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Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 28th
of September 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON
TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
The last week has seen some disagreement between agencies. Some say
things are getting very busy, but others say it is quieter than usual.
This could be down to their different markets indicating parts of the
logistics sector are more healthy than others.
WEBSITE Etc
We suffered from server problems earlier this week. Although not that
damaging, they did stop publishing for a day or so. Meanwhile, some
encouraging advertising enquiries have been received. These are from
people who have a far better idea of the internet than last year. It is
virtually impossible to sell to people who think they know all about
what they are buying, and who usually are utterly unaware of their
ignorance, so this change is very encouraging.
Due to pressure of work the News Reports feature may be cut back. This
takes up greatly disproportionate time for the draw it has on readers.
However, the main Press Release feature is here to stay. The time
saved may be used to develop other parts of the site, and in a new
business we are bidding for.
NEWS AND COMMENT
The latest regulations on ageisim may produce some absurdities. One
purveyor of psychometric tests implies that even asking for a degree or
what A-levels might leave you open to allegations; some subjects did not
exist twenty years ago... etc. What a relief! His wonder tests
will save the day. I have no doubt they have their uses, but
some of selling methods they attract can be quite desperate. These
devices have been around for many years, had they lived up to some of
the claims made of them, they would now be in universal use. Too many
attempts to legislate for decency replace bad management practices with
greater management impotence, in stopping the stop bad guys they
disempower the good guys. Things can be more subtle than well meaning, hamfisted
legislators admit.
A sculptor came to visit a few days ago. She had displayed life sized
resin statues of children for an event and asked me to carry them back
to her van when it ended. Although they weighed a fraction of what they
represented, were rigid and cold to the touch, I found myself tenderly
laying them down in the back of the van as if they were alive. She
arrived and put them in what seemed inappropriate positions to ensure
they were not broken en route. This took me back to an event many years
ago in a haulage yard.
A stacker driver had been trying to keep up with his more fortunate
friends and in desperation had turned to stealing. As the boss was
away, it was down to me to decide what to do. I resorted to taking a
sense of the situation and tried to apply what I thought was a just and
fair approach. It seemed many of his colleagues were far more unkind
and some much worse, but this could not be proved, and it was his bad
luck to be found out.
Pretending not to hear the
evidence, I sent him home to cool off, and to give myself some breathing
space. It is an invideous task to decide on these matters cloaked only
in borrowed authority from someone temporarily absent; I did not like
the feeling. Trying to think my way into the situation, and predict the
effects of applying plain justice to a popular employee, I 'lost' a key
bit of paperwork but let it be thought it could, one day, re-appear.
As far as the workforce was concerned, fate had saved his skin, but he
knew that for at least a few months, his position was only an office
tidy-up away.
With hindsight, this was a
mistake. Although the morale was not damaged it did not improve and my
attempt to sense the general mood turned out quite wrong. He'd made the
lives of at least two other employees quite miserable, but I had missed
this. In my determination to feel the whole situation, I had 'joined up
the dots' incorrectly. It would have been better to have left
uncertainty, rather than persist, in the name of a firm decision, in
creating a false impression to myself of the mood and situation. He
should have been dismissed.
The cause of this error is
quite common and appears in different forms. A farm hand was asked to
take a tractor and trailer around a very sharp corner which required
some skill. He normally did this at some speed and successfully. One
morning, the inevitable finally happened shattering the corner the brick
wall of the barn. When asked why, he said: "I always did that fast
because I wanted to get it over with." We laughed,
not understanding what or why he said it.
Although deliberate action is always preferable, constructing a pretense
to motivate an outward display can cause misjudgements. The worst
form can lead to thoughtless stereotyping. Greater nerve is required to
act deliberately knowing, yet keeping secret, that a key part of the
decision is based on uncertainty; that it is risky.
Seeing those starngely lifelike sculptures, strapped down just like any
other freight just did not seem right; it made me feel awkward for my
tenderness. I felt it easier to give them a respect they did not
deserve, and could have caused damage if I had been left to pack them by
myself. At the depot, there was no one there to stop me from making a
similar mistake.
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no
credible competition.
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 21st
of September 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
I have not had time for a full survey this week,
but sense little change.
WEBSITE Etc
Visits are up again, as expected for the time of
year.
The trend
for PR to begin to accept we are not going to do them out of their business
is growing. Where once we went months without any contact, now five times a
week is not exceptional. But the silence from the advertising agencies is
stark. When we ring them you can sense they want you off the line as
quickly as possible; bu,t in time, even they will begin to accept things
will have to change. Overall, the trend is encouraging and positive.
NEWS AND COMMENT
NEVER UNDER ESTIMATE A GEEK
DON'T SPIT
School children visiting France in the late
1960s were amazed to see signs usually starting with the words 'Defence
de...' followed by the offence. 'Defence de cracher' struck us as
particularly foreign, after all, 'We English' would never need to be told
not to spit in public. Only a few years earlier TB had been rampant in the
UK when such signs were far from uncommon, even in 'civilized' England,
and France was still recovering from the monumental destruction of war and
occupation, but how were those privileged children to know?
ANORAKS AND GEEKS
Out-of-date managers can often make similar
mistakes. I recently bought a 140 year old electric clock but, with the
exception of a presentation plaque, knew nothing of its provenance.
Determined to find out, I contacted a friend who was far more interested in
these strange things, and who most 'creative people' would dismiss as an
anorak wearing geek.
Five days later, he came back with the address
of the maker, two independent living relatives, family history,
naturalisation papers, census information and much more. He had patiently
used the internet and found out all this without taking a step outside, for
a cost of £40. Before the internet, geeks were seen as obsessives, with
highly focussed but boring expertise, and who might be inventive, but best
hidden up, and, at all costs, kept well away from polite or entertaining
society.
The fate of Alan Turing, perhaps the greatest
geek of all time, is signal. Bletchley was stuffed full of anoraks, and
they got results. Ironically, this was the first major change of what has
now extended across the Globe. In consistency with the importance of
information, Churchill ordered Bletchley be written out of history.
Flowers, who put his money where his mouth was, was treated disgracefully
and Alan Turing met his death, stripped of status, ignored, and hounded as 'a nasty homosexual'
Even the most important people were once
in the phone book:
thisislondon, now,
transport supervisors often go ex-directory; finding information has become
an art. In spite of the success of geeks, their peers and older
people often frown at their methods, as if they're not quite acceptable,
even, a little distasteful. They don't like the idea that progress is
eroding what they have learnt and are instinctively are trying to stop the
tidal wave by pretending it's not there
Modern managers should beware of geeks, they now
have a hand on a key lever of power. Information with authority permits
power. Without information, you can have as much authority as you like, but
you will remain impotent without information to use the authority to good
effect. The sight of a manager flailing around incapable of using their
authority in their ignorance is all too common in large and not so large
companies. More so, the potential influence of modern IT departments is
quite frightening.
The treatment of Turing was appalling, and such
tendencies still persist. Although his homosexuality was a factor, the main
cause was because he was considered a geek that was acting above his
station. The powerful did not take kindly to having to rely on a geek.
Half a century on 'creatives' and yesterdays' managers have met their
match.
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible
competition.
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 14th
of September 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
Similar to last week. I think the usual Autumn
increase in demand is not as brisk as usual, although there is some
improvement
WEBSITE Etc
Visits are rising, as expected for the time of
year.
It is encouraging to see
www.ciltuk.org.uk is improving its
web site, this is long over due and it appears Steve Agg, the new boss, is
going to kick some life into this key organization. As a professional
he follows a long line of well meaning amateurs; he really knows something
about the industry. Things are looking up. Meanwhile, I have spoken to
another PR who seemed to know as much as I do about the internet. The bleak
conservativism caused by PR people trying to stop progress could put some of
them out of business; the CILT has sensibly decided to bring its PR back in
house and say we will now be notified of institute news.
NEWS AND COMMENT
BORING PEOPLE ABOUT LOGISTICS
Some years ago, the air conditioning in the
Saudi Head Office of a road freight company gradually lost the fight against
extreme heat. The solution was simple, a Thai mechanic and a Sri Lankan
office clerk were detailed to stand outside next to the air conditioners to
splash water on the heat exchangers. Late 20th century UK managers were not
the least bit concerned about these latter day punkah wallahs, perhaps,
because they were safely out of sight.
SHARE THE ROAD
People tend to pay attention to things that
intrude and this often diverts their efforts from far more
important matters. 1930s UK travel for most meant using the
railways, although much freight was also went by train, it didn't intrude on
private space, it was out of sight. Modern British roads combine private
use and large scale productive activity. It is as if people are
now spending part of the time driving through a production facility as they
go about their private business. Something very similar has happened with
the relative decline of sending business letters and the rise of the mobile
phone. The former carried private and business traffic, but they did not
intrude, especially from before the days of junk mail. The latter
sometimes creates a chaotic feeling with a thousand options to buy, gamble,
do business and yes, even to have a private conversation, where once there
was a simple black telephone.
With shorter hours and a greater emphasis
on things other than work, these intrusions are strongly begrudged, without
any appreciation that they are part of the price for so much benefit.
Politicians play on this upset because it is an easy way to divert
attention from far more serious problems and because common ignorance about
logistics makes it difficult, or worse, plain boring to explain what they
are up to. There is another twist to this.
In the 1990s, I was asked to guide the PR of a
business charity in a case of an alleged major fraud. The knives were out
and things did not look good. The solution was to ensure everyone kept
their mouths firmly shut, permitting only one information contact for the
entire organization; coupled with this was a policy to make things look
complicated. This simple approach caused
a huge amount of smoke, making it far more difficult to locate any fire and
its cause. Too many aspects appealed for attention and the potential
responses of many parties were uncertain. This dissuades many
journalists who fear uncertainty. The policy bought time. No money was
siphoned into private pockets and it was a pity the organization finally
failed, though its management was far from perfect, it did avoid
the humiliation of creditors sending in the receivers.
The way a modern economy works is very
complicated. People do not like complexity, it introduces uncertainty and
asks you to appreciate things you may not wish to admit. Logistics
professionals are against all this to establish status and respect. The
usual approach is to lie low and hope progress will do the job for you.
Sadly, progress has, if anything, made it even more difficult. Another move
might be to extend the application of logistics principles to
information. This would see it directly applying to many of the old
professions and some upset will be inevitable, but if done correctly, it
will create the opportunity to earn respect, instead of trying to dodge the
criticism of people who do not want to know. The key step is to abandon the
passive formula of hoping people will learn to love you and go out there to
do something about it.
Without some new approach, trying to get people
to appreciate the importantance logistics professionals is is likely to be
met with the same glare I would have received, had I dared mention those
loyal employees keeping our air conditioners going in the scorching heat of
a Saudi summer.
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible
competition.
Next week, an incident in a home
for the demented reminds me of days driving lorries
and some strange management behaviour.
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 07th
of September 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
The market has woken up, but is not as busy as
usual in the Autumn. Political uncertainty may have caused some loss of
confidence. However, when these things happen, there tends to be a make-up
period, creating a demand surge a few weeks later.
WEBSITE Etc
I spoke
to three PRs yesterday. One was distinctly angry with what we are doing, as
we take information from his major Far Eastern shipping line
client directly. It is amazing he thought his client's image could benefit
from such attitudes. The others, who work for TNT and Wincanton, were
exactly the opposite. They are the first really positive communications
with PR and they seemed to understand those things about the internet of
which most in their profession still remain ignorant. These are encouraging
signs, they realized that far from deskilling them, what is needed is a new
form of relationship similar to, but not the same, as the one they have had
with traditional publishing.
Inexperience
of trade publishing left me ignorant of the key importance of relationships
with PRs. Like it or not, they inform companies of the credibility of
publications rather than other employees working in the industry itself
(Now there's an idea). This is illustrated by no
contact ever coming from the PRs employed by
ciltuk.org.uk There's
quite some ground to make up.
NEWS AND COMMENT
GHOSTS IN THE LANDSCAPE
During a light news period caused by US Labor
Day I drove over to the home where my mother now lives. The ten mile
route takes in some very beautiful scenery including a view of what seems to
be half the World. Travelling down the hill, the single storey rambling
house soon came into view. Within were about fifty people; ghosts of their
former selves they looked with distant yet questioning eyes and appeared as
if paintings with a few scraps of images still clinging to the canvas
hinting of what once was.
My mother was in the dining room. All ate in
silence; their memory was so short that conversation had become
impractical. Leaving, she recognized me. I asked her where we could go to
sit. A couple of minutes later, ahead a procession of four elderly people,
we came to a dead end. As if some perverse pied piper I had lead them the
wrong way. As the view had shown me the World, theirs had disintegrated and
with utter irony, I had lead them nowhere. I left through double glass
doors with coded entrance and exit codes to avoid these ghosts becoming lost
in the landscape.
Many employees' imaginations are damaged by the
demands of their work and the pressure of ambition combined with economic
forces around raising children. Their managers are often in exactly the
same trap but with even greater demands for conformity. The mind of a
business can become cluttered as if demented. The sight of a manager
instructing employees to do the wrong thing is common, sometimes it is
necessary to conform to a perverse discordant harmony, to preserve cohesion
across a large organization. It is not that employees are considered to be
things, 'resources' or 'capital' as the neutering jargon beloved of modern
business theory would have it, but that they are missing so much of what
once they were, or could be. It is as if management training is as
much about scraping off the paint from the picture of a character as about
instilling know-how. Those black suited, frightened middle managers, so
common at industry meetings do share something in that blankness and,
may-be, wistfulness for what has been forbidden or lost.
