Sitting waiting for the
Diarrhea train to London Bridge this morning, I was thinking through some of the things that it could be interesting to blog.
Most of them present
difficulties, including the need to say much to explain the point I
want to make.
But there is one that
remains with me years on.
It concerns J, a person
of limited intellect and greatly limited ethics, and she worked in
F.E.. She was one of those strange types who take statements of
corporate aspirations and advertising as statements of reality; so
that she wanted nothing more than to be “successful” in the eyes
of others; and endorsed the status quo until some aspect of the
status quo deemed it appropriate to change. And then she changed.
Fashionable idiocy all the way.
Thus, she seemed to
know that Human Resources is a true force of Nature and thank god she
wasn't born in an era when we had only discovered Personnel. Having
left that childhood period behind us, we now knew that mastery of HR
would lead to human happiness.
How wonderful and
appropriate then that she was Head of H.R. in her institution.
The first problem that
one notices with Dungheads is that they think they have to be seen to be doing
something useful; steady as she goes sounds like madness to them
because they want to be known for great deeds more than doing things the best way; but they can't do
anything useful. So they do unuseful things.
I recall that she took
on the issuing of temporary contracts. Not herself, of course; dear
me, no; but she handed them to a typist. When she remembered. We handed them to her and she handed them to a typist. Sometimes the typist made a mistake and that was often not discovered
until later, J never noticed – “I don't pretend to be a subject
specialist; I merely offer HR expertise” – creating confusion and
understandable aggression on the part of the visiting lecturer who objected to
hanging around while they got the paperwork corrected.
And it was a tribute to
the trust she inspired that few were willing to work on the promise
of a contract after she took over.
Sometimes the typist
would ask for clarification and she, J, would ask dumb questions of
the busy senior lecturers who used to do the contract writing without
thinking; or she would give a daft answer, taking us back to the
first problem.
She wanted more and
more notice and subjected others to lectures on the need to plan.
(She was new to F.E. and seemed to think you could plan everything
weeks ahead.)
More and more people were unwilling to work for us; and she complained that we were not retaining our temporary staff.
Gone were the days when
you could take a lecturer into a class and tell them you'd bring them
a contract during the time they were there. That wasn't an ideal way
to work; but sometimes it was the way one had to work – events,
dear reader.
Then she had the idea
that it wasn't good enough to just issue a contract; and that we had
to give a full statement of what they were supposed to do etc. Such
thoughts occur to fools with too little work to do. Especially if
they don't know anything about the subject. This one had never
taught; but you could tell she'd had an hour or two of training while
she was getting her HR ear tag and was ready to put the rest of us on
the straight and narrow.
It was from her that I
first inferred the belief, previously accepted in the Soviet Union,
that anyone who misbehaves must be mentally ill and that, combining
this belief with a good dose of behaviourism, the best thing for
everyone is for management to force people to behave as you tell
them.
As the new regimes came
into FE twenty years ago, people were bullied and became ill. “How
dare you speak like that to a manager” she was inclined to shout.
Part of the bullying was disciplinary hearing – I was myself once charged
with “inexpert photocopying of a document” (Level 4, bringing the
institution into disrepute; straight up) – and it was clear to J and
all the other monosyllabic intellects that the only way to save these
people was to discipline people more. Only when they had faced up to
their crimes would they be able to lead rewarding and productive
lives.
These fools did not
learn anything about psychology or any of that nonsense. It was
obvious to them that they were right.
J and co were deeply
suspicious of staff who could not or would not account for their time
in advance and in detail; they would show their diaries, especially
proud of the very full pages.
I think this arose from
their constant desire to steal time and stationery whenever they
could; and they assumed we were all the same.
Similarly, they knew
the impossibility of managing by consent because no one they had ever
worked with had willingly carried out their ideas.
I recall being asked
how I kept discipline in my team.
I also remember incomprehension when I said I was busy for a few hours because I was going to have a longish unofficial chat with someone, no I wouldn't say whom, in order to solve a possible problem. She saw straight away this was foolish and advised head on confrontation and keeping a record on file. Oh what I fool I was not to listen.
Solved the problem though.
When she asked how I kept discipline, I didn't understand the
question. I really did not. I had had to speak to a couple of people
over the years; but it was hardly a major issue: one chap who did try
to do nothing, but was very good if you could get him in the room and keep him there; and one with whom it was better for the students when she
did do nothing – so we gave her the classes who seemed mostly came
for the social side and everyone was happy.
But day to day. the
idea of management as sheep herding was not in it. Not for me. One
had to make decisions. One had to carry cans. One had to bollock the
occasional recalcitrant student: “Can you speak sternly to x,
Lawrence?” For the rest of it, I taught alongside my colleagues, a
little of a personal specialism and a lot of the stuff no one wanted so they
could see I took my share
How did I know my team
did their full hours? Because I gave them more work than they could
do in their hours.
But how did I know?
You
see, these half wits didn't know how long anything took to do
properly because they had never done anything properly. They had no
“trade” at all, no trade of any description. They offered a sort
of free-floating professionalism and expected you to consult them for
advice so you could hope one day to become like them. They'd give you a garbled regurgitation of
the latest self-help book they had read; and that was it.
Are
you familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? asked my Head of
Sector one morning. She liked us to meet at least once a week
although there was never anything to say. The only thing I remember
needing to see her over was to warn her that the student she had
signed up to study Multimedia – do you teach it? he had asked and
she had Yes, because she had no idea what he was talking about – was going to go berserk now he knew that that we
didn't have the kit. She looked confused and said “But I thought
Multimedia was computers and that”. Oh yes, and why had she changed
my timetabling and given the fastest computers to the programming
class? Again, she looked confused; but they're our star students, she
said. Yes, I said, and you can do their coding on any heap of a
machine. I said I wanted the best computers for people learning the
latest version of Office. Why? Because it won't run well on anything
else.
She
couldn't get that.
Anyway,
I said I was very familiar with Maslow... and that was the end of
that conversation. She just about had the intelligence to not speak
to anyone on anything they already knew about.
Meanwhile
the entire HR department of 1, who survived senior management anger by making available
sexual services to the Head of Corporate Blagging, decided that those
Team Leaders who got on well with their teams and whose teams
defended them, were obviously too close to their teams. We must have
separate offices and all teaching time removed so we could
concentrate on managing.
You
don't need student contact to manage lecturers, Lawrence
She
offered herself as an example of a manager who had never taught; and
look how well she was doing.
But
not everything was bad.
One
day she felt she had been doing so well that she went to the pub for
the whole day as a reward; and then on the way home she went through her
windscreen. And then her body died too.
Such
a loss. But the discipline of it was good for her. She never bothered
any of us again.
