Management

Yet another barmy story of England can be found in the Times here Firefighters aren't allowed to climb stepladders to fit smoke-alarms. Now you might expect this to be another HSE directive, but the Times rightly points out that the concern was voiced by the Fire Brigades Union. This does make a change from the banning of games of conkers and fitting of signs to pear trees warning passers-by that, amazing, pears can fall off them; in that it 's not the work of a local council attempting to put the blame on the HSE. Because when traced it appears that that's where the buck tends to stop. So why all the fuss and more importantly why is it all happening so suddenly?

If I were a member of the Opposition I could easily blame the current government for introducing a nanny state; if I were a member of the Government I could blame the Opposition for allowing things to get to this state when they were in power. Fortunately I'm not a politician and can therefore ascribe multiple causes to the problem.

Let's take a management structure, we'll have 48 'producers', people who actual create output, for the company. On their own they might do well, but frictions can arise so we need somebody to manage them (let's say 1 per 6). Ah, but now you have a new level of people who can argue amongst themselves, so we need another set of managers (1 per 4). Oops now we need another (just 1) so we have a structure like so:


That's 48 producers and 11 managers, add a secretary to each manager and you've got a 22:48 ratio or ~ 1:5. Also it's worthy to note that of the 11 managers only just over half are actually dealing with people who output for the company the others are managing the managers (,who are managing the managers, who ...)

Now the interaction between producers and tier 1 should be easy as they generally deal within their own sphere of knowledge, the producers may know nothing about the budget and the managers may no nothing about what's being produced. Therefore discussing matters outside their spheres they should defer to the other. (I know I'm taking an idealised view here), but what about interactions between tier's 1 and 2? They're both dealing with the same things, why should tier1 managers defer to tier 2 managers, other the arbitrary hierarchical structure imposed why should they bother?

It's at this point we have to turn to tribal status indicators, tier 1 defers to tier 2 because tier 2 earns more, gets the better office, is more likely to be talking to tier 3 and therefore have more influence. Once this becomes the norm something happens, people on one tier what to rise to the next; not because they can do the job, but because they want the extras that come with the position, just as importantly they don't want to slip down a tier and therefore lose those extras.

At this point I'll introduce a a small diversion, Scott Adams, he of Dilbert fame, produced a strip featuring an H&S officer apparently moving things around in order to create accidents, in the last panel the character and states something along the lines of "My pay is related to the decrease in accidents since my visit". For a different approach we can turn to Terry Pratchett and the city of Ankh-Morpork's fire-brigade who were paid "by the number of fires they put out. The penny really dropped shortly after Charcoal Tuesday."

So what's this got to do with conkers and stepladders and status and tiers. Well consider what would happen if all the tier 1 managers got along, what would the tier 2 managers be doing? It might not take too long before the tier 3, or highers, discover this. The entire tier might be downgraded or worse removed. As this would entail the loss of all status markers it's important that each tier do work regardless of whether there is any to do or not this is what is commonly referred to as 'make-work'.

But surely this has been the case for ages, why the sudden build-up recently. Well in my opinion this is linked to the increase in the private industry, the joke in the old nationalised services was that once you were in you had a job for life and therefore not only didn't have to produce make-work to justify your existence, but would actively discourage such to make your life easier.

Also the more litigious nature of our society, the "somebody else is to blame" attitude pushed by the ambulance-chasers and our colonial cousins, means companies have a need to absolve themselves of any wrong-doing. They are more and more inclined to find imaginary faults before the public do and put measures in place to prevent accidents that may never have or will occur, or that may only happen rarely due to an unfortunate set of circumstances (Such as a pear falling on someone)

Better yet so many rules and regulations require paperwork (in the original case, firefighters would probably have to present a H&S assessment for every house they worked in) and those need to be processed, perhaps requiring more staff, which would come under the manager's purview and surreptitiously push them up a tier.

So to summarise - The privatisation and the scrutiny imposed on councils and such, actually could increase make-work amongst managers; and who could dispute the need to prevent accidents and litigation against them. While at the same time creating more work that might require more staff thus increasing the stature of the original manager.

To put it bluntly anyone going around worrying about firefighters on step-ladders has way to much time on their hands and should be removed.