Keith Pincher's Blog

Local Rugby

2012-01-30T09:31:00.000Z

In the week that Dudley Kingswinford Rugby Club beat the formerly mighty Manchester 137-0 and their local rivals Stourbridge lost again to leave them hovering dangerously above relegation it was interesting to see both coaches making the same point but for different reasons.

DK player coach Jon Higgins went on record to warn of the dangers of being too ambitious, pointing out that former Championship team Manchester's rapid and humiliating plummet down the leagues with hardly a point scored until this season is simply a result of their unsustainable finances drying up and the desertion of their paid journeymen, while in contrast DK's starting line-up included 13 of their former Colts.

On the other side of that coin, it seems Stourbridge's coach Neil Mitchell is well aware of the dangers of basing success on imported paid players and what relegation might mean. Here's what he said:

“If you look at Wharfedale or Cinderford they have a core of players from the local area who are real brothers in arms. We don’t have that but we have got to find it.

“I want the players to take more responsibility, run the lineouts, draw up a team charter because everyone is going to have to muck in. I don’t want anyone thinking ‘What happens if we go down?’ or phoning this agents because we need to stick together.”

The Dreams nightmare continues

2012-01-18T18:23:00.000Z

They obviously weren't going to ring again so I had to spend another half hour listening to the piano and the announcements on the 0844 number before I got hold of another Scot. This time a girl named Kim. My previous phone call was recorded on her system but I still had to explain everything again.

First she said that the sprung slats were £40 extra and she would have to ring the store to see what I ordered. I told her that her colleague (Ross, she informed me) had promised to ring back but had only managed one of those silent calls that satisfies the CRM system and drives customers mad and she promised to ring me back and wait for me to answer.

She did ring back and the story now is that the Roma only comes with solid slats and has no pre drilled holes to allow the fitting of sprung slats so they aren't an option and she can't send me any. I'll have to open the box now to confirm this but obviously I don't believe her. She said she's looked at the instructions and also the people in the store confirm that I couldn't possibly have seen sprung slats on the bed in the store, I must have imagined it. She says I'm welcome to go in and check - yeah, like they won't be changing them as I write this. I've already spent an hour and a half hanging on the phone and talking to people who will tell me anything to get rid of me and they think I'm now going to drive all over there for another argument in person. As if.

I asked if I was the only person to buy a Roma bed and notice that the slats were solid and not sprung as advertised on the internet. She said I was. She also said that since I didn't buy the bed from the misleading internet, but in store, she was unable to do anything for me except perhaps sell me a different bed.

She said that Ross had the wrong number on the system which is why he didn't phone. I said that he did phone the correct number but hung up as I answered and she mumbled something I didn't catch. Perhaps the people who record the call for training purposes will understand what she said.

I don't want the bed now and intend to get my money back, so it doesn't make a lot of difference but I would love to hear from anybody who has a Roma bed with sprung slats.

If getting my money back is half as stressful as trying to get them to supply what I ordered you'll be hearing from me again. Meanwhile, pleasant Dreams.

Dreams the Bed Company

2012-01-18T15:31:00.001Z

02084954527 just rang. I happened to have the phone in my hand and answered on the first ring, but the caller had already hung up. I rang back - "You have been contacted by Dreams The Bed Company.....". Graaaahhh!!!!!

Well I suppose their state of the art CRM system shows that they rang me back and resolved my query. But of course they haven't. Now I imagine I have to ring them back again and wait another half an hour.

Or I can just phone my bank and cancel the transaction and leave their bed out in the rain for them to collect.

What would you do?

Dreams turn customer service into a nightmare.

2012-01-18T15:03:00.000Z

We've bought a bed for the spare room. I'm sure it will be a lovely bed if one of the Dreams Team will only come to the phone to sort out my problem with the delivery.

The bed has been delivered with solid slats instead of the sprung ones advertised on the web site.

I rang the store and first of all they said it doesn't come with sprung slats they cost extra. When I insisted they look at their own web site they said it was a mistake on the web and they would ring me back.

They rang me back and asked me to ring customer service. So far I've been hanging on for 10 minutes listening to a repetitive piano loop and an occasional recorded assurance that one of the Dreams Team will be with me as quickly as possible.

I can't understand why the store isn't authorised to sort this issue out.

Somebody finally answered. The order at Dreams end, but not on any of my paperwork states 'solid slats' apparently. The web site says:

Sprung slats provide a secure, comfortable base for the mattress of your choice.

