Paul sorts out fault reporting

Sometimes, after drivers returned from a job their cars were checked over for faults, so as to ensure that their next journey would be as trouble-free as possible. Often no problem was found; sometimes a minor fault was turned up; occasionally an unsuspected and rather serious issue came to light. The technicians who carried out these inspections did them at random times and the drivers never knew when their vehicles would be checked. Moreover, the technicians then issued a report that was typed out and sent to the driver, often weeks late. If this slip of paper went astray there was no back up mechanism for informing the driver of the outcome. And this outcome may have been the uncovering of a serious problem which, if not fixed urgently, could lead to a disaster further down the line.

The drivers had repeatedly petitioned Paul to at least introduce a system whereby they would be notified if an inspection had been carried out on their vehicle but he had always refused saying that it was their reponsibility to check.

"But how can we, Paul?" they cried, "if we don't even know that a check has been carried out?"

But Paul remained obstinate.

"Sometimes people request a check for our vehicles and we don't even know about it but we're still held responsible for the result."

But Paul remained obstinate.

"Sometimes a report might arrive and we are on leave for a two or three weeks. Who is supposed to act on it then?"

But Paul remained obstinate.

"Surely if one of the technicians finds a serious fault they are morally bound to do something about it - not just issue a paper report and forget about it."

But Paul remained obstinate.

So one of the drivers suggested a simple system whereby a technician, when finding a serious fault, simply sent a very brief email to one of the drivers' team administrators - a desk that was covered 52 weeks a year.

"We can't do that," said Paul. The technicians agreed with him.

"But why not?" persisted the drivers. "It would solve the problem at a stroke."

"Because it is the responsibility of the driver to look up the report," explained Paul. The drivers felt that they were going round in circles with someone who did not really grasp the issue.

Paul held a focus group meeting. None of the drivers was invited. Then he announced his marvellous plan.

"We will employ someone to whom all abnormal reports from the technicians go and they will then ring the responsible driver."

"But Paul," they cried. "We've already explained to you that is not going to work because sometimes they will be ringing a driver who has no connection with the report and sometime we will be on leave. Do you then want a serious fault like a leaking fuel pipe to wait until we get back from holiday? Not to mention that your plan costs money and ours is cost neutral. Why can't we use our plan? We've canvassed all the other drivers and they feel the same way as they are all concerned that the current system is unsafe."

Paul became exasperated. "All right - we'll hold a meeting to discuss the various options. Next Monday at 2pm? Come and present a concept paper on how your plan might work."

The driver who was proposing this plan said: "I have a driving job at that time that I cannot cancel - after all, customers come first. Can we hold it later that afternoon?"

Later that day he received an email from Paul. "We'll go ahead with the meeting a 2pm and feedback the results to you."

"But what's the point of having the meeting if I'm not there to explain things to you?" The driver was in despair.

But answer came there none.

Paul's austerity measures

The late summer and much of the autumn had passed off without Paul having done anything much more in the way of incomprehensible management. The drivers were surprised for he could usually be relied upon to baffle them with some odd decision or initiative at least once a week. They wondered if he had, so to speak, nothing left to offer. Perhaps he had shot his bolt?

But they were wrong. He had apparently just been having a short rest before embarking on a spree of spectacular managerial incompetence the like of which they had not seen before.

Ever since the General Election the whole country had been plunged into a programme of saving in an effort to try redress the enormous debts that had been accrued by banks who, guided by several of Paul's cousins, had gambled heavily on selling expensive houses to underpaid Alabama labourers - a gamble that had mysteriously and spectacularly backfired. The result was that all public sector pay had been frozen, although sadly inflation had not. All the workers in the National Hire Service had not seen their pay increase at all for nearly two years. And it was with this as a background that Paul thought it fit to award himself and his five executive directors pay rises of between 7 to 13%. The local press heavily criticised him. His personal share of the bounty was an extra £20,000 a year. As was pointed out, this was more than the salary of some of the clerical staff he had been plotting to sack earlier in the year in his so-called Customer Service Improvment Exercise.

Having spent tens of thousands of pounds on this deeply unpopular initiative and continually urged staff to consider voluntary redundancy (presumably to save himself the aggravation of firing them), the drivers were surprised to see a small item hidden in the company's website. It seemed that the original target of a loss of 107 posts had been revised down to a mere 6.7. Whilst pleased that the majority of their secretaries would now keep their jobs, the drivers wondered how the original calculation could have been so spectacularly wrong. They felt that if ever they would have got some important maths wrong by a factor of over 15, then they would be facing some serious questions. Not so Paul.

"On re-examining the accounts we found an extra £2 million," was all the explanation he volunteered when pressed.

"But Paul," countered the drivers, "we thought that these job losses were a by-product of the administrative restructuring that was to improve the customer's experience. How is it that finding extra money suddenly means that these people can keep their jobs? It almost looks as though the point of the exercise was to save money in the first place."

Paul didn't answer, and because the drivers didn't want him to change his mind yet again, they remained silent too. Paul had been taught this management tactic very early on in his career and had often employed it to good effect.:

1. Take a situation that may or may not be a problem.
2. Turn it into a big problem.
3. Suggest a draconian solution.
4. Weather the storm.
5. Propose more lenient solution.
6. Garner the ensuing praise.

After all, it's what Sir Humphrey would have done.

Paul slices the cake

The summer was drawing to a close and many of the under-managers were returning from their holidays. It did not seem to matter if they were away at the same time as each other but the drivers had to stagger their holidays to ensure several of them were always around.

Now that most people were back Paul set about sending some administrative emails - these had been sadly or mercifully (depending on one's point of view) absent over the previous month and he felt he needed to introduce some changes. If only for changes sake.

So the drivers were not too surprised to find a message in their Inboxes one morning informing them of changes to the areas of responsibility of the Main Administrative Task Reorganising Operational Notetakers. Few of the drivers knew what it was these people did anyway and they certainly did not see them around the company's shop floor very often. It was therefore news to them that they had 'areas of responsibility' at all and still quite mystifying as to what exactly was their role.

Paul however decreed:

From the beginning of the month the Main Administrative Task Reorganising Operational Notetaker previously assigned to the Refuelling areas will take over responsibility for the Washer Section and the one for the Job Booking Centre will now be in charge of Single Colour Parking. The roles for supervising the Cleaning Section with extra responsibility for the Clean Below the Ankle policy will swap with the previous role of overseeing the compulsory in-house training programme.

The drivers looked at all this and wondered. What on earth was the point?

"Hey, Paul!" they wanted to shout. "If you slice a cake a different way does it get any bigger?"

But Paul wasn't listening. He was counting all the extra income he was getting from the 125% price rise in the car parking fares that had quietly come into effect that month.

Paul seeks innovation

Paul's company internal budget management was a mess. All the individual departments were required to keep their accounts based on the amount of notional money that came in. No real money ever changed hands and moreover, the system assumed that all the departments operated entirely independently, without interacting with each other. Nothing could have been further from the truth as every driver, washer and refueller knew - but Paul did not.

On one sunny morning during the sultry late summer therefore, Paul sent an email around to the staff in the Division of Unhired Cars - they were responsible for most of the emergency work that did not involve actual breakdowns needing stripping down of the engines - inviting them to take part in a competition:

Due to deficiencies in performance there is a current overspend in the projected annual budget for your division. We need to find more cost savings urgently and you are encouraged to submit your ideas to me within the next three weeks. The person with the best - and the most - ideas will win a prize.

It was not specified what the prize might be.

Most of the drivers were rather put out by this. 'Aren't we working hard enough?' they wondered.

One of them asked: 'Paul, this little toy town economy of yours in the company - it doesn't make any sense. On the one hand you are exhorting us to work harder, attract more work, take on more jobs. Now you want us to reduce what we do, cut output, make savings. Have your left and right hands even met?'

Paul, naturally, ignored this.

One of the drivers had an idea. It was an old established custom that a worker wanting help from someone else within the company would scribble an outline of their problem on a little card and drop this off in an old box in a central office. From there it would be collected, passed to the addressee and action would hopefully ensue. The irony of the anachronistic nature of this system in an otherwise almost completely computerised workplace had gone largely unnoticed.

Sometimes the cards would get lost. Other times they went to the wrong person and days could go by waiting for the delivery to go to the correct person, during which time most of the work on the project in question would more or less stop. No one seemed to question why a simple telephone call or an email would not suffice, especially as lately the system was open to a fair amount of abuse as even junior fuel pump attendants could write a card asking for a quite senior driver to come and look at a fuel gauge, when perhaps this was not always necessary.

'And if you also wanted to record all this activity, Paul,' said the driver, 'then why not introduce an electronic system? The cards don't record anything as mostly they are torn up after the relevant advice has been given. It would be a much more reliable system, fully accountable and save days of waiting around. Other National Hire Service centres do it already. Think of all the time savings.'

'I'd have to invest in more IT,' countered Paul.

'Yes, but think of all the time wasted currently while people wait for others to come and advise and the job stalls. Saving that would surely pay for itself very soon.'

'Hmm. Hard to quantify though,' said Paul.

