The Paperless Office

Retailers in the UK spend a fortune on plastic bags. Plastic bags are everywhere. Just look in the hedgerows across our green and pleasant land. There is a massive procurement machine operating across our retailers who do nothing more than focus on buying plastic bags. You'd think they'd understand that competitive advantage could be acquired by buying less plastic bags. No instead the focus is on buying more plastic bags for less. They call it 'economies of scale'. Buying plastic bags does not encourage green working practises. Green working practises tend to be leaner. So we have enviromentally unfriendly procurement teams working for all the major retailers who think the answer is the paperless office in the back office. That is the extent of their innovation and contribution to the the green agenda. Right up to the late 90's most retailer's procure to pay processes for buying plastic bags were paper based. Paper orders, paper goods received notes, paper invoices, cardboard boxes to store all the paper and vans to take the card board boxes to archiving storage facilities. You know the buildings that take up enormous amounts of space while young families are crammed into our cities. The paperless office in a retail environment is the ulimate pointless gesture to indicate a committment towards sustainable development. Here is their real committment. Planes that transport food from 3rd world countries to our countrie creating a massive carbon foot print. The excessive amounts of packaging generating the need for incinerators near where people live. The tonnes of paper catalogues where on every page they encourage people to take out credit. Not to mention the zillion gallons of ink that has to be produced. Chemicals that generate tonnes of pollutants. Most large organisations operating across the FMCG sector have monolithic Head Office. Every so often their paperless offices have a 'chuck out your chimps day'. A metaphor for getting rid of the accumalated 'tatt'. Namely, reams of meaningless reports, stacks of industrial publications and glossy brochures from smaller companies trying to do business with larger companies. And so the cycle continues. The paperless office is a symbolic gesture to convince office based staff they are doing something valuable with their time. Paper on desks is the ultimate mis-representation of productivity in the modern day work-place. Why get rid of something that the guy responsible for your bonus uses as a visual cue to gauge your contribution? 20% of the world's population employed in the paperless office consume 80% of the world's resources. Behind this statistic is a multi billion pound marketing indsutry who want us to consume more for the sake of shareholder value. 80%of the world's population want what weve got. In the paperless office you are not there to talk about things that really matter. You are not encouraged to work in ways to help those less fortunate than ourselves. Our next door neigbours in the global village. The kids from areas of the world where Al Qaeda have no problem with recruitment. Check out life in the paperless office. The modern day workplace. Most of us live there and most of the USA's and UK's security budget is spent on protecting the infrastructure that houses it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzBy6agXKoA

Milk Round

Every year the major banks recruit graduates. Apparently, the next generation of leaders in financial services are the ones with massive overdrafts. Hear about a bank's response to a question about how would you deal with a customer asking for an overdraft. Back in 1994 all the major high street banks were recruiting and conducting mass assessment centres. All potential Fred Goodwin wannabees (courtesy of their overdraft as it was the final year) had to complete the a 6 page application form. One particular brand of money grabbing parasiteness (small flys that swarm plus opposite of East) presented the applicant with a case study. The case study was along the lines of student asking for an overdraft and the applicant had to reply. Students in the final year are adept at plagiarism. One particular bright spark copied a letter he got from the same bank refusing an extension to his overdraft. The wording was particularly unhelpful considering only 4 years early the same bank were begging for their custom by being very polite and offer bribes in the formt of credit cards and overdrafts they knew the student could not afford. Several weeks passed and no invite to the pointless battery farm assessment centre. The one where bowls of corn appear on the desk every 30 questions on the IQ/EQ/spatial/verbal/numerical reasoning questions designed by some billy no mates intelligent person who had not had sex for 10 years. Upon phoning the bank's HR department to get some feedback. The applicant was told they were unsuccessful due to the content in their letter, which the bank felt was not customer friendly. Last I heard was the applicant got a job in Enron's credit control department. Dont lend money to people who cant pay it back! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhxMoH9N1K4

Fear My Rubber Chicken

Never take a rubber chicken to work. Especially if you work in a large blue chip organisation.

