OCCUPIED COUNTRY

Matthew and Son (The Work’s Never Done)

Well....what a crap day at work. Firstly I had to go in early to attend a meeting in lieu of my boss. He’s picked the worst day (weather-wise) to go playing golf with my other colleague form the office - but, hey, that's life. Consequently it was just me dealing with everything.

It’s Sod’s Law though isn’t it ? The less staff, the more problems. “I need this laptop sorting today as I fly out to the States this evening”; “ This can’t possibly wait as I’ve an important presentation (yeah...right) to give in 45 mins”. Etc., Etc., Etc.

Mission Impossible

I remember a manufacturing industry where people used to manufacture stuff. Today that seems to be an alien concept. Engineering factories that were full of men, women (children ;-)) and machines. Noisy, dirty places. Teeming with people who created stuff ! You could actually understand the function of people from manager to labourer. You could grasp the nature of their toil, see what they produced and get your head round the fact what they produced – stuff – could be sold at a profit (or a loss admittedly).

The ‘manufactory’ where I have worked for so many years has now become significantly less noisy. It is painted in bright colours – even the floors. It is devoid of ‘producers’ and chock-full of middle-managers producing presentations, reports, graphs, forecasts, business-models. Paper....paper.....paper......

This results in constant re-organisation of the business. Which results in a constant search for the next “Mission Statement”.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m all for anything that keeps the loyal worker focussed on the task in hand and, if a mission statement helps in this regard, then who am I to pooh-pooh the concept. I’m sure that all over the country people are busily discussing ‘best-practice’ and ‘being the benchmark’. I’m sure that, once the new Mission Statement has been formulated productivity increases no end. The trouble is, that productivity these days produces paper and not stuff.

The way that all this tired ‘80s business-speak bollox has filtered into our everyday lives was rammed home to me a few years ago whilst I was driving through Lancaster centre.

On the outskirts of the city there was a, frankly, struggling car-repair business. It had that look of imminent-closure-extremely-possible about it. Peeling paintwork, ancient automobiles dotted around the place and.............a Mission Statement proudly painted on a board tacked – almost as an afterthought – underneath the dilapidated “Jones and Son” sign.

“To be the benchmark for car repair that other car-repairers aspire to”.

Something like that anyway. It was gloriously comical. You could imagine Del-Boy doing the same on the side of his ‘Trotters Independent Traders’ Robin Reliant. It was patently never going to be the benchmark for anything but a business on the skids. There was a touching faith, it seemed to me, that this guy had in the nonsense that was bandied about back then. The same nonsense that brought us the ‘lunch is for wimps’ crap and the breakfast meetings that managers started calling at 6:00am to show how tough and dedicated to the company they were. Many of them now redundant of course !

I must go back to Lancaster one day to see if its still in business.