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.