Management by Fear

I spent six years of my career working for a British conglomerate, seen as successful at the time, but with an endemic management style that I will never forget - management by fear.  It emanated from the man at the top, who was highly successful at managing a diverse portfolio of businesses with a mixture of arms-length and micro management.  How was that possible?  Well, the arms-length bit was to allow individual businesses to do their own thing provided, from a financial perspective, they met their budget and progressively throughout the financial year, key performance financial ratios.  The micro management came into play if the tree didn't look too healthy, at which point 'head office' would come in and examine the roots!

If you were to survive in a senior position, such as a business managing director, you had to be a particular type of person - a bastard!  The half-life of business managing directors was about eighteen months.  Nobody likes being a bastard for very long!  I suppose what I didn't like about my experience working for that company, was the underlying culture of fear.  Decisions were taken to try to ensure a flow of good news to the top.  For example, profit targets were met by cutting costs in areas where costs really shouldn't be cut.  It was a perform now and let's worry about the consequences later culture.

Against that background, I have to say that I did learn a lot.  It was a period of my career when I was actively engaged in the direction of international business development.  The conservative, risk-averse, attitude of the company could sometimes be seen as an impediment to making overseas sales but on many occasions did ensure the company wasn't saddled with unnecessary financial risks.  When the company constraints seemed unnecessarily burdensome, there was always an escape route - forgiveness is easier than permission!  I practised this route a few times, which was risky.  If the outcome is successful, you won't be punished.  But unsuccessful outcomes led to instant dismissal.  I had to get out.  No, I wasn't fired but unless I changed my ways of bucking the rules, I was in danger of being shown the door.

So why do I think it is now necessary to explain an experience that happened almost twenty years ago?  Well it made me realise that any business culture, positive or negative, is infectious.  You need to go with the flow to survive.  A docile labrador doesn't survive with a pack of wolves.  When I moved on, some of the positive sides of the culture, like attention to detail and strong financial management, were assets.  But the negative side, notably a confrontational approach when subordinates were not performing, could be counter productive.  Let me be clear, the confrontation does not mean bullying but it does mean holding individuals to account for the achievement of their forecasts and not suffering fools gladly.  So someone can fail once, maybe even twice, but beyond that they are replaced.  I soon realised that this can lead to all sorts of unintended consequences like 'soft' forecasting, dangerous short-term cost cutting actions, good and 'filtered' news reporting, etc.

What happened to the company in question?  It came to a sticky end, with parts of it sold off and the remnants almost bankrupt.  For a while I mistakenly followed the majority.  In the words of Mark Twain:

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

Savage Silos - Destroying Companies, Countries and Communities

Anyone who has worked in an organisation, small, medium or large, will have almost certainly experienced silo mentalities.  A classic symptom is when departments or groups do not want to share information or knowledge with other individuals in the same company.  It doesn't mean individuals are not doing, in their minds, the best they can, but they are doing it within the boundaries of their own little empires.  It is anti systems thinking because it follows the false assumption that if my little empire does well and all the other little empires follow suit, the company, i.e. the sum of the little empires, will prosper.  Well sorry, the whole is not the sum of the parts.  If you get things right, it's greater than the sum of the parts but with silos, it's considerably less.  Each little empire is a silo and it thrives because people feel comfortable interacting within the boundaries of the silo and they feel threatened by any attempt to draw them, their knowledge and information out of those boundaries.  There have been a plethora of corporate fix-it programmes aimed at breaking down silos, including visions, missions, common values, goals........, which look good on PowerPoint presentations but, from my experience, rarely seem to have much impact in the bowels of the organisation.

Silos can destroy companies.

Let's now turn to countries and as an example, the UK.  Although I watch the political antics from afar, I am appalled by what I see.  The rise of nationalism, spearheaded by parties like UKIP and SNP, is an example of silo thinking on a frightening scale.  Also what amounts to anti immigration speeches by the prime minister, David Cameron, perpetuates the Little England, silo mentality.  It's all predicated on some false premise of ownership of a country rather than, at any point in time, a collection of individuals who happen to be residing within a territory with historically defined boundaries.  That collection of individuals was formed by migration of the species and thus immigration.  It has evolved and will continue to evolve, by migration and immigration.  Nobody 'owns' the country, it was there for billions of years before the existence of homo sapiens.  The continuing evolution of the population through migration and immigration, provides diversity and invigoration without which, the country would stagnate and die.

Silos can destroy countries.

