If you’ve seen the Chris Rock film ‘Head of State’ you’ll know that the ‘small man’ on the presidential campaign trail has a light bulb moment where he stops trotting out the prepared corporate line and to the outrageous injustices staring him in the face, shouts loud and clear “that aint right!” Of course with the magic of Hollywood a triumphant election campaign ensues, you can guess the rest.

We’re having our own “that aint right” moment. Trawling back through the wellbeing section on our website we have written about stress, toxic behaviour, messy management and a plethora of factors that contribute to ill health, lost productivity, excessive costs and damaged performance on numerous occasions.

Signal was pleased to attend the first NoOffence! Criminal justice conference yesterday. This relatively new group has, in a short space of time, brought together an impressive cross section of professionals all interested in criminal justice reform.

We at Signal are currently working with NoOffence! on a working group to improve employment support for ex-offenders and potential employers.

Signal were pleased to attend the second in a series of events run by Human Potential Accounting (HPA) on the subject of Human Capital Management (HCM) and it’s place in the financial reporting of UK business.

The event was held in the Dorchester Library of the Royal College of Physicians in London and was attended by a wide variety of interested people from many sectors:

• Finance
• HR
• Journalism
• Education
• Banking
• Professional Bodies
• Think tanks
• Corporate Governance firms

One area that was sadly not represented was Government, but more on that later.

The BBC news story on 28^th July 2011, about Whitehall being ripped off by large I.T. firms made interesting reading. (Click Link)

Yet again, Government is wondering how they are spending so much money on projects that deliver very little, or in some cases nothing at all.

There is little doubt that the I.T. firms are making money out of Whitehall, but I do question whether it is wilfully ‘ripping them off.’

One of the key factors in the many examples available of I.T. contracts and projects that have gone so array, is the lack of understanding by Senior Managers in the Government on how to negotiate workable contracts, manage projects and set realistic budgets.

I am prompted to write today after reflecting on a headline news item that the Home Secretary has announced significant reform to Police reward structures. The pay bill currently costs more than three quarters of the overall £11bn budget, like all organisations with sound governance in place, the Police Service needs to keep a weather eye on its costs, specifically its paybill costs.

(Clink link)

Before I continue I want to say this, that no one is saying that the Police don’t do an important job, but they are a service in an environment of limited resources the same as all other critical services e.g. Health going through its own kind of pain right now, and the Government like any other organisation must cut its cloth accordingly.

There have been two big announcements relating to banking this week, the first was the surprise announcement by the Chancellor that he will implement the increase in the levy on Banks this year, second was the announcement of the so called Merlin deal. I’ll not embarrass myself by trying to explain all of this, it has been covered extensively in the news: (Click Link) & (Click Link)

The reason I have highlighted these significant announcements is for a rather more cynical reason. On the coattails of these announcements have also been a number of statements about how it is now time to leave the Bankers alone, to stop “Banker bashing”, “let that be an end to it”.

My attention was caught today by the following story on the BBC

UK Trade and Investment staff ‘told to use up £1m’

There is without doubt questions of propriety to be answered here, but before we jump on our ‘High Horses’ let us not delude ourselves. This does happen and frequently.

For many years, normally in the period between January and March I was regularly sent memos, emails and sometimes graced by a personal visit from the Head of Finance to invite me to look at ‘Any little projects’ that I may want to fund, that up until that point hadn’t been given the green light because of budget restraint.

Although these messages/meetings were conducted in a most jovial way, sometimes with tea and chocolate biscuits involved, the message was clear.

It is with some disappointment that I read today of the increasingly obvious distancing by Conservative members of the Government to the Justice Secretary Ken Clarke.

Back in June we posted a blog about the new Criminal Justice initiative outlined by the newly appointed Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor (Click Link).

Today it looks very much like the New Year will see the removal of the Justice Secretary from his post and a return to a more traditional view of prison operation.

We have commented a number of times on how necessary it is for a “Root and branch” review of our penal system to take place. That locking people up and doing nothing useful with them delivers nothing but a respite for the general public from the individual’s criminality.

Over the past few weeks we have been called upon to provide mediation services on a number of occasions.  In many respects this is very pleasing, it indicates a degree of awareness of the need to nip disputes in the bud before they escalate to grievances.  

The atmosphere in a workplace when an investigation is commissioned can be horrible, the daft but inevitable situation arises where no one feels that they can talk to anyone for fear of saying something that they shouldn’t, of making a situation worse, or even somehow becoming implicated in the whole nasty mess. This lack of communication of course exacerbates problems within teams where trust is becoming an issue, and people fill the vacuum with all manner of stuff made up, dreamt up and plain wrong.

The experiences of the past few weeks, of hearing the terrible distress that all of these people are undoubtedly suffering have prompted a range of thoughts and feelings, some of which I wanted to share here.

Change is all about us. Today it is not possible to switch on the radio or TV without hearing about “radical change”. The Public Sector in particular is going through it right now. Although I have to say that when I took up my first Civil Service post 20 years ago we were apparently going through major change and over the years we are always in the throes of one change programme or another, I lived through many a programme where things didn’t feel that different in the end.

When I think about change, I am still surprised at the lack of willingness to challenge “givens”. Every system or way of working has them.  Over extended periods of time they have been features of systems, usually for very good reason, they were in the past critical to making the system work but as time has passed even though no longer critical to anything, they are there, custom and practice, an untouchable “given”.