Sunday 20 August 2017

A View From the North

Thanks go to the alert reader for pointing us in the direction of the Sheffield Telegraph and the following essay penned on Friday:-  

Mad Management: Quality and productivity - or privatisation and waste?

In 1979 the fourth largest and one of the best known USA global companies, International Harvester, hired a new CEO, Archie McCardell. 

At the time the turnover was $8.4 billion. By 1982 they had debts of $4.8 billion and finally lost even their name. How was this monumental failure achieved? By cost-cutting, forcing bad work practices and trying to break the local autoworkers union; mostly at the advice of the CEO’s consultants! 
"In summary, what killed International Harvester was Archie’s cost-cutting, profit-taking and aggressive attitude towards staff and suppliers" 
McCardell was fired in 1982, one of the most despised executives in the USA, but he still had his millions while tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs. Industrial towns, like Rocky Island, Illinois, went into recession, but Archie walked away a rich man. The interesting thing is that Archie McCardell had form. His previous job was CEO of Xerox, where, benefiting from the spurious profit-levels provided by their earlier innovative technology, he neglected the rate of return on capital deployed and other basics. He left Xerox in serious trouble in 1979. His successor, David Kearns rescued Xerox at the 11th hour by instituting a quality improvement programme that focused on the customer, not the numbers. 

In summary, what killed International Harvester was Archie’s cost-cutting, profit-taking and aggressive attitude towards staff and suppliers. What saved Xerox was Kearn’s focus on customer care - understanding their needs - and adopting the RIGHT FIRST TIME (RFT) policy. RFT prevents the great waste that occurs through rework, and also, unsurprisingly, delights customers. In the eighties, for example, Toyota could produce a perfect new car in the time it took Mercedes to correct the defects in one of theirs off the line. 

One would think, therefore, that our politicians would follow the Kearn’s management model at Xerox? But no, they chose Archie McCardell’s. A prime example is Chris Grayling, the cabinet minister at the Ministry of Justice, followed closely by Jeremy Hunt. He, like Archie, has history. Taking the worst aspects of top-down, cost-cutting corporates he set about ‘reforming’ the MoJ in 2012. He instituted, for example, unfair court charges - which, Michael Gove, his successor, scrapped; selling prison training to Saudi Arabia - which Gove also scrapped, along with stopping books for prisoners; cutting legal aid to prisoners - which the Court of Appeal ruled unlawful; charging fees for workers taking their bosses to industrial tribunals - which the Court of Appeal also scrapped. Archie McCardell would have been impressed with his imperiousness, and David Kearns horrified at the sheer waste. 

This is not about politics. It is about the huge economic implications. Just refunding the tribunal fees amounted to nearly £30 million, without factoring in the administration costs. Add all the other ‘rework’ of failed policies and the tens of millions pile up. To cap it all Chris goes ahead with the privatisation of the Probation Service, against all the warnings from the police, the prison service, his civil servants and the Howard League. Because, when you’re drenched in neo-liberalism, you just KNOW that the private sector practices are better than public services. 

David Kearns put Xerox quickly back on its feet by improving quality, i.e. RFT and continuous improvement. Clearly then, this had to be where the probation service was failing. On the contrary, in 2011, the probation service won the British Quality Foundation’s (BQF) Gold Medal for Excellence. 

The probation service model worked! The same award that had gone to Ricoh, Siemens and TNT Express, all global successes, was awarded to this public sector organisation, which the CEO of the BQF described as ‘a shining example of excellence’. 

Clearly, after this accolade, Probation’s management model would be circulated throughout the public sector as best practice. 

But, no, our Chris, who knows better, privatised it in 2014, disbursing £800 million of public money to the private sector. 

As I commented in my last article over Hunt’s attempt to privatise NHS Professionals, dogma trumps evidence. But maybe it has turned out an economic success? Well, within two years the Tory chair of the Justice Select Committee, Bob Neil, said the privatised service ‘risks heading for a car crash’, with 21 private community rehabilitation companies reporting they were making a loss on almost all their seven-year contracts worth £3.7 billion.This a real lose/lose: in fact a lose/lose/lose because by October 2016 the Chief Inspector of Probation had “identified multiple failures”with one in three short-term offenders being released with nowhere to live. 

Chris must have a lot of rework to do. Actually, no. Like Archie McCardell at Xerox, he moved on in 2015 to Transport, leaving an unimpressed Michael Gove to pick up the pieces. 

Finally, there is a typically despairing British phase, ‘You’ve got to laugh’ (otherwise you would cry), and this is where I am at with this government over the sheer WASTE of taxpayers’ money and people’s lives. 

Between Chris Grayling and Jeremy Hunt alone we, the taxpayer are picking up a tab running into tens of billions, with a human cost that is as bad and more tragic. These two have been in charge of the fates of the most vulnerable people in our society, and they have treated them and their staff shockingly. Consequently our communities all suffer, and the nation cannot have a successful business environment in a failing society.

Has Grayling, like McCardle, finally been banished to the wilderness? No, he has been rewarded with Transport and has scrapped the Midland Mainline electrification, fundamental to economic growth in the North. 

