Way of the World..

On Wednesdays my partner and I often meet up for a midweek drink with friends. Nothing unusual there.

This week we all had one thing in common - every one of us was complaining about stressed and overworked we were and how our many and diverse organisations are short of resources while expecting staff to do more and/or meet ever more unlikely targets.

Now, my friends and my partner work in a range of organisations from small law firms through large banks to local authorities but the similarities were uncanny.

I have another friend who has a senior position in a Conservative-controlled County Council. His tales of life within that authority would astonish those who are ignorant of what goes on in the local Government universe. His experience, which seems to be the same across the private sector too, is that organisations are obsessed with keeping costs down presumably because in a low-inflation world, they can't raise prices which is the other obvious mechanism.

The key area that all organisations target is called "admin" or "business support" or whatever. It is regarded as an "overhead" and is cut to the bone. Unfortunately, cutting out the admin people doesn't actually cut out the admin any more than outsourcing a function will make it more efficient. Without the admin resource, it takes longer for staff to do the routine functions so productivity and often profitability falls.

In the past twenty or thirty years, "bureaucracy" has become a dirty word - I wonder how many people believe that Government is just like "Yes Minister" - but all the successful societies have maintained a bureaucratic infrastructure from the Roman Empire onward. Indeed, one might argue that it was the administrative function that was the backbone of the British Empire.

There is of course a problem when bureaucracy becomes self-perpetuating. My friend at the County Council tells me that they have imposed a whole new series of bureaucratic procedures because they got rid of all the admin staff...