There is, however, a limit to how much a
corporate entity can encapsulate human properties. The debate about wartime
guilt of sncf.fr cnn lemonde may
take things too far. At one turn, employees are neutered by management
jargon, as their characters are partially erased and then at another turn
these lost characteristics appear to lend humanity to the lifeless and
utterly neuter construct of a corporate entity. This exchange is strangely
discomforting. Life seems drained from people to be lent to something
created by them in the form of a legal construct. It appears the stronger a
corporate entity the less it can afford its employees their own characters;
but this depressing recipe is not necessary.
Although discipline and order is important to
make the wheels of a business turn, whether literally with a fleet of
lorries, or metaphorically, for virtually any operation, character can be
created by giving, rather than taking. There is an alternative to straight
exchange, an alternative to give and take. The deal is between people and a
legal fiction given a seeming life by the laws and practices they permit.
Such a body cannot have guilt because it cannot reflect, it cannot have a
conscience and is no-one. Employees decide to give their time and
deliberately pretend to do a deal with a company which they themselves
pretend to exist. The deal is very different than between two people, it is
between people and what they permit to imagine; more like 'give give' than
'give and take'.
With a myriad of imaginations there are a myriad
of companies with skeletons created by law and fleshed by employees, and all
others effected by them. The decline of a company as information fails to
flow and its corporate memory decays with increasing failure to learn from
experience dismays employees and commerce. With decline, so the
formula becomes a brutal 'give and take deal'.
Companies can be taken over and can recover from
bankruptcy. For people, it is different. Sadly, most ghosts never return to
their lives.
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible
competition.
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 24th
of August 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
Most contacts report a very quiet August,
although a couple say July was good. The test will be what happens in the
Autumn. The trend to try new approaches continues with
rpcrecruit now working thelen.org.uk
to find employment for ex-armed forces people. The general trend for
recently established Logistics specialist recruiters to fail in the face of
a downturn has been broken by one recently enquiring about advertising.
Meanwhile, advertised vacancy numbers have risen
slightly indicating the market is beginning to wake up. This is encouraging.
WEBSITE Etc
The audio
version of the comment below can be heard at
logisticsnews.com/message24-08-06.wav During July and the first half
of August the most popular page after the home page, was the Top 100.
However over the last few days interest has returned with the agency page
hitting the top followed by two vacancy categories.. It seems a revival in
vacancy numbers is being matched by more people looking for opportunities.
Again, this is encouraging. Now all we have to do is hope for is that the
personnel departments and recruiting line managers are serious. Visit
numbers have risen, but are far from the expected peak in late September.
NEWS AND COMMENT
PAST MASTERS & DUBAI BUS SHELTERS
CLERICAL WORK
A recent article entitled "Global Data
Synchronization" was published by industry week industry Simple people
might say it's a good idea to use information efficiently, others might say
ignorance is not clever. That simple truth wrapped up in terminology,
indicates the embarrassment when it comes out managers have been tolerating
ignorance. These wordy people appear to wish 'simplistic' and 'simple' mean
the same thing. There are reasons for this ambition.
Bright young consultants at $1,500 a day, sent
in to advise how to sort out companies usually apply text book management
solutions and often make good money out of organizations which persistently
fail to get better. Their inexperience is disguised by such phrases as
'global data synchronization'. Like eighteenth century
practices of prescribing mercury compounds and bleeding patients, their
contribution is liable to be counter-productive. A consultant without
experience should never be let near a company, except, perhaps to do
essential clerical and data gathering work. In this case, they should be
described as qualified clerks. This is not meant as an insult; the
occupation of a clerk should have the status it once held in the Victorian
period; 100% trustworthy competent clerks capable of using the
latest technology are uncommon
MORE THAN CLERICAL
The art of turning around a business can require
extensive knowledge of management techniques, systems and devices. However,
dealing with a confused and upset organization is rarely simple. Just as
writing this will require substantial editing to change what starts out as a
virtually incoherent mess of ideas, bad spelling and faulty grammar, going
through several versions before a decent one emerges*, turning a business
around also needs several stages. As doctors may say, from critical, to
stable, to recovering, to convalescence to good health. Starting from a
business close to corporate extinction they could go, for the sake of
argument, from: facing bankruptcy, struggling, returning internal control,
improving external control, good morale and strong surpluses.
Each stage needs a different management style
and different prescriptions. The aim should be to draw the future into a
business, so that it is constantly engaged with not only now, but with what
is to come. This is essential to good planning, as the cliché says, to 'the
management of change'. This complex process is rarely explained in
management text books. Their main focus is on what should be, but just like
those doctors from a more dangerous medical era, and there seems little
interest in searching out how corporate bodies work when unwell.
IT WORKED BEFORE
The failure of
walmart
to prosper in Germany dw-world
expatica, leaving with considerable
losses was matched by a similarly disastrous foray by
fedex.com
into the UK and European domestic courier markets in the 1980s. In both
cases, they seemed to have an ideal of how business succeeds and then
applied the formula, and applied it again, and again. The thought seemed to
be that the formula was right, and it only needed to be applied properly to
get the required results. But just as people can suffer from different
medical problems, depending on where they live and different conditions of
survival, so corporate bodies need to change to prosper in different
conditions.
The textbook of ideal company management fails
again because its ideals miss out on understanding how a corporate entity
engages with the World and how it needs to flex to cater for different terms
of engagement. If you fail to engage with your market the future marches on
whilst you remain about as ignorant as those bright young consultants, fresh
from their colleges, stuck in the past. In this respect, the frequently
questionable results from highly paid consultancies have a similar cause as
the formulaic failures of large companies in foreign markets. They apply
the same formula time and time again. Sometimes it works and, sometimes, it
can be spectacularly successful, but too often they do not succeed.
Treating an illness with the wrong medicine can be as good as taking poison.
SHEEP FROM THE GOATS
Most modern consultancy practice is appallingly
crude, it is usually only rescued from a public reputation of quackery by
the experience of older, time served partners, who often know the truth
and restrain text book lunges of junior staff, but always aim to maximise
income, regardless of the state of their patients. There are excellent
smaller business consultants who deserve respect but suffer from the fallout
from the behaviour of all but a few large consultancies.
DUBAI BUS SHELTER
On a wider scale, a national failure to manage
successfully can bring on some uncomfortable comparisons:
Dubai has introduced the World's first air
conditioned bus shelter
dpm Along with mobile
phones, this comes straight out of a 1950s child's picture book of the
future. Meanwhile, people in the
UK stand out in all weathers, because the future
has gone elsewhere
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible
competition.
* Last week's confusion between
proscription and prescription demonstrates how even
spell checks need to be used with care.
This schoolboy error did rather spoil the effect.
Next week, an incident in a home
for the demented reminds me of days driving lorries
and some strange management behaviour.
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 17th
of August 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
Most contacts report a very quiet August,
although a couple say July was good. The test will be what happens in the
Autumn. The trend to try new approaches continues with
rpcrecruit now working thelen.org.uk
to find employment for ex-armed forces people. The general trend for
recently established Logistics specialist recruiters to fail in the face of
a downturn has been broken by one recently enquiring about advertising.
This is encouraging.
WEBSITE Etc
The audio
version of the comment below can be heard at
logisticsnews.com/message17-08-06.wav The audio downloads have ceased
to increase in frequency, perhaps because people with bad memories from the
days before modern anti-virus systems are very suspicious of downloading
anything from the internet. However, it might also be a feature of holiday
period readership numbers.
NEWS AND COMMENT
BLIND CONFORMITY AND AIRPORT CHAOS
The chaos at UK airports was partly caused by
insistence everyone should be treated as equally suspect of murderous
ambition. This lead to the ludicrous sight of genteel old
ladies, common from such places as Malvern, Bournemouth or Eastbourne being
frisked and treated with equal suspicion as young men. The luxury of living
by proscribed rules where you can be certain of staying in the right without
the need for judgement is very restricted, and plainly cannot apply in a
World where most people either follow different rules, prefer to use their
own judgement or just plain don't care.
It is easy to see the problem, but something
even more damaging is caused by such an approach. Not only are
people proscribed from using their own judgement, but, as if in
self-defence, its considered offensive for the 'wrong sort of truth' to be
reported to decision makers. If it either contradicts tenets of
'correctness' or points out problems they may cause; such an act attacks the
foundations of the rule book and the system it has created. Those in
power prefer the rules to be intact because they control and offer a
framework for manipulation, in return, the people of the rule book are
grateful for absolution from responsibility. If the ruling UK party is
determined to stick by a strangely Victorian love for blind obedience, it
must develop systems to ensure information, that would normally be censored
by the rule book, reaches its ears. Meanwhile
their love of rules and regulations is taken to considerable lengths, as if
to make up for what seems a decline compared to the disciplines of the old
ways of working.
Things were very different before computers and
all the modern business paraphernalia designed to ease the process of work.
A glance at the pained copperplate writing on 19th century indentures,
legal documents, even down to builders invoices, tells of another highly
disciplined age when everything from the minute detail of dress through to
the approved loops on the ends of words was prescribed. Today, as if to
replace wearisome and seemingly unproductive embellishment from the days of
pen and ink, where writing is now as easy as typing out this piece on a
computer, there seems to be a desperate attempt to exert another form of
conformity. New proscriptions keep people in order, more so, prevent them
from the danger of using their own judgement. This conformity stops people
from stepping out of line, be they right or wrong. If they're correct, such
an act undermines the right of distant management to take decisions, if they
are wrong then far off managers already pressed by problems caused by their
lack of competence and the dealing at arms length will have yet another job
on their hands. In this way correctness assists moderate and
bad managers to control large organizations.
The problem at Heathrow Airport brings things
into focus. Rules of Correctness, right or wrong, are up against the cool
reality that the human rights they are supposed to support could bring about
less efficient use of security, which in turn could cause a major loss of
life. So much for the rights of any wretchedly unlucky people sacrificed,
almost literally, on the altar of mindless conformity.
The problem is the lack of high quality
management skill, a denial of perspective, and poor
organization. Politically Correct people tend to be unable to admit that
some proscriptions and prescriptions are less important than others. 'Rules are Rules'.
Near-by to our offices can be seen a bicycle lane complete with dedicated
traffic lights crossing a local major road. This 'correct' infrastructure
costing many thousands of pounds has had virtually no users over the last
two years... meanwhile, other things such as better road surfaces and
markings, of real importance, remain unattended. A similar argument has
been used over the cost of converting London Taxies to accommodate
wheel-chair users. This laudable act, in the name of common decency, cost
more than laying on special services for any wheel chair user as and when
they needed it. Such actions are costly, as long as they can be afforded,
there's little argument. The problem is that the question of 'affording' is
anathema to the inflexible non-judgemental, black or white / right or wrong
world of politically correct folk.
Terrorists are forcing the UK to abandon
mindless conformity, and may even start a movement to let people use more of
their own judgement. This will force the removal of incompetent
managers and the new ones will be better informed with less censorship on
the information reaching them. We should grow up and stop frisking 70
year old ladies on outings from their retirement homes in Bournemouth and
major on checking young men and women travelling alone... if you wish,
whatever their religion, nationality or colour of their skin.
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible
competition.
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 10th
of August 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
The clearout of weak agencies set up too late in
the last high demand period is just about complete and the established
agencies are, as in previous slack periods, benefiting from lower demand
spreading across fewer operators. Agency rates are under pressure, but as
in previous recessions, they do not realistically go below 15% and it would
be a mistake to expect an agent to perform well at under 17.5% with some
better ones still doing well at 19%. The general market seems similar to
last week but airline security worries may cause a short term reduction in
demand because confidence is an important factor in recruitment, often far
more than actual need.
WEBSITE Etc
A recent
surge of visits regularly sees numbers reaching last October's figures,
which is very encouraging. This represents around 35% on this time last
year. A distinct change in visit patterns was caused by the Airline
security event today. As some sites crashed, it appeared people used ours
to get an overview.
NEWS AND COMMENT
Returning to comment written yesterday:
Two men from
jarvisplc.com visited a street nearby to maintain what must be some of
the last sodium street lighting in the country; so I thought. These
wasteful things have long since left many UK areas, including Tower Hamlets,
the poorest borough in the country. They are now associated with
energy wastage, light pollution, poor illumination, abandoned goods yards,
demolished housing, and dereliction. Keen to find out more, I entered into
conversation. To my great surprise, they told me they were even putting new
ones up as replacements and that many still survived across Herefordshire.
In fairness, some of the new lighting in the County is modern and highly
efficient, featuring dimmer systems and more, but this makes the
contrast even more dramatic. A Georgian fronted street leading up the Church
in a rural town, keen to attract tourism and trade, is lit by some of the
ugliest street lamps ever used in the UK, and is seemed there were no
immediate plans to change the situation. Such is the treatment small
provincial towns can experience at the hands of centralized administration,
blindly following budgets and procedures. As ever, 'out of sight, out of
mind' appears to be the order of the day
It's easy to assume such this sort of thing is a
speciality of public and state controlled organizations,
but private business is quite capable of matching them. In the late 1980s I
called in at the accounts building of a well known Parcels Company in
Newbury. My contact rang down and asked me to go up to his
office. Surprisingly often, I find myself getting lost, and on this
occasion ended up in the computer room. This was a delight; in front of me
were three banks of James Bond style computers, complete with magnetic tape
whizzing back an forwards on big spools, dating from the early '70s. I was
later told this relic took several hours to work out the pay for 2,000
staff. It had survived was because its planned depreciation was over a
fifteen year period. The final year soon came and, despite my attempts to
preserve the machine, the embarrassment was crushed, well away from prying
eyes
This is not an isolated example. Across the UK
are hundreds of companies spending millions maintaining out-of-date items
from gantry cranes, to dodgy software, through to poorly specified goods
vehicles and faulty high-bay warehousing. Profit is plundered by
unnecessary costs caused by the inefficiency required to artificially
maintain capital on the balance sheet. That James Bond computer needed air
conditioning, specialist staff and much more to keep it going. This keeping
up of appearances, Bucket style, is about as unattractive as the filthy
orange glow emitted from an ancient sodium street light
Public companies do their best to keep their balance
sheets looking good. Shareholders can be thrown by capital write-downs.