There's a common factor in the silo mentality.  The clue is in the word 'mentality', which means 'way of thinking'.  People think, so the common factor is the person.  Yes that's you and me mate!  We are all silos.  We each have a range of behaviours that exhibit, to varying degrees, a lack of openness, selfishness, not working for the common good, etc.  So it's hardly surprising that when lots of 'mini silos' get together, common attributes attract each other and 'maxi silos' are reinforced.  What does this do for society?  Well it certainly damages it.  The strange thing is that when I analyse my own behaviour, I often feel much better when I force (and sometimes it does take a bit of force) myself to be altruistic, yet it doesn't come naturally.  A simple example is giving money to people who regrettably for them, need to beg in the street.

Silos can destroy communities.

So what should we do?  Well I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you wish to change the world start with yourself. 

I'll do it when I feel like it!

How often is "I'll do it when I feel like it" thought of as a statement underlying laziness, lack of discipline, procrastination and other condemnations?  I was prompted to use it as a subject for this post by my wife, Sandie, who recently made the statement.  Before she files for divorce, let me explain the background to her outburst.  She needed to make some scones for a charitable event the next day.  She had a sore throat and was feeling pretty rough.  Enter me, Mr Programme Man, who believes in working to schedules, which inevitably include things you don't want to do as well as your favourite tasks.  I have to say I'm not as disciplined now as I was when I was at the coalface of industry, maybe a little bit of wisdom has crept into my life and that wisdom tells me my wife was right!

Anyone who does cooking, which includes making scones, will know that it is highly creative, not mechanistic.  The finished product is complex.  Unlike a clock, you can't pull a scone apart to see how it was made and then reproduce it!  So cooking is always creative and very often innovative.  Creativity and innovation cannot be institutionalised.  You cannot be creative on command.  So my wife decided that she would make the scones later in the day or even early the next morning, before the charitable event, when hopefully she would be in the right frame of mind.

I am very familiar with industries engaged in projects, which often include design, manufacture and in-service support with overall programme timescales up to two or three decades.  In such environments, effective project management is the name of the game.  I guess what I have learnt from many years experience of that game is that some things can be programmed with a fair degree of certainty of cost and timescale, but others can't.  It is usually dependant upon where the task sits within a spectrum from 'simple' to 'complex' with 'complicated' being somewhere between the two.  Generally speaking complex tasks are not just difficult to programme because of the complexity and therefore the unknowns, but also because of the "I'll do it when I feel like it factor".  The slogan on the tee shirt in the photo suggests it is the 'shit' tasks that get put to one side and that's very often the case.  But it also applies and indeed should apply, to activities requiring high degrees of creativity.

Good project managers are well aware of the need to tailor project plans to not just the 'hard' measures of specification, timescale and cost, but also the intangibles of complexity as well as individual and collective motivations.  Combining the what has to be done now with what needs to be done when you feel like it, is no mean task.  Indeed, no matter how simple a task might seem, if it involves human beings then by definition it can become complex.

So thank you, Sandie, for once again dragging me away from my Mr Programme Man roots.  By the way, I prepared and published this post three days ahead of schedule.  Why?  Because I did it when I felt like it!

Student Protests - Symptom of an Unfair Society

The student protests held in the UK on 19 November, were well reported but not, in my opinion, reported very well.  Regrettably, there were some scuffles between a minority of protesters and some of the police, which can happen in demonstrations of this type.  The media tended to give a disproportionate amount of attention to the violence thus missing the point of what the protests were all about.  This post will attempt to redress the balance.

Let's for a moment step back from the issue of education and how it should be funded, and ask a fundamental question, why do nations collect taxes?  To pay for societies' needs of course.  So what are those needs?  Health, education, infrastructure, security........to name but a few and in no particular order.  I reckon education must be high on the list of priorities because it is an enabler for the development of society.  It is the prime ingredient of social mobility, helping to provide equality of opportunity.  That makes sense doesn't it?

Now let's return to the issue of tuition fees.  For someone born to wealthy parents, tuition fees are not a problem.  Mummy and Daddy will pay.  On the other hand, a student who has excelled in state education, whose parents are not affluent, could easily think twice about, or even not consider, the option of going to university and being saddled with a massive debt at the age of eighteen.  And why should that be?  Surely society should see the benefits of funding all stages of young people's education, not just primary and secondary schools.

There is also another important aspect of this debate.  In many of the countries of the world, particularly the richer countries, the gap between rich and poor is increasing.  That is a fact supported by a wealth of evidence.  The gap varies from nation to nation and is particularly worrying in the UK and USA, but less of a problem in the Scandinavian countries.  The UK's tuition fee policy is surely going to exacerbate the wealth-gap problem.  Students from well-to-do families who can afford the fees, will get a better education than students from less-well-to-do families.  A better education tends to lead to opportunities for better paid jobs.  Conversely, a lesser education tends to lead to lesser paid jobs, or no job at all.  It all adds fuel to widening the wealth-gap.

