R2OK!

Ian Robinson · Posted: Thu Jul 25, 2013 3:34 pm Post subject: Jeremy Vine interview

Guardian piece from Sunday. Don't think it says anything really new, but perhaps worth a look.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jul/21/jeremy-vine-bbc-crises-radio-2

R2Icon · Joined: 10 Sep 2009 Posts: 1444

Hmmm. Middle management, no one understands what they do because they don't do anything, well, they delay things. Here's how it works.
A large organisation has a boss whom has the authority to do anything and is responible for everything. No one likes to be responsible for everything, so the boss employs a small army of people to delegate authority to for certain things, take for a simple example, getting the bins emptied. Now, the bins are emptied by a cleaner on minimum wage outside of office hours under a service contract but the big cheese is still responsible for getting the bins emptied. The big cheese is far too busy to be bothered with complaints about bins not being emptied so he hires a manager to make sure that the bins are emptied. The manager can't believe his luck, all he has to do is check the bins are empty each morning, then the rest of the day is his own. He soon gets bored and he's not really happy with being the bin manager, so he renames himself, "Waste Management Services Director" hires a secretary and several waste monitoring staff. Now he has a department. He sets up a series of departmental meetings, a daily meeting, a weekly meeting and a monthly meeting. Minutes are taken actions are placed. They collect metrics of bin emptying statistics, set targets for bin emptying and monitor rigorously. Soon it becomes clear that they have far too much data, analysis and reports on bin emptying that they need a data services manager(waste management services). The new data services manager doesn't like walking around collecting all the reports and ststistics by hand, so he introduces an electronic system, which requires every employee in the organisation to fill in an e form report on the state of their bin each morning. The electronic system e form system introduced is not easy to use, is incompatible with all other e systems and requires a week long training course before it can be used by the employees. The data services manager is pants at teaching, so he hires a data services training manager and several training staff to help out. After a year or so, very nearly all the employees have been trained but the IT department have upgraded everyones work stations to the latest operating system which is incompatible with the data management waste services e form system. The waste management system is packed full of important historical data which needs to be migrated onto the new e system compatible with the new operating system, this is a tricky thing to do, so a data migration manager and staff are hired to manage the operation. The new system is nothing like the old system, so all employees have to be retrained, and the whole process starts again.
That is why it takes one minimum wage contract cleaner to empty your bin and 60 or so middle managers to make sure it is empty but not a single one of them checks, you have to do that yourself and fill in a form.

tiny51 · Joined: 28 Jan 2009 Posts: 915

Methinks a middle management guru wrote this

R2Icon · Joined: 10 Sep 2009 Posts: 1444

and that's just bins, imagine the number of people involved in quoting a price for one man to do a day's work at a customer site. You would think it would be easy but no, it involves 5 departments, can take up to three weeks or more and costs around £11, 000 internally to work out the price, which everyone already knew at the start, it was £400 plus expenses, you add the 11, 000 to the 400 add the standard profit of around 30% and bingo you have a quote. The customer is delighted that they can get their "whatever" repaired for around £15, 000 and accepts the quote after a not dissimilar amount of internal administration and costs at their end. One man is sent to change a bulb: and that my friends, is why I chucked in the defence industry.
The BBC is worse.

nod · Joined: 24 Dec 2006 Posts: 3558

What's scary is he's been on R2 for 10 years !! Shocked

and it's the most listened to news show !! Shocked

R2Icon · Joined: 10 Sep 2009 Posts: 1444

Helen May · Joined: 10 Dec 2006 Posts: 19335 Location: Cheshire

I was at home, but can remember him, I think he had David Blunkett on as his first guest.

Oddly I was just thinking it's almost 10 years to the day that I rang in about something and was on air. Had to listen to Mr Blue Sky down the line before I got to speak. Ken played the song this morning and it brought it back to me.

H

PS the only reason I remember the date is that it was my birthday and that's next week!
_________________
88 - 91 FM this is Radio 2 from the BBC!

I said it live on air in the studio with Jeremy Vine on 10/3/2005

tiny51 · Joined: 28 Jan 2009 Posts: 915

I was driving home after delivering to Asda at Dartford, I remember cos I always used to have a chat with a good friend while waiting to get unloaded