It's quite common to see unused computers, machinery and other expensive
items hanging around so the auditors can tick them off against the asset
register. They usually know the form, but they must have something to see,
before the register can be completed. A similarly mindless adherence to
procedure makes us laugh at the well meaning Hyacinth as she struggles to
make a success of her famous candle lit dinners, unintentionally driving
everyone around her to distraction. Employees can end up equally upset
Where staff dance strange and futile quadrilles in the
name of appearances, you can be certain their morale is greatly damaged.
They know too well that most of their work is for deliberately unproductive
reasons. This breeds anger and seriously damages information flow, to the
point that senior management habitually know far less what's going on than
trade union representatives and works gossips; it would be unreasonable to
expect staff ordered to behave in an unreasonable manner to act sensibly.
Once in this fix, without the privilege of a state guarantee, organizations
stand close to the precipice
Consultants can walk around a site and, observing those
'can't throw them away yet' items, can very quickly work out how far out of
its mind the organization is. A sharp eye detects things like unused fork
trucks, spares for machines long since sold, collections of those strange
third copies of dockets no-one seems to know what to do with and so on. All
these things signal a system upset by its own attempts to keep up
appearances, as if the good impression manufactured for the benefit of the
banks and the investors calls for a bad one to balance it in the operation
itself. In some cases, the very process of creating a good appearance
causes something even worse needing even more cosmetics to cover it
up. This can spiral out of control creating the all too common ghastly
make-up of an image presaging the collapse of an organization
Those orange street lamps, a small and seemingly
unimportant oddity, should not be symptom of anything worse, but the worry
is, that they are just that. Private companies can only afford so much to
keep up appearances before a spiral sets in. Local Authorities and state
organizations can spend billions on utterly futile maintenance of computer
systems, ministers' pet ideas, slavish robotic adherence to regulation and
much more because the taxpayer picks up the bill
A recent visit by health and safety officials to a
Hereford burial ground saw the erection of scaffolding supports,
complete with those nice little plastic caps on the ends of the metal
tubes, around dozens of 3 foot gravestones because they feared people might
be killed if they fell over
herefordtimes The local paper called this 'Health and Safety
gone mad'. They missed the point; more certainly, the organization
responsible was showing signs of going out of its mind applying regulations
in such an idiotic manner, as if it has lost touch with common sense and the
outside World. (Idiot is derived from the Greek for a
private citizen
drizzten). In the logistics business and further afield, the
mindless waste of keeping up appearances would evaporate if inappropriate
secrecy were impossible, stripping away the privacy needed to incubate
baffling, often laughable and sometimes offensive displays of waste and
mismanagement
'Out of sight, out of mind' should be the last thing ever
sent to that crusher to be forgotten
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible
competition.
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 3rd
of August 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
Two agencies report tough conditions, but see
signs of good trade for the Autumn. There're signs other agencies are
beginning to rethink the way they engage with the market as the impact of
the internet grows, with some trying to develop international markets as the
UK market becomes more difficult. The market appears to be worse than
the Summer of 1992 and 1993
WEBSITE Etc
Although we
have received several sales enquiries over the Summer nothing yet
substantial has happened except for two quite startling examples of time
wasting from agencies. Perhaps the silly season started a bit early. For
all this, enquiries have risen over the last few months, that we are getting
any in the peak of Summer cannot be a bad sign. I am pleased to see all our
recruitment customers are still healthy where some others, who have not used
our service, are struggling or have already gone out of business
The next
sound file can be found at
www.logisticsnews.com/message03-08-06.wav It deals with underlying
reasons for the strange silence from the profession failing to counter
public ignorance about logistics and a general cause of conservatism.
Depending on response these audio files may increase in length and number.
NEWS AND COMMENT
LOGISTICS IS NOT FOR AMATEURS
There was this journalist, bureaucrat, and bishop who all thought they were
logistics experts. The last week or so brought up three examples of
startling ignorance on the subject
"Transport is not very
difficult at a strategic level", so said a leading columnist at the
Guardian guardian
But amateurs have caused havoc for generations with their
ignorant strategic and gigantically wasteful UK transport plans. In 1952,
British Railways designed and started building an entire new generation of
steam locomotives as the days of steam traction were numbered and when the
US had virtually eliminated it from its tracks wikipedia
A little later, the incompetent decision to insist on under-powering the
Trident aircraft
wikipedia opened the way for the
immensely successful US
boeing.com
727
wikipedia
Meanwhile, the EU seems to be buying into the
hydrogen dream:
tnn It seems politicians need to
pretend they're doing something about pollution without having to take the
politically dangerous steps of stopping us from using or wasting so much
energy. Hydrogen
production needs vast amounts of electricity. Polluting power stations make
this electricity.
It is staggering this simple truth only appears
in the small print of the trade press and is usually shunted off 'hydrogen
is wonderful' articles; such behaviour proves the partiality of much of the
old trade and general press. The problem of Global Warming is generally
accepted; now the dishonesty has moved on to how to deal with it
Even the church seems to be getting in on the show with ryanair.com
taking exception to a Bishop criticising low cost air travel
independent The low cost airline link
will take comfort from the fact its June load factor was 87% compared with
high cost
britishairways.com' at 81.6%
reuters. On the other hand, high cost
aa.com did
better at 85.4%
cnn, compared to low cost
jetblue.com
at only 82.1%
primezone This would make
flying with some, but not, all high cost airlines more undesirable depending
on load-factors.
IRRESPONSIBLE SILENCE
The strange silence from logistics trade bodies,
associations and institutes on this growing absurdity should stop.
Logistics is deeply entwined with the problem of Global warming. Perhaps
it's bad for business to speak the truth, or maybe it might threaten career
prospects; in the long run, everyone will lose if it remains
open-season for ignorant people to call the shots about logistics, free
from the criticism of logistics professionals.
UNCERTAINTY
Change is not easy to handle and even less so if
it requires you shake up years of certainty. On a small scale, a traffic
office dealing with very short lead time LCL, FCL and groupage business, can
present an immense challenge to a trainee operator. Later afternoon, the
work for the following morning is usually planned with an outline for the
rest of the day. A single operator can handle thirty or so vehicles. In
the morning, a couple of breakdowns, bad weather, customer delays, load
alterations or cancellations can cause chaos, but a professional operator
can rip up a plan and, to the untutored obsever, shuffle virtually the
entire operation at breakneck speed to make the best of resources and keep
the customers happy. This is involves great mental flexibility, fluidity of
thought and a good dash of opportunism. From what would have been a mess of
half used vehicles comes a new plan which can often run more tightly than
the old one. Meanwhile uncovered work frightens
the trainee, but the pro will say, and has said countless times before,
don't worry we will cover it, and as if by magic, this nearly always
happens.
Some time ago, I had arranged to go to London.
The original plan was to go by car, but my colleague had discovered the
train was quicker and cheaper- even before parking and congestion charge
costs. A few minutes later the required tickets were bought on the
internet. It was strange, that despite my agreement, my mood changed as if
out of tilt, to an uneasy slightly on edge feeling. Even in small things,
we often don't like change, however sensible it is and even if its
obviously the right thing to do. It often causes a similar feeling as if a
commercial deal has been altered by one party barely after the ink has dried
on the contract. A deal has been made with the outside World and now common
sense has changed it; terms of engagement have have been made uncertain,
slightly destablizing the ground beneath your feet.
DON'T ROCK THE BOAT
The conservatism which protects journalists,
bureaucrats and bishops immunity from professional logistics criticism, is
rooted in establishment unwillingness to alter what it feels are fixed and
certain rules of engagement with the World. Politics and decision making is
chaotic enough without yet another anchor removed. Those trying to get the
establishment to take logistics seriously are therefore considered sources
of instablity. We all end up paying for this 'stability' by ignoring the
truth in the name of a discordant mental conformity; we are all singing out
of tune, but at least we're all singing the same notes; so the argument goes
When the underlying drive to keep deals seeps
into parts of an organization where it may not belong, quite sensible people
can be the ruin of a business. The mantra: "'It's always been done that
way' is a fear of uncertainty, which is right and proper if judging
contract performance in the light of applicable law, but can be lethal to
business health. Proclamations from journalists, bureaucrats and
bishops may seem radical, but scratch the surface, and you often find
entrenched conservativism clinging to inappropriate anchors to organize
their lives and engage with the World.
A SIMPLE CHOICE
It does take some nerve to stand up and
challenge the great and the good. Global warming, the price of oil and
the growing necessity to deal with international competition will soon
create more instablity than any challenge to the comfort blankets of
yesterday's establishment figures.
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible
competition.
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 27th of
July 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
I would love to say things are picking up, but
the only message coming through is that the situation remains the same. The
uncertainty caused by the ghastly war in the Middle East has not yet hit
confidence
WEBSITE Etc
We are
getting a few enquiries in the peak of Summer. This could be a very good
sign, because these weeks are normally very quiet. On the other hand, it
could be a new side effect of the business silly season.
The sound
experiment is going very well. Till lunchtime today, the second most
popular page on the web-site, after the home page, was the newsletter
archive, it then slipped into the third place. The old position was many
places lower, somewhere close to 'site map'. This proves the effect of a
sound broadcast, so the feature will be permanently on site. The latest
version of the News and Comment can be heard in audio at
logisticsnews.com/message27-07-06.wav It is a continuation of my old
anti-behaviourist approach, but with an additional respect for those HR
professionals who stand head and shoulders above the run of the mill. At
least the better ones will be amused by 'grandfather and the sweeties'.
NEWS AND COMMENT
AMUSING
A teacher called a few days ago. Old friends together,
we spent several hours talking about this and that. Too often, occupations
mark people; he explained how he avoided this fate. Teaching
about behaviourism, his class tended to forget Skinner who was so keen on
experiments with rats. So he tried another angle: This fellow was also
involved in the strange scheme to use pigeons to guide American bombs in the
Second World War
bfskinner arischindler thehistorynet
The idea appeared to have been possible, but it was deeply tasteless. This,
of course, tickled the children and they did not forget again. In this
way the information was not inculcated, but, rather, they actively
learnt. Children, just like the rest of us, appreciate humour and
contrast--- both of these depend on absurdity or contradiction and not on
some rigorous systematic scientific method. Humour throws a spanner in the
works of the educational debate of inculcation v drawing out what is already
in there; these techniques wrongly see them as passive. Elsewhere, modern
industry still suffers from behaviourist inspired attitudes.
UNAMUSING
A year ago, a knock-back on a tender was e-mailed from
someone newly recruited and who had not been involved in negotiations. You
may recognize the style. The original went:
=====================================================
I understand you have been speaking with my colleague
***. As he mentioned I have been appointed as the
new account manager . It hasn't been communicated largely to my old
logistics company but I anticipate that I shall on site with my new team
shortly.
As such, I
do not think we will be advertising with you just yet but would like to
remain in contact.
I would like
to subscribe to any newsletter that you produce and would appreciate it if
you could send me over the costings as outlined to my colleague for my
records.
=========================================
And deconstruction, as some might say, goes:
So, you've been speaking to my boss. Now I am
going to take the decisions. I shall be recruiting my own people so you
don't have a hope.
You will not get any business from us, but for
appearances, I'm saying I would like to keep in contact and to prove my good
intentions to my boss, send your newsletter, whatever it is. It will cost
me nothing to bin it. Send me your tender information, again to 'prove' my
good intentions. I have not looked at anything you have sent and could
easily get it from my boss, because whatever you submit, you are not going
to get any business
==========================================
As you can imagine, I was furious. Perhaps the
most insulting part of it was that the now ex-HR manager thought that this
intensely political message could not be decoded. It is well known
that promising to keep things for the file is usually a promise that they
will be instantly binned. The above note was, as the Americans would say, a
classic 'kiss-off'. But the attitude of unprofessional HR / Personnel staff
is not from their hearts, but from their training, which is based on
behaviourist psychology championed by the likes of Skinner; he of the
Pigeons.
Some months ago she found out working away from
the secure World of a logistics company personnel department demands a
different attitude, and has even had a dose of her own medicine.
OBJECTIONABLE
Humans are well beyond the animals Skinner et al
delighted in manipulating. Inculcated with behaviourist training, people
can end up using the same methods, as if they were pigeons or dogs. Sadly,
their spirit begins to conform to the view that they have of others creating
an artificial self-justification for their actions. 'The Laughing Policeman'
was a wind-up song, and how often do you seen someone from Human Resources
or Personnel make a joke or even crack a smile? Behaviourists are
delighted with success in making dogs salivate, and other animals perform
unusual tricks, but their success with humans is not always so
good Like the accountants last week, they, too, live in a
surreal World. Here the human spirit, creativity, humour, and intimate
engagement between people do not figure. And, just like the lesser
accountants, unprofessional HR staff depend on the real for the persistence
of their artificial universe
Most managers find working the necessary
administrative machinery of employment a humourless and dull affair. Making
sure the business adheres to mountains of employment regulations can be a
nightmare and demands systematic and humourless application. They dump this
on impressionable people whose spirit adapts to the task. But from time to
time you do come across HR managers who break caste. These are the real
stars; but, sadly, there are all too few in the firmament.
CARRIED AWAY
As I was working as a recruitment agent in the
late 1980s at the peak of income generation, earning over six figures, I,
too, behaved badly. I happily convinced people to take new jobs and even
managed, on one occasion, to engineer a vacancy, taking great care to adhere
to the letter of the law. The thrill of making so much money seemed to
take me over. Several marriages were broken up because of my intervention
and although many were delighted that I engineered better times for them,
the latter was all that I chose to remember until that ex-personnel manager
upset me.
