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
Monday, 27 April 2009
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
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
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
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