wfn.org | Management Consultants Propose Sweeping Changes

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

21-April-1997 
97168 
 
         Management Consultants Propose Sweeping Changes 
                   in Assembly-Level Operations 
 
                          by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--With General Assembly deadlines fast approaching, how to 
get an outside consultant's just-finished recommendations on overhauling 
the management of the General Assembly Council (GAC) into the hands of 
commissioners to the 209th General Assembly consumed the Council's 
Executive Committee in a brief meeting here April 3-4. 
 
     The organizational and management assessment -- ordered by last year's 
General Assembly after an intensive study of the denomination's structure 
-- focuses on already identified problems with Corporate & Administrative 
Services (CAS) and the Office of the Executive Director and between the GAC 
and other denominational corporate entities. It also proposes developing a 
"unified vision of the church's activities at the national level."  The 
management report recommends that a Blue Ribbon Commission be established 
to rethink how the General Assembly functions, how the Presbyterian 
Center's role is to be shaped for the future and how six separate national 
entities may function with more common policies and procedures, if not some 
consolidation. 
 
     "The problem is that we're [still] redoing what we did in 1920," said 
the Rev. William Phillippe of Alexandria, Va., a pastor and former interim 
GAC executive director who assisted Arthur Andersen LLP, the Washington, 
D.C., consulting firm that was hired last November to review the 
denomination's management network.  "And we need to seriously rethink that. 
 ... 
 
     "We need to visualize what the national expression of the church needs 
to be and do in order to enable our pastors and congregations to be 
effectively in mission at this point in time." 
 
     Simply put, Arthur Andersen's two representatives, Joan Elise Dubinsky 
and John Klaffky, told the GAC's executive committee that the Presbyterian 
Church (U.S.A.) "cannot act like a single denomination until it has 
developed a unified vision of the church's activities at the national 
level" -- minus what it calls "Balkanized behavior" among church leaders, 
competing understandings of the purpose of the Presbyterian Center, 
outdated accounting practices and a decision-making style that is so 
diffuse no decision is ever final and consequently is always open to 
dispute. 
 
     The Executive Committee will review the report during its April 25 - 
May 3 meeting in Seoul, Korea, with comments in hand from the Council's 97 
members and from the Board of Pensions, the Presbyterian Church (USA) 
Foundation, the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, the Presbyterian 
Investment and Loan Program and the Committee on the Office of the General 
Assembly (the other major Assembly-level entities). The committee agreed to 
mail the report to commissioners to the 209th General Assembly before the 
April 18 deadline, with a letter explaining that further GAC comments will 
be reported to the Assembly after the Council's June 10-12 meeting in 
Syracuse. 
 
     "We had two choices," GAC chair Youngil Cho of Raleigh, N.C., told the 
Presbyterian News Service after the meeting.  "The GAC could adopt [the 
recommendations], correct our situation and make a report to the General 
Assembly.  Or we could comment and send the report to the General Assembly 
to make the decisions. 
 
     "We decided to go the second route, so the General Assembly will make 
the decisions." 
 
     It also voted to sell the 120-page report through Distribution 
Management Services for $1, to post it on the denomination's Web page and 
to begin a PresbyNet meeting for discussion of the proposed 
recommendations. 
 
     The Andersen report recommendations include the following: 
 
          reducing the scope of essential CAS services to budgeting, 
accounting, information 
          technology and systems, as well as finance, treasury and 
controller, in order to focus on 
          improving what the report calls  "poor execution and performance 
of services" in the 
          needed areas of budgeting and cash receipting.  Oversight of 
legal, property 
          management, internal audit and human resources services under the 
executive director's 
          office would be placed in the supervision of a recommended 
position of chief operating 
          officer. 
          establishing in CAS a customer service orientation and creating 
business processes that 
          "are less complex and more straightforward," remedying the 
competing current 
          understandings held by CAS and other ministry units about whether 
CAS is a regulatory 
          body or a customer service agency. 
          creating two positions within the executive director's office, 
with an executive director 
          assigned externally focused responsibilities, such as strategic 
planning, governance and 
          management, fund-raising and development, and relationships with 
other GA entities, 
          and a chief operating officer assigned managerial and 
administrative responsibilities 
          within the Presbyterian Center.  The report defines the current 
executive's job 
          description as a "mission impossible," full of competing 
expectations (such as being a 
          business executive, spiritual leader and pastoral care giver) 
within an organizational 
          design that grants the GAC executive less authority than any of 
the executive's 
          counterparts in other GA entities. 
          establishing a Blue Ribbon Commission to be staffed by the 
interim executive director 
          and the stated clerk to submit a new organizational design that 
may consolidate some, 
          if not all, of the six related entities; establish basic policies 
and procedures to link the 
          related entities together; and write brief vision statements for 
all entities, ensuring that 
          the statements "depict a single, integrated organization," the 
lack of which is cited by 
          the report as a cause of recurrent organizational turmoil now. 
 
     "This is the hardest recommendation we'll make to you," Dubinsky told 
the Executive Committee, adding that considering structural redesign 
intimidates most organizations. The report says the denomination "cannot 
afford the continuation" of the current level of internal conflict and 
disputes about authority among the six related entities, nor can the 
PC(USA) "act as one church until the six related entities share a common 
identity and vision." 
 
     The Andersen report indicates that the six entities currently 
 
          reject any authority other than the General Assembly, which only 
meets for one week 
          each year and has continually changing membership 
          speak two incompatible languages -- religion and business -- and 
"few are bilingual," 
          making dialogue problematic  
          devise business practices that overlap and compete rather than 
support a "seamless 
          delivery" of systemwide services 
          recycle rather than resolve disputes in a consultative 
decision-making environment that 
          is often time-consuming and inefficient and seldom final. 
 
     The report recommends that a new organizational design be brought to 
the 1998 General Assembly, with a plan to implement it no later than the 
year 2000.   
 
     "The heart of this report is change," said Cho, a professor of 
business, who told the Presbyterian News Service that he anticipated this 
level of proposed change in the report.  "[The change is] to improve the 
service of the PC(USA) to the glory of God, to be more efficient, to be 
more economical. 
 
     "We are living in a very sophisticated world.  Our church did not 
update [to the level of] modern organizations.  This should have been done 
a long time ago." 

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