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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 