'Oh, I have quantifiable savings too,' replied the driver. 'Take a walk round the place any day of the week and ask anyone who is carrying a clipboard what on earth they are doing. If they aren't contributing anything useful to what goes on here - sack them.'

'You mean introduce an extended programme of compulsory redundancies amongst the managerial staff?' mused Paul.

'Same thing,' sighed the driver walking off, confident that neither of his ideas would ever see fruition.

Paul sorts out some staff disharmony

Some of the administrative staff had not been seeing eye to eye for some time. The office was something of a no-go area for the drivers lest they be embroiled in another round of 'she-said-this-to-me' and the amount of time they had spent counselling the various parties was beginning to add up.

No one could even remember who, how or what had started this maelstrom of ill-will and different drivers had at various times done their best to pour oil on the troubled waters, but to no avail. Things had got so bad that people were now taking time off with stress - a sure sign that the downward spiral was in full flow.

Up until then Paul had not been too concerned with the situation as the work was, one way or another, being done. But as soon as it became clear to him that he was paying money for people to be away, he took notice. He acted swiftly.

First he arranged a meeting with all the affected administrative staff. There it became clear to him that the central issue was the relationship between one person in particular and the various others. Allegations and counter-allegations were flung about like confetti and he too found it hard to untangle the whole. He decided that simply to move the one person into a different office and let the rest get on with things seemed the most practical solution. The drivers were delighted and the workers who were to be left behind in the office were very happy with this plan. It would, they thought, solve everything as they all worked quite well together.

A couple of weeks passed where nothing happened and the staff were starting to become a bit restless, wondering if they had been forgotten. One of the drivers rang Paul to enquire what was happening.

"I'm arranging a mediation session," was the reply.

"What? Why? I thought we had a good plan that kept everyone happy?" queried the driver.

"I've drafted in an advice team from the Human Resources department and the Training section and they feel that some sessions of facilitated common ground finding would be useful."

"And how long is that going to take? The atmosphere in that office is awful. If you're not careful more will go on sick leave. None of them enjoys coming to work anymore."

"Well," replied Paul. "Obviously many of the mediation facilitation staff are away on their summer holiday right now but as soon as they're back..."

"Don't you understand the urgency here, Paul? Why change a perfectly good plan that could have been enacted straight away?" The driver thought awhile. "It wouldn't by any chance be a tactic to get people to resign? Only a couple of weeks ago you were telling us you needed to sack 107 staff..."

"We're not sacking anyone!" screamed Paul. " There will simply be some compulsory redundancies. Anyway, were going to try mediation and that's that."

"You do realise that you're taking a big responsibility in doing this. If it doesn't work it is highly likely that there will be a disruption in service."

"We are merely advising," retorted Paul. "We don't take responsibility for anything." And he stomped off.

Paul gives the staff helpful information

There had been nothing like it before, even in the memory of the oldest driver. It was as though the population had undergone a collective Jekyll to Hyde conversion. In multiple cities across the country riots were breaking out each evening and the number of cars that were being burned meant that the National Hire Service was on high alert for more work. The drivers looked aghast at the images nightly displayed on their TV screens and hoped that they would not be caught up in the mayhem.

Having said this, the city where Paul's branch sat had remained trouble free. One upturned wheeliebin at the corner of the road - the sole product of one disenchanted youth's brief protest - had been the only casualty. Everyone wanted that to be the only act of vandalism in their city.

And thus it was that the drivers were not a little alarmed one afternoon as Paul ventured forth out of his office visiting all the work areas accompanied by his Main Administrative Task Reorganising Operational Notetaker - a squat, Batrachian woman of about fifty named Gwenda Water-Baths, whose understanding of the drivers' work was less even than Paul's.

"There are rumours of civil disobedience in the city this afternoon," was the word they spread. "We're here to exhort you to be cautious on your way home."

"What do you mean 'cautious'?" asked one driver. "Don't walk into a riot? Give us some credit."

Paul and Gwenda ignored this and continued: "You need to plan how to get in tomorrow in light of these disturbances."

"Eh? How? Are you going to lay on armoured buses or something? Either we can come in or we can't. There's not much we can do about it if the whole place is ablaze and full of rioters."

Paul and Gwenda were silent.

"Where did you hear this information anyway?" asked one driver, who had hitherto not spoken.

"Er, we heard a rumour," they said lamely.

"I only ask because there's a well respected local journalist on the Daily Record who has posted a message on Twitter to the effect that he has just driven around the whole city and has not seen anything in the way of riots anywhere. I would have thought that you would have checked your facts before going round being alarmist, especially when you have no useful advice to offer with it anyway."

Paul and Gwenda remained silent. They hadn't thought of checking their facts.

They started slinking away.

"Hey, Paul!" shouted another as the deflated pair reached the door. "Did you see the article showing that this branch of the National Hire Centre is the most expensive to park at in the whole country? Oh no, you wouldn't have given that you're not aware of the local press."

Paul and Gwenda turned the corner and disappeared from view.

Paul improves efficiency (again)

It was high summer. The heavy, fetid heat seeped into every room except Paul's, where the air conditioning was on maximum. Many of the offices were empty as this was the holiday season and dozens of the drivers had escaped to the beach for a week or two of recuperation from their recent excesses of work. One of the drivers was off sick as the long hours finally took their toll and the skeleton staff that remained could just about cover the work. The languid atmosphere clogged the whole place like syrup.

And so it was with not a little surprise that the remaining drivers read an email inviting them to a consultation and a launch of new initiative to improve customer services. Which was it, they wondered - the start of a consultation or the launch of a new way of working? It couldn't be both, could it?

Paul stood at the lectern, a minion having opened the inevitable PowerPoint presentation for him. "Do you think we'll need more seats?" he queried. "No - four each should be fine," quipped someone from the back.

At five sharp he began.

"We have been conducting a survey of practice to improve the booking process for jobs. Customer feedback shows that this is area where we can improve. It appears that different departments are using varying practices in arranging appointments for their drivers."

"Well obviously, Paul," the drivers chorused. "Booking tasks for a bulldozer is rather different than in the limousine section, isn't it?"

Paul ignored this and continued.

"We have discovered that streamlining the service will lead to better efficiency and cost savings. For example, some of the secretaries will now be known as Pathway Facilitator Operatives and take on more of the role of the booking paperwork. Other staff may also be deployed cross-boundary into these posts. It will aid and enhance career development opportunities. In this fashion we estimate that we can lose 107 posts and still achieve better results."

"You mean that by renaming each job with a fancy title you can fool people into believing that they have had a promotion, all the while filling them largely with people of a lower pay grade - thus saving you more money," shouted one.

"Hang on, Paul. You're going to sack 107 staff at a time when you are rearranging the core administration of the service? That sounds rather risky," queried another.

Paul was livid.

"We aren't sacking anyone," he exploded. "That is inflammatory language which shall not be used. After a period of consultation, natural wastage and relocation as well as some voluntary redundancies there will simply be some compulsory redundancies."

"What's the difference?" they asked.

Paul forebore to answer.

The drivers were very angry. In the first place this wasn't so much a consultation as the presentation of a done deal. And secondly:

"Isn't it true that you just wanted to cut wage costs and thus dreamt up this phoney redesign as a Trojan horse for them, hoping that in the morass of detail about customer service improvement programmes no one would notice that you were planning to reduce the workforce all along?"

Paul forebore to answer.

Paul makes a snap decision

The drivers were working flat out. Even so the work was building up - especially, they noticed, the really urgent work. Some of the longer term, routine jobs they could postpone for a while but some needed to be done pretty much straight away. However things had got to a stage where these urgent jobs were so frequent that they were displacing the routine work indefinitely and that was not good for the image of the company.

The drivers had got together to work out a way through this peak in work that had come about partly because of the holiday season when several were away. Doing some extra work on Saturday mornings seemed to be the only option in he short term, even though they recognised that carrying this on for any length of time would not be good for their collective health. However, in the interests of keeping things moving smoothly many were prepared to make this sacrifice.

They conferred with their booking clerk, who arranged their lists of job, and she confirmed that this was possible. There were sufficient car washers and fuel pump attendants to staff these extra sessions of work.

So they emailed Paul explaining the situation and asking him to authorise the scheme. They hoped for a quick response as Saturday was not that far away and plans needed to be made for setting up the various jobs. The customers needed to be notified.

Thy waited for a reply. And waited.

Then it came.

"I shall confer and get back to you."

Confer, they wondered? With whom? Wasn't he the manager?

So they waited some more, impatient to take steps to rectify their burgeoning waiting list. And Paul mulled it over, and thought about it from every angle, and mulled some more.

And the drivers waited.

Paul dreams of being world-class

One of the drivers was retiring. He had been unwell for some time and had therefore been unable to do much work. The other drivers tried their best to cover for him but it was quite a long time before Paul appointed a short term replacement to help with the workload. This new appointment however was a tremendous help and worked hard and within a very few months the drivers noticed that, with this extra capacity, the waiting times from customer inquiry to job completion had more than halved.

