Terry Leahy's point last week (made in respect of schools but, frankly, universally applicable) about the smaller-the-better when it comes to back offices, is utterly brilliant. And timely of course.
Mr Leahy practises what he preaches. When I went to work for Tesco (in the back office, naturally, I hasten to own up!) I was immediately - and to my immense horror - rushed off to undertake a thorough induction training in a store local to my home.
Blimey ! That knocked any Mayfair-Jenny nonsense (picked up from West End developers) out of me, I can tell you!
And at Christmas, every member of professional support staff, at Cheshunt or elsewhere, from the most junior right up to Board level, is required to go into store to support the operation, whether stacking shelves or packing old girls' groceries (actually this is the most sociable and rewarding of the tasks by a country mile !).
Now, leaving aside how useless I was in-store (I believe I may have been a genuine liability, actually. Once I dropped a bottle of hugely expensive Chateau Neuf de Pape which shattered all over the store floor) this was an annual powerful reminder of the raison d'etre of the business: if we didn't focus on selling beans and toilet paper then we didn't have jobs, simple as that!
Terry Leahy used to frequently hold breakfast meetings for groups of his managers at 7.30am to discuss the issues of the day. One time I wasn't quite late but I was the last there (it being a bit of a schlep from Chiswick to Cheshunt) and the only place left at the table was next to Terry Leahy himself.
I slid into the space next to The Great Man as unobtrusively as possible and it was a very good job I'd taken a big mouthful of scrambled egg as he opened his remarks by saying "we're all retailers here" so that I was not able to voice the pompous retort which sprung into my mind: "you speak for yourself! I'm a regeneration practitioner".
No, that would never have done. And yes, I believe Terry Leahy is totally right to focus his entire resource on the front end, and that this should happen also in our schools.
The lesson in this for those of us who practise regeneration, though, is totally confounded by our lack of a clear cut "customer" and by continually having to address multiple stakeholders.
This is a pesky fact of regereration life to which we need to give serious thought. It is, however, clear that we need to aspire to the Terry Leahy level of focus on the front end.
One thing is for sure: piles of expensive feasibility studies never really delivered anything much worthwhile for real people, we need to find more streamlined ways of giving comfort on government funding programmes.
The back office should always be reduced to the bare minimum. End of chat.
Leave a comment
What a user pic? Get a Gravatar!