Specifications:
- Modern design
- Metal frame
- Chrome finish
- Sprung slats

At least, it does at the moment. I've taken several dated and timed screen shots in case it gets changed while I'm waiting for them to call back. Annoying isn't it. I've got work to do today and I'm spending it getting wound up by good old British Customer service. Dreams indeed!

Waiting targets for accident and emergency to be scrapped

2010-06-10T11:02:00.004+01:00

At last, some common sense in government. After years of persisting with the damaging philosophy of arbitrary targets micro managed from Whitehall our new government sweeps away Blair's foolishness at a stroke and hands control back to the managers. Well done Cameron, and thanks for listening.

Link to the Guardian article.

Foxconn factory ends condolence payments over suicides

2010-06-10T09:58:00.000+01:00

One suicide note appears to have convinced Foxconn that their policy of compensating the families of suicide victims is motivating employees to take their own lives.

Foxconn factory ends condolence payments over suicides

This looks like an example of one of the two big mistakes which are commonly made when interpreting data. In this case they are treating a Special Cause of Variation as Common and reacting inappropriately. As Deming said, don't just do something - stand there.

The sin of believing your own publicity.

2010-03-12T09:42:00.009Z

All of what we do, for our clients and for ourselves is based in systems thinking. As a result we've been more keenly interested than most at the unfolding story of the Toyota crisis. We've watched Toyota's growth both in reputation and sales over many a year now and always with admiration - until now. Over recent years there has also been a boom in Toyota based management books. Indeed it's hard to find a management book published in the last ten years that doesn't have either Toyota in its title or contain copious mentions of the company.

The story of the gaffes committed in not listening to their customer's complaints and pretending there was no problem, to accepting that there was a problem but not reacting quickly enough to it will no doubt produce many reprints of those books and spawn a whole new set in the categories of PR and disaster management.

The question in my head through all of this has been - did they begin to believe their own publicity, were their heads turned by so much praise? In fact I was reminded of the case of Sainsburys who were a client of ours through the 80s and 90s. They were at that time family led and quite simply believed that they were the best, which they had been without doubt, but they refused to believe that the runners coming up on the rails were a genuine threat. We were working with other retailers at the time and could see clearly that Sainsburys weren't as good as they thought they were in many areas and were clinging to what had worked well in the 70s. They just didn't listen to us and they were in for a terrible shock when Tesco, the upstart they disliked the most hit them very hard indeed.

Toyota appears to be the other side of that coin. The new kids on the worldwide block who overtook the old established front runners and forgot to carry on doing what they had done so well.

There's an excellent interview by John Shook on his Lean Enterprise web site with Takahiro Fujimoto, who thinks that Toyota did start to believe in their own infallibility which I would urge you to read.

PS. We have no control over the Google ads placed adjacent to these posts, one of which currently reads - Employee Rewards. Widest range of incentives to increase workplace motivation. - If you're tempted to click on that, please don't. Instead take a look at Alfie Kohn's book Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes or listen to his podcast.

Canon FD 85mm f1.2L

2010-02-22T14:53:00.019Z

I own a Canon F1. It's a professional 35mm camera from the days before digital and autofocus and I'm always on the lookout for more lenses for it. I have a saved search on eBay for Canon FD fit L series lenses and I've noticed something unusual that I would like explained.

L series lenses with the FD fitting are reasonably rare and you can normally expect search results to throw up five or six 'buy it now' and auction items. The lenses sell for £400 to £500 for the mid range lenses, while fisheyes and telephotos are much more expensive. There were well over 100 FD lenses in the range and I would guess that the L series would provide around 15% of the total range but a much lower percentage in terms of units sold due to their very high prices when new. They are immensely collectable today because of their exceptional build quality and optical excellence. Just like the modern autofocus L series in fact.

What surprises me and I think needs an explanation is how a lens like the Canon FD 85mm f1.2L which hasn't shown up on my searches at all before this week can provide six results out of seven for L series lenses in today's search with sellers from the UK, Japan, USA and Ireland. I've noticed recently how a rare lens like this one suddenly becomes available in disproportionately high numbers and then vanishes again. Recent lenses to behave like this are the FD 50mm f1.2L and the FD 24-35mm f3.5L. The sellers are usually from the USA, Ireland or the UK and the buying options vary between low start bid, to high start bid and high priced buy it now.

I'm sure it's not coincidence, though I can't see how it can be anything but. Try it yourself. Just search for "Canon FD L lens" on eBay. When you read this you might find that a different lens is having its day.

