Phil Factor on lies, damned lies and documented working procedures.

There is a world of difference between the business processes that really take place in a company and the management’s understanding of those processes…

After several years working as a systems analyst I intuitively understood this fact, but its truth was brought home to me forcefully only after I went to work for a well-known company that specialised in financial services. I’d had quite a bit of retail banking experience but nothing really prepared me for the strange, archaic work-practices of this company. Little had changed since the late-Victorian peak of their enterprise, except that the workforce no longer wore starched collars and ties.

Two years before my arrival, the management had been swept away in one of those whirlwinds that periodically affect such firms. The workforce barely looked up from their ledgers as they scratched away at their timeless rituals, but a new dynamic team of managers, complete with braces and gelled hair, had descended on the hapless enterprise. They were determined to enact a dynamic business re-engineering exercise that would “transform the company into best-in-class providers of financial services for the new millennium”.

These human dynamos, square of jaw and decisive of action, resolved to introduce startling efficiencies that would, in their words, “reshape and redefine the whole enterprise in a new and vibrant way”. They decided to call in the management consultants. Suddenly the corridors were full of earnest, humourless young men in gold-rimmed spectacles, neat hair and smart suits. Solemnly they interviewed the staff to determine, and document, the business procedures of the company.

At this point the employees woke up to the reality of what was going on around them. They recognized “introducing efficiencies” as a euphemism for a drastic slimming of the workforce, “reshaping the enterprise” as a variation on the same theme. With the creative energy of people in fear of their livelihood, they gave the serious-suited gentlemen procedures by the bucket load. Every department was able to describe in vivid detail their intrinsic importance to the working of the enterprise, the vital nature of their role. They conjured processes out of thin air.

The management consultants accepted everything at face value. They did not seem to even consider that old Joe in dispatch, whose job was a sinecure that an energetic man could complete in half an hour, might have lied to them when he described the elaborate and skilled nature of his contribution to the company. It was all noted, analysed, diagrammed and documented. The final report was delivered in forty volumes and placed in a large filing cabinet, along with a final bill to the company of several million pounds.

It has always perplexed me that management never question the rule that whatever is said by a serious young man in a suit, gold-rimmed specs, and a smart haircut, must be hot stuff. As these particular smart young men were also from a London firm of accountants and charged stratospheric fees, then their contribution must, they knew, be profound.

As part of the team of IT consultants hired to implement the “business reengineering”, I’d been tasked with turning the documented business procedures for the Shipping part of the business into an application. It seemed simple. One just had to start at page one of the documented procedures, implementing everything as described until tired but happy, one reached the final page. I unlocked the filing cabinet and gazed upon what must have been one of the most expensive books in history. The IT director told me, with a hint of admiration in his voice, that I was the first to attempt to read it. With mounting panic I took the relevant volumes to the department and talked to the team that ran it.

“Do you really do all this stuff?” I asked. The response was silence and sheepish looks all round. My second question, “If we created a computer system that did all this stuff, would it work?” was greeted with muffled laughter. At this point, I was shaken by a wave of panic so violent that I stood up abruptly and swept my hand across the wall to steady myself. Their laughter turned to looks of horror, and wails of dismay.

Thinking from their reaction that maybe my arm had dropped off and the severed stump was spraying blood around the room, I glanced around. I had, with my sleeve, wiped off a considerable section of the writing on a whiteboard fastened to the wall. To cut a long story short, the real, simple story of their mundane working lives, had been enshrined in a series of simple charts on a whiteboard, consisting of checks, crosses, dates and names. My carelessness had erased a section of the true procedures that coordinated their work activities.

This, I pondered, was a bit of a give-away. An hour later we had restored the chart and, in doing so I had bottomed out the simple routines and paperwork that governed their working lives. It bore no resemblance to the lies told to the management consultants. Even more alarmingly, it was refined and honed by a hundred years of evolution into a system that was hard to better.

Three months later, they had their computer system. I’d written it, by myself, during my lunch hours. It was based on their whiteboard, in a comforting and reassuring way. It was simple, it worked well, and it required no retraining. The IT director fussed about it as it seemed to embody none of the profound knowledge imparted by the expensive management consultants, but I told him, without blushing, that the essential procedures from the report had been adopted. He sighed with relief, and signed off what proved to be the only successful part of the subsequent business reengineering project that was ever completed.

As with all enterprises, the tide of management revolution turned, and the dynamic management in braces and striped shirts all disappeared. Against all expectations, the old traditional parts of the business flourished and the radical new initiatives failed to achieve their promise. The workforce once more settled down to their old ways without the threat of radical reform of their work practices. The only thing that had changed was that visitors were no longer liable to wipe out the organisational system of the shipping area with their sleeves. Their cherished diagrams flickered on computer screens around their department.

The vast filing cabinet with its precious contents was quietly removed, like the Ark of the Covenant, to a convenient cellar. The business reengineering and its colossal expense were quickly forgotten.

So when one hears, with monotonous regularity, that enormous government computer systems fail, could it be that it is not the fault of the IT people who implemented the systems at all? Maybe it is the fact that the government employees puff up the complexity and importance of their roles in the business and systems analysis to the point at which one is implementing a complete fantasy, designed to protect cushy jobs rather than to serve the public? Could it be that, once these specifications and architectures are complete, nobody has the power or the inclination to challenge the veracity of what has been produced?