Steaming with fury about that e-mail, I
gradually calmed down. Anger is usually a sign of impotence, it tends to
dissipate, once you find out and understand what really
happened. Remembering how I had behaved at the peak of my recruitment
success turned all those unprofessional HR people back into
humans, Forgiving myself, I knew the same applied to them.
SWEETIES
Sometimes we slip into thoughtless laughter. My
grandfather used to bring out a tin of sweets in the dining room with other
adults around. He shook the tin and said to the assembled children: "I
know small boys don't like sweets".
"Oh! Yes we do! Oh! Yes we do!" Chorused
the little voices.
Everyone laughed as the children had their
treats. They laughed not because he had tricked them into behaving as if
they were Skinner's pigeons... but they knew better and were laughing at the
absurdity of such an idea; and, perhaps, at a secret embarrassment of once
being little themselves
RESPECT
An old contact working as a personnel manager
tells me things have greatly improved since the 1990s and extreme adherence
to behaviourist creed is on the retreat. This is good news. My friend was
a ray of sunshine on an otherwise dull day. He's known to be one of the
best in his occupation, perhaps, because he has found a way to teach
systematically using humour and creativity to communicate with children. He
admits to some behaviourist ploys, but does not let them take control of his
teaching or his mind. It's a dreadful pity that others fail to apply
similar techniques in their dealings with adults.
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible
competition.
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 20th of
July 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
The heat is not helping. Things are much the
same as last week.
WEBSITE Etc
SOUND AND VISION
ups.com is to
test its new hybrid truck in Detroit
is an example of growing use of new
broadcasting. som.cranfield.ac.uk
uses audio and video to show what
it offers in the supply-chain field. It's taken a surprisingly long time
for this development, despite those purveying somewhat less respectable
activities have been using the same technology for several years. The
problem seems to be not the technology or cost, but humans not keeping up
with opportunities or lacking the mental flexibility / imagination to grasp
opportunities. On the other hand, it could be organizations lacking the
structure or nerve to try something new.
The latest
offering is, as usual, just an audio version of a bit of this letter.
It can be heard at logisticsnews.com/message20-07-06.wav This
one is slightly better than the some previous efforts, but it did take some
time to pull it together. Seeing houses about to fall into the sea
is a surprisingly disturbing experience, but the video will have to wait.
The weather has reduced visits to a Summer low,
but even this is up 30% from last year, when things were not quite so hot.
NEWS AND COMMENT
DOUBLE SPEAK
The EU is to promote 'green cars'
worldhighways This sort of description is
dishonest. Strictly speaking a 'green car' is one that does not pollute.
It's good to hear of less pollution, but the public shouldn't be confused
into believing cars are not the filthy things they really are. The only
truly 'green car' might be powered by Hydrogen Fusion generated electric
energy. As Hydrogen Fusion does not yet exist, the next best thing might be
atomic energy or wind and wave power. Politicians' protestations are like
children's' sand castles in the face of the power of the sea. An unholy
alliance of political expediency and the unwillingness of the electorate to
face up to an unpleasant reality has permitted this double speak. Elsewhere
in the awkward world of logistics, politicians employ other techniques to
void / avoid reality.
UNHEARD OF
royalmail.com managers are to vote on strike action
independent You know a business is
close to terminal decline when managers threaten to walk. Private industry
shareholders usually pull the plug long before desperate managers act. This
business is state owned and the government appears unable or unwilling to
deal with a disastrous and wasteful situation. A sad and faintly ridiculous
act looms. Something has gone very wrong, were it in the private sector,
it would have sunk like a stone with the banks calling in debt. However, a
convenient device has ensured accountants have not written off the business.
ON THE BRINK
At one end of a beach in S Devon is a large abandoned
house, clinging to the edge of a cliff. Clambering up a steep and dangerous
path, it was soon clear the sea was about to claim the building. It was a
sad site / sight. A once valuable and interesting building had been
transformed into a useless, dangerous heap of materials on the brink of
oblivion. The elements had punctured the fraud of a property value the
moment when the owners were forced to realize all worth had
evaporated. Gingerly edging down the path, a sad notice from better times
came into view saying, "up the steps for ices". Some wag had written over
it, "for nothing". The house was still there but the financial world had
already consigned it to oblivion.
VALUE NEEDS PEOPLE
Company status depends on how much it is valued; things
and the lives and expertise of people can be, as it were, 'evaporated' to
nothing by money people. The permission of valuation is all. Accounting
excludes what it considers invaluable and valueless things. The
accountant's vision is blinkered, the irony is that value cannot exist
without the estimation of people, who are priceless. Finance is worthless
without people, but it sometimes behaves as if it can ignore the judgement
of people. This dangerous act sees financiers fancying they can dictate
value on their own. This is quicksand
Hundreds of transport companies and their staff have been
improperly valued by accountants, unable to estimate the value of expertise
and goodwill without the reassurance of nice written contracts. As with so
many disciplines, many accountants yearn to avoid judgement and
responsibility, preferring a simple mechanistic approach. In extreme, they
appear to wish the messy business of people and goodwill were cut out of all
estimating. This attitude distinguishes time serving risk averse pen
pushers from the great accountants.
VALUATION
And yet, the basket case of
royalmail.com has not been written off or subjected to vital radical
action. Something has been done to cut costs, but the effect has been to
address a consequent illness and not the main problem. But Royalmail is
considered to exist by accountants because it is guaranteed by the state
where the same professionals would have sent a thousand transport companies
to their end. This illustrates the limits of accountants, their discipline
is partial and is more interested with safety than with economics or, for
that matter, efficiency.
Had I sauntered down that beach and seen the house
hovering, half off the cliff, still in use with washing on the line and a
jolly ice-cream stall doing brisk trade, it might have been a matter for the
nice young men to take me away until I came to my senses. The UK government
gets away with it, partly, because accountants are unwilling to admit they
prefer the surreal to the real. Royal Mail is a failed business propped up
by a government with an equally surreal view of the World. The really
unfair bit of all this is that many transport companies suffer from the
problem in reverse. Their houses, warehouses and haulage yards are well
away from the coast, but accountants all too often order the sea inland to
wipe them out, lending a strange twist to the tale of King Canute
INVENT A WORLD TO AVOID REALITY
A country run by the dictates of a surreal landscape
cannot avoid facts. The curse is that this 'realization' / surreal
world will conveniently change when facts get so obvious as to be
undeniable, such is the tortured posturing of politicians and
second-rate accountants. Great accountants should make themselves
felt before the environment and competition from the Chinese make us regret
tolerating the systemic waste of national talent, and reserves.
The abandoned house on the cliff will soon disappear, but
we still have choices; unholy alliances or accounting fiddles- for how
long, depends on how soon we stop kidding ourselves.
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible
competition.
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 13th of
July 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
Welcome to the ten new subscribers from last
week. This was a record number for the Summer period.
The news and comment section is now available in
sound at:
logisticsnews.com/message13-07-06.wav It may take some time to develop
a style suitable for reading and speech, all the same, I hope it will be of
interest.
Apart from criticising an aspect of
Deutshchepost, the news is getting pretty busy. The below is a sample from
today. This is an exception; normal editorial policy will be the rule:
================================================================
ABUSIVE USE OF A FACILITY TO ENHANCE
SECURITY?
The US is now seeking passenger details before
international flights take off
news
abs-cbnnews
This appears to be part of a trend
The way the problem of security is being handled
threatens international tension; in the UK, the feeling is that US law is
extending to the point of even over-riding UK legislation. The US
extradition of three bankers
bbc
itv
cnn
thisismoney has
caused a major debate in Parliament and many see it as a provision
originally provided to permit greater security, but now being used to extend
US power, some even suggest imperial influence, over an ally. UK
troops are fighting alongside US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The situation may have been caused by a weak, corrupt and
elementally incompetent UK Labour Government now mired in a disgraceful and
grubby scandal of selling peerages.
The failure of MG is thought by many
to have been caused by UK government interference under the then Labour
minister, Byers. That an iconic UK brand should now be owned by the Chinese
to made in the USA
link
independent
iht adds to negative sentiment
NEWS
Russian aircraft lands safely:
interfax
A GIGANTIC EXPENDITURE
The Global logistics spend is estimated at $326bn
shippingtimes... and only one
web-site truly serves Global logistics
================================================================
JOB MARKET
Things are very quiet. The Summer season has
stopped most activity. Roll on the Autumn! If you are seeking employment,
do not let up the pressure, and try not to be discouraged by this seasonal
factor; however, try to enjoy the sun rather than get too upset. (This easy
to say, I know from experience just how discouraging being out of work or
seeking work when conditions turn bad can be) The important thing is to be
prepared for when things accelerate. Don't let the b****rs get you down.
WEBSITE Etc
WHAT HITS MEAN
This has been covered before, but a recent talk
with a customer brought out a better way of explaining this deliberate
confusion caused by sales people trying to manipulate people into buying web
space.
When your machine downloads a page it first
downloads the page without the images. When this is finished the page code
downloaded instructs your machine to go to other files to retrieve the
images. These then fill the spaces on the page you have downloaded. For
instance on our home page within the code is an instruction to download
http://www.logisticsnews.com/globe%20map.gif If you click on this, the
image will come up without our home page. Each file, including the page
file, counts as a hit. Thus, one unique visit to our home page counts as a
hit on the page file, plus a hit on the logo file, plus a hit on the
files of each of our advertisers. If you have many advertisers, or are
cunning and fill the pages with empty gifs, you can generate a huge hit
figure from a small number of visits.
If you ask for hits, a seller of web space may
quote a perfectly honest huge hit figure, but the dishonesty is that the
person is likely to know this is not what the buyer intends Most buyers
mean 'visits' when they ask for 'hits'. Sellers, in effect, lie by
omission, by playing on this confusion. Don't let them get away with it.
When they quote hits ask them what the difference is between hits and unique
visits, they will either prevaricate or come clean. If the latter, they may
be worth doing business with.
NEWS AND COMMENT
GONE QUIET
A change has occurred since the
deutschepost.de takeover of
exel.com. Exel used to send regular
e-mails about new contracts and developments, now these have virtually dried
up. A couple of causes spring to mind. The company is adjusting to its new
ownership before the news flow starts up again, or a public relations scale
problem has taken a grip. Organizations hold precious any news which might
effect their status, and large ones are often highly protective of their
brands. With size, the tendency is to require the same proportionate level
of management seniority to decide in these matters. A small company can
easily use a director to authorize a news release, a company such as
Deutschepost might find other things for its directors to do. Where
small businesses are itching to get the news out, the largest ones can find
they are unable to communicate because they either cannot, will not, or are
unaware of the need, to authorize more junior people to handle their brand.
But something more subtle may be at work.
TRUE LOGISTICS STATUS
The branding approach to this take-over appears to have
mistaken logistics as a sub-activity rather than a major category such as
Food, Manufacturing or Finance. unilever.com,
a master of sales and marketing, does not put its brand on Walls
Cornettos. People would be utterly thrown if this approach applied yet
further across to Dove Shampoo or other Unilever products.
Rockwood tried to establish a transport empire in the
late 1980s taking over distribution, forwarding and contract hire and
parcels companies. They then abolished the old names, and tried to create a
series of brands with Rockwood and the activity tacked onto the end. The
plan came to nothing, except that it managed to end several well known
names. In the early mid 1990s, the head of Securicor was asked if taking
over Russell Davies, a road haulage company moving containers, would present
challenges. He said containers were little more than large parcels, so
there should be no problem.
LOGISTICS CATEGORIES
Anyone who has worked as a parcels driver and has driven
container lorries will know what nonsense this is. Standing close to a
skeleton trailer as the massive weight of a container settles on the chassis
is elementally different to bundling parcels into the back of a van. Sales
are different, driver control different, vehicles different, traffic
operation different, dangers different, paperwork different, security is
different, and so on. Logistics contains many different products;
attempting to force many into one brand can have strange effects on
organizations and customers.
LUNCHTIME CHAOS
On one of my Summer days off, I visited a pub in Ludlow.
New management and a new bar staff were learning the ropes including those
mental allowances required to make the computerized till system work
properly. I ordered a beer and lunch, but at a critical moment, two people
thought they were taking part of the order and both entered the information
on different terminals. A sort of chaos developed as each had worked the
system to get around its flaws to make it operate and, then, that compromise
took a grip as it reacted with the other compromise making correction a
major exercise. It took five minutes to sort out the mess because I had
inadvertently thrown them leaving them temporarily in the grip of the
machine, unable to serve customers. A simple error interacted with a
business system that seemed to multiply confusion dangerously close to
chaos. Business systems depending on human manipulation to work can hold a
secret and dangerous vulnerability; likewise, an entire business can be
thrown by a seemingly innocuous matter such as a branding category error.
A BIG BLURR
The
dhl.com / Exel
matter is of particular interest. Post Offices are widespread and those
with an overwhelming market presence tend to have a very different view of
public relations and branding. Where companies compete in a more brutal
fashion, getting out the news of success to a focused market is
important. It seems
deutschepost.de
has mistaken the nature of Logistics expecting
dhl.com to cover a diverse range of activity; forwarding is as different
a product to courier and contract land logistics as ice-cream is to shampoo
is to household cleaners. Unilever carefully maintains its brands and does
not bother ice-cream eaters with a brand associated with shampoo. Had they
tried this, both markets would be thrown much as the pub in Ludlow was
temporary paralyzed. Bigger is not better with branding, relevant focus and
spread is.
