Wednesday 7 October 2015

Despair, despair

I really do dispair sometimes.

I have a successful business which has some basic processes in place to ensure that I don't forget anything, and things get done.  It's minor project stuff, nothing that you'd do a Gantt chart for, but still important to my customers.

I occasionally help people out with Business Analysis work, charities and small businesses.  This is great practice for me and really helps them out.  It "sharpens the axe" for my day job and doesn't impact negatively on the work I do for my main employer.  In fact, it's massively enhancing to the day job, like CPD and self-funded training all rolled into one.

So, why the frustration and despair?

Simple really, my day job is working in an environment where no-one seems to produce much, and excuses for non-delivery don't even seem necessary.

Is it acceptable to cut off a service and just leave staff high and dry?  No!  "They'll just have to wait for a solution?" No!  Get a grip.  Every business model says that business is going to hell in a handcart.  Let me explain:

Porter's five forces says that you're at risk of being integrated.
Osterwalder's VPD says that another service will disrupt you, because you're not doing what the customer needs.
The list goes on, pick a model and plug in the way it works and everything points to a failure down the line.

The key to this is that the internal public sector doesn't operate like a business.  Some say that it does, but in my experience it does not.  It may aspire to do so, and it may outsource things to business, but the fact remains that you get paid for turning up and not for doing stuff.  What I'm saying is that it's basically not a performance culture.  Sure, there are performance reviews but that's really just more bureaucracy, reducing efficiency.

So, can you pilot a better approach?

Now, if you make one part a performance culture, it can't work because all the other parts aren't.  You'd just create a single failure.  You really need to reform the whole system.  Look at a small business, they get stuff done fast because they need to work, invoice and get paid to live.  I'm not saying that it needs to be 100% like that, but we need a system where people who produce nothing can't hide behind excuses.  You need to revise the system and make it more "lean", where people can raise issues and they get dealt with and when a suggestion is made, it actually gets looked at seriously.

I can't fight it much longer.  I need to find a way out of this asylum.