They were very pleased with this but acknowledged that even with this new bonus help they were still only just coping. They were delighted when one of Paul's assistant managers told them that they could convert this temporary post into a permanent one and so they spent some time considering what skills the new appointee should possess to best cope with current demands and to fit in with their strategy. The driver who was retiring had driven mostly Plymouths and the English Reliable Caravan Pulling vehicle for which there wasn't that much call these days; rather the drivers wanted help with the increasing demand for the Economy Mid Range car that was becoming very popular.

The other aspect of the departing driver's work had been time in the Research and Development workshop looking at ways to repair big ends and he had quite a reputation in this field. Many of the other drivers didn't quite see the point of this as once the big end was broken there wasn't much could be done to fix it and the car was generally consigned to the scrap heap.

Paul then had an idea.

"I know," he said to the assembled company. "We could use the money I had initially earmarked for your replacement to get a top class innovator in the field of big ends and recruit him to work here. We can then become a world-class big end centre. That would really put this branch of the National Hire Service on the map"

"But Paul," they lamented. " If you do that then the day to day service will crumble back to the shabby state it was in before we got our temporary replacement driver. You might end up with a world-class big end research centre but you'll also have a third class driving service. We'd struggle to be the best branch in this county, never mind the world."

"But the world-class big end man would help you," countered Paul.

"Nonsense Paul," they replied. "He'll be off taking big ends apart all day and then going to conferences to talk about it. We wouldn't get a shred of real work out of him - after all, that's not his job."

"But a part of my vision for this place is to make it world-class," sniffed Paul, clearly upset that yet again he might be thwarted.

"Walk before you can run, Paul," they soothed. "Walk before you can run."

Paul goes electronic

For every journey they undertook the drivers had to fill out a logbook of the trip detailing the various aspects - from number of miles driven to passengers carried to fuel consumption to any vehicle damage. These logbooks were as old as time and perfectly understood by everyone who worked in the company, and beyond. When going to a new National Hire Centre branch the drivers would know straight away how and where to enter the relevant information. The system worked well and no one had any complaints.

Paul however, had other ideas.

He saw an opportunity for cutting the staff who filed, stored and maintained these logbooks and using the savings to invest in some more vital management projects. He explained to the drivers that henceforth they would be entering all the information on a computer and dispense with all the paperwork. The drivers had their misgivings but were reassured that all would be well. They were shown the programme with which they could access all the data and enter their comments.

"But Paul," they said. "Using your programme we have to keep opening and closing sub-programmes to retrieve information from the different databases whereas currently there is a programme that skips effortlessly between them. Why are we regressing?"

Paul smiled. "There may be minor glitches but we will iron them out in time," he replied.

"What's the hurry?" they queried. "Why not wait until the existing system is at least as good as what we have rather than go backwards? Did you know for instance that in one of the sub-programmes the Return key doesn't work so everything we write comes out as a single line?"

Paul just smiled. "Oh yes, we know about that," he said.

"But you thought you'd go ahead and implement it anyway?" The drivers shook their heads. "What's being done about it?"

"Well..." Paul hesitated. "We're contacting the developers." The drivers' eyes rolled.

"Anyway, the main problem is that looking up all our information using these cumbersome routes rather than just flicking through the logbooks takes much more time. 12% more in fact: we've measured it."

Paul, who had no such data, grimaced. "Once you've got used to the system it will get quicker," he ventured.

"Quite possibly, Paul. But that doesn't explain why you're introducing an inferior system too soon, making us use it effectively as your unpaid beta testers whilst expecting us to work normally at the same time."

"Because it's progress," retorted Paul petulantly, and left.

Paul designs a survey

Back in March - while on attachment at the Department of Hire you will recall - Paul had used his unique knowledge of statistics to make all of the National Hire Service centres better than average. His plan to close the five worst performing (by his measures) had raised a storm of protest from the drivers and their families. Petitions were compiled; local radio stations were canvassed for support; even demonstrations in the centres of the affected towns were organised.

Paul, by now inured to people contesting his decisions, initially tried to ride the storm thinking that it would all blow over but, when it did not, he finally agreed to launch a national survey so that the views of employees, customers and the general public aloke could be collated. He designed it himself under the umbrella of his own survey company - rather egotistically called My Own Research Institute. Whether he would listen to or act on the results, he had not yet decided but he was certain that he would at least have an accurate picture of the true feelings related to the ten Hire Centres vying to avoid the threat of closure.

All the Managing Directors of the various centres went about urging their staff to fill out the surveys online with the idea that the centres with the most responses would be spared the axe. The hopeful survey responder was asked for his views on various aspects of the proposed closures and, to finish, Paul had inserted a compulsory field for the entering of their email address. This, he thought, would guard against people trying to respond more than once. The other safeguard was the entering of one half of the postcode but oddly, there was no further check of duplicity.

One of the drivers, hoping to help promote his particular branch and suspecting that anything designed by Paul would have a flaw, thought he would try entering a second reply - one from his work email address and one from his home one. No sign of an electronic block or reprimand sparked by his 'double-counting' appeared and so, as he could generate several more email addresses very easily, he tried his luck again. And again. And again.

After six attempts he became somewhat bored by the repetitive nature of the exercise but he reflected that if everyone did this it would skew the results of Paul's survey to the point of irrelevance but, knowing Paul, he also thought that pointing this out would do no good whatever so he held his counsel.

Paul looked at his little online world from his office and saw the survey responses roll on in, pleased that his project of gathering opinion was running so smoothly.

Paul pays overtime

At the beginning of the year the drivers had noticed that the waiting times from customer enquiry to the job being done was rising. This was partly due to the absence of a colleague, partly due to rising demand. They were surprised that Paul had not suggested anything to correct the situation and so it fell upon them to come up with a plan. They negotiated for a temporary replacement colleague but found that it was several months before he could start.

Whilst they were waiting for this new colleague one of the drivers suggested that, for the time being, they do more shifts themselves to help alleviate the creaking waiting times and thus hold the service together. His colleagues agreed, aware though that this would significantly increase their workload but seeing that it would help the situation. The work they would normally have done during this time was largely displaced to out of hours but they did it anyway.

It was a great success. Waiting times more than halved and when their new colleague arrived things were in a much better shape. Neither Paul nor any of his managerial colleagues offered any thanks for their efforts but the drivers had come to expect this.

They put in their application forms for payment for these sessions. It was a full three months later that they eventually saw the money arrive in their accounts. At first they thought it was an administration error as the sums paid were so small. £40 an hour before tax for people of their qualifications seemed very low compared to what had been paid to others in the company in similar situations previously, even quite recently. And compared to market rates this was almost six times lower. But they knew that to complain was to appear greedy, especially in these times of austerity, and so they kept their counsel.

And Paul knew this and looked on from his office on the top floor and smiled.

The driver who had initially suggested all this extra work however, was saddened and upset that he had in effect made his colleagues do the work almost for free. Although the work had been done in normal working hours it had displaced other activities that still needed to be done and were, as often as not, done in the drivers' own time and moreover, the whole effort was on top of an already overfull working week. Upon enquiry - as usual - it appeared that there was nothing that could be done about this.

Morale had taken another kick in the teeth.

And Paul knew this and looked on from his office on the top floor and smiled.

Paul streamlines Special Parking Activity

After the brouhaha regarding the Zero Income Ration Calculator And Demonstrator of Inactivity Abolishment Negotiation work counting exercise had died down somewhat, the drivers thought that they might at least not hear any more about it for a while. They were wrong.

The first inkling that they had that the issue was far from buried was an email one of them received asking him to reduce his Special Parking Activities by almost half. A word of explanation here: the Special Parking Activities formed one part of the laborious time-counting that had gone on some weeks previously. they represented the part of the working week that supported the main activity of actually using the vehicles - counted under Driving Customers in Cars - and included such tasks as training Learner drivers, keeping up to date with new uses of the vehicles, marking exam papers for the Learners, auditing their own work, and of course parking up the vehicles. Paul had decreed that these activities should not exceed a quarter of the working week but he knew full well that in reality they took up more than this but the drivers took work home with them or did it after hours. They did this largely because they were interested or helping out colleagues and accepted the fact that they would not be paid for every last thing they did.

Now Paul wanted them to reduce the amounts that the Ration Calculator stored in it's deep, inaccurate electronic belly. The driver was surprised as he thought that his contributions to these various activities had previously been valued and he had not advanced any claim for more pay. He sighed, logged on to the Ration Calculator and checked how much of each he was doing. Using this he compiled a lost of non-driving activities that he could theoretically cut and sent them to Paul.

"Excellent!" replied Paul by email. "That is very helpful. You choose which combination you would like to amend, but of course this will not alter your working week template in the real situation."

"What does that mean?" queried the driver still unused to the language in which Paul traded.

"We need to ensure that all drivers have no more than 2.5 Special Parking Activities each," emailed Paul. "But naturally cutting these on the Ration Calculator will not affect the material pattern of you week."

"You mean you want me to delete the electronic reference to some of the work I do and yet continue doing it?" asked the driver incredulously. "Isn't that simply deceitful?"

Paul had no answer.