What about affordability?  Yes I can hear the politicians bringing the austerity arguments to the table - we're all in this together!  Well sorry but we're not.  Again there is plenty of evidence to show that the tax laws are heavily biased in favour of the very wealthy.  When I say very wealthy, I don't just mean the top decile of the wealth distribution, but even more favourable for the top 1%, and extremely generous for the top 0.1%.  People with fortunes of tens or even hundreds of billions of pounds don't need to work.  Their money makes plenty of money for them and they can, of course, afford the best investment advice.  But it's always too difficult for governments to tap into this wealth.  There is a major problem, of course, which is international tax competition and thus the use of tax havens.  I don't want to stray into the issue of international capital flows and I don't need to because, that aside, I still believe nations such as the UK, aim their tax collection activities at the soft targets - ordinary workers on Pay As You Earn.

So let's not use affordability as a reason for not providing free education because I would counter that argument with we can't afford not to.  So good on you students, keep protesting and just one day we might have a government that will see the light.  That said, I don't believe any of the UK's political leaders come from families who would struggle with tuition fees........maybe therein lies the problem!

No change there then!

Those of us who grew up in the UK before decimalisation of the currency in 1971, remember pounds, shillings and pence, as well as the coinage that went with it, as illustrated in the photo.  Before the change, the currency had been in existence for 500 years and boy was it difficult to deal with.  At least that's my opinion.  There were 240 pennies to a pound and there were further sub divisions as follows:

• Four farthings to a penny
• Two halfpennies (pronounced ha'pennies) to a penny
• Three pennies to a threepenny bit
• Six pennies to a sixpence
• Twelve pennies to a shilling
• Two shillings and sixpence to a half a crown

There were also crowns and guineas but I won't go into any more detail, I'm sure you get the gist of it.  Every shopping trip was a mathematical brain teaser.  For example, if two items cost five pounds three shillings and eightpence - written £5 3s 8d - what does one item cost?  The answer is two pounds eleven shillings and ten pence - £2 11s 10d.  Now in 'new' currency the two items would be five pounds and eighteen pence - written £5.18 - and each item would be two pounds and fifty nine pence - £2.59.  Much easier isn't it?!

A brain teaser doing the rounds during my youth was - "If a bottle and a top cost a penny ha'penny and the bottle costs a penny more than the top, how much does the bottle cost?"  I don't have any survey data to back this up but my guess is that at least 80% said the bottle cost a penny.  That's the wrong answer, it's actually a penny farthing.  The top then costs a farthing, which means the bottle is a penny more than the top.  The teaser doesn't have the same elegance in 'new' currency somehow, even if we inflate the total price to 1.5p, which in 'old' currency is a little more than threepence ha'penny.  That makes the bottle 1.25p and the top 0.25p.  I suppose the fact there isn't a 0.25p coin makes it too conceptual.  How would you buy a top?  On your credit card?!

Here in Turkey the currency is lira, which is divided into 100 kuruş, so that's nice and decimal!  My wife and I provide extra English lessons to a Turkish student who also likes mathematical brain teasers so I asked her the question - "If a bottle and a top cost one lira and fifty kuruş and the bottle costs a lira more than the top, how much does the top cost?"  She got the right answer, twenty five kuruş, which happens to be coin in Turkey.  So she's one of the 20%, a smart cookie!

I don't really get concerned about currencies.  To me it's just a very convenient means of doing transactions.  I'd rather go to the shop and pay money for a packet of cornflakes, than exchange a chicken for it!  I find the 'patriotic' attraction to the pound in the UK, instead of going for the Euro, rather pathetic frankly.  In fact I would welcome a world with just one currency, maybe the US dollar. However, I do have a sentimental recollection of pounds, shillings and pence, because like the Turkish student, I also have a mathematical bent and love brainteasers.  So in the world that I grew up in, which didn't have calculators, personal computers or credit cards, going shopping really was a brain teasing exercise.  Was it better than today?  I don't think so.  Whatever the coinage, there was never enough of it!........

No change there then!

Timeless

There are three human inventions that, in my opinion, have had an enormous impact on mankind.  These are the wheel, money and the measurement of time.  I might write about the wheel and money in the future but the focus of this blog post is time.  What is time?  Well that's actually not an easy question to answer and if you research some of the philosophical debates, you can convince yourself it doesn't exist.  But what do most certainly exist are the artefacts of man's measurement of time, including the watch that I am currently wearing on my wrist.  These devices are designed to give us a better understanding of the position of our location on the planet, relative to the sun as the world spins on its axis with a complete rotation every 24 hours.  Some devices also tell us where the planet is in relation to its orbit around the sun, which it completes every 365.25 days.  We have divided this travel into months, weeks and days.  Also, because 0.25 days is difficult to deal with, we have 365 days in most years but 366 days every fourth year, which we call a Leap Year.  Clever isn't it?!  These designations are purely artificial for man's benefit, and by the way, when I say "man's" I really mean "human's", there's nothing sexist implied there!  Trees, dogs, rabbits, mosquitos, fungi, fish,.... do not, as far as we know, need to measure time, at least not with the same resolution and accuracy as we do.

