Thread: The Runt's Public Service

Over my working life I been in private and all 3 levels of government employment, federal was by far the worse for restructuring, name changing etc. One of the departments was known as the dept. of Name Changes.


Once upon a time, a very old and once respected Australian company and a new, progressive Japanese company decided to have a competitive boat race on the Parramatta River. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance. On the big day, they were as ready as they could be.

The Japanese team won by a mile.

Afterwards, the Australian team became discouraged by their loss and their morale sagged. Corporate Management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A Continuous Measurable Improvement Team of "Executives" was sent to investigate the problem and recommend corrective action and a recovery program.
Their conclusion: The problem was that the Japanese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, whereas the Australian team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. The Australian Corporate Steering Committee immediately hired a consulting firm to study the management structure of the team.

After some time and tens of millions of dollars spent, the consulting firm concluded that "too many people were steering and not enough were rowing. "To prevent losing to the Japanese team again the following year, the management structure was changed to "4 Steering Managers, 3 Area Steering Managers and 1 Staff Steering Manager" and a new performance reward system for the person rowing the boat to provide more incentive to work harder and become an "Excellent Rated" performer. "We must give him empowerment and enrichment." That ought to do it.

The next year the Japanese team won by two miles.

The Australian company retrenched the rower for poor performance, sold all the oars, cancelled all capital investments for new equipment, halted development of a new canoe, awarded Special Recognition Awards to the consulting firm and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the company senior executives.

SOUND LIKE ANYWHERE YOU KNOW ?



Martyn

Thank god for private sector as I was once employed by the CSIRO mate what a joke, I was instructed to put thermostat controls into science blocks to make them think they had central heating in place, Clever Scientists responded with a thankyou email to head of Maintainace for the new found warmth, go figure as these clever chaps were paid Intelligent individuals,
PS this was way back in the early 80's.

Originally Posted by timaus13

Thank god for private sector as I was once employed by the CSIRO mate what a joke, I was instructed to put thermostat controls into science blocks to make them think they had central heating in place, Clever Scientists responded with a thankyou email to head of Maintainace for the new found warmth, go figure as these clever chaps were paid Intelligent individuals,
PS this was way back in the early 80's.

before the invention of the internet and email

Best one I experienced was when a former cleaner came into my classroom with a clipboard and started counting out loud. I asked her what she was doing. I was told that she had been promoted out of the cleaning area and now had the job of counting fluorescent tubes, that's right - counting fluorescent tubes!

She was soon made redundant and paid to leave. On her final day I went to the usual send off. I asked her more about what happened to get her promotion. She told me that she caught the Director at the time hard at it with his Educational Assistant in the Director's office one evening. That's why she was moved out of the way and paid to leave .

Originally Posted by p38arover

You can't.

Some years ago (in OTC), I was acting in a higher grade and had been for about a year before it was advertised.

I applied but lost to another bloke who had no experience in my field.

I was then asked to train him!

I appealed the promotion. The reps on the appeals board were the union rep (who didn't like me as I was a very non-unionist union member), the company rep, and the independent.

After the appeal which I lost, the company rep (in private) told me that he'd voted for me, the union rep against me, and those situations, the independent always went the way of the original promotion.

Ron

Mate I have worked out that promotion in the public service area still relys on the old mates act.
During my time I had 4 promotion interviews, the first I lost out to a bloke who ultimatley became my boss, on the morning of the interview, i watched him type out a restructure proposal he had obtained from someone else, word for word, he used it as a hand up, it got him the job, i had no hope in an appeal.
This bloke now is off sick with internal affairs after him.

the second one was a regional position,the bloke who got the job had the convenor as one of his referees.
no hope on that one.( he got charged and resigned 2 years later.) then they restructored.

the third one, didn't get an interview, why because i didn't use the STAR format for the application, was talked out of an appeal because it could have embarressed the convenor who was a fairly senior officer, as the star format wasn't mandatory.
the fourth one, didn;t get submitted because they changed and withdrew the position.

Its easy to be cynical, but when you see it time and time again, it makes you wonder.
I guess its no different in the private sector. probably worst as there are very little by way of checks and balances.
Glad i am out of it.

my rant

john

Originally Posted by dobbo

What are you implying Ron, I thought you hadn't seen my workplace.

Yes but I've met you in your previous workplace!

Ron

In my time in OTC I was promoted into positions about which I knew nowt and over one of the blokes in the area.

However, they were lower level management positions and that was something at which what I was reasonably good.

I relied heavily on my technical staff and when I got the kudos for a job well done, I made sure that management knew that the staff did the work and that they also deserved acknowledgment.

I don't know of one area in which I was the manager where the staff didn't eventually accept and respect me. That doesn't mean that it was all plain sailing at first - especially when they thought that one of their number had missed out on the job!

Ron

Originally Posted by JDNSW

...
... I don't know what the answer is. The only thing that keeps the country working is that at least some of the people promoted are at least reasonably competent at management, and that some of the best people at skilled tasks like what they are doing enough to refuse promotion.

John

John you can only refuse promotion for so long, in my case many years. However a couple of years ago before one of those idiotic accreditation audits, I was seconded to a position that needed to be done prior to the audit now they won't let me back whence I came because I did it too well.

Diana