We've all been through it and know how it goes...

[Dial 0870 ..........]

((((ringing))))

Welcome to British Tap.  Please listen carefully as the following options have changed,

Subtext: You've not called us before so you wouldn't know that and it makes no difference to you, and all we are doing is wasting your time whilst the call routing system finds somebody who might be able to answer your call

.  
Please note that calls may be recorded for training and quality purposes

Subtext: Because we really don't trust our agents or our customers for that matter and we need to be able to go back and find out what you said and then tell you that you were wrong and that you didn't say what you know you said.

Please select from the following options.
Please dial 1 to buy a new widget, please dial 2 if you would like us to  try and cross-sell you some insurance for the widget you bought from us last week, Please dial 3 to report a fault with your widget

[Dial 3]

Your call is being held in a queue and will be answered shortly.  
Our agents are busy answering other customers calls

Subtext: The people in front of you who are more important than you and were given a better phone number to call.  

Your call is being held in a queue and will be answered shortly.  
We value your call.and would love to answer it as soon as we can

Subtext: but we have not  staffed our call centre properly and things are getting a bit out of hand because we are operating on the cheap.

Your call is being held in a queue and (click)

(((((ringing)))))))

कॉल करने के लिए धन्यवाद British Tap . मेरा नाम Nigel है . मैं आज की मदद से आप कैसे हो सकता है ?

Eh? Oh? My boiler is leaking.

我很抱歉，您所谓的Whistle的热线电话，我会转移你向锅炉热线。请稍等

Sorry, what did you say?

(((((ringing)))))

[thoughts start to wander]

Yes, of course, that old cost-cutting gambit of the offshore call-centre.  

Indeed, whilst the overseas call centre pendulum has been swinging back  on-shore in the last year or so, now with cost crunch following credit crunch we can expect that trend to reverse somewhat.

Call centres and the customer experience that go with it are not the only things to get crunched when belts are tightened, discretionary project spending is one of the first things to be reduced,with projects either being deferred or cancelled.  Whilst this is a very hand tap to close, by turning off spending on projects willy-nilly, as snuffing boring, run-of-the-mill sustaining projects, genuinely innovative activities also usually get the chop.  

Conceptually, the unfettered application of cost-cutting measures looks something like this...



... with good stuff getting damaged at the same time as cutting off all the bad, spendthrift behaviours.

In particular, undiscriminating simplistic cost-cutting can be quite short-sighted and have unforeseen effects down the line.  Indeed,  this process of cost-cutting can accelerate an overall competitive cycle of pain...

...where declining profitability is met by efforts to increase efficiency through cutting costs, implementing new technology or whatever, which drives greater competition, which leads, to, oh dear, declining profitability, ad absurdum.  [By the by, this cycle was posited by two of my colleagues at Mitchell Madison Group, Mark Carrington and Philip Langguth  in their seminal work "The Banking Revolution: Salvation or Slaughter?"]

However, innovation is one of to primary decelerators of this cycle

So the conundrum is how to go about reducing costs without killing the good stuff, thus...

...to take out cost and building competitive advantage through innovation and better customer experience.

The solution generally lies in being more analytical about the cost-cutting process rather than simple "slash and burn", such as:

• Careful prioritisation of projects, for example, choosing to favour of genuine innovation efforts over the projects that just sustain the existing business;
• Taking a system-level view, e.g, over the customer life cycle, and using joined up thinking to ensure that simplistic, functional cost-cutting does not cut across and destroy customer experience, or in the IT software development arena, taking the whole productivity equation into account (rather than focusing solely on daily rates)
• Keeping a focus on profitability, rather than just the bottom-line, so that the overall financial health of the enterprise is improved

Meanwhile, back to the phone...

(((((ringing)))))
(click)

Благодарим ви за свикване на British Tap бойлер гореща линия. Казвам се Tony. Как мога да ви помогне да днес?

Oh, !$R£W"Q^%$£&^%$£&%$£"%^)*&%)(*^%$%^£!!!!
[Slam]

I have previously talked about the use of my observational superpowers to analyse the geo-cultural variations in traffic lights.  Indeed, with many years experience of driving I would like to regard myself as a sort of professional Gentleman Amateur in the general sphere of traffic management.

You know the sort of thing: new developments are appraised with a cynical eye and a firm grip on the steering wheel,  each new disaster greeted with a reproving glare, a sigh and shake of the head, the all too rare  improvements grudgingly admired, and gone in a flash as you pass down the road (at the prevailing speed limit, naturally).

And so, In my many miles of driving, with sometimes too much time on my hands, I am moved to muse on the solutions to many apparently intractable problems - one such topic  being that of the strange behaviour of  drivers when they reach a sign like this:



For many people, this is a command to form a single orderly queue about 5 miles out from the offending road works, and then fume/gesticulate/weave violently as a small number of other drivers (possibly acolytes of the Bavarian blue and white propeller) exercise a modicum of common sense to save a few minutes by driving up to the lanes towards the red blocks, and try to 'merge in turn', gasp, horror, don't frighten the horses!  

