As you may know I have been unemployed and seeking work for a little over a year. Ideally I'd like a full-time permanent job within easy travelling distance of home and in the industry sector where I've made my living these past thirty years. The local employers aren't interested in me. Travis Perkins in Northampton, along with Barclaycard, the Nationwide and RS Components have all decided they'd be better off without my contribution.
I've widened my scope to look at jobs further afield and at areas of employment outside my aspirations. There is little to be found. What I have found has involved manhandling dishwashers and washing machines in and out of lorries and up and down conveyor belts (Two days). I've counted cars queuing at traffic lights (One day, with the promise of two more to come). I've delivered second hand cars, driving them from an abandoned USAF base to motor dealers (One day) but in fourteen months I've been unable to secure a 'proper' job.
When I signed on to receive Job Seekers allowance I was told I had to produce evidence of my job-seeking efforts. I started saving an the emails which said "Thank for applying..." and produced the list each fortnight when I went to sign on. Not everybody replies to job applications so the number of jobs I have applied for since I started keeping the list is larger than the one thousand entries the list now contains. One thing I have found is that there is definitely an "Age Bar" in effect in the IT industry. I'm over fifty years old and, as far as recruiters are concerned, over the hill. My best years are behind me. My best work has been done and I've nowhere to go except downhill from here. It's a dispiriting prospect and I'm pretty sure it's wrong.
But now the bright side. Yesterday I received an email from a Dutchman called Llewellyn. This is unusual enough to remark upon. Llewellyn is looking for User Acceptance testing resource to work on a system integration and delivery project at ABN Amro Bank in Amsterdam. Happily for both of us I have some relevant expertise to offer since from April to September 2006 I worked at ABN Amro Bank in Amsterdam on some test activities relating to their Basel II Compliance project. Llewellyn called back this morning and we agreed that I would be a good fit for their requirements and maybe I should start making plans to go back to Amsterdam for a three month contract with likely extensions.
So there it is, some light at the end of the tunnel. It's not what I was planning to do, but it's better than sitting at home worrying about my overdraft. I shall try and ignore how I hate EasyJet and the hours wasted hanging about in airports and dining out alone and having to pack up my dirty laundry and haul it home every Friday. But I've done it before, loads of times an I didn't die from it. Well, I was quite ill[1] for a while but I got better.
[1] Look on Wikipedia for "Lacunar Infarct"
Tuesday 24 March 2009
Thursday 19 March 2009
How to do Management
Have you ever come across a "Mission Statement" lately? Loads of organisations have them. Some because they need to focus on what they have to do but a lot more have them because the last management consultant told them they needed one. It's a bit like the latin motto which used to adorn the cap badge heraldry, "Per Ardua Ad Astra" sot of thing. That particular motto belongs to the Royal Air Force and means "Through Struggles to the Stars" which is more in tune with the sentiments of NASA than the blue-clad mud movers.
I may be marketing a mission statement parsing tool shortly. It asks the question "What? Where? Why? How? Who? and When?" of mission statements. The responses must be framed several different ways because the question may be asked in several different contexts: Conceptual, Contextual, Logical, Physical, Mechanical and Instantial. I.e. the Zachman diagram is used to decompose the mission statement. (I'm a big fan of the Zachman diagram)
The responses occupy thirty-six cells of a matrix with these column and row headings. The number of answers that can be given is a metric of the effectiveness of the mission statement in providing strategic, tactical and operational guidance to the enterprise. The number of blank cells, the number of unanswered questions, prompts the enterprise to ask the questions that need to be asked before the mission can begin, the How, Why and When sort of questions that are essential to planning.
I tried this once with a corporate mission statement that appeared to be well thought-out, expressive and inspirational. The questions raised by my analysis were a little disturbing since implicit in the mission statement is that you have some sort of monitoring process to let you know when the mission is (a) on track and (b) completed. (As the RAF might say, how many stars have we reached? How many more have we left to do?). It turns out that most mission statements have no sort of end-condition that can be defined or reached and are purely aspirational.
"Empowering stakeholders" is a common theme in mission statements these days. I just googled for the expression and scored over a million hits. If you have this in your mission statement how indeed do you know when you have been successful or even if you are on the right track? What metrics can you employ to measure empowerment. The common get-out is to launch a survey asking your stakeholder "Do you strongly agree, agree, disgree or strongly disagree with the statement 'I feel empowered." I am not sure that this sort of metric really measures anything compared to something more solid like the number of complaints received.