Then again, I doubt we shall ever breathless children at
an ice-cream van asking for unilevers
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible
competition.
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 6th of July 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
Two or more specialist agencies appear to have
gone, but, as yet, all the older established brands are still trading.
There's no doubt hard times are here, but the spread of broadband coupled
with new forms of internet advertising might have encouraged more DIY in HR
departments. If this is the case, I do not believe this tinkering will last
for long, as Personnel staff are tend to be weak at maintaining candidate
data-bases and do not have the specific logistics industry experience that a
time served specialist agency operator offers. But more serious innovations
may be on the way.
It is true that the internet has damaged other
businesses such as the agents for less famous entertainers and many events
businesses, because many smaller suppliers now have their own web-sites so
reducing the need for middleman contacts and their marketing muscle. This
trend will, in due course, radically alter established wholesale and
procurement markets
The apparent alteration in the recruitment
market may be more due to this short term phenomenon than to serious
underlying industrial / commercial change. However, there are signs that
the way the pre-internet recruitment market operated is changing which will
offer opportunities for flexible businesses, and will be fatal for those
that do not change fast enough.
WEBSITE Etc
AN EXPERIMENT
The sound experiment is continuing with a
version of part of this newsletter on the home page. Just click on the
speaker. It is usually put up a day or so after this is sent to you, when
we get the time to do the recording but is published early today. This was
something that needed some practice, it was not as easy to do as I thought
http://www.logisticsnews.com/message06-07-06.wav
Meanwhile, visits to the site from UK government
bodies are now similar to those from the EU commission... and far below
visits from US military servers. What on Earth's going on? For all the
talk of Blair about the internet, the reality is that the UK government
either forbids use or just wishes the internet would go away. It does seem
keen on government web sites, but its wish for control seems to exclude
public employees use of a new method of communication now used widely across
the World.
The curse of the middle aged man with his head
in the sand is no monopoly of the UK government. Sadly, we now get
virtually no visits from
ciltuk.org.uk which
seems to lack interest in what it should be doing. As an ex full Member of
the Chartered Institute of Transport, before the merger that lost all
primary records of my Examination results, and an ex-member of the Institute
of Logistics, I am disappointed. Thousands of junior logistics manager
members desperately need support and due status, they deserve better.
NEWS AND COMMENT
networkrail has asked for
another huge sum of money:
telegraph
guardian
bbc
How long can the UK afford paying vast sums into
this state owned business? Do managers perform best when they are not
expected to make money and feel they have access to vast quantities of cash?
If a company makes a profit, there's nothing stopping a
rule insisting 100% reinvestment in the business. The 'not for profit' idea
betrays yesterday's futile political hang-ups, rather than a practical
approach to a monumental problem. The danger of taking away the need to
make a profit is the creation of a 'not for responsibility' company.
Byers, the Labour minister who engineered the end of Railtrack, approved the
'not for profit' mantra, a tried tested political formula disguised with new
words; but this may have had its day.
Many years ago I upset a university lecturer. In those
days, (the mid '70s), we were discussing "the logical
property of the word good as applied to Oxford sewage effluent and bacon
sandwiches"; as people were being blown to bits in Birmingham. Drawing this
to her attention did not go down well; in the ensuing exchange, we were told
the sentences dished out to the Guildford Four were because, on the grounds
of utility, someone had to be blamed, regardless of innocence, to defuse a
growing and dangerous anti-Irish anger. I could not believe this and we had
a row. I was later proven to be spectacularly wrong. The Guildford four
and Birmingham Six bbc innocent bbc and
were as innocent as I was of blowing people up.
I felt bad about this. But another clash with that
lecturer revealed something else. On the matter of business utility, she
said there had been a newspaper article about an everlasting light bulb that
was not being sold because it would wreck the market for traditional
lights. Again I piped up. Some months later, a clipping was left for me,
it turned out the bulb was an early version of the low energy white
discharge lights now commonly available, but it was not everlasting, and is
still not quite a replacement for the more friendly less robust old
fashioned types.
She was right about the bombers. Prejudice can be very
positive effects, she right for the wrong reasons, or perhaps, from
incomplete reasoning or prejudice, but the light bulb affair illustrated the
flaws in such methods. 27 years on, there is still no such thing as an
everlasting light. The vast majority of humanity gets by this way, which
may explain why we depend on the quality of today's politicians because they
are in tune, however much they are disliked, with the way we live. None of
us can get buy without bluffing from time to time, but some rely on it more
than others.
Business doesn't have an electorate, but it does
have more than its fair share of managers relying on being right for the
wrong reasons. A lucky person can keep up a roll for years, some manage to
bluff their way through their entire working life, but many come to a
cropper taking others down with them. A good Managing Director will have a
nose for the bluffers, especially for those who really believe they are
right for the right reasons. There's no harm in profiting from the
bluffers, as long as you are prepared to head off a huge mistake; chancers
need to be treated differently to those who get results using
sound judgement and method from sound foundations. Byers career came to a
halt as he applied a time served political formula in the creation of Networkrail;
his luck melted away
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible
competition.
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 22nd of
June 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
A Summer demand reduction has hit, rather as it
once did regularly in the mid to late 1980s when patterns seemed to follow
the seasons like clockwork. Christmas, quiet; Spring, busy; Summer, asleep;
and, Autumn, almost as busy as Spring. With the economic recession of the
early 1990s, Black Wednesday etc: these old predictable ways ended. I hope
this quiet period is only a part of a trend and not signal to another dose
of rough economic times.
WEBSITE Etc
AN EXPERIMENT
As a first step we have introduced sound
which can be downloaded just like
bbc The first
experiment is running at the top of the home page; a direct link is: logisticsnews.com/message.wav
We hope to offer this simple add-on to banner
advertisers who will only need, just as I have done, to buy a reasonable
microphone for under £30 and use some free software from the internet. In
this case, nch.com.au/wavepad/masters.html
was used. It came with simple instructions, and after about an hour I
managed to record and edit simple messages. A recent BBC programme has
something interesting to say about the general state of the internet:
inbusiness.ram We can also host video but cannot yet edit or create
our own
The future may see companies making their own
videos in place of press releases, but I think PR companies will be the
first to advance in this area. It is noticeable that warehouse and
transport companies with Marine businesses are the major entries on the What
They Think page bothering to issue general information and industry
intelligence.
Meanwhile, the usual Summer reduction is so
great that actual visits have reduced from last month. This is typical for
June, the important thing is to maintain a year-on-year visit growth. The
expected confusion between hits and visits continues, but internet ad buyers
also seem to misunderstand of the significance of click-throughs
BUYERS' MINDSET
Visit and click throughs numbers are very
different from magazine circulation figures. The quality of viewers of a
web site depends on what they can get out of it, otherwise they would not
use it. That is why we spend 80% of our time on content,
leaving a the other 20% for sales, administration, accounting etc:, A click
is a deliberate act of interest rather than the scan of an eye across an
advertisement. Internet readership deliberately searches out, rather than
passively receives.; this 'circulation' cannot go stale, unlike the
data-bases of traditional operations. Many a trade magazine is glanced at
and put straight into the bin.
The number of positive results per click through
figure can be vastly higher than the number per magazine
circulation figure. Results are what matters but the smokescreen of
mindset from another time and that seeming inability or unwillingness to
learn are a real problem. Sometimes, only a shock will bring about change.
Just as people were beginning to understand the
difference between hits and visits, this new problem arises. It can be
difficult selling to people set on importing rules of the printed world into
cyberspace. Just as web site designers have had to learn a thing or two, so
the buyers need to understand the internet is not another version of what
they have been doing all along, but is very different, more complex and will
be far more influential
NEWS AND COMMENT
PERSPECTIVE
A visit to friends jolted me awake. Their son,
all of twelve years old, was taking videos, editing them and putting them up
on a web-site. He seemed to effortlessly grasp what was, only ten years ago
or so, something that we thought might happen, but when, was only to be
guessed at. Adding insult to injury, I sat down at his machine and showed
some of my work, secretly hoping he could give me an idea or two,
but later overheard him talking to his mother saying, with distinct
surprise, that I seemed to know more than him. A double edged compliment, I
had just about kept up, but he had assumed he was dealing with a fully
paid-up member of the fax and typewriter generation
On the way home I bought some kit to catch up with this
'average prodigy'. The problem was not getting the stuff but, rather, that
I had to order my mind to do it. Some of the work was by trial and error.
I did not know if a sound file could be dragged and dropped onto the
external web, the bit which people go to when looking at the web-site. It
did work, but some care was necessary.
ERROR
An experience with an electrical device put a shot across
my bows. A small v shaped scar on my hand, a calling card of high
voltage, now reminds me that trial and error without skill and judgement, is
blundering. Valve circuits can be quite tolerant of wiring errors, just as
long as you don't put the high tension through the heaters. They often give
you a second or two to disconnect before serious damage occurs. On the
other hand, solid state is not so forgiving; it's very easy to wreck a
device in milliseconds. Discussion and argument can have similar patterns.
Trial and error can be very successful, as long as the
error bit manages to shift the ground to add to what was not brought to the
meeting. You can be certain there will be some only too grateful that
someone else made the mistake for them . This gratitude often
takes the form using that mistake to look on the problem in better
focus. The solution to a problem usually appears when it is fully
understood and is sharply in focus. Adjusting a pair of binoculars to your
eye, you wind in and out until just the right spot is found. Rarely do you
wind straight to the spot first time.
BEWARE HIGHLY ORDERED MEETINGS
Trial and error frustrates those wanting a
swift 'efficient' result, pre-prepared and constructively agreed or
re-enforced by contributions from others. Theirs is a solid state,
pre-prepared, behind-the-scenes world where meetings work more quickly and
error is less tolerable. Engagement with what is to be discussed, or with
others is not required. This place appears constructive but the
creative activity is restricted to a select few elsewhere. It can be a sign
of a faulty political working environment when the important decisions are
dished up to groups of people appearing to meet to discuss, but who are
really only there to ratify. In extreme, ordered meetings confirm
obedience. Companies can pay a high price for a failure to use the minds
and the information possessed of their staff
Trial and error is preferable, but my hand reminds
me getting them to work is another matter.
So there was that small boy showing me that I had tuned
off my mind to new developments. Although surprised for a moment, even
feeling a slight sense of irritation, he forced me back into focus. I was
fortunate. Had he been someone unwilling to patronize, I should have been
dismissed as quickly as a solid state circuit can burn up when incorrectly
connected.
It would be interesting to know what meetings are like
at Airbus.
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible
competition.
9 Church Street Leominster HR6 8NE
UK 0044 (0)15688 610865
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 8th of June 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
The market remains flat, but is not at the base
levels of 1992/3.
I WANT TO BE A RECRUITMENT AGENT
Two people have asked about becoming logistics
recruitment agents; this is usually symptom of hard times. They suggested
they could offer a high quality service as a USP to enter the market, but
however good you try to be, the recruitment market tends to dictate what it
gets. Yes, you should always interview candidates put forward. However, if
you have someone who looks 100% on paper and you know your rival could well
have just received the same cv, and you know the employer will see
them, no questions asked, you will only lose if you insist on
interviewing. Meanwhile, your rival hits the button on their keyboard and
leaves you standing. We used to call such candidates MITB- money in the
bank. You lose 'em if you don't use 'em
ENDS JUSTIFIES THE MEANS
Employers want a vacancy filled with the right
person at speed and they are usually be willing to compromise 'good
practice' to get a result. It is in their interest as much as the agent's to
cut corners. This leaves agents in a difficult situation. If the terms of
competition demand you have to behave unprofessionally, deviating from doing
what is necessary is plain bad business. Sadly, this creates the situation
where bad business is good business. Of course, if things go wrong, then
some people are only too happy to blame 'unprofessional agents', when they
have been responsible for the cause of their complaint. Good HR managers
would never behave this way.
Good recruitment is about contacts, judgement,
imagination and excellent information management. When conducted
professionally it is a pleasant occupation, however, all to often bad
business is necessary. When you get good at seeing through people, dealing
with poor quality recruiting managers can be a very unpleasant; compared to
others of outstanding quality, from execrable to admirable, can lend a
dispiriting contrast. Other things need to be weighted before trying out
recruitment.
ECONOMIES, COSTS AND DATA
The economies of small scale, once an attraction
to the occupation, have been watered down. I started with a typewriter,
phone, biro, pad of paper some envelopes and stamps. Now you need a decent
computer with excellent data handling capacity. With higher entry costs,
the flood of data is ten times what it once was.
IF YOU MUST
The general advice to hopefuls is not to
underestimate the complexity of the logistics recruitment market. Rather
than fight the terms of competition, get to know and cater for them, whilst
adding a little extra skill in one or two key areas. The best time to start
is just as an economic dip is turning positive. This can create enough
momentum to prosper and become strong enough to weather the next economic
down-turn. If you misjudge and start before the end of a down-turn or leave
it too late, you may not survive. The right thing at the wrong time is as
useless as the wrong thing at the right time. Timing is as crucial as doing
it right. As with most of business you do need a bit of luck.
WEBSITE Etc
We are considering launching a global logistics
video news service. This is will be a big step, the problem will be
available time. As usual, costs will be kept ultra-low.
NEWS AND COMMENT
LESSONS TO BE LEARNED
The New Zealand air regulator seems to
have adopted the UK politicians' way of saying they were at fault but
acting otherwise
nzherald
Observers might conclude they say they are to blame but do not
act as if they mean what the say. They are
in danger of becoming doubly responsible; for their incompetence and,
then, for deliberate misinformation. Liars also misinform.
Whenever some disaster occurs, especially
one involving 'incompetence', the shout goes up about 'lessons to be
learned' to deflect responsibility in the name of 'being positive'.