"And then next year presumably you'll point to the absence of these items as evidence that I am not working too hard?" continued the driver, by now incensed beyond belief.

Again, Paul had no answer. But he just smiled.

Paul's newest initiative

The Compulsory Training programme was progressing apace but Paul was a little sad to see that it contained only 23 items. Two more would make for a much nicer number and look better on his spreadsheet. He pondered his predicament.

Although his 'Clean Below the Ankle' policy regarding clean footwear in the cars, reinforced by rigorous annual updates, wasn't having quite the effect he had hoped he could not deny that his drivers weren't at least fully briefed on the issue. Nevertheless, he felt the subject could do with a bit more publicity.

And thus he created and sent out many emails commending the Brighter Efficient Engines scheme. This, he thought, would supplement the invaluable knowledge that the training modules behind the Clean Below the Ankle policy and had many potential spin-offs. Not least, he could create trainers of this scheme thereby creating more roles for the myriad of mini-Pauls within the organisation. BEE-trainers would have an exalted status. It was even possible that they would themselves spawn multiple reports on driver compliance. Paul envisaged a future where these Hostile Opposition to Nurturing Efficiency Yardstick summaries would be used as a 'name and shame' tool to drive greater uptake.

First of all the drivers were all sent an A3 poster to read as Stage 1 of their BEE training. There were lots of coloured charts and boxes of text explaining why BEE was such a good idea. In fact, some of the drivers wondered quite why so much justification was necessary if the process was indeed quite as useful as advertised. In one box there was a graph showing the impact of the introduction of BEE in a neighbouring organisation compared with one that had resisted its arrival. Strangely, it appeared that both lines showed a similar improvement in engine efficiency in the time that one of the two centres had used the technique. Paul however did not see this but saw only the fact that one line was lower than the other. That was evidence enough for him. He wasn't about to let rigorous scientific analysis get in the way of a good addition to his training spreadsheet.

The drivers were nonplussed. "We look after our vehicles already, Paul," they said. "How does this programme - teaching us what we already know - help in any way other than making us give up time to go on your courses when we could be doing core work?"

"I'm surprised and disappointed that you find the need to query an innovation that is designed to improve the lifespan of your engines," he countered, not really answering the question.

"But is there really much evidence that wearing gloves to check the oil level makes any difference to the lifespan of the car?" they asked.

In reply Paul pointed at the two lines on his graph.

The drivers shook their heads, realizing that they were getting nowhere, and forbore to comment further.

"Now - which of you would like to be a BEE-trainer?" asked Paul.

Paul runs a course

Every year the drivers had to be assessed to ensure that they were still capable of doing their job well and safely. The idea that they would ferret out a struggling colleague and deal with the situation themselves was quite outmoded. No, these days there had to be some managerial input into the process. This would make everything better. At least that was the theory.

The problem was that there were an awful lot of drivers. And it seemed that as soon as the assessments were completed, they were due again. Despite the drivers' best effort to stretch the time between these annual ordeals from twelve to fifteen or even eighteen months, this process of documentation collection always seemed to be the paperwork equivalent of painting the Forth Bridge. And now the government had decreed that the whole exercise should be even more detailed with the Enhanced Strengthened Assessment.

So Paul decided to delegate. It was one of his many talents. Several drivers would be trained in the mystic art of assessment and would be taught to count the uncountable. He ran a course.

Ten of the drivers had been persuaded to attend. The head driver, who had already been trained in the art, was leading the day and began by outlining the reasons behind the initiative and the main areas they would cover. The drivers then eagerly awaited Paul to come and give the next talk, setting the context in more detail and motivating them. They waited. And waited. The coffee cups were empty and the small talk had dried up.

The lead driver rang Paul's secretary to enquire politely if he was running late. "Oh, he's on an away day fact-finding mission in a nearby town," he was told. The driver apologised to the group.

The morning passed. They studied the seemingly endless types of Supporting Information that each driver would have to submit in their Reassessment Folder every year. It seemed never-ending. Copies of driving licenses, insurance papers, logbooks of journeys undertaken. Copies of complaints from passengers, reflections on these complaints, outcomes of investigations. Breakdowns, reflections on breakdowns, route cause analyses of the breakdowns. Feedback questionnaires from all one's colleagues, evidence of team-working, statements of good eyesight. And on, and on.

And then there was role play.

A character actor played the role of drivers with problems and attitudes quite unlike anything that the assembled group thought they would ever encounter. They struggled through the use of open and closed questions and discussed the role of the assessor in the resolution of any problems uncovered.

"Is this process supposed to be helping the driver concerned in finding ways to make his working life easier or is it more of an exam-like scrutiny?" asked one of the audience.

There came a long answer but no one was any the wiser afterwards.

"Are we supposed to be judge, jury, facilitator, counsellor or a combination of these?" they persisted.

Another long answer. Still not enlightened.

At the end of the day they were given certificates and told to go forth and assess. "You need to do between eight and twelve a year," they were told. "Each one should take a couple of hours of preparation, two to three hours of face-to-face time and an hour or two of reflection before writing the summary report."

"This is instead of some of our usual driving duties?" they queried, alarmed.

The head driver running the course smiled. "We find that weekends are probably best for this activity," he concluded.

Paul's Listening Week

The incessant edicts that emanated from Paul's office were beginning to irritate and worry the rank and file workers of the company rather and the number and volume of their protests could not be ignored even within the cosy recesses of Paul's secluded world. And this protest was beginning to irk him. At first, he had tried to ignore it. But the grumbling only grew. Then he tried pinning statements to the company noticeboard explaining one or other of the schemes.

Nothing seemed to pacify the ungrateful, ignorant masses however.

"Paul," they would say, "we are worried about your plans for more competition with local companies for specific forms of hire. It won't be a level playing field as they just take on the high paying, easy trips. Look at the local firm wanting to just pick out limousine travel. How will that affect our service? Are we to deskill, only to be found wanting when a limousine request comes in over a weekend, when they are closed?"

Paul shook his head.

"Car UK will help provide our customers with more choice," he began before being cut short by one irate driver.

"And this decision has nothing to do with the chairman of Car UK giving you £21,000 to refurbish your office last year?" he challenged.

Paul shook his head.

"And when the British Ultimate Passenger Association takes most of our cases of Ferrari hire, how are we to train future drivers on those vehicles? I understand that they won't be teaching any."

Paul shook his head.

"I hear that you are going to publish data on who is the best driver in each section," another asked. "Given that it is very hard even for us to tease apart the multiple variables that go towards identifying who is good and who is not - and we understand what these parameters mean - how do you expect the general public to cope?"

Paul smiled and shook his head.

And so the objections went on.

*

And so it was that Paul had arranged a week of sessions to 'listen to the whole range of opinions and feed them back to higher management within the Department of Hire'. The drivers gathered in a plush lecture hall and were surprised when Paul arrived with the head of the Sedan and Hatchback Agency in tow. What had she to do with all this? Especially as under the new plans her agency would be abolished. Was she here as an apologist for the new changes or as a conduit for their views. No one knew.

Paul introduced her to the nonplussed audience and then proceeded to fire up the computer on the podium to display the first slide. It was crammed with text.

"Oh no!" whispered one driver. "Death by PowerPoint."

"Yes - Killing me Microsoftly," agreed another.

And so began a half hour of slide after slide with explanations of how wonderful the new reorganisations would be. Then, finally, time for comment from the audience. They raised the same points as they had with Paul but it seemed that the head of the Sedan and Hatchback Agency had very selective hearing for she choose to reply to only a few and just smiled fatuously at the rest, whilst producing the same soundbites that she had used in the first half hour.

When the full hour was up, on the dot, the drivers were dismissed and filed dutifully out to return to work.

"When they said 'Listening Week'," said one as they left, "I didn't realize it was to be us who would be listening."

Paul's view on education

For much of the year the drivers had Learners attached to them from the nearby Driving School - the company annually received a hefty sum for carrying out this teaching work. Depending on the type of vehicle and nature of the jobs, one or two Learners were supposed to shadow the drivers and pick up tips both from observing them 'in real life' and from dedicated talks that the drivers gave. Because there were so many different types of vehicle the Learners spent only four weeks at a time with each sort.

One Friday morning one of the drivers was doing his usual round of preparing the vehicles for the coming week. A Learner accompanied him. The first car was a Ferrari that needed refuelling. The driver took it to the fuel pumps and explained to the learner about the type of fuel, the amount the vehicle consumed and the dangers of allowing the level to fall too low. As they left, moving on to the next job the Learner enquired:

"So, do you put the petrol into the boot or directly into the cylinders?"

The driver was astounded and horrified in about equal measure. He could barely begin to imagine the thought processes that led to the asking of this question, displaying as it did the lack of both theoretical and practical knowledge of the Learner. Moreover, the chap clearly hadn't done any background reading to ask such a daft question. He tried to explain.

The next vehicle was a Jeep. The tyre pressures were rather low and needed correcting before the next arduous off-road journey. The driver tried to give the Learner another chance.

"So what do you think could make tyre pressures go down?" he asked.

