All over Agia Palagia, like all over the rest of Crete, there are houses that are not finished.  The state of disrepair ranges.  Sometimes the house is complete but the carport is a concrete shell.  Other times there is only the skeleton which, as the sun sets, casts shadows across itself and so has the appearance of a painting by Escher.

As I was observing the houses I was also making my way through Beevor’s Crete, a book about the battle and the subsequent occupation.  Something that General Metaxas said to Colonel Blunt stood out.

Few realise how easy and how dangerous it is to mix sentiment and strategy. (p. 55)

This is a common theme in my work.  (Of course!)  One has an idea about something that needs making or a place that needs visiting.  That idea is not the same as a plan, but we often think it is, which is why people are always giving up smoking but very often not succeeding.  The houses in Agia Palagia, to me, are a visual representation of what happens when there is no system for controlling people’s idiotic urges.

Some quick analysis:

1. The builders of the houses got sentiment and strategy confused – they thought that wanting a house was enough to make it materialise.  A local told me that once construction had started the familes doing the building would fall out, or the money would run out.
2. The council does not say no to projects.  If they do say no, someone can be bribed.
3. The council has no teeth.  You can start work on a house without the council’s permission – they will not do anything about it.

Optimism and stupidity, no 'assertive noes', the ability to bribe and bully decision makers, i.e. corruption and intimidation, and no repercussions for going ahead with rogue projects.  These problems are the root of Agia Palagia’s housing crisis.

The solution is simple in theory but difficult in practice

1. Projects should be vetted and sentiment and strategy must never look the same. 
2. There has to be lots of assertive noes, i.e. prioritisation. 
3. There has to be repercussions.  Houses need pulling down, rouge developers need sending to prison.

The reason that Agia Palagia’s landscape is defiled is not because of a lack of common sense, any fool can see that what goes on is insanity.  It’s not because, generally, people are happy with the situation: they are not.  It’s simply because the leaders are weak, and poor, and greedy (although greed is too simple an explanation, public servants in Greece don’t earn what they do in Holland, for example, and so they have to top up their wages somehow).  To fix the housing problems on Crete would require an overhaul of Greek culture; the installation, and proper remuneration for, civil servants; a proper system of justice; etc.

Executives of companies, who usually just want an IT department that can reliably build tools, are deceived by the task at hand.  They are deceived, also, by the role that they play in the planning of projects.  It is they who, when bullied or bribed, say yes when they should say no.  It is they who don’t have it in them to fire project managers, to chase out the corrupt and replace them with well-paid men and women of honor.  Because of this self-deception, then, they don’t realise that an organisational transformation starts with a personal transformation.  It does not start with Scrum or XP, with Kotter or Lencioni, retrospectives won’t help and neither will meditation. ^{Actually, meditation might help.}

Agia Palagia is a useful metaphor for the problems that executives face.  If you want things to work, the foundations have to be set.  Just as, here in Holland, we utterly take our basics for granted, executives, with no basis, take it for granted that their teams should be able to build software and/or run projects.  Taking something for granted is what Metaxas meant when he observed the danger of mixing sentiment and strategy.  Taking something for granted is self-deception, it is a lie we willingly tell ourselves.

Addendum
It was brought to my attention that buildings that are incomplete are exempt from tax.  If this is true then the problem of Crete is more complex.  But still, it shows perfectly how rules and procedures can create perverse behaviour.  This is the danger of methodolgies, something I will be talking about it in London next week.  For those who can’t make it, I covered this problem in detail here.

Image 1 - this was my favourite fuck up.  The monstrous building at the edge of the bay was built without permission.  Structurally, it’s complete.  But, inside, the apartments are strewn with materials from when the builders downed tools.  The problem, it seems, is that the council would not grant a building permit but they also don't have the authority to pull the building down, either.  The owner lives in one apartment, now, on the top floor.  He is not allowed to sell the others.

Image 2 - the view from a hill east of Agia Palagia.



Image 3 - a common shell of a building.

Other Unifinished Buildings

Add comment