On the fiddle

Like all IT Executive teams, EG-IT’s team was no exception in having its strengths and weaknesses.  It is neither fair, nor appropriate, to rank teams from best to worst but, for each team I have worked in, one specific attribute will always come to mind.  Unfortunately, my memories of the EG-IT Exec team will always be dominated by the theme of waste, in particular wasting time.

On joining the organisation, I was surprised to note that the IT Executive met every week and assumed that this would be a high level (and punchy) check on activities, 30 minutes maximum.  But it was scheduled for four hours.  And to make matters worse, it over ran!  I came out stunned, having pored over the most minute details, wondering what on earth all the managers in the department did.  I soon found out  - they spent half the week preparing information for the next IT Exec meeting, the other half dissecting the information that emerged from the last one.  The result was an unhealthy and fruitless interest in trivia and a lack of any progress on the real issues at stake.  Important matters, such as those relating to people, were always left to last, when energy levels were declining and the need to move on to the next meeting dominating. 

After a couple of years we eventually recognised the importance of HR matters and agreed to deal with these first, but my joy of reaching such a milestone was somewhat tempered when the solution was to start the meeting an hour earlier - it was now scheduled for five hours!  And the need for meaningful discussion on other topics was met by yet another weekly meeting being scheduled  - this one was called ‘reflections’ - every Thursday for two and a half hours. 

Of course this approach has a potentially dangerous impact on the organisation below.  I calculated that if I applied the same demands on my management team that Patrick Naef made on us (a weekly total of seven and a half hours of management team meetings, plus an hour one-to-one), then I would be spending 25 hours per week simply sitting in management meetings.  Extrapolating this approach throughout the organisation does not bear thinking about, particularly given the main goal was just keeping everyone ‘up to date’.

I referred (in an earlier blog) to Patrick Naef’s management approach of ‘conflict by design, creation of tensions between team members, then kiss and make up at an away day’ and these away days would trigger another terrible round of waste.  These events not only wasted time, but also money because of Patrick’s seeming obsession of holding them far away from the office.  I am totally in favour of such ‘away days’ on a periodic basis where the management team can step back from day to day issues and spend time on the wider challenges.  Once a quarter is about the right frequency and that is about how often we met.  But you can step back from day to day issues quite easily by meeting away from the office.  My own such management ‘away days’ were held in the Aviation College - ten minutes up the road with no additional cost to the Group - and they lasted just a day.  But Patrick would have us out for two days at a time in places like Hatta, Oman, Switzerland and Germany.  Once we had the entire senior management team (circa 25 people) hauled up to Musandam for a couple of days.  If you include travelling time, this would have cost over three man months on top of the hotel and travel costs, not to mention the consultants’ fees.

These sessions, for some reason, needed external consultants.  Personally, I think senior managers should be capable of facilitating themselves but I do agree that, at times, there is a need for a bit of independence.  But this can be provided internally and the Group could certainly have provided people with the necessary skills and independence.  But Patrick Naef only seemed to be comfortable when he had his team around him in a far flung location and marshalled by his favoured firm of consultants.  This company certainly had innovative ideas which, at times, worked well.  At one session we benefited from some oral delivery training from a highly accomplished actor and this was really powerful.  But that was an exception.  On a couple of occasions we were shown the concept of putting music to management by a truly world class violinist but, whilst I do not deny that it was an incredible experience to hear someone of that stature play at such close quarters, I could never see this adding a single dirham of value to the business.

I do recognise the need to try something new but I am afraid we have to recognise that IT is not particularly complicated.  What we needed was training on things like risk and project management, not musical lessons.  I couldn’t help wondering how my customers at the airport would have reacted when, say, BRS was down if I had turned up and started to tune my violin.

But by far the biggest waste of time and money I have ever experienced was our infamous trip to Frankfurt.  To this day, I do not know what the excuse was for us all to drag ourselves to a remote monastery in Germany.  Certainly it was an interesting location and the evening wine tasting session was enjoyable, but the sessions organised by our consultants could have taken place anywhere.  Though, as it turned out, it would have been better if they had not taken place at all.  No violinist this time, but we were blessed by the presence of a mathematician and a medical doctor.

Our mathematical friend had devised an impact analysis management tool for us to use.  The idea of it was that, having drawn up a weighted map of their business processes, a company could easily measure the impact of any proposed actions.  As a simple example, a product price increase would positively impact profitability, but could negatively affect customer satisfaction.  And the reduction of customer satisfaction could result in reduced sales and thus profit.  And so on.  So, with this tool, all a company owner had to do was key in the options under consideration, until the optimum answer emerged.  A sort of ‘managing a large company for dummies’ type of thing.  But we soon discovered a basic flaw - in order to draw up the weighted map, you had to fully understand your business to the point of saturation.  The impact of every conceivable event had to be known first, before you could decide its weight and the events it would impact.  In other words, you needed to know the answer before you could ask the question.

We spent the best part of a day drawing up a map of our (EG-IT’s) business, with the understandably endless discussions on weightings.  Then we tested it and discovered that, in some cases, it worked perfectly.  Bingo!  But in other cases it was wrong, which of course meant that our map was wrong.  So we re-drew the map!  We did this endlessly until, thankfully, we ran out of time.  But we had to persevere and even brought the guy back for a second round (this time in Musandam) some months later.  Eventually, the sheer folly of this was finally accepted and the initiative was quietly buried.

But all this was a breeze compared to the other main session of the trip.  I do not know what the specific purpose of this one was, but it was conducted by a lady doctor who had some very interesting ideas indeed.  I found her presentation as disjointed as it was unnerving.  She seemed to spot my scepticism early on in the proceedings (maybe it was my body language, maybe she had been briefed) and she was quick to point out that, by sitting with my left leg crossed over the right, I was giving her a clear indication about not only my psychological state, but also about the relationship I had with each of my parents.  When I challenged this, she proceeded to finish me off with the reinforcing (and compelling) evidence provided by the fact that I wear my wedding ring on my right hand.  I tried to put her straight by demonstrating that the ring (which used to belong to my Father) simply did not fit on my left hand.  “Excuses”, she said and quickly changed the subject.

It got worse.  She had us lined up, swapping places until we felt “more comfortable” in certain positions and suggested that we should sit like this in future management meetings, as it would increase our effectiveness.  Bizarrely, she also had a keen interest in which side of our marital beds we slept in but, without doubt, her coup de grace was the insistence that every night we should go down on our hands and knees and worship our parents.  Now I am more than happy for anyone to follow whatever beliefs they choose, but this one was never going to work for me, nor for my dear old Dad, rest his soul.

I found the woman unnecessarily intrusive and when ‘proving points’ during exercises sometimes appeared to use double meaning questions, similar to those employed by some faith healers and fraudsters.  But, regardless of how genuine she may have been, I am at a loss to see how such a session could have ever conceivably added any value to our business.  In fact that sentiment applied to the entire trip, other than a good bit of team bonding during the wine tasting.  But we could have done that round the corner from the office.

On the way back from Frankfurt I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for our fare paying passengers whose ticket costs were, luckily, not broken down for them.  Had they been so, I am sure the element for ‘IT Management Training’ would have raised a few questions.