Negative Management

I have never been much of a follower of management jargon. To me, good management is a matter of common sense but with the increasing rarity of that commodity I have turned to thinking about the theory of management - Journeyman style!

I have come to the conclusion that there are three basic types of management:
(1) Positive management - actions taken by managers which improve the situation.
(2) "Laissez Faire" - basically "do nothing and let the workers sort themselves out". Depending on the calibre of the workers, this may actually result in better results than (1).
(3) Negative management - actions taken by managers to interfere with the normal working of the organisation which results in worse results than if they had done nothing.

Sadly, I have to report that Follyville, which has so far generally exercised option 2 with reasonable success has now descended to Option 3 - Negative Management. I don't suppose it is intentional but it comes from not considering the outcomes or consulting the workers before decisions are made. The management and burghers of Follyville have always had a very blinkered "one issue" approach and the latest developments follow in this trend. The issue at the moment is saving money. It's the same everywhere in Local Government - Follyville is no different. But instead of asking the question "how can we sensibly save money", the word "sensibly" is left out. Result - negative management. Let me illustrate with a recent example.

Two officers of Follyville had been booked on a course in London. It was assumed that admin. would order them train tickets (as pre-ordering results in a saving on the full price). However, the day before they were due to go they were informed by management that there was no money in the training budget. There was, however, money in the mileage budget. Rather than going by train Officer 1 should therefore drive to Officer 2's house and then drive the two of them to Newbury Park underground station. From there they could get the underground train to their course.

Let's analyse this scenario:

Cost under normal arrangements -
2 x Train fare (including Travelcard) @ £50.20 = £100.40 (N.B. this would have been cheaper if tickets ordered in advance).

Cost under Negative Management arrangements -
97 miles mileage reimbursement @ £0.40 £38.80
Car Parking at Newbury Park £ 4.50
2 x Tube fare to Holborn £20.00
2 x 1.5 hours extra journey time @ £17.76 £53.28
______
Total cost £116.58

So a misguided attempt to save Follyville some money actually resulted in spending £16 extra plus considerable increased aggravation for the officers concerned in having to drive back in the rush hour, in the dark, in the pouring rain with all the hazards of road water and spray. Not a nice journey at all.

Follyville Economics

Those of us who work for local authorities are in a no-win situation as far as economics are concerned. The government has, over a long period of time, made strenuous suggestions to local government that they should find whatever means they practically can to save taxpayers money. The officers at Follyville Borough Council have done just that and, for the year just gone, managed to save £850,000 on the planned budget. I don't know how that compares to other councils, but I would have said it was worthy of a pat on the back. ....... but no. Quite the contrary! One of Follyville's own councillors is demanding to know why the council underspent by such a large sum. [He must follow this strange economic logic hypothesised in my last post.] His reasoning must be "bugger the government's requests - if it's in the budget we'll jolly well spend it whether we need to or not." Surely he must realise that a large underspend is always preferable to a large overspend ............ or maybe not!

A Follyville Christmas

Thursday 7 January
Slightly quieter today ..... but still like a chicken shed. Thank goodness I have not had to come in for the past two days. Change my voicemail message to inform callers that as we are now "hot desking" I won't be in the office much to pick up any voicemail messages, so they are better off sending me an e-mail. Survive till lunchtime and then go home. Conclude that four hours is about as much as anybody can reasonably be expected to take of this. Pity the poor buggers who have to be here all day!

Friday 8 January
Snowed in at home.

Monday 11 January
Can't face it - take a flexiday!

A Follyville Christmas

Monday 4 January
First day back after Christmas so everyone is in the office. Luckily I get in early and bag a desk. Pleased to see that our manager comes in later and doesn't get either a desk or a seat. Serves him right for casually going along with such a stupid idea.

One of the executive directors comes past and asks him how everything is going. "Fine," he says, "it's all going smoothly". I shake my head sadly from side to side. "What's the problem?" says executive director. "Everything!" I say. "Oh that's just Tim", says manager, "he's negative about most things". The latter statement is, of course, total slander. I usually like to take a positive stance on life, but it's very difficult to be optimistic about a total disaster!

I survive until lunchtime and then go home. The noise is intolerable. From now on the new office will be referred to as "The Chicken Shed".