Thank you, Chris Grayling, for nothing.

John Carlisle

--oo00oo--

I'm assuming the following from Sheffield Hallam University goes some way to explain something of the author:- 

Honorary Doctorate - 2004

Twenty years ago in Sheffield John Carlisle pioneered a revolutionary approach to dramatic business improvement, that of instilling supply chain, or upstream, collaboration: a commonsense approach spectacularly absent from British industry at the time!

This relationship strategy of profitable co-operation has been adopted by almost 100 major organisations across the globe. The approach has enhanced the quality of working life for thousands, delivering, as it does, dramatically enhanced performance without conflict, re-structuring and job losses. Welsh Water, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and business giants Shell, De Beers and Siemens are typical of organisations that applied his methodologies for increased savings of up 30 per cent and startling innovations.

As a result of helping clients world-wide deliver project savings of over £350 million per annum in the nineties, his Sheffield-based firm, JCP, became the biggest consultancy of its kind in Europe.

Born in Zambia, John worked in the copper mines before moving to England in 1970, settling in Sheffield in 1976 and establishing JCP in 1991.

8 comments:

  1. Umm, probation didn't work prior to TR no matter what awards for excellence it might have won. Probation stopped working the moment it moved away from befriending and supporting to judgment, risk management and box ticking. But the writer is spot on about Grayling and Hunt. I cannot for the life of me see why either has any kind of job when they are so plain bad at their jobs

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    1. Grayling and Hunt are from the same school of self serving politics. Graylings dodgy dealings are often brought up on this blog. But let's not forget how dodgy Hunt is.

      Since being elected to government in 2005, Hunt has been involved in a string of scandals which when put together outshine some of the bigger scandals on this list. Yet somehow the impervious MP has gone on to be rewarded with ever more responsibility.
      Here are some instances where other MPs and the public have called for the Teflon-coated minister’s resignation:
      · In 2009, he was forced to repay £9,500 of taxpayers’ cash after allowing his election agent to live rent-free in his subsidised home. This was after he had also breached the rules for claiming for a property that was his designated main home.
      · In 2010, it was discovered his former parliamentary assistant had been given a civil service job. The assistant was the daughter of a Conservative life peer who had also been the director of Hunt’s company.
      · In 2010, he apologised after suggesting hooliganism was to blame for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.
      · In 2012, it was revealed he was a tax avoider (something Cameron said he would not tolerate) after dodging more than £100,000 in tax in a property deal.
      · Again in 2012, close links were discovered between his office and Rupert Murdoch’s company News Corporation. Hunt, at the time, was handling the company’s bid to take over BSkyB. It was found Hunt and his advisors had communicated sensitive information to Murdoch.
      · In 2013, the British Medical Association said he displayed “complete ignorance” after saying he thought the abortion limit should be changed to 12 weeks.
      · His expenses featured: 1p for a 12-second phonecall, £75 on five candles, £700 on signs for one of his houses and a whopping £3,180 on stamps, envelopes and labels (in one year).
      Why is Hunt still in the cabinet? Labour leader Ed Miliband once said “it beggars belief” but maybe it has something to do with Hunt’s support during his buddy David Cameron’s leadership campaign?

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  2. 12.49 Hunt is cut from the Theresa May cloth who openly bribes the Irish M.Ps to a billion pounds to enable her to stay in power ... she leads by example and the British public accept it. Disgusting

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    1. There's been massive opposition to the building of a new prison in Port Talbot. Wales has just had HMP Berwin foisted on them with no extra funding for the local NHS services being provided by central government to accommodate the extra services that will have to be provided to the prison population.
      Wales doesn't want another super prison.
      But I love the fact that the rethoric spouted by the MoJ to one politician is being flipped and being used to raise further concerns by someone else.

      http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/people-worried-inmates-huge-planned-13503872

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    2. Top-level talks should be called over controversial plans to build a prison in Port Talbot amid fears that inmates will be released into the community.

      Bethan Jenkins, AM for South Wales West, has called for an urgent meeting over the proposal for the super-sized 1,600 capacity category C prison earmarked for Baglan Moors.

      Neath-based Miss Jenkins has written to Prisons Minister Sam Gyimah over her concerns.

      In her letter, she said: “There is some anxiety in the local area regarding what the situation will be when prisoners are released and whether or not prisoners are likely to be released, on probation or otherwise, into the local community in Port Talbot.

      “Could you tell me what the MOJ’s preferred policy on this matter is and whether or not you envisage prisoners who are not originally from the local area to be released in Port Talbot or nearby towns and villages?

      “I noted recently that in a letter to the MP for Aberavon, Stephen Kinnock, that you said that the prison would be: “a category C adult male resettlement prison in which the focus will be preparing an individual for resettlement through maintaining and improving family ties and providing access to local community services, for this it is essential to have transport links to support reintegration of offenders back into the community.”

      “You also go on to say that “some category C prisoners may be considered for temporary release for activities linked to rehabilitation.”

      “My concern arising from these statements is that it appears that you are confirming that there could be significant numbers of prisoners of former prisoners, being released into the local community in Port Talbot and surrounding areas, if the prison is built.