The rubber chicken is the ultimate mascot for anything comedic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_chicken). It represents being light hearted and not taking life seriously. You will find similar artifacts on the desks of most people who work in our offices like teddy bears, novelty toys and speaking cop cookie jars. I knew a guy who worked at the Head Office of one of the UK's top brands. At one point in the 90s this firm turned over 1 billion quid. Unfortunately, goods things don't last forever, which meant the inevitable series of tinkering around the edges org restructures. To lighten the mood my friend had a rubber chicken on his desk. However, in the spirit of the 'clearview bluesky thinking out the box strategic culture paradigm of inflection' initiative to recapture the company's spirit for success he was asked to remove it. Now, I'm all for change particularly change that changes leadership at the local level. The problem is that in times of corporate chaos you end up with little dictators in middle management fearful for the jobs. This particular manager's gripe was the rubber chicken on the desk. Negotiations were started to retain the presence of the rubber chicken in parallel with discussions about the waves of redundancies . The main argument to retain the services of the rubber chicken was that you could poor tequila into its back back passage, spread its legs and use the chicken in a drinking game. You know the ones you play when everyone in the IT department is hanging around late at night to see if a program works. (Other uses of the hole in the rubber chicken can be viewed @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRGT34ORavw&feature=related). Regrettably, negotiations stalled and the power of the HR department was brought to bear. The counter argument from senior management was on the grounds of Health & Safety and efficiency as part of a clear desk policy. Union representation then intervened. A letter was written to HR demanding to know where in the employee contract it is was stated that a rubber chicken could not be present on the employee desk. HR then sort legal advice. The legal department had the rubber in the chicken tested for harmful chemicals. There were indeed small traces of hazardous
compounds, which could pose a theoretical environmental risk in the office. At a staff meeting with senior management and a board member to talk about the redundancy process the issue regarding the rubber chicken was on the agenda. Upon hearing about the rubber chicken the board member burst into laughter and said they had a rubber rat on their desk. Apparently, if you squeezed its balls it made a growling noise.

Watch the terror as 2 up and coming middle managers and a representative from the HR department with more time than sense encounter a rubber chicken.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzCSlpc_c0Y&feature=related

Microslop Project

Microslop Project is a software tool with the mental powers greater than a jedi. This tool has the ability to convince a project manager everything will be alright. It makes people think things are under control when they are not. Worst of all it makes people think they have predicted the future. Microslop Project is the ultimate spin doctor playing on a project manager's perception filter. It tells you want you want to know. It feeds off ones confirmation bias. Those lovely lean blue lines making you think you've brought order to chaos. Finish to start planning only works if you are making stuff that has been made several zillion times. Finish to start is a constraint that wont deliver V1.new of anything that does not involve making stuff. Human beings working in the knowledge economy just dont do finish to start. Combined with using pockets of free time from business as usual resources and you've got yourself in a cat and mouse game with every other manager calling on the same resources. There are 4 dynamics that Microslop Project cannot help you with:

• Parkinsons Law. The work always fits the time available;
• Student syndrome. People always leave important boring stuff to the last minute;
• The halo effect. Time poor people gravitate towards what they enjoy doing;
• 'But'. Is it going to be finished? Yes but. Everything before the word but is never true.

Important complicated things are ready when they want to be ready. People are not 'decimers'. (re : Blakes 7). http://www.cultv.co.uk/blakes7.htm

Blue Chip Fables

I wanted to write about the stoopidnees that goes on in the corporate world. Real life experiences of the keystone capers going on in all those office buildings we walk by everyday. Unfortunately, I cannot name and shame the companies and organisations involved as most of them have a legal machine waiting to sue anyone for telling truth. The hardest part was coming up with a concept that encapsulated the whole thing. In the end I've decided to use Aesop's approach to story telling with something symbolising success in the corporate world hence the words 'blue chip'.

The word "fable" comes from the Latin "fabula" (a "story"), itself derived from "fari" ("to speak") with the -ula suffix that signifies "little": hence, a "little story". Though in its original sense "fable" denotes a brief, succinct story that is meant to impart a moral lesson, in a pejorative sense, a "fable" may be a deliberately invented or falsified account of an event or circumstance. A blue chip stock is the stock of a well-established company having stable earnings and no extensive liabilities. The term derives from casinos, where blue chips stand for counters of the highest value.[1]