I was brought up in the disciplines of engineering. I was taught that you cannot manage or control anything that you cannot first measure. I regard this as an axiom, a self-explanatory and indisputably true statement. The appliance of science to the measurement of management still has a long, long way to go. Sadly when I raise these points, I am accused of 'getting too technical' which tells me my peers and colleagues lack the stomach for a rigorous debate.
I may be marketing a mission statement parsing tool shortly. It asks the question "What? Where? Why? How? Who? and When?" of mission statements. The responses must be framed several different ways because the question may be asked in several different contexts: Conceptual, Contextual, Logical, Physical, Mechanical and Instantial. I.e. the Zachman diagram is used to decompose the mission statement. (I'm a big fan of the Zachman diagram)
The responses occupy thirty-six cells of a matrix with these column and row headings. The number of answers that can be given is a metric of the effectiveness of the mission statement in providing strategic, tactical and operational guidance to the enterprise. The number of blank cells, the number of unanswered questions, prompts the enterprise to ask the questions that need to be asked before the mission can begin, the How, Why and When sort of questions that are essential to planning.
I tried this once with a corporate mission statement that appeared to be well thought-out, expressive and inspirational. The questions raised by my analysis were a little disturbing since implicit in the mission statement is that you have some sort of monitoring process to let you know when the mission is (a) on track and (b) completed. (As the RAF might say, how many stars have we reached? How many more have we left to do?). It turns out that most mission statements have no sort of end-condition that can be defined or reached and are purely aspirational.
"Empowering stakeholders" is a common theme in mission statements these days. I just googled for the expression and scored over a million hits. If you have this in your mission statement how indeed do you know when you have been successful or even if you are on the right track? What metrics can you employ to measure empowerment. The common get-out is to launch a survey asking your stakeholder "Do you strongly agree, agree, disgree or strongly disagree with the statement 'I feel empowered." I am not sure that this sort of metric really measures anything compared to something more solid like the number of complaints received.
I was brought up in the disciplines of engineering. I was taught that you cannot manage or control anything that you cannot first measure. I regard this as an axiom, a self-explanatory and indisputably true statement. The appliance of science to the measurement of management still has a long, long way to go. Sadly when I raise these points, I am accused of 'getting too technical' which tells me my peers and colleagues lack the stomach for a rigorous debate.
Thursday 5 March 2009
The Great Global Warming Debate
I am a global warming sceptic. Not because I disagree with whichever climatologist spoke last on the subject, but becuse of the way they spoke. The arguments in this issue seem to come from a non-scientific space, from a space which is occupied by spin doctors, publicity managers and self-promoting snake oils salesmen. Worst of all, it has become a political issue. Not politics in the sense of a reasonable opinion reached by consensus and the debate of well-informed authorities, but politics in the sense of populising, self-promoting, resource hi-jacking cock fighting.
The politicising of the debate has done no end of damage to any chance of progress with the issue. Now it's a dirty, sticky paintbrush which soils whoever picks it up, well-intentioned or not. Politics, as practised around here, is based on certain principles. I describe them below, and invite you to recollect what you have heard of the Grat Global Warming debate bearing this in mind:
(1) Keep it simple, stupid. The message must be reduced to the simplest possible terms. In the minds of the politicians and spin doctors we are too stupid to receive and understand a message containing complexities and ambiguities. The important thing is that we should receive their message. For a complex issue the complications must be removed and ignored. For an ambiguous or uncertain issue, the ambiguities and uncertainties must be removed. In the case of the global warming/anthropogenic/CO2 emissions debate removing the ambiguities, uncertainties and complexities to leave a single politicised message is a bad thing to do. "Reduce your carbon footprint!" remains which is patronising, unhelpful and probably has no effect on the outcome at all.
(2) Demonise someone, anyone. Politics is a blame game and to find someone to blame we have to find someone, some grouping and blame them for our troubles and then make them pay. In the sooty footprint debate we have seen drivers of four-by-fours demonised. At my wife's place of work it was seriously suggested she should pay double for her car parking because she drives a Honda CRV which employs four wheel drive (sometimes). This has nothing to do with the carbon footprint of the vehicle, or its CO2 emissions but everything to do with being in a identifiable group. Also identified for demonisation are drivers of luxury cars as in London's CO2 emissions-based addendum to the congestion charge. This is thinly-diguised politics of envy tactic whose end result is merely to raise revenue for governmental bodies.