This brand of humbug is special because it uses the good principle of
positive attitude to wrap up what is the most inexcusable- an attempt at
power without responsibility.
It is blatantly obvious that if mistakes have been
made, they should not be repeated. 'Lessons to be learned' reveals a
wish to be unaccountable. 'Lessons not to be learned' reveals part of
the dissembly; by implication, the knowing of adults
(that's you and me) is reduced to childishness by the sheer
blatancy of the attempt. Unpleasant attitudes often reveal
themselves in the connotation of jargon.
BULL
Modern business jargon weeklygripe
has its attractions. It can make you appear to know more than you do.
It has a pleasant circular or self-justifying nature that adds security
from being proved wrong. It usefully cuts out those who will not use
its tortured vocabulary and grammar. It has the delightful effect of
holding responsibility at bay. With what triumph wretched graduate
trainees are pounced on for bu******ting, and yet this now appears to be
the last refuge of incompetent politicians and public servants. In the
glare of publicity and growing discontent, this sanctuary will not last
for long. When something really bad happens, these bu******ers are
clever enough to use other methods to shift responsibility; cue:
'MEA CULPA' wikipedia
.
FAULTLESSNESS
Organizations constantly fight the tendency to try to
escape responsibility, the best of them ensure enduring opposition to
employees attempting to evade responsibility. A well set up
company will systematically return (pin) responsibility
on to those to be held to account. There is no relativism here, some
things go wrong because people were at fault either through incompetence
(innocent), omission (passive) or deliberate action
(active).
THE DAMAGE IS THE MATTER
You can be sure the preferred fault is incompetence,
anything to avoid the sin of omission or deliberate act. In addition
there's a strange belief that an allegation of incompetence needs less
proof than the other possibilities. Just as in 'lessons to be learnt',
so admission of incompetence, without evidence of anything worse, is
a very useful loop-hole to avoid responsibility. But, as far as an
organization is concerned, incompetence is as potentially damaging as
omission or deliberate misconduct and it should be treated accordingly.
Poor stock control could be as serious as backing a lorry onto the bay
an helping yourself to a pallet of goodies. Moral and
ethical matters are for the wider World and if need be should be
addressed there in parallel
TO BE TAUGHT
People shirking responsibility pass it over to others
who in turn try to cancel 'lessons to be learned' with 'lessons to
be taught'. This constant affair lends a subtle nature to the work of a
good employee, for these tendencies exist in organizations at every
level.
An irony of writing this sort of thing is that,
barring really nasty people, everyone will think they're the good guys;
but there will be some, at least, who will know only too well of
the endless business of moving responsibility back to where it
belongs. The amount of effort involved is, possibly, the most
serious drag on business productivity. When every avenue is exhausted,
a final desperate act is to try to deflect attention... in a
wider Political world this can involve the use of flags guardian or the
dangerous use of flags, and history tells of things far worse.
Fortunately, these devices have no place in the logistics business
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible competition.
P.S.
In the Hereford Times, The
Bluecoats School is advertising for a 'Successmaker
Assistant' It would be funny if it did not
extend beyond parody. Most worrying is
that they are unaware of how stupid they sound.
Reform of the UK public sector will need
some very radical action.
9 Church Street Leominster HR6 8NE
UK 0044 (0)15688 610865
Logistics News International
The first Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 1st of June 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO
ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear All,
JOB MARKET
It took long enough for the laughable IIP
scheme to be found out:
personneltoday
It is encouraging to see more vacancies posted
by the agents this week, perhaps things are looking a little better.
WEBSITE Etc
The archives are becoming one of the most
popular destinations on the web-site so new pages have been
introduced, splitting the press releases into different modes. At the same
time the master archive is being maintained. The idea is to make it easier
to find what you want, and to prepare for the time when press releases
become so numerous each mode will have to be on a dedicated page. The good
thing about this will be to release advertising space and create more focus
for advertisers.
These few visitors from yesterday are a fraction
of the total number and a miniscule part of monthly readership.
They illustrate a growing, high quality readership even in Bank Holiday /
Memorial day week:
Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (5
visits)
CNCGROUP Beijing province network. CN (5
visits)
Close stock company "Ochakovo". RU (2
visits)
Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant. US,MD (2
visits)
Ameritech. US,TX
Linde Refrigeration & Retail Systems
Baxter Healthcare Corporation. US,IL
Thetford Corporation. US,MI (2
visits)
GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. US,NJ
Jamba Juice. US,CA
Dawnay Day Lander Ltd. GB
Oberthur Card Systems. GB
Office Angels Ltd. GB
General Services Administration. US,DC
Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. GB
Performance Systems International Inc. US,VA
Impact Business Solutions Inc. US,OR
PR Newswire. US,NJ
Technical Chamber of Greece. GR
GROUPE CAT.
FR (2 visits)
Federal Express Corporation. US,TN
Exel Logistics, Inc. US,OH (Now DHL)
United Parcel Service. US,NJ
TNT LOGISTICS NORTH AMERICA, INC. US,FL
Heriot-Watt University. GB
University of Leipzig. DE
Regents College. GB
The George Brown College of Applied Arts and
Technolo. CA,ON
NEWS AND COMMENT
DISAPPOINTMENT
Attending a talk given by a retired teacher
recently nearly landed me in deep water. He was good presenter, but the
company on my table proved even more interesting and a bit rowdy. As
the event went on, he turned and fixed us with a beady eye. School
teachers often have the ability to sense anarchy or disorderly spirits
at a great distance. I froze for a second, half expecting a piece of
chalk or board duster to come hurtling my way. As I relaxed, so a
forlorn look of disappointment crossed his face replacing the projectile
with something far more potent.
The slightest trace of anarchy is something to be
held in check or, ideally, expelled from the classroom. All too often,
both teachers and managers fill the void with a distrust of ideas
preferring inculcation. Discipline is no simple matter and out of
control school children and students with 'ideas' need to be reigned
in. Free spirits have no place in their world. But it is possible to
maintain control and permit freedom; this skill marks out the bad teacher from the
good and the incompetent manager from the respected.
PRIVILEGE
In the late ‘70s, a
student had free run of the Library of the Unitarian College,
Manchester. This powerful religious group controlled the largest
industrial city in the World for decades, but in latter days had
dwindled. The library reflected earlier times. Undergraduates are
usually forbidden access to early editions of Locke, Hobbes, Descartes,
Hegel, Newton and other great philosophers; yet here they were, and
there was no librarian.
Grasping the
opportunity, he took out many books at a time and piling them up, cross
referred one to the other. It was a privileged, deeply private
experience which normally comes only by permission of powerful
connections or great wealth. Lecturers at the University of Manchester
were not so happy when confronted with a ‘know all’ student, full of
obscure quotations from texts that even they would have to make special
arrangements to handle and would never have been allowed to remove.
Peering into the
computer screen, the modern search engines have utterly changed the
information landscape; thanks to academic institutions, those texts are
now publicly available. Tens of thousands of information gatekeepers
are out of work, their offices redundant as the eighteenth toll houses
still seen on English roads. Information and idea flow have vastly
improved.
LAWYERS
AND OLD MEDIA
A development can bring
information to people in a focussed way using one of the greatest
freedoms of the World Wide Web. Ironically, until recently, this freedom
was thought to be a threat, with some wishing it an offence to deep link
without permission. Old media did not like the idea of change.
Lawyers, some sensing another money making opportunity, even advised
that written authorisation might be necessary. Had they been correct,
the internet would have been crippled with even the likes of Google and
Yahoo facing litigation. wired wired wired wired wired -these
can be a little slow
HOW
Publishing techniques
vary. With a list of deep links to relevant press release pages and
news report pages, it is a simple matter to open around 100 of these at
a time and select any relevant deep links in the pages displayed.
(Opera and Explorer browsers used in conjunction are good for this
purpose). These can copied, pasted down and minimised with a short
content description on an internal web. After formatting, the external
web can be up-dated. A simple web authoring package works well, so no
IT professionals, (more gatekeepers) are needed.
Legal fears still haunt
printed publishing, preventing it escaping from the box it has partly
created for itself. But the threat has largely receded, opening up a
huge opportunity to use the freedom presented by deep linking. A new
publishing is being created. Entry costs are low and competition from
traditional media is still hamstrung
That student was
extraordinarily lucky to stumble into that unloved library. It took 25
years for him to fully appreciate this. The internet will change the
history of information and ideas. As they are at the foundations of
civilization, a tidal wave is approaching that will alter virtually
every perspective in years, and not the decades and centuries from the
days of words on paper. The world of Logistics is responding
faster, taking a lead over still desperately conservative activities
such as printed publishing and public relations. The internet might
lend a good reputation to an industry that, until now, was considered
best left unmentioned in polite, ignorant company.
It took a time before the momentum of Alan
Turing’s algorithms, also essential to the internet, was fully
realised. Tim Berners-Lee’s invention may not take so long. Things
aren't going to get any easier for teachers and managers
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible competition.
9 Church Street
Leominster HR6 8NE UK 0044
(0)15688 610865
Logistics News International
The
first Global Brand in Logistics
Publishing
Thursday
18th of May 2006
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO ANYONE
WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Dear
All,
JOB
MARKET
Three specialists have reported
conditions somewhere between the
effect of the Far East economic
fall several years ago and
September 11th. In the UK,
additional damage has been done
by the gross
hypocritical incompetence of the
political class. Most of it
appears to be related to
confidence rather than actual
economic pain, but there are
indications that small
business is in recession, which
fact is not reported because the
big businesses have been
insulated so far. The UK
government may pay the price
of thinking big business is the
answer without realizing the
ship will sink without small
business support. In effect,
confidence has hit demand from
big businesses and recession may
have done the same for smaller
operations.
The
real danger is inflation caused
by external factors such as the
price of energy and World
currency realignment, and
internal ones such as higher
taxation, unfunded pensions
payments and the cost of a
bloated wasteful public sector,
itself encumbered with
unaffordable pensions
commitments. These factors are
beginning to frighten
investors. Agents are having to
work hard to make a living
WEBSITE Etc
More
encouraging enquiries have come
in, but landing them is
still the problem. It
seems younger staff get keen,
but still meet negativity from
inexperienced (in
this respect) older
ones. On the other hand, it's
good to see several are still
pending where last year's count
was nil. A recent enquiry may
well see the resurrection of the
business politics project; this
had been consigned to history,
but now, it seems events are
catching up
NEWS
AND COMMENT
IRRESPONSIBILITY
The attraction of putting
out government schemes to
private finance is similar
to the allure of contracting
out
('outsourcing' in business
speak). The trick
is to put off the
bill, leaving the taxpayer
to pay far more, years after
your retirement, and a
businessman can shrug off or
those irritating problems
demanding experience and
know-how, to nice 'little
people' willing to sweat
over such minutiae on his
behalf
SIMPLICITY AND PERPLEXITY
Occams
Razor
wikipedia skepdic
skepticreport holds
great attraction in the
world of Science. The
tendency is to prefer
apparently simple formulae,
that is to minimise numbers
of assumptions, to model how
things work in the world.
Some of the most basic laws
of school physics such as V
= IR or F =MA illustrate the
practical worth of simple
explanations doubling up as
useful devices. But such
practical simplicity
dissolves in the sub-atomic
and the greater universe, at
the extremes. Worse, what
we think is practical may
mask perplexing aspects.
How come five oranges minus
three does not
count? Because you have
taken away three does not
mean there are less than
five, except that three are
further away. Why can't
speed go negative? Why do
some people believe that
numbers exist as much as
those oranges? etc: This
principle should be
carefully applied in
science, elsewhere,
additional caution is
needed.
ABSURDITY AND FREEDOM
The attraction of dumping
today's liabilities on
taxpayers, decades on, or
things you can't manage onto
other companies is magnified
because of the sheer
simplicity, blatancy, as
some would have it, of the
devices available. Avarice
and ambition conveniently
fog the future where
others may have to pick up
the pieces. The fatal flaw
at the heart of their
assumptions is in you and
me. Our minds are not
simple places, their
sophistication is at once
the source of our freedom
and freedom is not logical
or predictable. We can
think with contradictions
and inconsistencies
un-resolved. Where a
computer would throw up its
chips and dump its ram, we
can happily put disturbing
stuff to one side to get on
with other matters; we can
even include
unresolved matters in our
thoughts using judgement to
bridge the gap. Where our
brain obeys the laws
of science our mind is free;
one causes the other. This
is not simple; absurdity is
at the root of our freedom
Relying on seemingly simple
ways to deal with
embarrassing public finance
problems or attempting to
dump the business
complexity on others but
hang on to the profit is
a fragile and
shallow method. A few steps
into the future can easily
leave simplistic politicians
and businessmen out of their
depth in a tidal wave of
unpredicted complexity and
unpredictable freedom
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
(literally)
An older manager can amaze a
trainee by getting things
right in an inexplicable
way. Sometimes it's
impossible to explain why
things work, perhaps this is
because that manager's
sophistication was enough to
meet the strangeness of the
World and the same
strangeness in the heads of
those around. Management is
not a science and it's no
simple trick; there's much
more to it than that
Regards,
Charles Cawley
Editor
Logistics
News has
no
credible
competition.
9 Church
Street
Leominster
HR6 8NE
UK 0044
(0)15688
610865
Logistics
News
International
The
first
Global
Brand in
Logistics
Publishing
Thursday
11th of
May 2006
PLEASE
PASS
THIS ON
TO
ANYONE
WHO
MIGHT BE
INTERESTED
Dear New
subscribers,
Thank you for your interest. If you have time, any feedback to feefo would be greatly appreciated. We are forbidden information about who leaves feedback under feefo rules, so this is entirely voluntary. Please note the de-subscription arrangements at the end of the message.