First silence. Then: "Is it air?"

The driver shuddered inwardly. Even the man in the street knew a few reasons why tyre pressures were low. He tried to give broad hints to the Learner to tease out some correct answers. Finally:

"Is it spontaneous combustion of the tyre rubber?"

The driver sighed and moved on.

The third car they came to had broken down the day before. The driver approached it with a spring in his step. The basic principles of Assessing Brokendown Cars. Surely the Learner would get something right here?

"So if the engine won't start what should be the first thing you look for?" he queried.

The Learner looked blank. "Do you have to take the engine out and take it to pieces?" he ventured. The driver inwardly wept.

"No," he persevered. "Can you think of something simpler first?"

Silence.

"Look, you've done your workshop attachment. Apply what you learnt there." He was becoming exasperated.

Again silence.

"Have you heard of the fuel gauge?"

The Learner shook his head.

And so it went on through the long morning until they had finished. The Learner held out a piece of paper to the driver.

"Can you give me a grade for my four weeks with you, please" he asked.

The driver, annoyed and angered beyond belief by now, let fly.

"Frankly no. For a start, this - the last day of your attachment - is the first time in the four weeks that I've even seen you. Secondly, every question I asked you this morning you got wrong. Not just a bit wrong but spectacularly so - so much so that I would have got more sense asking the boy who cleans the windscreens. To give you a grade I would struggle finding a letter low enough, as frankly a 'Z minus' would be too high."

The Learner left, sulking, to find another driver whom he might cajole into giving him a 'C'.

*

Later, walking down the corridor deep in thought, the driver ran into Paul. He thought he would ask him about the state of the Learner's woeful lack of knowledge. He explained the details of his morning's trauma. "Don't you think at this stage - eight ninths of the way through their third year of training - they should be rather better?" he asked.

Paul smiled and shook his head.

"Oh, I don't know," he said in a conciliatory tone. "I can understand how that could happen. They are told that they needn't concentrate too much on the practicalities for the first four years - rather learn about more abstract principles that might stand them in good stead later."

"But the practicalities are what underpin everything that they are going to do when they qualify, not to mention the best way of learning facts," protested the driver.

"Well," said Paul. "They are very good at colouring in pictures of cars."

Paul tackles dirt

Paul sat cradling his third cup of tea and pondered his predicament. The problem was the mud. And the gravel. And all manner of dust from the road.

It got into all the vehicles and sometimes the standard vacuum cleaners that they had down at the Cleaning Section weren't sufficiently powerful. Or, in the case of the wet mud, they didn't make any impact at all and different cleaning materials were needed. And the other problem was that in the various car parks the vehicles would have different sorts of dirt in them - not all the same kind. This was because those scruffy, inconsiderate drivers would drive many different vehicles in a day and go to different destinations and walk over different terrains. Their cross-contamination of the vehicles was a significant problem and Paul had already introduced a scheme whereby the drivers had to change their shoes or boots between each journey - the Clean Below The Ankle policy - but strangely, this had not made much of an impact on the dirt problem. Paul assumed that this was simply because they weren't doing it diligently enough.

This morning for instance, one of the cleaners had had to hoover out a limousine that had been used to go to a hotel with a gravel drive, then clean a fork-lift truck that had been used to lift crates of vegetable matter and lastly try and scrape wet sand from an off-road four-wheel drive car. He had needed different tools for each job. How wasteful, thought Paul. It would have been so much easier if all vehicles encountering sand were parked in one place, mud in another, and so on.

He stood up and tried to think this through. It was however clear to him that such a scheme could not work as it it was impossible to predict what sort of dirt any given vehicle would encounter on its journey and moreover, there were other considerations when parking it in a nominated area - namely what sort of engineering maintenance it might need by the teams of mechanics that fixed, serviced and generally prolonged the life of all the vehicles after their journeys. Even Paul conceded that their task was paramount. But the cleaning issue still irked him.

He did what he normally would in these circumstances and convened a focus group to make an 'options solutions' list. The group's message was clear. As the vehicles had to stay in the areas where they currently were, so the drivers should stay in fixed areas too - as opposed to the criss-crossing of the compound that happened now.

Paul put a poster on the canteen notice board to this effect. He was pleased. Job done.

*

He supposed he should have expected it though. Never did he come out with a brilliant idea without the tiresome drivers challenging it at the first opportunity. This one was no exception.

"For heaven's sake, Paul!" they moaned. "We can't just switch round and drive all the vehicles in one particular area. There are all sorts of different ones needing all sorts of different skills to control. We aren't all trained in all of them, you know."

Paul sighed.

"If you just stayed in one area then it would only be one type of dirt that affected those vehicles." He spoke as if to little children. "Then we would only need one type of cleaning equipment per car park."

"But Paul," they chorused, "Take Tom here. He currently has two vehicles in Car Park D - a Ferrari and Jeep (he's still waiting for the European Universal Saloon)." Paul ignored the dig. "There's also a JCB in that area. Were he to drive that he probably crash it and cause all manner of harm. Last time he drove one of those was at the Drivers Training School over twenty years ago. Things have changed a bit since then."

"Are you telling me that you can't all drive all the vehicles here?" Paul was incredulous.

It was the drivers' turn to sigh. "That specialisation for you, Paul," they said.

Paul turned, looked out of the window and then closed his eyes just wanting the dirt to go away.

Paul checks on job completion

Each time the drivers had finished a tasking, however small or lengthy, they recorded this information on a standardized form and this record was then kept centrally. For some years however, this had all been computerized using the Electronic Drivers' Operation Centre Software so that anyone on any terminal in the company could check who had done which job and when.

The drivers filled out these forms, entering the basic information about the trip - time taken, miles covered, amount of petrol used, number of passengers carried and so on - but also such additional data as any existing faults on the vehicle, repairs that had been necessary, unusually heavy loads moved and the like. Thus it was that it was possible to build up an inventory of who had been doing what work and driving the most efficiently.

At least that was the theory.

And as with most theories, it folded upon contact with reality.

For the computer system worked on the premise that whichever driver had been allocated a job was the one who carried it out. In practice of course the drivers ensured that, as far as possible, the driver with the correct skills for that job took it on - regardless of what the computer had directed. Moreoever, the drivers swapped shifts, went on holiday and even occasionally had time off sick - all the things that a good computer-model driver would not do - and as such the data that was held on the company's mainframe was at best patchy, at worst wholly inaccurate.

Paul naturally was unaware of any possible discrepancies between the sterile environment of the hard drive and the messy, vibrant, colourful existence of his employees. He had spent much time promoting the system and he was not about to let real life intrude on his model. He regularly sent reports up to head office based on these figures and in return received instructions for future strategy based on them. He never questioned why these strategies rarely survived their first contact with the shop floor.

Each branch of the National Hire Service was required to submit this sort of data annually to assess which were the best performing, safest ones and which needed reform. These data, gleaned from the Electronic Drivers' Operation Centre Software were fed into a complicated formula to arrive at an absolute number - the Safety Measure Ratio - and this number in turn presumed to sum up all the work that had been performed in the branch over the last year. Branches with the best figures received more work and staff and kudos from head office. Their managers won bonuses.

It was that time of year again. Paul sent out instructions for all the drivers to review large numbers of their already completed forms to ensure that the data were accurate. Unfortunately the information, drawn from the fallible central system, failed to connect the correct driver with the correct job most of the time and thus the drivers had to spend valuable time checking the details behind the forms and then forwarding them on to whichever colleague had done the job.

Just as they had trawled through this arduous task, Paul sent another email:

"Regretfully, there has been a glitch in the way the software has matched drivers to taskings. A new list of forms to be completed is attached. Please ensure every one is completed within two weeks. Drivers failing to comply will need to attend my office to explain their failings."

And so the trawling, searching, reallocating process started all over again and the mood of the drivers soured further.

"Why on earth are we doing this anyway, Paul?" they asked. "We've filled out the forms once and we do them thoroughly."

"It is imperative that we submit accurate information," retorted Paul, one eye on his end-of-year bonus. "The extra information is vital to securing a good safety rating."

"Well, why don't you just add a few fields to the existing form so that we fill them in then and there rather than having to go back, months later when we've forgotten all about the particular job and vehicle?"

Paul hadn't thought of that. He was however not brooking any dissent on this one and resorted to his usual tactic of shouting.

The drivers shook their collective heads, and as usual just got on with it. Good or bad, they wouldn't be seeing any bonuses.

Paul's creative counting

The Single Colour Parking scheme had been in operation for many months now and the drivers, as with so many of Paul's initiatives, had incorporated it into their daily routine to minimise the fuss. However, one new feature of the scheme was beginning to increasingly irk them. Often they would come into work the next morning and find that their vehicle - correctly parked in an appropriately coloured bay the night before - had been moved somewhere completely different without their having been asked. Worse than this was the fact that often no one seemed to know exactly where the vehicle had been moved to.

Paul's so-called Parking Managers operated without reference to any of the drivers and seemingly without being held to account to anyone as the blame for finding moved vehicles too late in the day would always find it's way back to the drivers and never rest on the shoulders of those who had effected the move, even if problems had occurred as a result.