Imagine a world without time or more precisely, without the means (or perhaps desire) to measure time.  Ridiculous you might say, but my response is we are far outnumbered by species that don't measure time and they seem to manage quite well.  There again, the other species seem to exist comfortably without drugs, alcohol, tobacco, lethal weapons and wars, but that's also a topic for another time.  If you think you need to measure time to catch the train or plane, be 'on time' for work or know when to watch 'Match of the Day', consider whether you need to measure time to live or conversely, the measurement of time dictates the way you live.

The summer months are very hot here in Turkey, so from May through to October I don't wear a wrist watch, because it's too sweaty and uncomfortable.  To be honest, I don't miss it.  So why do I wear it in the winter?  Probably as a fashion accessory!  Don't get me wrong, I think there are huge benefits from man's invention of time measurement but whilst there are pros, there are also cons and the biggest con is our obsession with 'synchronised living'.  Interestingly there was a period of time when, as a young engineer, I designed digital electronic circuits.  I remember my first foray into this exciting world, when for some reason, I designed the circuits to operate asynchronously.  This means that when one operation completed, it would 'trigger' the next operation to commence and when that one completed, it would 'trigger' the next one and so on.  It was pointed out to me by a more senior engineer who was reviewing my progress, that asynchronous design was 'bad practice'  and 'best practice' was to design circuits that operate synchronously.  Synchronous circuits have a pulse generator, which is known as........wait for it........a CLOCK!  The clock synchronises all the various operations within the circuit.

I think that whereas most species on this planet tend to naturally live their lives asynchronously, something called TIME, or more precisely, man's measurement of time, forces the human species into synchronous living and in my opinion, a more stressful lifestyle.  I'm sure you've had experiences when you are really enjoying yourself only to be told that it's ten-to-three and you need to finish because you'll be late for whatever task was scheduled next.  So try for one day to forget the planned tasks and the schedules and just drift, asynchronously, from one unplanned event to the next - it's bliss!

I could write all day about this, but I haven't got time!!!!

Trip the Light Fantastic

When I prepare my weekly blog post, I usually think about the issues and then somewhere along the line, decide on the title.  This week it's different.  For some reason 'Trip the Light Fantastic' was playing on my mind so I decided that would be the title before I had any idea of the content - arse about face you might think, and you're right!  So having determined the title, I had to find out more about it.  To "trip the light fantastic" is to dance nimbly or lightly, or to move in a pattern to musical accompaniment.  Thanks Wikipedia!  The oracle goes on to inform me that "........it is an example of a constructionally idiosyncratic idiom."  This means it is not possible to understand what it means from the words that are used.

I will return to 'Trip the Light Fantastic' later in this post but first the discovery that it was a "constructionally idiosyncratic idiom" got me thinking about idioms.  You're pulling my leg.  It's raining cats and dogs.  This iPad cost me an arm and a leg.........and so on.  Isn't it bizarre to use a combination of words that mean something due to common usage, whereas the literal meaning is quite different.  How confusing for foreigners learning the language.  Not just for foreigners learning English of course, in French "donner sa langue au chat", which literally means "to give one's tongue to the cat", actually means "to give up".

Idioms might be confusing when learning a language but on the other hand I feel idioms add a kind of richness to the language.  Putting words together like "pulling my leg" can have two totally different meanings.  Someone could be grabbing me by the ankle and pulling my leg.  Alternatively someone could be joking.  The combination of three simple words - pulling-my-leg - can convey more than one message.  The whole really is greater than the sum of the parts!

Returning to 'Trip the Light Fantastic', I really don't know why this idiom came to mind because I haven't come across it for many years.  It occurs to me that it might have marketing applications.  Like a producer of electronic equipment always trying to maintain competitive advantage by being nimble in the market, might describe the agility of the company as "we always trip the light fantastic".  Or maybe it would be closer to the literal meaning of the phrase for a light switch manufacturer!

So when something simple like an idiom comes to mind, don't discard it.  There's always a chance it could teach you something about linguistics, be a catchy strap-line for your business venture or maybe the title of your next blog post.  No, I'm not pulling your leg!!