A Management Fable

Frank and the Spanner

In the Midlands there is a factory.  They make bits, which fit into other bits, which eventually find their way into washing machines and lawn mowers.

It is a grimy old factory that bumps along the bottom of the industrial supply chain, just about making enough money to keep its doors open; but only just.

For many years now there have been initiatives to improve the performance of the factory.  They tried business process re-engineering, they tried lean, they tried six sigma, they tried lean-six sigma and they even went agile for a while.

But none of these initiatives really amounted to a whole hill of beans.  The staff just bent over and rode with them – they knew nothing much would change, (nothing much ever really changes in the Midlands) — and the plant owners got progressively more and more exasperated.

The bright young thing

To solve the problem once and for all they appointed a bright young thing as the new plant manager.  He was fresh out of business school with the shiniest pair of shoes anybody had ever seen.

The bright young thing was convinced that he knew the solution.  Instead of force-feeding the staff another top down initiative he was going to get close to the work, listen to the people and understand their problems.

You can’t transform your organisation if you don’t know your organisation

Or so he’d been taught.

Life on the shop floor

So off the bright young thing trotted to the shop floor where he met Frank.

Frank was not a bright young thing.  Frank had come into this world a fully paid up member of the awkward squad, he didn’t like being told what to do, he didn’t like managers, he didn’t like productivity initiatives and he certainly didn’t like bright young things.

Bend over, here comes another one — thought Frank

“I’m here to help you improve productivity.” Said the bright young thing

“Really?” Muttered Frank

“Yes, tell me what I can do to help.”

Frank shrugged, he’d heard it before, “Nobody ever listens here” replied Frank. “Why should I waste my time telling you what we can do to improve?”

“This time it will be different, I will listen, I will give you what you need, we can make this business great together” – the bright young thing liked to lay it on a bit thick.

“OK”, said Frank, “get me a new spanner.”

The B.Y.T. looked at the spanner Frank had in his hand, it wasn’t any old spanner, it was a chrome-vanadium open-ended slogging spanner, (look it up), they cost a pretty penny.

The B.Y.T. winced, how was he going to justify buying another spanner? But he’d committed to Frank that he would listen so off he wandered to the factory stores to see what he could do.

Trouble at the stores

“Do you have any idea how much those things cost?” gasped the head storeman.

“Is it for Frank?  The old git has been angling for one of those for years, he already has a perfectly good spanner.  You can’t trust him, if you give him another one it will only end up on eBay, tell him he can’t have it.”

“Give him one and everybody else will want one!”

Failure

So the B.Y.T. wandered back to Frank and told him the news.

“Now there is a thing” grunted Frank.

“Here you come, spouting all your engagement claptrap, I must listen to my staff, they know what to do, I must empower them, it will boost morale, blah bleeding blah blah.  And what do you do about it when somebody actually has the balls to ask you for something?”

“What?” replied the B.Y.T.

“Bugger all!”

Frank was not a happy man.

The B.Y.T. slowly wandered off back to the store-room.  He told the store man to hand over the spanner.

“You will have to sign for it and get it authorised!”

So the bright young thing took the chitty and walked upstairs to see the Chairman who raised his eyebrows and eventually authorised the spanner.

The spanner

Ten minutes later, the B.Y.T. was back on the shop floor, spanner in hand.  He handed it over to Frank.

Frank took the spanner — somewhat bemused — then, one spanner in each hand started to adjust his machine.

Would you believe it? The machine started to run faster.  Then Frank took his spanners and walked down the production line towards the next machine.

The moral of the story

Never listen to management fables, and never listen to your staff, they don’t know what they are talking about.  This was just a fairy tale.  It never plays out like that in real life.

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