John Linton .....or have they?
As yesterday was December 13th perhaps the 12 days of Christmas started then ending on Christmas Day? Long ago (and when only an austere encyclopaedia were available as a reference) I, and a number of other sub teens at an English boarding prep school spent some time as the weather got progressively more Arctic and the Christmas holidays drew ever nearer trying to determine when the 12 days actually started. We failed miserably in our clumsy 'research' and eventually asked the vicar at the local Anglican church after, compulsory, Sunday church attendance one Sunday. He told us that the ancient song had nothing to do with Christmas or any particular time frame but was written by Roman Catholic catechists in the 1600s as a way of reminding young RC children of the major tenets of their faith during times when to be a Catholic was a punishable offence and nothing could be written down.
I have been reminded of this arcane piece of knowledge/folk lore several times lately when different Exetel personnel have quite seriously told me when questioned about some strange action that "that's the way we've always done it". As one of Exetel's 'founders' the one thing I know about our business is that it has constantly changed since our 'first day' yet I now hear this silliness many times a month. Not only is it silly it's really scary to think we now have people who are not aware of the need for constant improvement (change) in every aspect of a telecommunications business and their need to be part of initiating that, real, change by always looking for things to improve - of course not changing things for the sake of it. Believing that there is some immutable way/process of doing anything in our business is as silly as a bunch of 11 year old English schoolboys trying to find out the period described in a 400 year old folk song when it had been written as a memory aid for a forbidden 'religion' with no relationship to time/dates/geese/hens/partridges/milk maids/etc whatsoever.
How does anyone 'manage' people in ways that totally promote sensible change when any commercial organisation has grown beyond 20 or 30 people, all of whom constantly communicate with each other? How do you overcome the tendencies of people who seldom meet each other to accept as "gospel" what the last person who trained or managed them said?.....bearing in mind that what is the best/only way to do something one day will need to be varied as products/services/process inevitably change over time? It is becoming a major challenge for our company - particularly as our operations are split over two very different geographic and 'cultural' areas. Our industry has an overwhelming need for precision which is significantly complicated by dealing with several different suppliers whose systems and processes vary widely. Obviously not in the ways we are addressing these issues at the moment.
So......among all the other things that take up all the time in any particular day we also need to change our management processes - fundamentally - over the coming years to move away from whatever we currently have in place to something completely different. What that may be is unclear to me and I don't think I have heard any useful suggestions 'internally' nor do any of my business acquaintances have much to offer when this subject has arisen. They, like me all those years ago, tend to see the problem as stupidly as looking for the actual period covered by the 12 days of Christmas song - i.e. we start from a totally wrong premise when trying to find a solution to a question...we don't realise that the question we are asking is complete nonsense.
Something to ponder on during this "12 Day Christmas Season".
PS: And talking of Christmas - is God alive and well in Geneva?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/8947263/Higgs-boson-scientists-reveal-first-tantalising-glimpses-of-God-Particle.html
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