I work in the public sector where the pendulum is always swinging between trust and control. It's partly because we're not entirely driven by MBA's and our succ

I work in the public sector where the pendulum is always swinging between trust and control. It's partly because we're not entirely driven by MBA's and our success criteria isn't earning shareholders value, but it's mainly because we've been around for so long because we can't go bankrupt when we fail. There are advantages and disadvantage to both approaches. In a system of trust the key benefits are better products, happier employees who have less sick days and stick around longer, more creativity and new solutions that are appreciated by the community. The downside is that some employees, managers or contractors are going to take advantage of the trust in such a terrible way that you'll have no option but to swing towards control once the media finds out. A good example from my country is a decade back, when we had a lot of trust in our public sector and an elderly care facility was saving money by putting dirty diapers back on the elderly if the urine in the diapers didn't weigh enough. Crazy, right? But that's the stuff that happens with trust, you'll also see managers contracting out procurement contracts to companies they own themselves and other stuff like that. On the opposite side you have the MBA based approach where everything is streamlined, measured and conformed. This is where you can build two hospitals for the price of 1,2 because the plan for them are exactly the same. It's where you LEAN every single business process up, and harvest the benefits. It's efficient, clean, and it slowly exhumes your business of value. Because the MBA approach very rarely manages to create something new, it's just really great at maximizing your current system. Eventually a neighboring city is going to do something wild, like figure out how to completely wipe out dyslexia by trying some crazy new method, because they trusted some hippie teacher with a plan. This is where you're forced to swing back toward trust and value tradeskills (not sure if this is the right word in English) because your politicians can't survive another period of having the highest dyslexia numbers in the country and nothing in the MBA playbook can help them. This is a little simplified of course, and I'm certain things are different in the private sector, but I dare say, that if your organisation sticks around for long enough, it's bound to see the pendulum swing between those two outlines.