Sunday, March 27, 2011

I should have known: "Newspeak" is the only language they know.

I think I mentioned some time ago of my attempts to get an on-line discussion board in place so that front line sanger savers, [AKA phone specialists, service consultants, team mentors, technical support, whatever,] could put questions and suggestions to their peers. The need for this kind of consultation arises when some apparently novel question or problem comes up and the sanger saver cannot find an answer in the sacred scripting of TRAMS or the on-line oracles of the Sausage Factory website. I have been talking about the need for this kind of discussion facility for more than two years now. It has been more than 18 months since I first launched an official request/suggestion about it, 15 months since the first knock-back and just over 12 months since a High Level Honcho decided that it sounded like a good idea and endorsed it.

So after 12 months of, what we might foolishly believe to have been, official endorsement of the idea and umpteen attempts on my part to encourage implementation of the discussion board where is it now? Well, Friday last [25/3/2011] I was told by a manager that they had just discovered on Monday last [21/3] that someone back in 2008 had made a decree that no more discussion boards could be created using the Sharepoint software which is what we we proposing to use.

I was shown an email in which someone expressed the opinion that "a review was needed" and I realised that this meant: "this must stop!"
The opinion elaborated that: [in so many words] the use of Sharepoint should be considered by a committee and "a [factory]wide approach considered". I realised that this more or less meant that: "if we can't [centrally] control this, it must not exist." I believe my interpretation of this is fair enough in that two years have passed since that edict was handed down. That interpretation was confirmed by another email where it was noted that no new such discussion facilities have since come in to existence.

I think this demonstrates a couple of things fairly clearly.
  1. that George Orwell's concept of "Newspeak" was not at all fanciful; words can be made to mean their opposite, particularly when apparently describing policies and/or responses to calls for change; we are again being taught that change is only good if it "comes from the top"
  2. the Honchos of the Sausage Factory have no sense of any kind of urgency about the need for improved communication within the organisation, and quite possibly have no idea that the Factory is floundering through lack of real communication within and between the various far flung parts of its organisation. The evidence for this lack of communication is clear however, examples include:
  • letters are sent out by parts of the organisation which immediately create problems for public contact areas because the latter were not informed and phone staff struggle to find out what callers are talking about
  • various on-line facilities which may be crucial to particular types of client enquiry are unilaterally removed without consideration of the consequences - most recent example is a form for recording "community information" about wrongful or fraudulent behaviour relating to the bacon supply
  • changes to procedures laid down in TRAMS [AKA "the two tonne oxymoron in the room"] about how addresses may be updated where, for example, a member of the public or an organisation has need of a particular form to be sent out but the new process for updating the address has a minimum turn around time of 24 hours so the form cannot be sent until the poor phone staffer has confirmed that the new address has taken
  • the Factory has a policy of deliberately retaining out of date addresses on the records of clients who have ceased involvement in one or other of the channels of bacon supply; this means that if those clients restart such an involvement some years later, even though other information supplied by them in the mean time shows they have moved, the Factory will send forms and letters to an old address as a matter of course. This problem has been around for decades but the obvious solution has never been applied: simply ASK THEM on the annual sausage survey form. [The mind boggles!]
I could go on and on but the smell of over cooked bacon is not conducive to good sleep.