Having joined the company a whole three years ago, I have recently found myself in the unusual position of working in my home location of London. And, I am happy to report that, after three months of commuting, my train recently arrived on time for the FOURTH occasion. Now, this might not seem like quality client service, but I am sure it will come as no surprise to you that the local train company measure the service that they provide and, technically it seems, a train is not late unless it is… very late. Anything less than, say, ten minutes, is clearly not deemed to be late and hence they do not forfeit any of their crucial profits, for which I will spare you my thoughts on the privatisation of services.
So, statistically, the train company provides an excellent service. And statistics are clearly the most important means of measuring quality. Statistically, Britain’s children are currently becoming more intelligent each year, Britain’s hospital waiting lists are decreasing, and crime is falling too. Brilliant; what a wonderful country I live in. Of course, statistically, Leicester City are fourth in the league and England recently finished third in the rugby world cup (if you choose to measure fair play and try count respectively).
As you can see, statistics can be misleading, depending on what you choose to measure of course, but I see a greater evil; in this age, at least part of the lack of job loyalty must be attributable to the lack of trust that management invest in their staff. Surely, the more you try to measure people and set targets endlessly, the less the opportunity for innovation and personality (actually, as an example, I recently got overcharged in a bloody newsagents and was then completely unable to get a refund as the till was run automatically, all so that management can control stock – this isn’t progress, it’s crap service). How demoralised will employees become in this context? Well, how often has your office seemed to resemble Wernum and Hogg?
Another example of crap service is the road works at Vauxhall. These have been going on for years it seems and, as I walk past each day, I try to see what progress has been made. Now, if they started to measure things like the number of hours of scratching one’s arse or the percentage of tea consumed whilst not on a break, they would be a truly successful organisation; number of bricks laid in a week might reveal them for what they are. As a juxtaposition, when in the US, signs went up one day warning to expect traffic delays as a result of road works near my flat. Fearing months of disruption, I returned from work on the first day of the works to a most unusual site for a Briton – there were over a hundred workers working (no, that’s not oxymoronic)… Day 2, the work was finished. Why do we have to put up with such bollox in this country?
Which brings me to my last point about how wonderful the recent rugby victory was, and not a little bit un-English. It really has been tremendously unfashionable for the English to flirt with anything remotely related to sporting success for a long time, which might make the victory even more sweet (although we are still very good at comedy and music). Now it would be very easy to criticise all of the people who have sought to revel in Johno’s victory, but I am not going to do that as I think it is ultimately very good for rugby that this many people are finding out more about the game, and I hope it lasts.
However, the fact that our prime minister has decided to return from the important, Commonwealth conference this weekend in order to bask in the reflected glory should be seen for what it is. This is a man who once stated on radio how he recalled sitting in the Gallowgate end at St James’ watching his beloved Newcastle and Jackie Milburn scoring. The interviewer replied that he was a little surprised by this revelation as Milburn had retired when Blair was four and the Gallowgate didn’t have seating until the 1990s. Clearly the sort of trustworthy individual that statistics can create.
Posted December 8th 2003
Scholey.com 