Much investment had been funnelled the way of these Parking Managers. They had high salaries and a smart uniform and a vast office where they would periodically hold 'crisis meetings', even when there was apparently no crisis to be seen. When asked about vehicle moves or locations they would usually deny all knowledge, blaming it on the previous shift - which was of course impossible to track down for many days, if ever.

Moreover, they were uncontactable by the usual channels. Whilst just about everyone else on the site could be reached by telephone or pager this elite crew sported weird, Star Trek-like communication devices worn around the neck on a cord that instantly sprang into metallic voice the moment they spoke to each other across the compound but were mysteriously inaccessible to the drivers and just about all the other staff.

As usual, and without much hope, the drivers went to find Paul to see what could be done about these unregulated, unwitnessed, uncatalogued overnight vehicle moves. They started on what they thought might be a promising line of attack.

"Paul," they said. "A few months ago you introduced a scheme to limit the number of moves a vehicle underwent between entering and leaving the site in order to minimize risk and increase quality of service. Did you know that some vehicles are still being moved up to six times between journeys and that therefore sometimes we can't find them in the morning leading to delays in services?"

Paul thought awhile.

"Well," he countered, "if they are taking up a valuable 'rapid-exit' slot they might need to be moved so that a rapid-response vehicle can use the space."

"Granted," the drivers replied. "But that accounts for about one in twenty moves. What about the other nineteen?"

Paul thought awhile.

"We try and put similar vehicles into adjacent slots," he tried.

"Not very successfully. This morning I had to visit five car parks before I found my vehicle," one of the assembled drivers shot back. "Even the superintendent of the area where I had left my vehicle yesterday had no idea where it had gone to."

Paul thought awhile.

"But the figures don't indicate a problem," he retorted obstinately. "In the last six months no vehicle has been moved more than the target of twice between any two taskings."

"What!" The drivers were aghast at this blatant twisting of the facts. "You can't have been counting properly!"

"Depends at what point you start counting," thought Paul and smiled.

Paul counts time

It was that time of the year again. It seemed to come round so quickly and the drivers groaned inwardly as they prepared once again to do battle with the online work-quantity assessment tool that Paul had introduced across the board some years ago after he had found a couple of drivers sneaking off early to play darts. The 'Zero Income Ration Calculator' And 'Demonstrator of Inactivity Abolishment' Negotiation toolkit was a hugely unpopular initiative but compulsory so the drivers had no choice but once again to embark on this time-consuming and ultimately futile exercise.

Every moment of every day had to be justified and fought for. Paul's premise was that they all worked a five day week, nine to five, but even he knew that in reality the drivers did much more than that. All the same, each time Paul had reviewed the submitted assessment the final answer always seemed mysteriously to come to a total of 'five days'.

Much as they disliked having to count each minute of each day like this the drivers nonetheless complied with this annual spreadsheet-filling exercise. They would then have a personal interview with Paul during which time he would question each entry with a view to deleting it.

"What's this do you do on a Wednesday afternoon then?" he would query, pointing at the entry in question. "It's not 'driving' so we can probably take that out."

"That's the afternoon I go over to the Driving School to teach, Paul," replied one. "Do you remember we have a contract to provide a set amount of tuition to the students there and in return we get £20 million and the pick of the newly qualified drivers each year?"

"Hmmm," grumbled Paul. "Alright. What about this?" He jabbed a finger at Friday morning.

"That's when I go over to the workshop. We're running this project to research more efficient use of fuel and..."

"Yes, yes, yes," Paul cut him short. "But that's your hobby. We don't pay you to indulge yourself!" And he pressed the delete key. "And what's this 'Extra Duties' part then?"

The driver looked incredulous. "That's time spent on call at nights and weekends for the emergency jobs that come up." he said.

"But you don't physically work all that time!" argued Paul.

"No - that's why it's paid at a different rate," the driver explained, as if to a small child.

Paul's finger hovered over the Delete key again. Then he saw another entry and was instantly distracted. "Ha! Three hours for 'Ongoing Learning"? Explain."

"Well, we are legally supposed to keep up to date with developments in the field," the driver replied.

"Ah, yes..." Paul smirked. "But we've taken care of most of that with our In-House training programme days." And he altered the entry from 3 to 0.5 hours.

And so it went.

One non-core profit making activity after another was questioned and amended in this way until each driver began to feel as though he had been trying to defraud the company by claiming for work that need not be done.

Finally Paul would lean back in his chair with a satisfied grin. "There!" he'd say, looking at the bottom line. "I thought so. A grand total of 'five days'."

Paul approves a business case

For over two years now the drivers had been lobbying Paul to invest in a new type of vehicle. Although rather specialist in nature, they had seen that there was a growing market for the European Universal Saloon and furthermore, their main competitor - the British Ultimate Passenger Association - did not have it. In fact only a small local company boasted this car and their chief specialist driver of the vehicle was about to retire.

Moreover, the last two times that the National Hire Service had had its performance reviewed by external assessors - a process that all car hire companies underwent to ensure that a safe service was being provided to the public - they had been criticized for not having the European Universal Saloon saying that it made a nonsense of Paul's repeated claim that they were the leading provider of 'specialist luxury long-haul family transportation'.

Although it was quite an expensive car, the drivers had calculated that the income it would generate would more than pay for itself inside two years and they wrote a business case for Paul to this effect. After a few revisions, whereby their original figures had been massaged out of all recognition by Paul and his Procurement Advisory Team, the drivers were pleasantly surprised to find that the idea had been approved. Moreover, the income it was due to generate was, in the new revamped business case, going to be used for other much needed improvements. Even more excitingly the company was also going to buy some very rare glass for strengthening the windscreens on its sports cars - the branded 'Superior Protection Y' glass was eagerly awaited.

All these new acquisitions were voluably trumpeted around by Paul as an example of pro-active management. The drivers were happy with the extra services although in practice found that the Superior Protection Y glass made little difference. They waited and waited for the European Universal Saloon to arrive and were often told that the purchase order had been signed - but nothing came.

They visited Paul.

"Paul," they began. "You've invested the predicted profits from the European Universal Saloon business case in all these other acquisitions but the car itself hasn't arrived yet. What's going on?"

Paul took out an old envelope and started writing down figures.

"What are you doing?" they enquired.

"Seeing if the extra income you can generate from private use of the European Universal Saloon would fund us investing in it," he countered.

"But Paul! The business case went through ages ago. You've even spent most of the projected profits on other schemes. There's no point in trying to reinvent it on the back of an envelope now!"

But nevertheless they were tasked to go away and rewrite it. Which they did, and then they took it back to Paul.

He squirmed a bit but eventually conceded that there was indeed a case to be made for the purchase. The drivers looked happy.

They made arrangements for an opening ceremony. It became clear that the car iteslf would not have been shipped by the date set so they arranged for the supplier to lend them a demonstration model for the day. They adorned it with a large red ribbon and invited the press. Paul made short speech about how working together was driving up quality and innovation, cut the ribbon, ate some cake at the buffet and quickly left.

The drivers looked forward to using the new car: it could only be another couple of weeks before it arrived, surely?

Thus it was that they were not a little perturbed to find that some weeks later they received a form to fill out analysing the benefits of the car and comparing it to other models.

"Why?" they queried.

"Well, we can't sign the purchase order until that is done," replied Paul.

"What?!" They were aghast. "We thought that had been done before the Grand Opening."

"Oh no!" smiled Paul, touched by such naivity.

Paul designs a pathway

Paul was looking out of his office window watching the hire vehicles enter and leave the car park. He watched as the drivers parked in the section cordoned off for returning vehicles, went to the canteen and then re-emerged to return to their cars, vans and lorries to refuel them at the in-house pumps and then clean them in the jet-spray area. Later they might climb into a different vehicle to set off on another job. Other times they might not clean the cars, and sometimes they refuelled before going off for a coffee.

This asymmetry irked him. “We need to streamline this to make it more efficient,” he thought to himself. “A pathway for managing all this activity after returning to the depot – that’s what is needed.”

He took a walk around outside and noticed that behind the canteen there was a covered area where the vehicles queued to get to the fuel pumps. It was tolerably large. Some vehicles however seemed to jump the queue, refuel and drive off immediately. These did not wait in the covered area.

He met with his managers to discuss this problem. They covered many sheets of paper with flowcharts, estimated timescales and projected numbers. Finally they came up with a plan.

“Shall we tell the drivers?” asked one.

“I suppose we should.”

*

“We need to restructure the process for servicing the vehicles when you return from jobs,” Paul began to the assembled company.

The drivers looked puzzled. “Why?” they asked. “What’s wrong with what we do now?”

“It doesn’t follow a defined pathway,” replied Paul. We need people to fuel and clean the vehicles and dedicated scheduled rest breaks.”

“But we fuel our vehicles now and clean them when necessary. When there’s time we’ll have a break. Sometimes there’s an urgent job to do so we just refuel straightaway and get on with the work. It works really well. No one gets upset if someone jumps the fuel queue if they have an urgent appointment”

Paul ignored this.