A Follyville Christmas

Tuesday December 22
The start of the big move - packing up day. Which bright spark thought it would be a good idea to move immediately before the Christmas holiday? I suppose they thought that not much work would be done on these two days anyway - apart from all the senior managers, of course, who all had very pressing meetings they had to attend and were extremely conspicuous by their absence from the chaos that was going on all over the office. It was left entirely to the grassroots to decide how to organise things - which was probably for the best, judging by past performance. All went reasonably well until the crates ran out. An e-mail had been sent to all staff making it quite clear that everything had to be packed up and ready to go by the end of the day ........ All very well if you've got crates to pack in .......... a bit difficult if not! Crates had to be labelled with personal and team names to make delivery easier at the other end ....... but the printers were removed at the beginning of the day so no labels could be printed. The computers were taken at lunchtime so no-one could do any normal work. So the afternoon was a case of sitting around reading the paper and doing Sudoku ....... couldn't do anything else. We saved one crate for the Emergency Planning Manager (who obviously had not planned for the move and had disappeared to a meeting all morning). He had not had the foresight to start packing his stuff in advance, and I left him pondering how to get about four crate-loads of stuff into the last remaining crate.

When Christmas came to Follyville

When Christmas came to Follyville it was a total cock-up.
The executive directors should be sent straight to the lock-up.
We had to move from Office One across to Office Two
the same day that the plumber was there taking out the loo!

We didn't have sufficient crates to pack up all our stuff
and by the time we got to Office Two we'd all had quite enough.
We had no seats to sit upon, unless you got in early,
but "more are coming soon", they said, "we hope" ......... "they must do - surely?"

There were no shelves on which to put the content of our boxes.
We'd better dump them all outside to amuse the local foxes.
The noise in here is quite intense. In fact, it's almost nearing
the levels in a poutry shed used for intensive rearing.

I'll have to go and work from home - the buggers have won the battle.
I'll work far more effectively ..... just miss the tittle-tattle!

Follyville continued (again)

Monday - receive e-mail that all desks have to be completely cleared by close of play Thursday because they are being removed on Friday to be taken to the new office .......... but we are not moving for another four weeks ........ which means that hire desks will have to be brought in to keep us going in the meantime. I think maybe the Follyville burghers should have consulted a logistics expert before undertaking this little bit of stupidity ...... or at least consulted me for a bit of common sense.

In practice I am not going to be in for the rest of the week so I have to clear my desk (and everything under it!) with about 6 hours notice. Luckily a supply of large crates are delivered at lunch time and I manage to get all my paraphernalia into two of them ...... just! And then I read another e-mail that states we should use one crate each and, if at all possible, share a crate with a colleague! No one knows where all this stuff is going to go to at the other end ... there simply is no room for storage.

So on Monday I return to my hire desk ........ naturally much smaller than the one they have just stolen from me. I was planning on living out of crates until the final move but, no ........ we have to pay for the crates by the day so they all have to be emptied back onto and under the desk. The crating up exercise will have to happen all over again in four weeks time. A little foresight and forward planning could have avoided all this disruption and expense. Goodness only knows what will happen on D-Day if the burghers carry on like this. The phrases "meltdown" and "the end of civilisation as we know it" come to mind. Watch this space as the story continues.

Follyville continued

The workers at Follyville Borough Council continue to get ready for the big move. The office phone system has now been replaced with VOIP (Voice over internet protocol). This is supposed to be cheaper and will allow those working from home to make free calls. However, it is plagued with problems. For a start, you can't make a phone call unless your computer is logged on. This in itself is a process that now takes about 20 minutes each morning so, if you have just popped into the office briefly before going off somewhere else for the day, you can't make a quick phone call because it's just not worth firing up the computer. It also means that you can't be helpful and answer your colleague's phone when it rings because if they are not there, their computer will not be logged on.
This week my system has been ringing and then hanging up before I have a chance to answer. The caller gets a message asking if they want to leave a message, even though I am sitting at my desk. This then transformed into a total malfunction by the end of the week whereby my colleague had to phone someone else in the office on their mobile and get them to bring me a message to phone her back because my phone was not ringing at all (no voicemail either).
But this is not as bad as it gets. We heard on Friday that when we move we will lose our computers and will instead have "dumb terminals" connected to the server. The dumb terminals won't have any kind of sound-card in so when the phone rings ........... we won't be able to hear it! Great for getting work done but not exactly high in the "customer care" stakes. I'm starting a book on how long it will be before we get proper phones back again!