should Europe learn from Russia?

A correspondent points me to a rather splendid tale of how to deal with bureaucrats,
The mayor of a west Siberian oil town has ordered his bureaucrats to stop using expressions such as "I don't know" and "I can't" -- or look for another job.
Alexander Kuzmin, the 33-year-old mayor of Megion in the Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous district, has banned these and 25 other phrases as a way to make his administration more efficient, his spokeswoman said.


His approach is driven by a desire to serve his electorate,
"Town authorities are there to make town residents' lives comfortable and prosperous," Kuzmin, a oil engineer by training who studied business administration in Canada, said in a statement posted on the town's web site. "Town officials must work out mechanisms to solve and remove problems, not to avoid them."


A little bit authoritarian for my taste, but I would love to see it here.

Other phrases banned include,

It's not my job
It's impossible
I'm having lunch
There is no money
I was away/sick/on vacation
What am I supposed to do?
What can we do?
I'm not dealing with this
The working day is over
Somebody else has the documents

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