(3) You cannot exaggerate enough. Tony Blair was briefed on the "imminent global climate catastrophe" and told the rest of us it should be our single most important issue for the future. That was just before the global financial catastrophe happened which stil might cause an end to all trade, a global cost of living crisis and leave us all without the goods and services we rely on (see how it's done?). In politics the important thing is to keep the message (and the man) in the spotlight all the time. (A secondary purpose is to keep the spotlight away from the places you dont want it to go.) To keep the global warming issue alive, a ludicrous spiral of reportage calls us to look at how many nuclear power stations like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl will have to be built before next Christmas, how many villages will be washed into the sea like Boscastle or New Orleans this Bank Holiday Monday and how many of us will suffocate or drown in our cars if we dare go out tomorrow. If you took all this literally, you'd be forced into believing that the devastation wrought on New Orleans by Katrina resulted from me filling my kettle before boiling it for one cup of tea. The causes of the floods in New Orleans may have more to do with inadequacies in the operation of the flood defences. If this surpirses you, read this paragraph through again.
All of which leaves me more than a little disgusted with the whole business. I think we should be concerned, I think that if there is anything I should be doing then I should be doing it. But my good intentions and good will on the issue are being hijacked by media manipulators, green activists, agitprop merchants, anti-industrialists and self-promoting campaigners for self promotion all with their own agendas and axes to grind. They have over-simplified and demonised and exaggerated and obscured the truth and misled us all.
The politicising of the debate has done no end of damage to any chance of progress with the issue. Now it's a dirty, sticky paintbrush which soils whoever picks it up, well-intentioned or not. Politics, as practised around here, is based on certain principles. I describe them below, and invite you to recollect what you have heard of the Grat Global Warming debate bearing this in mind:
(1) Keep it simple, stupid. The message must be reduced to the simplest possible terms. In the minds of the politicians and spin doctors we are too stupid to receive and understand a message containing complexities and ambiguities. The important thing is that we should receive their message. For a complex issue the complications must be removed and ignored. For an ambiguous or uncertain issue, the ambiguities and uncertainties must be removed. In the case of the global warming/anthropogenic/CO2 emissions debate removing the ambiguities, uncertainties and complexities to leave a single politicised message is a bad thing to do. "Reduce your carbon footprint!" remains which is patronising, unhelpful and probably has no effect on the outcome at all.
(2) Demonise someone, anyone. Politics is a blame game and to find someone to blame we have to find someone, some grouping and blame them for our troubles and then make them pay. In the sooty footprint debate we have seen drivers of four-by-fours demonised. At my wife's place of work it was seriously suggested she should pay double for her car parking because she drives a Honda CRV which employs four wheel drive (sometimes). This has nothing to do with the carbon footprint of the vehicle, or its CO2 emissions but everything to do with being in a identifiable group. Also identified for demonisation are drivers of luxury cars as in London's CO2 emissions-based addendum to the congestion charge. This is thinly-diguised politics of envy tactic whose end result is merely to raise revenue for governmental bodies.
(3) You cannot exaggerate enough. Tony Blair was briefed on the "imminent global climate catastrophe" and told the rest of us it should be our single most important issue for the future. That was just before the global financial catastrophe happened which stil might cause an end to all trade, a global cost of living crisis and leave us all without the goods and services we rely on (see how it's done?). In politics the important thing is to keep the message (and the man) in the spotlight all the time. (A secondary purpose is to keep the spotlight away from the places you dont want it to go.) To keep the global warming issue alive, a ludicrous spiral of reportage calls us to look at how many nuclear power stations like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl will have to be built before next Christmas, how many villages will be washed into the sea like Boscastle or New Orleans this Bank Holiday Monday and how many of us will suffocate or drown in our cars if we dare go out tomorrow. If you took all this literally, you'd be forced into believing that the devastation wrought on New Orleans by Katrina resulted from me filling my kettle before boiling it for one cup of tea. The causes of the floods in New Orleans may have more to do with inadequacies in the operation of the flood defences. If this surpirses you, read this paragraph through again.
All of which leaves me more than a little disgusted with the whole business. I think we should be concerned, I think that if there is anything I should be doing then I should be doing it. But my good intentions and good will on the issue are being hijacked by media manipulators, green activists, agitprop merchants, anti-industrialists and self-promoting campaigners for self promotion all with their own agendas and axes to grind. They have over-simplified and demonised and exaggerated and obscured the truth and misled us all.
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