Office e-mails are messages containing jokes and pictures. They are distributed because the workforce in our management factories is completely bored doing the pointless things delegated by the powers that be. Office emails tend to be a bit close to the knuckle. All the so called electronic age has done for the working classes is to swap a life of repetition on an assembly line to a life of repetition in the office. At the least on the assembly line you could take the piss out of everything without the PC police dragging your ass down to HR for a telling off.
Long live Rudolph Walker the PC brigade's and Nick Griffin's worst nightmare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Thy_Neighbour
Wednesday 20 May 2009
Wednesday 13 May 2009
Hubris : Greek God of Management Consultants
Over the next 4 years the UK government may 'notionally' spend 4 billion on management consultants. Sort of begs the question what do civil servants actually do. I know of one local authority that spent 20 million on expenses for consultants over a 12 month period. The amount of expensese paid to consultants in the public sector far outweighs that paid to MPs. An authority that is facing significant challenges in providing adequate children services and services for adults less fortunate than ourselves. 20 million would have made a significant difference to those particular services. In the late 90's the advisory industry never had it so good. The paranoia around y2k, the dot-com boom, Euro and massive investment in technology refresh programmes across the private sector. Problem is folks, the private sector got wise to the jargon spewing merchants of change. So the usual suspects turn their attention to the public sector.
K-Y-JEL-EE
Dolitte
Public Welcome Convenience
TBOTW - The Best of the Worst. Weak quasi-consulting quack house specialising in over-paying over-qualified unambitious grads to tap keyboards all day in awful provincial business parks, courting the contempt of real workers on site. Employs 100000 people worldwide
Dolitte were involved in the Barrings Bank scandal and the weak quasi-consulting quack house's audit cousin were involved in the farce of a company that was Enron. Years later the weak quasi-consulting house were involved in 2 significant failed implementations of IT across the public sector that wasted several million pounds of hard earned tax payer contributions. Both of these firms failed to follow their own advice and practises documented on their multi-million pound knowledge bases. Advice and practises they constantly try to flog to the public sector. That is not to say advisory firms have not made a difference. There are as many successes as there are failures and a root cause of failure lies in the inability of the public sector to manage these firms effectively. The problem with management consultants is their 'hubris'. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris). It constantly gets them into strife. You would not believe the craziness. I know of one so called training event in Amsterdam for a bunch of up and coming IT strategy consultants. On these sessions the group is split into teams and asked to work through a case study that normally culminates in a presentation at the end of the day. The thing about management consultants is that powerpoint to them is the equivalent of a light saber. A yoda level powerpointer uses animations, sounds, maintains eye contact with the audience and never ever looks at the projected image on the wall as the the slides are changing. So on the last day of the training course each group had to present its masterpiece to the other groups. One presenter was banging on about Enterprise Resource Planning and supply chain optimisation. The slide behind him changed projecting a 6ft image showing a woman performing a lewd oral act on a man unbeknown to the presenter because 30 people could see the slide and he couldn't. The following week most of the group ended up on major client engagements across Europe. I know Ive given the consultants a hard time but they are being used to their own detriment, which is not a good basis for a sustainable commercial organisation. The current use of management consultants dis-empowers our civil servants. Our front-line workers in the public sector take on the challenge not for the money but to make a difference. A management consultant working in the public sector gets paid significantly more and their primary motivation for being there is not for the good of the community. If it were they'd be working for the NHS, government etc. It is a monumental failure on the part of senior civil servants and our politicians not to listen to the public sector front-line then take forward repeated ideas because it came from a management consultant. Go and look at every consultant inspired initiative in the public sector and trace the chronology of the idea. What you will find at source is that some bright spark of civil servant or front line practitioner had the idea. However, poor management and leadership stifled it. So when some flash clever suited and booted articulate brain box with access to higher levels of senior management pitches the idea it gets the nod. It is no big surprise that when the consultants come to do the hard time i.e. the dreaded implementation they encounter resistance at the lower levels of the organisation. Combine this scenario with the over riding principle of a management consultant 'The client always takes responsibility for the change' and you might as well bet our income tax and council tax on a horse race. Coz the great thing about being powerless is that your are freed from any obligation to do anything to help yourself.
