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.