We all know how a game of Jenga ends. It starts as a solid stack of wooden pieces that fully support each other, grows into a gap-toothed column that’s dangerously top-heavy, and then tumbles into scattered pieces when the middle gives way.

Jenga towers abound in our public sector.

Take a recent report on the health system, which found that Labour’s reforms “stripped out layers of DHBs and other controls, disconnecting the new top decision-makers from the health front line.” The newly centralised Health New Zealand flipped a projected $500 million surplus into a $1 billion deficit without improving health care. The report identifies failures in planning, governance, tracking and reporting—gaps everywhere.

“Senior managers kept on telling the health minister savings were on track.” They were not.

Some hired nurses, assuming Health NZ covered wage increases. It didn’t.

Were these teething problems, or is our health system run less professionally than the corner dairy? Well, Health NZ tracked its $28 billion annual expenditure in an Excel spreadsheet—and not a particularly good one. Many fields weren’t linked to source information, vastly increasing the potential for errors, both accidental and intentional.

The corner dairy must balance its books. Health NZ wasn’t even trying.

The Ministry of Education is another classic tower. Staff numbers grew 55% over five years, while teacher ranks grew by just 5%. Performing one of its most basic tasks in 2023—estimating teacher supply—it predicted a surplus of 600-plus primary teachers. This surprised principals, who were pretty sure they faced a shortage.

Jenga blocks move to the top of the tower; that’s how the game works.

Now, the Ministry admits it miscalculated—we’re actually short by about 1,000 primary teachers.

The punch line is that the Ministry hadn’t factored in the teacher release time that the Ministry itself requires. Plenty of teachers would rather not vacate their classroom one day in ten, but they don’t have a say. Only the Ministry and unions do.

If a fraction of the former teachers currently employed by the Ministry of Education returned to classrooms, supply would be sorted. But how many would voluntarily leave an organisation that pays its own staff more than it pays teachers? And why would any ministry voluntarily reduce its numbers? Jenga blocks move to the top of the tower; that’s how the game works.

I once interviewed Dale Williams, a motorcycle mechanic and former Mayor of Otorohanga, about his leadership model. In the early 2000s, he oversaw a huge improvement in youth crime and unemployment and averted an exodus of local industries. Being practically minded, he and his team developed solutions that leveraged existing people and resources, solutions informed and executed by those at the coal face. The goals were clear, and the processes transparent.

Contrast Otorohanga with our growing Jenga towers. They will keep wobbling closer to collapse until we change the rules of the game, the first of which should be this: public departments don’t exist to build themselves ivory towers. Let’s strip them back to what they should be—compact, efficient hubs that simply serve us.