I wonder is there a covert production facility knocking out fake new/used L series FD lenses in small quantities in the Far East and distributing them through an international consortium of eBay sellers or is there another explanation. Answers please.

Carrot and Stick. Do incentives work in business?

2010-02-05T08:07:00.006Z

Dan Pink says that incentives only appear to work when workers benefit financially for working faster or harder on simple tasks that require no thought. But when a wide peripheral thinking vision becomes necessary the wheels come off as incentives are introduced. So if you're a pieceworker on a bonus, the money is probably well spent on you, but if you're a banker on a bonus we're probably headed for a worldwide financial crisis.

If you happened to miss the last banker induced worldwide financial crisis and can't wait for the next one then watch the video and see how The Candle Problem illustrates all this very nicely.

Sandwell MBC Fiddling while Gnomes Burn.

2009-12-03T08:58:00.006Z

When you hear this: "A council has backtracked after ordering a tenant to remove two garden gnomes from outside her front door on health and safety grounds", Your first guess is always going to be Sandwell MBC, surely the barmiest council in the UK, which is going some because there's some tough competition out there. The gnomes were apparently judged to be a fire risk.

One of these days I'll compile a list of 'The People Who Ruined West Bromwich' and I have a strong suspicion that somewhere on it will be those who worry about gnomes whilst not noticing or caring that all housing within reasonable walking distance of the town centre has been flattened only to be replaced by a waste land of brick rubble and concrete slabs surrounding that enduring monument to their stupidity, The Public.

“There are enormous pressures on NHS staff to deliver waiting times within Government targets.”

2009-10-26T08:39:00.011Z

It has emerged that A&E figures at Arrowe Park Hospital in Merseyside between March 2008 and April 2009 cannot be relied upon because they were fiddled by A&E managers who were under pressure to meet government targets. There's a similar case being investigated at Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham where the waiting times figures for treating A&E patients within the stipulated four hours were also allegedly fiddled.

I came across one way which is used to distort the figures in NHS A&E recently. Patients wait for up to four hours in the waiting room and just as they are about to go over into the fifth hour, they are moved from the waiting room to the treatment area where they wait for another couple of hours. The target is met i.e. out of the waiting room in less than four hours and the government inspector is satisfied.

Who is not satisfied? The patient of course, the customer, who is using a different system of measurement, the only one that matters, the one that says "waited for six hours".

We've also heard of ambulances waiting on the car park until Accident and Emergency is in a position to start the clock and process the patient within the four hour target, but that's old news, they've obviously moved on to some new fiddle by now. Haven't they?

If only the government could channel all the creative thinking that goes into finding new ways to cheat to meet their targets into creating genuine improvements we'd all be much happier - and where did they come up with the notion that a four hour wait is a good thing to aim for anyway? Not by listening to the 'Voice of the Customer" that's for certain.

Link: Daily Express

UK Police improve crime clear up rates by pretending it didn't happen.

2009-10-23T13:32:00.004+01:00

Here's another case of making your own performance look better and at the same time giving complete dissatisfaction to your customers whilst not performing at all. It sounds like something from Alice In Wonderland doesn't it, and of course it is, or the UK as we sometimes call it. It's all to do with government targets of course and the cheating that goes on to meet them.

The UK police can improve their clear up rates and reduce figures for the number of crimes committed at a stroke by the simple expedient of declaring the hard to solve crimes, such as vicious beatings where the perpetrator hasn't given themselves up, as a "No Crime".

No paperwork. No awkward questions. Just a dissatisfied public who are one more step away from trusting the police and the things they say about themselves.

Link: The Independent

Targets encouraging prison managers to cheat to meet them

2009-10-21T09:35:00.002+01:00

Nobody should really be surprised, except our government, by the news that prison managers have been moving vulnerable inmates between prisons in order to meet government targets when the inspectors visit. I've heard similar stories of schools encouraging disruptive pupils to stay at home when OFSTED are visiting. The sad part of the prisoner issue is that it has caused the prisoners distress and driven some of them to self harm.

Prison managers say they are 'over inspected' and the need to meet performance targets is unbearable.

Targets are counter-productive. They do not bring about improvement, they bring about stress and cheating and actually damage the system they are meant to improve. Nobody wins, but it's a lesson our government refuses to learn.

Links:
Wider probe over inmate transfers - BBC

The Public - Put it out of its misery says KPMG

2009-10-15T11:08:00.027+01:00

The news yesterday that auditors KPMG are suggesting that The pUBLIC in West Bromwich which is currently £49 million over budget and rising should be either mothballed or demolished was very sad to hear. We saw something similar to this with The Millennium Dome which was built with no clear purpose but has since found one. It appears that The Public will be less fortunate.