(There are yet other people that think this is a sign for a picnic area at the beach with cheap red plastic tables under  palm trees, but we'll leave tham for another day).

The 'zip merge' is a respected means in other countries to speed the traffic through the taper where the road narrows,  as you can see from the diagram from New Zealand...



..yet it was allegedly considered sufficiently un-British to be excluded from the Highway Code until it finally made it in 2007. 

Of course,  pondering on how best to solve this problem of irrational bahaviour, I came up with what seemed like a useful solution to level the playing field at the Taper's End.  I won't bore you with the details because I discovered the much more bizarre and entertaining fact when researching this topic:  there are web-sites out there where such matters are discussed amongst consenting adults.

You'll find them if you look at places like Pistonheads, DigitalSpy, UK Roads Portal (Society of All British Road Enthusiasts) , Pathetic Motorways - I do have to admit a sneaking affection for this latter site, as it does nicely demonstrate some of the more farcical antics of road planners.

Side bar...

What did the users of these sites do before the Internet?  Hang around the Transport section at WH Smiths or the local Public Library?  Publish grubby Roneo'd  newsletters and  round robins? Hold earnest discussion groups on a Thursday night in the "snug" at the local pub?  Flock with cameras to major road openings?  Wow, what a life!

So having  having discovered that my great idea was not especially original, I have now moved on to a new problem to solve:  the near extinction of  the Chicken Tikka sandwich on the roads of Britain. Thanks to Smffy.com, I found a picture, but at Ginsters, nary a one!  



The truth must be told - why has Britain fallen out of love with the Chicken Tikka sandwich?

Last year, I came across a couple of surveys about Middle Management that piqued my interest. The first said:

Middle managers emerge as a neglected, disillusioned and frustrated breed in research...a third say they are kept in the dark about company plans, almost two-thirds confess they are at a loss to understand their role   -- jobs.telegraph, "Middle Managers are left in the dark"

And if you read the underlying report you see  that an astonishing 48% of middle managers do not think that communicating with their team is a key part of their job;

The second said:

...under performing middle managers are costing British business £220 billion a year in lost productivity.  Over half (54 per cent) of senior managers felt that middle managers were uncommitted to strategic goals, and 62 per cent criticized lack of management and leadership skills. -- Hay Group,  "Alarming Performance Gap at Middle Management Level"

Whilst this is clearly a puff piece by Hay to sell all sorts of warm and fuzzy HR services, linking the two together, you can see why the senior managers and directors might hold those views.

Middle Management is possibly an endangered species these days, but does still seems to be hanging on in little niches,  according to these surveys, despite hating the job, and apparently failing in the eyes of their seniors, so you wonder why they stick it out?!

Wikipedia makes an amusingly naive attempt to define away the problem...

Middle management is a layer of management...whose primary job responsibility is to monitor activities of subordinates while reporting to upper management.  In pre-computer times [ "What? Jurassic, maybe?", dripping with sarcasm], middle management would collect information from junior management and reassemble it for senior management.  With the advent of inexpensive PCs ["har, har", choking on spittle]  this function has been taken over by e-business systems [paralysed with laughter, writhing on floor].  During the 1980s and 1990s thousands of middle managers were made redundant for this reason ["So simple?"]

...taking a Tom Peter's-like knife to the whole layer, thus:


...with the backbone provided by those amazing "inexpensive PCs" and fantabulous "e-business systems":  However, as a saving grace, the entry does at least refer to communication as a key job function.

I went through an epiphany on this topic some many years ago, when working as a development manager in a computer manufacturer.  I was sitting in a daily "War Room" session held during the torrid Beta trials of a piece of probably under-cooked software.  In the room were the luminaries of Technical and International Sales & Service divisions and assorted lackeys, acolytes, water carriers and coat holders.  In particular, on the Technical Division side was this management line:

• The Technical Director
• The Development Director
• The Development Manager (Me)
• The Project Manager

The Beta trials were displaying all the dysfunction of a classic "waterfall" software development project going to b*ggery, hampered also by a functionally aligned organisation, and all the attendant politics.  So we spent many a fractious morning in the cut and thrust of departmental politics, whilst attempting to alleviate the pain of the early Beta customers.  

Outside that bun fight, the job of a middle manager was supposed to be to "put yourself about", (be seen to) sniff out issues, especially the opposition's dirty laundry, and inform on the organisation to the Directors in your line, in short - a communication role, pure and simple in concept, hellish in reality.

The War Room was, however, one shining light in the risk management firmament - and something that still features many years later in Agile development methods (e.g, as the daily stand-up).  The concept is cribbed directly from military usage and is all about shortening communication lines to improve responsiveness and to win battles.  