This week's letter now follows. The comment is a bit UK orientated this week but I do hope the general theme will be of interest:
JOB
MARKET
Things
are not
brisk as
an
average
year,
with
some
agents
reporting
much
less
business.
However
it seems
some are
doing
better
than
others
but none
appear
to be
saying
all's
well.
The
recent
crumbling
of the
political
classes
had done
some
damage
to
confidence
which
appears
to have
hit this
very
sensitive
sector.
The good
news is
that
such
emotional
reactions
are
normally
followed
a catch
up
period
when the
real
demand
proves
it is
still
there
and jobs
still
need to
be
filled.
WEBSITE
Etc
This
letter
has been
reconstructed
afresh
instead
of just
pasting
in new
items
onto the
previous
one.
Someone
on
feefo.org
said it
was
coming
through
in a
mess.
I know
this was
not
happening
to
everyone,
but suspecting
some
dodgy
code caused
the
problem,
I hope
this
gets to
you in
better
shape.
If you
are a
new
subscriber,
any
feedback
would be
greatly
appreciated.
THOUGHT
BOSSES
Two
publishers
have
contacted
me over
the last
few
months
asking
if I
would
write
for
companies
wishing
to be
known as
'thought
leaders in
Logistics'.
The pay
was not
enough,
so they
went
elsewhere.
However,
responding
to this
a new
category
has been
introduced
to the
Press
Release
section
called
'Industry
development
thought'.
As the
internet
develops,
companies
will be
keen to
by-pass
the
trade
press
and
publish
their
own
advertorial,
or even
plain
useful
and
interesting
articles,
for
marketing
purposes.
We have
great
hopes
for this
section.
So far,
there
are few
entries,
and they
will
linger
for
several
days
before
being
shunted
off the
archives,
unlike
the
press
releases
which
last for
only 48
hours on
the home
page.
Visitors
have
been
varied' with
strong
interest
from the
US
Military,
the
usual
band of
lawyers
seeking
for
something
to be
outraged
about,
several
corporate
rating
agencies
and
some lost
souls from
the main
UK
political
parties.
The
loyal
band of
manufacturers,
retailers,
banks /
analysts,
third
party
logistics
companies,
airlines,
shipping
and
academic
establishments
are
still
continuing
to
increase their
numbers.
Some strange
patterns
have not
improved.
INTER
WHAT?
We
still get
far more
visitors
from
Middle
Eastern
defence
and
governmental
departments
than
from
their
European
counterparts.
For all
the UK
government
talk of
using
the
internet,
the
reality
is
that British
government rates
somewhat
below
the UAE
and is
utterly
out of
the race
compared
to the
USA.
Such
facts
exhibit
a
dangerous
incompetence
and, at
best, rigid
and
unresponsive management.
The good
news is
that UK
private
industry,
fast
being
caught
up by
Mainland
European
industry,
does not
share
this
gross
inadequacy.
NEWS AND
COMMENT
CONNOTATION
foxtons,
an
estate
agent
in
London,
has
on its
windows:
'People,
not
property'.
I
don't
know
what
is
most
insulting
about
this
politico speak.
Do
they
think
we'll
believe
they
care
more
about
people
than
the
bottom
line?
Perhaps
they
don't
believe
they're
selling
property,
may-be
they're
selling
people?
Do
they
think we're that
stupid? Devices
of
this
type do
work,
but
when
found
out,
they
have
a
nasty
habit
of transforming
disappointment
into
permanent
mental
sourness.
Tempting
fate
for
short
term
gain, putting
out
what
some
might
consider
a
lie,
is a
plain
and
gross
mistake.
It
is one
of
the
best
ways of
destroying a
corporate
reputation.
MINDSET
SET
UP
A
logistics
company
might
say
'Solutions,
not
transport'.
Some
advertise
transport
and
warehousing
jobs
without
mentioning
those
oh-so-dirty
words
because
businesses try
to
get
around
peoples'
prejudices by
meeting
personal
dishonesty
or
blindness
in
kind.
In
this
strange
shadow
dance,
they
hope
two
minuses
can
make
a
plus
or
at
least
will
create
confidence
by the
suggestion
of a
shared
caste
of
mind.
(mindset?).
It
comes
as a
shock
that
even
mentioning
such
matters
could
have
you
physically
ejected
from
some
places.
Such
is prejudice
that,
in
the
right-on
1960s,
a film
director
was
ejected
from
a
dinner
party when
he
had
the
temerity
to
suggest that
the
remake
of
'Zero
de
Conduite'artificial-eye wikipedia geocities,
'If',
was
poor
in
comparison. Listening
problems are not unique
to
Golf
Club
members'
bars.
A
BIT
COMPLICATED
The
simple use
of
reason
alone
is
not
enough
to
get
people
to
listen,
even
if
applied
with
a
dollop
of
sensitivity
and
tact.
Emotion,
caste
prejudice
and
plain
confusion
often
convinces
businesses
and
politicians
to
try
the
minus
minus
method.
We
arrive
at a
pile
of
idiotic
expressions
'thinking
out
of
the
box'
and
'singing
from
the
same
song
sheet'
whilst
delivering
greater
accessibility
for
progressive and
inclusive projects. This
stuff
has
been
so
abused
it
now
carries
the
taint
of
humbug.
Some
managers
and
politicians
don't make
the
effort, instead they
try bullying
to
get
through
bbc
This
can
work,
but
the
accompanying
fear
creates
a
robotic
response
from
once
thoughtful
people
to
the
point
that
they
give
up
judgement
based
on
what
they
see
and
hear,
preferring
safety
in
blind
impotent
obedience
to
bullies. Those
so
cowed
lose
all
creativity
and,
as
idea
/
information
flow
hits
the
skids,
lose
the
ability
to
support
the organization
on
which
the
bullies
depend. A
system
(which
tolerates
bullies) carries
within 'the
seeds
of its
own
destruction' (Slightly
different
from marx and
his
latter-day
followers
such
as
Marcuse
et
al)
The
art
of
communicating
with
obstinate,
cluttered minds, and
I
include
my
own, is
not
for
amateurs.
The
likes of
Foxtons
and all
those
prissy
logistics
companies
trying
to get
round /
get into
messy
minds, know
there's
a problem.
Their
attempts,
though
primitive,
are
vastly
preferable
to the
disgrace
of bullying
businessmen
and
thuggish
politicians;
but
they tend
to
fail if
used for
too
long. What's
left in
the New
Labour
brand?
Regards,
Charles
Cawley
Editor
Logistics News has no credible competition.
9
Church
Street,
Leominster,
Herefordshire
HR6
8NE
U.K.
0044
(0)1568
610865
Logistics News International
The First Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 4th of May 2006 Best viewed in rich text
Please
pass
this
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to
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who
might
be
interested
Dear
All
JOB
MARKET
The number
of
vacancies
has
risen
slightly,
but
senior
positions have fallen
back
a
little.
Two
agents
have
noted
a
fallback
in business around
Easter
and beyond.
WEBSITE ETC:
MARKETING
Trawling through the internet, I have come across many more contact details than there were in the past, indicating people are beginning to realize those offering irresistible Viagra deals will find them out, regardless of whether they publish their e-mail or not. All it takes is for a recipient of a message from you to drop their guard for a moment and their address book finds itself where it should not be. This is, perhaps, the way most of the pills and other messages find their way into peoples' computers.
Meanwhile chicago-consulting.com sent us this item: pdflink Although a bit indigestible, it illustrates growing sophistication in the Chinese logistics market.
DEVELOPING INTERNET
debenhams has admitted its web site is not up to scratch independent A major company saying this in a key formal report marks a radical change from the marginal regard a few years ago. It seems some senior managers have realized their careers could suffer if they ignore the internet; many more may have to learn the hard way.
There will be no reports update tomorrow
NEWS AND COMMENT
IGNORANCE?
whitehouse.gov
It
appears
George
Bush
himself
believes
hydrogen
powered
vehicles
will
lead to
less
pollution.
He's
plain
wrong.
Others
claim
hydrogen
is an
alternative
to hydrocarbons
wired
They are
plain
wrong.
The
energy
market
is
interlinked,
hydrogen
is not a
source
fuel, it
needs
energy
to be
produced.
The
production
of this
energy
causes
pollution
and
consumes
vast
amounts
of
source
energy. The
hydrogen
bandwagon
appears
to be
rolling
on
regardless
of
facts,
but it
will be
interesting
to see
what
happens
when it
hits the
brick
wall of
reality...
equally
interesting,
will be
the
explanations
from
those
who sold
us this
pup
INEXPERIENCE
Some
people
seem
incapable
of doing
a clean
deal. First time
house sellers notoriously
try out
stunts
which
usually
back-fire,
but more
unexpectedly,
rich
people
with
inherited
wealth
are
often
equally
incapable
of a
straight
deal.
Lack of
experience
is
partly
to
blame.
Although wealth
permits travel
around
the
World
and
opens
doors,
these
people
are
often unaware
of the
necessities
faced by
the rest
of
humanity; they have
not
gone beyond the
front
door in
their
mental
landscape. Experience
bridges
the gap
between
the
World
beyond
that
door and
the
vastness
of the
mental
landscape
full of
contradictions,
half
memories,
and the
daily
chaos of
half
digested
observation,
instruction
and
gossip.
The notion
that
failing
to take
a
risk can
be the
greatest
risk is
beyond
them. In addition,
they were
often forbidden
from
taking
decisions
by those
who left
them
their
wealth
up to
the time
death removed
their
influence.
Inexperience
and lack
of
responsibility leaves
them all
at sea
Such inexperience
can leave
the rest
of us
perplexed,
even
quite
angry. That
it
exists
at
all can cause the
strongest
feeling.
The
natural
character
of
people
can be
equally
surprizing
FOCUSSED
AVARICE
Some
time
ago, an
inheritance
came up
in
London.
The
family
had
arranged
a method
to
distribute
the
house
contents
by
taking
turns to
pick
items. One
of the
four
children
had
spent
hundreds
of hours
looking
up and
checking
the
value of
every
item
over
the previous
five
years.
Such
systematic
greed
combined,
with an
almost
strategic
preparation,
left the
others
breathless
with
shock
SMALL
MINDED
AMBITION
Others
work their
way up
companies
by doing
'the
right
thing'
and
majoring
on
keeping
their
heads
down
whilst
sweetening
those
who have
power
over
their
careers.
They do
their
very
best to
avoid
risk
but satisfy
ambition and,
sadly,
this
route
has
proved
highly
successful
for
thousands
on
thousands
of senior
managers. In
avoiding decisions they are
unaccustomed
to risk
and,
along
with the
inexperienced
rich,
cannot
cut
clean
deals. Meanwhile,
those who
have stuck
their
neck
out and
are free
of small
mindness are
too often trampled
under the
feet of
these ignoble
souls.
Situations
can
be just
as
strange
FUN
ON
THE
NIGHT
TRUNK
A
friend
working
in
the
Middle
East
some
years
ago
told
of
how
the
night
trunk
drivers,
third
world
nationals
as
they
were
then
called,
were
sometimes
stopped
by
police
for
mutually pleasing
desert
trysts. This
highly
motivated
certain
staff and
rotas
were
arranged
accordingly. The worst
punishment
reserved
for
someone
'who
had
it
coming',
was
assignment
to
that
night
trunk
normally
worked
by happier
drivers.
Conditions
were
harsh
AS BAD
TO
IGNORE
THE GOOD
In
any event,
a manager
should
should
be ready
not to
be
shocked
into the
wrong
action,
or
worse,
into
inaction.
Systematic
greed
under-pinning
an
almost
strategic
approach
appears
to be
utterly
unlikely...
but it
does
exist
and is
quite
common.
Such
focus,
combined
with
smallness
of mind
applied
over
years is
hard to
grasp,
but it
must not
be
ignored.
The way
some
people
just
cannot
decide
or do a
clean
deal can
also be
unexpected;
we are
often
prejudiced
to
assume
extremes
cannot
happen, to
the
point
that
we refuse
to countenace
them.
The key
is to be
able to
see what
is in
front of
you; do
not
assume
this is
a call
to seek
out
unplesantness;
things can
work the
other
way were
positive
matters
are
equally
ignored.
It is as
offensive
to be
blind to
the good
people
offer as
it is to
let
others
misbehave
WORSE
THAN
HOT AIR
The idea
of
selling
hydrogen
as a
wonder
fuel
without
arranging
an easy
way of
getting
the
stuff is
pretty
unlikely,
but it
has
arrived
and has
attracted
a huge
bandwagon
and
thousands
of
ignorant
'hurray'
articles
in the
trade
and
national
papers.
Cynics
may say
George
is fully
aware of
the myth
of
hydrogen
and that
he is
using it
as a fig
leaf with
no
intention
of
touching
the
interests
of big
oil.
The
backroom
boys
may intend
this,
but
whether
he's
aware of
any
such thing
is
another
matter.
Those
selling this
wonder
dream seem
to have
conned
George
Bush,
greed or
ambition has got
the
better
of
them. For
George
it's
not ignorance;
more
likely, he
just
can't
see it
Regards,
Charles
Cawley
9 Church Street, Leominster HR6 8NE 01568 610865 and 01568 620266
9 Church Street, Leominster, Herefordshire HR6 8NE U.K. 0044 (0)1568 610865
Logistics News International
The First Global Brand in Logistics Publishing
Thursday 20th April 2006 Best viewed in rich text
Please pass this on to anyone who might be interested
Dear All
JOB MARKET
The one or two of our customers that have been slower at paying their invoices have sped up. This is a sure fire sign something positive is happening out there. Meanwhile vacancy numbers posted have risen on the majority of sites and no discernible reduction has happened on the others. This is encouraging.