      “Placing offenders, the majority of whom would probably have no prior link to not only Neath Port Talbot but also to Wales, in my view could be highly problematic and could go as far as exacerbating social problems which already exist in Port Talbot and surrounding areas.”

      She added: “It has also been pointed out to you in prior correspondence by myself and others, that housing in the surrounding areas, near to the proposed prison site, primarily have established families with schools, hospitals and other community facilities also.

      “My constituents would be extremely concerned with any proposals for them to accommodate significant numbers of re-offenders with no prior link with their community.”

      She said people living in the community had been in touch with her with a variety of concerns.

      The super-sized prison at Baglan Moors is one of four to be drawn up for England and Wales, including Full Sutton in east Yorkshire, Hindley in Wigan, Rochester in Kent, under a £1.3 billion plan by the Government to transform the prison estate.

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  3. Jeremy Hunt-

    It's just been discovered that private hospitals also enjoy charity status, and as such have an 80% reduction in their business rates each year.
    The NHS? Full business rates, and an increase of £500million over the next 5years.

    Chris Grayling-

    Well the following article demonstrates (at every level) just what a shocking mess the MoJ are in.
    This is one that you really couldn't make up.

    http://www.legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/senior-judge-berates-government-lawyers-handling-moj-negligence-claim

    'Getafix

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    1. A lady justice of appeal has berated the Government Legal Department (GLD) over its defence of a negligence claim brought by a prison officer against the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), saying its “lack of focus” led to a “huge workload which was wholly disproportionate to the real issues”.

      Lady Justice Thirlwall, sitting as a judge of the High Court, said government lawyers announced before the trial that a witness would be giving evidence who had died in prison months ago.

      “There were undoubtedly flaws in the way some of the statements were drafted,” Thirlwall LJ said. “Witnesses were interviewed and notes taken but the statements were not drafted for many months or even years.

      “This is not a method likely to achieve the best evidence. I am quite sure that this was done because the pressure of work did not allow for the best preparation and not for any sinister reason.”

      Thirlwall LJ went on: “The lack of focus in the defendant’s case led to a huge workload which was wholly disproportionate to the real issues.

      “That is why statements were served well out of time, with no explanation and why careless errors were made.”

      She was ruling in Marsh v Ministry of Justice [2017] EWHC 1040 (QB). The court heard that James Marsh sued the MoJ for psychiatric injury following a prolonged period of suspension from Downview women’s prison in Surrey.

      The MoJ responded by arguing that the claimant was guilty of misconduct and would have been dismissed in any event, had he not been dismissed for ill health following his return to the prison.

      On the pleadings, Thirlwall LJ said the amended particulars of claim was 38 pages long and the amended defence ran to 114 pages.

      “Both pleadings are far longer than was necessary to identify the issues in the case. The defence in particular includes unnecessary detail, much of which is irrelevant to the claimant.

      “Had proper focus been applied at an earlier stage the trial would have taken at most eight days, instead of the 15 that it occupied.”

      Thirlwall LJ said counsel for the claimant “raised a number of concerns” at the pre-trial review about the defendant’s approach to the litigation.

      “Several of the witness statements submitted on behalf of the defendant contained passages that were identical.

      “The information given by the defendant to the claimant’s solicitors in advance of and to the court during the pre-trial hearing about the availability of witnesses to give evidence was inconsistent and on occasion simply incorrect.”

      For example, the judge said the defendant had said a ‘Ms Noakes’ would be giving evidence, while in fact “she had died in prison some months earlier”.

      “Whilst I can well understand that no individual can know the whereabouts of all potential witnesses, the reassurance being given to the court was based on nothing and so should not have been given.

      “There were several less obvious inaccuracies and misleading statements which it is not necessary to rehearse.”

      At the trial, Thirlwall LJ said she heard evidence from 29 witnesses over 15 days, having refused an application to extend the time estimate.

      “I considered then as I do now that the proposed number of witnesses and documents was wholly disproportionate to the issues and value of the claim. I set a limit on the number of witnesses to be called and imposed a cap on the number of pages in the bundles to 3000.”

      Thirlwall LJ said Surrey Police were invited to investigate Downview Prison in 2009 to investigate “allegations of widespread corruption”, mainly that the prison officers were “involved in sexual misconduct with prisoners”.

      This culminated in the suicide of a prison officer the night before his trial for misconduct in 2011 and the imprisonment of one of the governors, Russell Thorne, for five years.

      A new governor from another prison launched an investigation into alleged misconduct by Mr Marsh, but the only charge, a “slapping allegation” was dismissed in 2012.

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    2. Thirlwall LJ rejected “in its entirety” the MoJ’s defence to the negligence that Mr Marsh was guilty of misconduct which would have led to his dismissal.

      She also rejected the claimant’s argument that the solicitor for the defendant at the GLD acted with an “excess of zeal” and when dealing with witnesses was “too close to the case”.

      Lady Justice Thirlwall dismissed the claimant’s application that the MoJ’s defence should be struck out as an abuse of process of the court, but gave judgment in favour of the claimant.

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