Check out the figures and impact on the public finances. Try using the Freedom of Information to find out about the return on your investment in management consultants. It's impossible and will cost you £600 if you try. Note how one neighbourhood in Britain is being turned into a police state so these firms can plough their trade. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHEkR8bfbPo
For guidance on how to manage the management consultants and outcome based agreements:
http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/features_details.cfm?News_id=28585
http://www.supplymanagement.com/EDIT/Top_stories_item.asp?id=19761
K-Y-JEL-EE
Dolitte
Public Welcome Convenience
TBOTW - The Best of the Worst. Weak quasi-consulting quack house specialising in over-paying over-qualified unambitious grads to tap keyboards all day in awful provincial business parks, courting the contempt of real workers on site. Employs 100000 people worldwide
Dolitte were involved in the Barrings Bank scandal and the weak quasi-consulting quack house's audit cousin were involved in the farce of a company that was Enron. Years later the weak quasi-consulting house were involved in 2 significant failed implementations of IT across the public sector that wasted several million pounds of hard earned tax payer contributions. Both of these firms failed to follow their own advice and practises documented on their multi-million pound knowledge bases. Advice and practises they constantly try to flog to the public sector. That is not to say advisory firms have not made a difference. There are as many successes as there are failures and a root cause of failure lies in the inability of the public sector to manage these firms effectively. The problem with management consultants is their 'hubris'. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris). It constantly gets them into strife. You would not believe the craziness. I know of one so called training event in Amsterdam for a bunch of up and coming IT strategy consultants. On these sessions the group is split into teams and asked to work through a case study that normally culminates in a presentation at the end of the day. The thing about management consultants is that powerpoint to them is the equivalent of a light saber. A yoda level powerpointer uses animations, sounds, maintains eye contact with the audience and never ever looks at the projected image on the wall as the the slides are changing. So on the last day of the training course each group had to present its masterpiece to the other groups. One presenter was banging on about Enterprise Resource Planning and supply chain optimisation. The slide behind him changed projecting a 6ft image showing a woman performing a lewd oral act on a man unbeknown to the presenter because 30 people could see the slide and he couldn't. The following week most of the group ended up on major client engagements across Europe. I know Ive given the consultants a hard time but they are being used to their own detriment, which is not a good basis for a sustainable commercial organisation. The current use of management consultants dis-empowers our civil servants. Our front-line workers in the public sector take on the challenge not for the money but to make a difference. A management consultant working in the public sector gets paid significantly more and their primary motivation for being there is not for the good of the community. If it were they'd be working for the NHS, government etc. It is a monumental failure on the part of senior civil servants and our politicians not to listen to the public sector front-line then take forward repeated ideas because it came from a management consultant. Go and look at every consultant inspired initiative in the public sector and trace the chronology of the idea. What you will find at source is that some bright spark of civil servant or front line practitioner had the idea. However, poor management and leadership stifled it. So when some flash clever suited and booted articulate brain box with access to higher levels of senior management pitches the idea it gets the nod. It is no big surprise that when the consultants come to do the hard time i.e. the dreaded implementation they encounter resistance at the lower levels of the organisation. Combine this scenario with the over riding principle of a management consultant 'The client always takes responsibility for the change' and you might as well bet our income tax and council tax on a horse race. Coz the great thing about being powerless is that your are freed from any obligation to do anything to help yourself.
Check out the figures and impact on the public finances. Try using the Freedom of Information to find out about the return on your investment in management consultants. It's impossible and will cost you £600 if you try. Note how one neighbourhood in Britain is being turned into a police state so these firms can plough their trade. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHEkR8bfbPo
For guidance on how to manage the management consultants and outcome based agreements:
http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/features_details.cfm?News_id=28585
http://www.supplymanagement.com/EDIT/Top_stories_item.asp?id=19761
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