“We propose to build a dedicated ‘Fuel and Wash’ facility behind the canteen where specialist refuellers can work the pumps more efficiently and trained cleaners can be on jet-spray duty,” he countered.

“But Paul,” the drivers said. “Not all vehicles need cleaning every time. Their last job might only have been a trip for a few miles down the road. And most vehicles don’t need immediate refuelling as their next job might not be until the next day.”

Paul ignored this.

“You’re just going to spend money building a facility that simply reproduces what we do now.”

Paul ignored this. He was thinking of his pathway.

“Is there any evidence that refuelling our cars sooner and washing them more frequently improves our productivity?” they queried.

Paul ignored this, principally because he did not know of any.

The drivers despaired as Paul wandered off to meet with the architect to start building his new Fuel and Wash area anyway.

Paul's worker consultation

On another day Paul left his car and was again walking towards the company's building and his office, passing the rows of vehicles for hire. However, he noticed that one section of the parking lot was not filled with these but with the drivers' own cars instead. What a waste of valuable room, he thought. The company could stock far more hire vehicles if this was not simply 'dead space'.

He met with his managers and they discussed the problem. Eventually they decided to survey the drivers as to what they felt would be the best solution. However, instead of allowing them to voice their opinions - this might produce too many and varied answers - they felt it best to make it a tick-box exercise and let them have a choice of only three:

1. Pay more to park here

2. Pay even more to park here, or

3. Don't park here.

Unsurprisingly the drivers were not impressed with this tactic but were even less enamoured of their management when the results of the survey were published some weeks later and these showed that the majority view was apparently that the best option was to build a multi-storey car park, that it would need to be funded from increased car parking fees, and that these increases would be in relation to the salary of each worker .

"But Paul!" they cried in horror as the amount of the increase was made clear. "That is up to triple what we pay now. And we won't be getting any better facilities. Even now we often have to queue and search for a space."

But Paul was unmoved. "We need more space, and as there are other buildings all around we cannot expand sideways. We need to go upwards."

"But Paul," protested the drivers. "You can't fund real estate improvements by effectively cutting our salaries. That should be funded from the company's own internal budgets."

But Paul was unmoved.

"And another thing: this charge is related to salary - the higher the salary, the more one pays. Are you aware that only the government can set an income tax, which is what this effectively is? You are acting illegally."

But Paul was unmoved.

"Will the management staff also be subjected to these new higher prices to park here?" they asked.

Paul remained silent.

"If we don't want to sign up to the new charges where else could we park?"

Paul coughed. "You can use the Park and Ride facility we will be laying on or use the bus."

"But Paul. Some of our taskings are not during the normal working day. The Park and Ride or the bus services may not be running when we have to come in at these other times. Are we effectively being penalised for not working nine-to-five?"

Paul remained silent.

"And another thing, Paul," the drivers persisted. "If this goes ahead it is not clear what happens to this huge increase in fees when the new multi-storey car park has been built. Do we become part-owners of it as we will have paid for it? Do the charges then revert to the old levels?"

But Paul remained silent.

Paul uses statistics

Some time after his ultimately unsuccessful dalliance with a move to a different company, Paul did receive a reward of sorts when he was asked to leave his regional senior management post to be seconded to the National Hire Service's central strategy office for a period of three months. He was very pleased. Here at last was an opportunity for him to unfurl his managerial wings to their full extent and put into practice some of the more audacious ideas that he had been cultivating for a long time.

His new office was, if anything, even larger than his old one and he had a pleasant new secretary and his mid-morning snacks were brought to him in a bone china cup and saucer on a silver tray rather than his accustomed mug and a plate. There also seemed to be a complete absence of drivers in the building - something that cheered him greatly for they were his main source of irritation and a constant block to progress.

After he had settled in he went to some meetings. There seemed to be plenty to choose from. He was very impressed as this must mean that the Department of Hire was a very productive place. His immediate boss scheduled a meeting with him on the Wednesday and spent an enigmatic half-hour outlining his own recent work before closing with the equally challenging statement:

"The current drive is on performance management, Paul. Most of the low-hanging fruit has been plucked but we want you to do some blue-skies thinking to innovate further changes. Best of luck!"

How Paul had striven to increase the performance of his own drivers, washers and fuellers back in his regional office but they had always countered with some argument or other that supposedly showed them already working overtime. Here at last was a chance to level the scores. Blue-skies thinking! Let's think 'Big', he thought.

Two weeks, countless meetings, three brain-storming sessions and four concept papers later and he had a solution. He was very pleased. What an exceptional piece of work this was! As blue-skies thinking went, this was about as all-encompassing and radical as it was possible to be. He sat at his desk and carefully composed the memo to the chairman of the Board outlining his plan.

PROPOSAL FOR EFFICIENCY SAVINGS BASED ON PERFORMANCE MANGEMENT

Over the last few years the ability to collect information from the regional centres has increased exponentially so that we can now reliably assess multiple aspects of their work from locally and nationally gathered minimum data-sets. Using these it is possible to assess performance based on indices such as profit, turnover and safety. This last area has been of especial focus recently due to a few well-documented cases in the media indicating short-comings in the processes followed by the staff.

An analysis of accident rates across all 10 UK regions show that safety is consistently high at over 95% but there is a variation from 95 to 99% - the average being 97%. Further details as to specifics of accidents in the under-performing regions is beyond the scope of this document but also considered unnecessary.

In line with modern statisitical thinking the proposal is to close the under-performing five centres so that only an above average service remains. The resulting cost savings need hardly be elaborated upon here.

The programme has been reviewed at senior management level and been assigned the title of: Consideration of Assessed Regional Departments: Insufficiently Average = Closed .

At the time of going to press it appears that Paul's proposal is going ahead as no one on the Board could find any flaw with the logic.

Paul applies for a new job

For a long time Paul had been thinking of moving. His ungrateful charges clearly did not know quality leadership when they saw it and he was feeling very under-appreciated. Last week's incident over the 'Fit To Be Driven' form still rankled. He had been scanning the trade press for some months now looking for a suitable post but it seemed that people with his special set of qualities were not often recruited. Then, one day, he saw an advertisement for a senior management position with one of their great rival companies, the British Ultimate Passenger Association.

Until recently he had always denegrated their ways of working but now he was beginning to feel that here at last was an organisation that would value and cherish him. He downloaded the application form and began to fill it in. He had no trouble at all with the section on 'Name', 'Address', 'Education and Qualifications' and 'Current Salary' but then came upon the final part.

'In no more than 300 words outline no more than five positive contributions you have made in your current post within the last year.'

He chewed his pen and thought awhile. There were so many! How could 300 words suffice to sum up his year? The birds chirped outside his window and a cooling breeze wafted into his spacious office as he sat wrapped in reverie, composing his ticket out. Finally he wrote:


As a senior manger with the National Hire Service I have been integral in introducing many new working practices to increase responsive organisational flexibility whilst maintaining integrated management options and enabling value-added skill development.
Internal Accounting
Internal financial cash-flow scenario programming has revolutionized the company's ethos on cost-saving resulting in systematized third-generation programming of profits.
Vehicle storage
Streamlining post-event storage using a functional logistical projection model was one of the major recent projects that has resulted in a futuristic monitored environment with consequent raised morale and a strengthening of corporate identity.
Out of hours working
A parallel policy contingency enabling maximum utility of the traditional non-working week was introduced with no overall capacity loss whilst increasing compatible incremental time-phased deliverables.
Training
Non-optional career-enhancement tool-kit programmes with spin-off benefits for overall functionality yielding quantifiable data-charts have been seamlessly integrated into the work-force's routine.
Safety
The introduction of pre-task functionality checks using the latest portable digital technology has allowed the reduction of intra-journey mobility limitation with the inevitable growth of a safety culture amongst all staff.

In summary, my tenure here has been hallmarked by the introduction of a series of synchronized improvements in institutional enablement bench-marking. In the round, going forward, I envisage further such upswing with the inevitable collateral effect of augmented operations. I feel I would bring mission-critical, world-class turnkey solutions in an environment where blue-skies thinking is crucial to achieve real-time traction in the market. My interpersonal skill management portfolio would also ensure multi-level buy-in to future developments from all levels of the available human resources.


He sealed the envelope, gummed a postage stamp on it and left it in the 'External Mail' tray for his secretary to post later, confident in the knowledge that the British Ultimate Passenger Association would not receive any other applications quite like it. Then, satisfied, he leant back and waited for the arrival of his mid-afternoon tea and biscuits.

Several weeks passed but in the end Paul received a letter explaining that, on reflection, the company had decided to limit the vacancy to a six-month post and fill it with a work-experience student instead.

Paul displays safety consciousness

The telephone rang in Paul's office shattering his mid-afternoon reverie. The voice at the other end of the line sounded distant, as indeed it proved to be. One of his drivers had unexpectedly run out of fuel in a faraway corner of the country and needed Paul's authorization to fill up at the local petrol station. Grudgingly this was given but, his afternoon routine broken, Paul started thinking.