And in this gladiatorial "circus", whose job was mainly about communication?  Well, mine.  

The fun started when discussing the approach to some issue and it came down to fixing some malfunctioning product feature, and the bullets starting heading my way.

It was a frustrating, no-win situation:

• I could, for example, just nod the question over to the Project Manager and be seen as weak, but then, why have a dog and bark myself?  
• I could have taken the role as Project Manager from the meetings to control the information flow, but that made a nonsense of the whole War Room, and would have been a recipe for being blamed for everything wrong with the project (which was woven into the very fabric);
• or other strategies which were all equally flawed, within the oxymoronic constraints of the project and the organisation, and most vitally, defied sanity and common sense!

Then, ding, the light went on!  This job is pointless!  

Moving back to the current day, elaborating on the analogy of "organisation as anatomy" , then you can start to think that there are, at the very simplest,  two types of job:

• useful, creative, purposeful roles that move stuff forward, onwards, upwards - like Muscle
• other roles that are like the connective tissues, insulation, piping for insanitary fluids and other ugly bits that get left on the side of the plate of life, yes, Gristle

Visually, then the pure Middle Management communication role has to be seen in this light:

 

I made my decision on this years ago, but for anybody who is still uncertain, I offer this handy little decision-making 2x2 matrix:

Middle Managers Career Game board		Want to be...
		Gristle	Muscle
Treated as..	Gristle	Stay	Move!
	Muscle	Retire	Enjoy

I had an odd sense of deja vu when reading the headline Human noses 'can detect danger' . Didn't Gospodin Ivan Petrovic Pavlov work all that out all that stuff about conditioned/conditional reflexes back in the 1890/1900's?

So I looked at the abstract on the Science web-site to see if I could learn something new...

Learning to associate sensory cues with threats is critical for minimizing aversive experience.

OK, that makes sense...

The ecological benefit of associative learning relies on accurate perception of predictive cues, but how aversive learning enhances perceptual acuity of sensory signals, particularly in humans, is unclear.

Why is it unclear? Isn't that just the negative part of what Pavlov did - he could have rung his bell (or not, according to your version of history), and taken the dogs dinner away...

We combined multivariate functional magnetic resonance imaging with olfactory psychophysics to show that initially indistinguishable odor enantiomers (mirror-image molecules)

Ah, it's "enantiomers", is it?

become discriminable after aversive conditioning, paralleling the spatial divergence of ensemble activity patterns in primary olfactory (piriform) cortex.

Uhuh.

Our findings indicate that aversive learning induces piriform plasticity with corresponding gains in odor enantiomer discrimination,

Yeah, well, like, totally, dude...

underscoring the capacity of fear conditioning to update perceptual representation of predictive cues, over and above its well-recognized role in the acquisition of conditioned responses.

I hear the sound of hairs being split. Can the neurons tell the difference?

That completely indiscriminable sensations can be transformed into discriminable percepts further accentuates the potency of associative learning to enhance sensory cue perception and support adaptive behavior.

(eerie silence, wind whistles, tumble weed rolls by)
:
:
:
:
Oh, you've finished, sorry, I was doing something else whilst you were talking.



I just checked the Fog index which says that the abstract is only fit for somebody with an astonishing c.29 years of education. To be fair though, the bowdlerised version for us mere mortals on the Science magazine site is only 17 Fog units...

So what's new? Well nothing much as far as I can tell, maybe they've just painted in a tiny crack in the universe of knowledge - where possibly a simple inductive proof might have been sufficient.

It would have been much more interesting if they had managed to demonstrate that smell is the contrarian sense doesn't work like all the others. Then we can only imagine what the headlines would have been...

First an earthquake, now a White Easter, if I were superstitious, I should be expecting some further meteoro- geo- or otherological event to be coming up soon.

The snowy countryside is certainly pretty...

..but maybe it could presage the inundation of the low-lying lands by the rising seas.

In that event, the Lincolnshire Wolds where I live (ringed in yellow on the map below), would become an island off the east coast of South Yorkshire.



Almost serendipitously, I read that the Met Office launched its new "traffic light" severe weather warning system, which was rushed out a day early to announce the snow-storms over the weekend.

I am sure that traffic light afficionados, highways engineers, and railway signalling engineers all over the country will be grinding their teeth because it really is nothing like a proper traffic light at all. It does have the good old red and green, which do not work for the one in 10 red-green colour blind men in the population, but bizarrely, it has both yellow and orange aspects, just to confuse the other 90% of the population. Very democratic, but not very ergnonomic.

My wife and I have been telling the neighbours for some time that we are going to build a jetty at the end of the lane and park a boat there ready for the floods. So in anticipation of the Deluge, and our future status as island dwellers, it seems an appropriate moment to take a leaf from the Met Office book and create a localised version of the Severe Weather Warning System, below. The legend is helpfully mostly coloured blue...