WEBSITE ETC:
MARKETING
Another campaign has started to raise viewer numbers, and, of course, to get more advertising. The start of the year has seen three new advertisers: tdg-global.com lloydslistevents.com and a banner vacancy posting by an employer frost.com link: The first is Global, the second international and the third is a new form of advertising. Things are beginning to develop. The new campaign will major on the strap: 'The First Global Brand in Logistics Publishing'.
Meanwhile, I am trying out a slightly modified format to this newsletter. Over the next few weeks it is hoped it will develop further.
NEWS AND COMMENT
HOW WE LAUGHED
I remember reading a wonder book of the future in the late 1950s. It featured atomic powered steam engines and an electric World where power and all its benefits would cost pennies. All this hope came crashing down within a decade, as the nasty problems of radiation seeped out. Atomic steam engine dreams, and the later British Rail flying saucer fantasy went to the scrap yard, along with the last of the veteran coal fired locomotives. From the early '80s great hopes arose for a major revival of UK rail-freight and canal transport; these, too, have been a damp squib
I felt let down, and still do.
LESS PROMINENT
But the other half of this story is not mentioned so often. In that time, people feared a Third World War, but this did not happen. Many believed there would be a Communist uprising, but that turned out a half-baked student fantasy. In the early 1970s many were convinced a second ice age was on the way, now it's Global warming. Unrealised fears fuel damaging conservatism which is made worse by a failure to recognize their influence. We do not have atomic powered steam engines and fail to live in glassfibre pods living off stuff from coming out of toothpaste tubes wearing ghastly futuristic clothing, but our World is not as good as it could be, because those now unspoken fears blinkered peoples' imaginations.
PREPARATION
Many students in the '70s positioned themselves to be ready for the major changes they thought were coming. Tens of thousands from well-off homes, including many now Labour MPs, pranced around calling themselves 'workers'. They felt obliged, because a tenet of Marxism is that only workers have a pure understanding whilst the bourgeois are irreparably tainted from their class background. Some students even dressed up in dungarees and little workers' caps. Many even thought a violent revolution was 'necessary' with thousands, or millions of deaths. . In those days, it was politically correct to believe that 'workers' could not be racist, and that only white people could be racists. Anyone voicing an opinion who was not a 'worker' or a 'faux worker' was not only wrong but was not to be listened to.
That view of the future is in the same historical dustbin along with the atomic steam engines, railway flying saucers and the rest. But as now, anyone stepping outside the bounds of the mindless imprisonment of political correction, risks the deliberate deafness- the ignorance- of others.
People trying to run businesses in the '60s and '70s were understandably concerned. But there were compensations.
METAMORPHOSIS
Graduates arrived on their doorsteps in ever greater numbers and happily converted from 'worker' status to obedient ambitious company servants. Few lingered, because they longed to be bosses all along. Some kept to politics to turn into a Blair or Brown, but the rest followed their ambition, simply by swapping 'workers of the world dungarees', for management trainee business suits. Contrary to popular opinion, they did not sell out, but only adapted the way to achieve their ambition to be bosses. They transformed, but the underlying ambition was unchanged. It would be naïf to forget this transformation from system wrecker to system servant. Many are now running large companies.
This unedifying thought should be kept in mind when dealing with such creatures. They are driven, at best, by self-centredness, and the worst, by pure selfishness. Company servants can be just as unpleasant as self-made people. The former are servants working a system, the latter have made the best use of opportunities to make money but have, at least, had to be productive on the way, although the means may have been less than admirable.
RIDICULE AND CONVENIENT FORGETFULNESS
The truth of this disappointment is complex. Atomic steam engines do not thunder up and down the railways, but electric engines powered by atomic powered steam turbine electric generators do. The Communist utopia is no longer even considered a utopia, but we do have a million regulations and, for better or worse, things have generally improved from forty years ago. Selectively laughing at failed dreams is to fail to learn from them, and those conveniently forgotten. Those escaping ridicule may, indeed, be the more significant because they linger in the gauche and embarrassing past of people now in senior management and positions of power
It's bad enough being let down, but far worse, to be let down by other peoples' second-hand dreams. Naïf canal lovers and railway train fantasists should update their ideas and make them practical, instead of continually repeating worn out quasi-moralistic chants. However hypocritical those graduate trainees, this is one thing they did not need teaching. It would do no harm to root around in the past to better understand what's going, only, try not to laugh at what you dig up
Regards,
Charles Cawley
9 Church Street, Leominster HR6 8NE 01568 610865 and 01568 620266
Logistics News International
For great value advertising-- a real alternative to the tired trade press with unique national and global reach
Thursday 07 April 2006 Best viewed in rich text
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Dear All
JOB MARKET
I have had no time to ring around this week. However job numbers have risen... which either indicates more time wasters, or that the market is a bit better.
WEBSITE ETC:
STILL NO COMPETITION
The current page content arrangement may change as the press release page gets more and more busy. We might have dedicated pages to the modes featuring news and press releases on the same page. This will need more work, so I will need to find a system around this.
Recent phone calls to bt.com about broadband were met with a barrage of sense. Have they, at last, pulled themselves together about this?
We are trying out our first vacancy banner for a consultant on the home page. This is an internet only employer advertisement . We hope it will be the first of many.
NEWS AND COMMENT
DELIBERATE
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IS IMPOSSIBLE
networkrail.com says punctuality is at a limit guardian This sort of remark is typical of a state controlled corporation. Could you imagine a private business saying it had reached the peak of perfection in any respect? Network Rail is spending £bns; if it fails to continue to improve, it will join nhs.uk as an example of waste and mismanagement caused by political incompetence.
FANTASY
Now it's dreaming of selling shares: independent thisismoney This business has vast debts, is notoriously open to the vagaries of politics and was created by Stephen Byers; too often, large organizations believe their own illusions
HANDBAG
Perfection is rare, but not impossible. Anyone attempting putting on The Importance of Being Earnest will know only too well the long shadow of Dame Margaret Rutherford's handbag epinions Others feel Victor Meldrew's 'I don't believe it' is close to perfection in its own way. Jacqueline du Pres playing Elgar's Chello Concherto is yet another. A thousand film remakes disappoint, with virtually none living up to the originals. But none of these is from the World of business.
EXPERIENCE IS ONLY FOR JUNIORS
Organizations wrapped up in themselves start to believe their own propaganda. The curse of loss of face stops constant reassessment and revision to keep in step with change. Instead, 'party line' becomes the rule because those who formed the original policies and targets cannot bear to admit they need adjustment. Just as in Politics, it is seen as weakness to change your mind, in effect, an admission that learnt from experience is considered a sign of incompetence, unreliability and, even, of mendacity.
DYNAMIC
The solution is to emphasise underlying targets. In private business this is easier: in most cases they are corporate self-preservation and profit. They are the static part of a dynamic, with the active being to change the way the business operates to keep in tune with constant alterations in the circumstances of the world. The means change but the ends always stay the same.
However, for state controlled operations the profit bit is not so critical for senior managers, but the wish for self preservation is just as strong. In this case, self preservation may find pleasing political masters' not so practical aspirations might do more for security than working efficiently and turning a coin. Corporate self-preservation and political appeasement is the static and the active is to change the way the business operates to keep in tune with the changes in the political world disguised by a smokescreen of systemic propaganda.
PERFECT MISTAKE
The laughable claim that Network Rail has reached the limits of punctuality reveals just how much it has reverted to the good old days of British Rail. The remark might be true, although I doubt it, but more damagingly, that it was said speaks volumes. Network rail is no example of operating perfection. The conceit or delusion behind management daring to say such things is, if you were one of a million hapless commuters, stark to the point of arrogance. By implication it says: 'Don't complain about punctuality, because it's not going to get you anywhere, because we / things are never going to get any better. There's the clue. Management has become so tortured it confuses 'things' with themselves as if they have lost their will or a mind of their own. They have become creatures of political circumstance rather than in step and, sometimes, in charge of events.
The bitter disappointment of leaving the cinema after seeing a dismal remake of a much loved classic may match a can't do, won't do, it's impossible, excuse from a 'perfect' rail business. Day to day experience of such failure must cause hugely greater upset. Some years ago, marksandspencers found out the cost of public board room disputes as it showed it had lost control of management information at the highest level; in several minds, it appeared to be out of its mind. Since then, doubtless, there have been rows, but none have surfaced and the company has recovered. British (Network) Rail needs to sort out its PR PDF, we may hear of no disputes, but what it does say implies it, too, is dangerously close to la la land.
Regards,
Charles Cawley
9 Church Street, Leominster HR6 8NE 01568 610865 and 01568 620266
Logistics News International
For great value advertising-- a real alternative to the tired trade press with unique national and global reach
Thursday 30 March 2006 Best viewed in rich text
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Dear All
JOB MARKET
Some movement is evident, but shipping vacancies have fallen back. However there's some revival in demand for sales people indicating either that companies have cut their sales efforts too drastically or that they think things are getting better.
WEBSITE ETC:
BETTER THAN LOGISTICS FOCUS #2
We have tried out feefo.org's right to reply following someone leaving feedback not so keen on the first posting referring to Logistics Focus. The original message: http://feefo.org/feefo/viewfeedback.jsp?id=6733&return=36 speaks volumes. Thank you to all those who have left feedback. I have asked Feefo to stop using the list now
Visit numbers have stabilized after the recent campaigns, but another one will be starting in a couple of weeks time. Enquiries are still up and new advertisers seem content. This is good stuff
Etc:
We plan to move office by the end of Summer this year to do another project whilst running the web-site. Broadband has freed us to work virtually anywhere... it is already having an impact on housing in the countryside
NEWS AND COMMENT
DELIBERATE
ENGINEERED CONFUSION
Confusing protective instincts with protectionism is dangerous, in that it allies safety with nationalism, to the extent of almost excluding criticism of xenophobia. The cunning line makes free trade supporters feel they tempt fate in voicing their opinions. It appears the whole thing is based on an unwillingness to face up to World competition, hoping crude protectionism will solve problems caused at home. The sight of consultants deliberately telling clients what they want to hear, whatever the waste, is common enough; that some politicians do the same is a strong possibility. On the other hand, the sheer momentum of history might make such actions inevitable. There are times when it is unwise to stand against the tide.
JUST AS DAMAGING
Some things in life that do not follow rules, the art is to spot them and stand well back.
FUNNY FOR SOME
Entertainment TV programs about management are usually only amusing to those who have not faced the reality they reflect. The likes of Sugar, or the despicable boss of the Office are ghastly to behold if you've had a dose of the real thing. Likewise, the silly publicity behind milliondollarwebpage.com also diverts attention from what's really going on.
Sugar is particularly sad because he seems to need someone who will put up with what is tantamount to abusive humiliation bbc . If he had to face life lower down the ladder today, he would be associated with some of the worst management creatures. However, perhaps he comes off the best compared to the motley collection of desperate contestants willing to jump through hoops and put up with his belittling. Sugar resembles the worst form of swaggering shop steward from the late 1970s now, mercifully, only an unpleasant memory.
AN EXCUSE TO DO NOTHING
It seems mainstream media are intent on reflecting illusions to entertain. The unpleasant people exposed should have long been consigned to history. Office politics is a very unfunny because it frequently blights entire working lives. It takes the pleasure out of work and reduces people to the status of unpleasant business necessities. Some will say this railing is hopeless because history will steamroller over the few brave souls who stand up and try to stop its progress. Such advice is often applied to the wrong situations. Sometimes, it is wise to stand back, but to apply this approach incorrectly is the source of a vast and negative conservatism, which does immense damage.
DOING NOTHING
Last week, we were searching for a new project to move from the Leominster office where we have perfected the building, ready for sale, to do the same thing elsewhere. We travelled to the middle of Wales to see a one time coaching inn, untouched for a hundred years. The rain poured down and the house was dripping inside and out. An elderly estate agent appeared, unlocked the door and we wandered around the building which was close to a Dickensian ruin, complete with wire bells, water pumps, plunge bath and many reminders of days before the motor-car. We left shaken.
The history of the building was so strong it was clear that it would not take kindly to diversion; to modernization. It would have been offensive to do anything but try to return the place to as it was. The agent seemed to know this and, a kind man, appeared to hint as much in his manner. He had shown nearly 100 people around the inn, and standing in the damp, his image cut a picture to my mind I shall never forget. It would have been a serious error to try to alter what would not happily change.
IN COMPANIES AND PEOPLE
Companies in a similarly derelict state should be avoided. However attractive their offerings, history can 'come for you' and spite all attempts to drive it another way. People like Alan Sugar can be the same. There would be no point in trying to do much with this intelligent, driven man beyond avoiding working for him but being amused by his company, for we were as much amused and grateful for the privilege of meeting history at that inn.
KNOWING WHEN TO DO SOMETHING
Some things should be left to go their own sweet way. However much the figures add up, the sums should not always determine choices. It's a pity that the 'apprentices' did not understand this. On the other hand, one of them has since done rather well, perhaps history can make up for its behaviour to those whom it takes a liking. Adding up a heaps of numbers is one part of business, a feel for history is another of many other factors. It is important to be very careful when choosing to stand back, to avoid causing more blight than ever created by history.
The problem is that not everyone has a feel for history, and too many use it as an excuse to revert to what they think is the failsafe option: do nothing. I think we were right to leave the inn to the damp and the rain, but I know it is wrong to do nothing about bad management and its tricks.
Regards,
Charles Cawley
9 Church Street, Leominster HR6 8NE 01568 610865 and 01568 620266
Logistics News International
For great value advertising-- a real alternative to the tired trade press with unique national and global reach
Thursday 16 March 2006 Best viewed in rich text
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Dear All
JOB MARKET
Two agents report a new surge in business, which can't be bad. rpcrecruit 