How irresponsible of the driver to run out of fuel! Surely there must be some sort of checks performed prior to a journey to prevent this sort of thing - and to stop him having all this extra work. He pulled a piece of paper towards him and started doodling.

The next day he called the drivers together and explained his new safety policy to them.

"There has been a serious incident with regards to vehicle preparation leading to emergency refueling plans. These are costly and should not be necessary with the proper pre-task checks. From today therefore, I am introducing the 'Fit To Be Driven' form that each of you will need to fill in prior to each journey. It ensures that you have checked the fuel gauge and are prepared to certify that there is sufficient fuel for the forthcoming journey."

"But Paul!" cried the drivers, who had all heard of the previous day's incident and also knew that it had occurred because of an unexpected and particularly long tailback, "This is just extra paperwork duplicating what we already do. Of course we ensure that our vehicles are fit to go before we start out. It's a part of being professionals."

"It didn't stop yesterday's fiasco," countered Paul, pleased that he seemed to have the upper hand in a discussion for once.

"That was an anomaly. An unusual, unpredictable occurrence. No form on earth will legislate against that. If you made cars instead of hiring them out, you wouldn't start making them without windscreen wipers just because it hadn't rained for a day; or start fitting snow chains on them all after a single night's snowfall, would you?"

"And another thing," they continued. "We're busy enough as it is. This form will just slow us down even more. I suppose you're even going to employ someone to monitor these forms as well?"

"Er, well - yes," said Paul, somewhat taken aback by the responses and this insight. "But we need something to stop these problems occurring again," he insisted, half-pleading. "The form is crucial."

"No it isn't," they replied. "Don't you remember that a while ago we introduced a system whereby only certified drivers could check and release a vehicle for a tasking - no longer the car-washers and others who used to help out? It was precisely to ensure better safety that we did this. This new form adds nothing to that system. It's simply duplication."

"As well as increasing safety, it also lends greater clarity and accountability to vehicle movements on a case by case basis," retorted Paul.

“That’s what this is all really about, isn’t it?” the drivers shot back. “The ability to apportion blame and the lack of confidence in us as professionals based on an isolated, unpredictable case. The buck stops – where precisely? Oh yes: anywhere but with you.”

Paul was nonplussed. Didn't they see that this was for their own benefit as much as his?

But the drivers stalked off, mourning their fate of being managed by people like Paul.

Paul sorts out vehicle storage

Paul gazed out over the car lot watching his drivers come and go on their various tasks. In the distance the jet sprays were throwing up a fine mist as a queue of vehicles waited in line to be cleaned. And over the whole scene fluttered the company flag sporting the well-known colours of the brand: red and yellow. Everything about the company was based on this red and yellow theme. The regulation shirts and overalls, the ties, the motif on the headed paper, even the vehicles themselves. Luxury and family cars were red whereas utility vehicles such as vans and lorries were yellow. The Board had decreed that this gave a highly visible, instantly identifiable on-the-street presence to the company and certainly the colour scheme was in the public's mind by now synonymous with the National Hire Service.

Something however irked Paul this morning. His sense of symmetry was upset for as he scanned the rows of vehicles red and yellow ones were mixed together like dots from an Impressionist's painting. No nice neat rows of one colour or the other but a random convocation leading to a riotous attack on the eye.

This would never do, he thought. How could one run a business with such a mess in what was in effect the storeroom? There was no way of keeping an easy tally of which vehicles were in or out on a job. He decided to meet with his managers and come up with a plan. They had several conferences and then met up with people from the IT department. Finally he sent a memo to the workers:

Single Colour Parking.
With immediate effect all vehicles are to be parked in their designated colour zones with no exceptions. The Red and Yellow areas will be clearly marked and drivers returning from a job should park their vehicles in the appropriate zone prior to cleaning and refuelling. Parking attendants have been employed to facilitate this process. In order to monitor this new policy employees are encouraged to notify any breaches immediately using the new 'SCP Breach' software that has been installed on all computers in the company. Monthly reports of the figures collated via this method will be widely distributed and disciplinary action, including fines, will result from failures to adhere to this policy.

The workers were by now becoming relatively inured against the more eccentric pronouncements of their masters but still thought that this was illogical. They went to see Paul.

"This new edict: how does it help us become more efficient?" they asked.

Paul had been half-expecting a degree of mutiny from his ungrateful charges and so had a little speech prepared.

"We are fortunate," he began, "that the colours in the logo of the company allows us this easy differentiation of vehicles so that without any extra expense we can streamline the process of vehicle storage. I am sure that efficiencies will result in this more user friendly system."

"But Paul," they argued, "we know our vehicles inside out. We are hardly going to mistake a Ferrari for a removals van just because they are parked next to each other, are we?"

"We need to present an image of uniformity to the outside world too, you know," Paul retorted. "It gives a good impression to anyone coming to visit."

"OK, we understand that point but it definitely doesn't make sense on an efficiency level. You won't always have the same number of red and yellow vehicles here. Are you constantly going to be changing the sizes of the two parking zones?"

Paul said nothing. He hadn't thought of that.

"And sometimes a driver has to to come back from a job and go straight out on an urgent second one. Do you really want him to waste time looking for a suitable parking spot in the appropriate colour zone just to satisfy this policy when this could waste precious minutes?"

Paul thought on his feet. "Of course there might need to be exceptions," he said lamely.

"Presumably this will all cost quite a lot to put in place - what with building new car parks and all that? There are many other areas of the business that could do with a bit more urgent investment rather than this."

"This has been designated a priority at the highest level," retorted Paul shortly.

"Yes, but spending time, money and effort on software to report breaches and then spend more time collating these reports and circulating them to everyone really is a bit much," they countered. "For a start it is punitive and secondly it won't achieve anything as the attendants that you have employed to direct vehicles to their appropriate zones won't let anyone pass unless it is to the 'correct' colour area anyway."

"I'm surprised that you can question the value of decisions taken at high management level in this way," Paul shot back using vehemence as his usual substitute for reasoned debate. "The service we will be providing will undoubtedly be better for this."

He turned and left thinking: And the view from my window will be ever so much neater.

Paul sets up a new service

Despite the rumblings of discontent that the new methods of administration had brought, work continued apace. The Ferraris were driven out to executives for the weekend; the removals vans could barely keep up with demand; the estate cars towed caravans until their drivers nearly broke down with exhaustion; the bulldozer cleared the way for everyone to go to work each day.

Despite all this the drivers continued to think up new ways of improving the business. It was quite clear that demand for the caravan-towing arm of the operation was mushrooming and the current quota of drivers and vehicles could not really cope. They knew of a colleague who was just finishing a short-term contract with a rival company nearby and they wondered whether he could be persuaded to join them and help increase their capacity. They took the proposal to Paul.

Much to their surprise Paul was in favour of the idea and approved it without much hesitation. He authorized the new post. As to the work that he was to do, he merely had said: "Just get it up and running through the usual channels."

That was two months ago. Setting up this additional activity had not been as easy as they had initially hoped. Paul's 'usual channels' - ones he had created alongside all the other new initiatives - were not entirely straightforward. After the visit to his office the drivers had gone to see the Vehicle Bookings Clerk to arrange for bookings for the new driver to start. She was keen to help but explained that she needed to run the idea past her supervisor, who was away that week.

When this lady returned, she seemed quite amenable to the scheme but felt that it still needed approval form the Vehicle Bookings Manager. This person only worked on Thursdays and Fridays and no one could deputize for her but the Bookings Supervisor thought that time would not be wasted as she could "run the idea past the Section Service Transformation Lead".

This young man, Norbert, in turn thought long and hard about the plan and asked whether executive agreement had been sought for the post of the new driver. The other drivers were by now becoming a touch exasperated and replied that they would hardly be trying to set up more bookings if they hadn't secured this rather obvious first step to start with. Norbert thought he had better check with his Section Operations Manager, who in turn asked Paul. Paul remembered that he had acquiesced and sent a message to the head of the 'General Performance - Car Concern' group to chivvy things along as he was noticing the increase in delays from booking to delivery of the cars and this had led to some heated discussions with the head of the Sedan and Hatchback Agency.

When the Vehicle Bookings Manager returned she saw this correspondence and acted quickly. First she enquired whether this was an new service they were offering or the extension of an old one.

"For heavens sake, Mabel!" chorused the drivers. "You know it is the extension of the caravan-towing service. You come and pester us to take more of these bookings on almost every week because there are so many! Now can you please just set up the booking facility?"

"You need a code," objected Mabel tartly.

"And how do we get one of those?"

"You need to fill out this form," she replied triumphantly, handing over a thick wad of papers.

And so the drivers sat down to fill out the form, answering questions that had been sorted out at the very start of this process but trying nonetheless to keep their patience. Proudly they gave the completed result to Mabel later that day.

"Can you get a code now and start booking?" they asked hopefully.

"Codes are issued by the Information Technology Applications Support Co-ordinating Manager," she replied. "She's on a Communications Course but will be back next week."

And Paul looked on from his office on the top floor, and smiled, and felt a deep wave of satisfaction wash over him as he regarded his kingdom, where everything was proceeding like clockwork.