How it all got to this after such humble beginnings is probably a management book in itself. It began as a small project to build an arts centre in West Bromwich - but even back then its purpose was ill defined. I knew some of the people involved and once asked them what things were going to be housed in the proposed arts centre. I didn't get a satisfactory response because I don't think they knew the answer themselves. The word they used most was 'space'.

How it was taken out of the hands of those well-meaning but naiive people and grew to cost £79 million and counting without ever developing a viable business plan is a tale of hubris, mis-management and groupthink - the kind of thing that could only happen when funded by taxpayer's money - and I hope somebody writes it all down one day. It will be hard to find people willing to tell their story though, because as each one leaves the project they very carefully remove the stain from their CV.

Notes:
the pUBLIC logo and namestyle appears to have been quietly dropped in favour of THE PUBLIC.
In 2008, Architect Will Alsop won Private Eye's spoof award The Sir Hugh Casson Award for the Worst New Building for his design of the pUBLIC.

Links:
Sandwell MBC
Express and Star Newspaper

Suicide 'Fad' at French Telecom.

2009-10-01T09:26:00.017+01:00

In the past 19 months, 24 workers have committed suicide.

Management have fobbed it off as a fad, or a quirk of statistics - they have said many things but they have not admitted that in an attempt to drive profits they have created a Papillon* inspired version of hell on earth in their call centres. Here's how the inmates describes life in that awful place.

"Everything the employee does is counted: when he or she goes to the toilet; when he eats; when he smokes a cigarette. The workers are even made to wear wi-fi ear and mouth pieces so they can deal with calls during their breaks."

"The workers were treated like cattle. When they failed to meet their targets, they were punished or screamed at."

"My job is to sell more and more stuff, new services, to clients who ring up with some kind of problem. I am supposed to be obsessed with making more and more money on commission."

Raised eyebrows in the UK and the USA. Isn't that the way call centres have to be run? Isn't it just a fact of life? Perhaps the French just aren't used to modern management. They've been spoiled all these years perhaps and can't adjust.

I hope my readers will see immediately that good customer service and sustained growth are not the results of such amazing management stupidity and that the reason we hate call centres is because they are designed to be staffed by discontented employees who cannot help but give us bad service. It's all in the design of the work and management is responsible for that.

Sadly, poor service and employee's dissatisfaction ultimately come back to management via those same old culprits Targets and Bonuses, but I'm not so sure we can so easily pin the responsibility for the French Telecom suicide rate which is comparable with the French national average and may actually not be getting any better or any worse but simply demonstrating random variation.

I'm not going to look into it any more than that in case it depresses me.

* Note: I'm referring of course to the Henri Charrière book and the 1973 film and not to any similarly named call centre technology provider.

From The Independent

Google Maps Mania: Sydney Dust Storm YouTube Google Map

2009-09-23T15:46:00.000+01:00

More about the Sydney photo opportunity. This time from Google Maps.

Google Maps Mania: Sydney Dust Storm YouTube Google Map

Google AdSense

2009-09-23T13:30:00.004+01:00

As I write this I see that the smart Google ads on this page have picked up on the keywords in the post about the cloud of dust that is smothering Sydney and are advertising Dust Extraction. It's a very clever technology but it really needs to be cleverer than that I think. I suppose the success of the thing depends very much on how many visitors from Sydney I get who are looking for ways to clean up after the cloud and are planning to install an industrial strength extraction system to keep them safe and clean for the next twenty five years or so. Not many I suspect.

Clare looking pensive

2009-09-23T10:43:00.009+01:00

Clare in Hockey Strip, originally uploaded by aka Pincher.

Clare wasn't posing for this pic, she was just wondering where her boss had vanished to. We needed him so we could do some shots about the new Future Skills Sandwell shirt sponsorship for the Dudley Ladies Hockey Club. She looks a bit incongruous standing there in a factory unit all dressed up for hockey doesn't she. I think it's the kind of thing that should be encouraged.

Luna Park

2009-09-23T09:21:00.001+01:00

_MG_5478
Originally uploaded by tomhide

Surreal. You usually need filters to get effects like this one.

Sydney Dust Storm

2009-09-23T09:15:00.001+01:00

Sydney Dust Strom
Originally uploaded by tomhide

Red dust created during the hot Aussie winter and being blown into Sydney is creating some rare and wonderful photo opportunities like this one from Tom Hide.