So long and thanks for all the fish! **
Yes this is my very last Newsletter Preface as Master. I am sure you are all delighted that I will no longer be haranguing and cajoling you. Or maybe not? I do not want to steal my own thunder, as I hope you will want to read the Introduction I have written for our Annual Report which summarises my year, but here are a few final thoughts:
- Our membership: we are growing strongly thanks to everyone's hard efforts - but you must please keep introducing friends and colleagues!
- Our financial position: is now probably, to the best of my knowledge, at the strongest it has ever been to date
- Our achievements: the Company is continuing to increase its impact within The Livery
Please support my successors and keep enjoying your involvement so that WCoMC remains truly vibrant. I will continue to be active in ProBono work (as you would expect) and helping David P-J with our communication, the Charitable Fund and stuff like the continuing development of our website and systems (to name just a thousand things).
** For those who wonder what the title is all about and whether I have finally lost the plot after my year as Master, I refer you to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"..... (and you may still then wonder about my losing the plot as I am not really leaving or going away.....)
Thank you all for your support. Patrick
Should a consultant move on from giving riskless advice - to shouldering part of the business risk in a joint venture...?
Liveryman Robert Fonteijn describes the challenges involved for a consultant in a tech startup in Ukraine...
What do the Federal Open Market Committee, the refugee crisis and Volkswagen's new Chief Executive all have in common....?
Liveryman and Economist, Dr Rebecca Harding, exposes the new face of Globalisation....
WCoMC should always be involved in at least one big issue in the City....
Who do we know who could top a list of 50 of the UK's most prominent workers over 50 .... with Stephen Hawking, world famous physicist and Cambridge professor, positioned at No. 5....?
A highly-valued Friend of WCoMC - who has routinely provided warm hospitality, plus struggled through torrential rain with the ceremonial robes when the Company is on show - her PhD in theoretical chemistry.....
Entrepreneurship in Cambodia, Madagascar and India.
Assistant Rosemary O'Mahony working with a NGO project that is competing for a substantial Google award - needs you to Vote...!
NOTICES
Installation Dinner - 6;30 - 10:30, Tuesday 13 October, at Vintners' Hall, 68 Upper Thames St, EC4V 3BG. Master-elect, David Peregrine-Jones has invited his former IBM Chairman and colleague, Sir Anthony Cleaver, to be Guest of Honour. Sir Anthony has also chaired the UK Atomic Energy Authority, the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the Medical Research Council. Most recently he was Master of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. See Calendar of Events and Book at wcomc.org/events/calendar
To all Liverymen: Fish and Chips on Fridays - at the Little Ship Club and City Livery Club. A 2-course buffet including fish and chips for £15, at Bell Wharf Lane, Upper Thames Street, London EC4R 3TB. At the restaurant right on the sparkling water of The Thames. Book in advance on ph: 020 7248 2800
Worshipful Economic Strategies...
'The Dead Horse Bounce'....
Tribal wisdom says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."
The analogy is used where an organisational activity or initiative of some sort is obviously failing, and offers no possibility for redemption or rescue. Effective Management Consultants respond by terminating the activity, and managing the exit to limit damage as far as possible. Less effective operators - especially when under pressure and subject to high expectations – (and particularly where a loss of reputation is feared) tend to look for, to implement and to justify all sorts of daft strategies....
In government, education and the corporate world, lots of highly ambitious strategies are employed when facing a dead horse situation. For example -
- Giving the dead horse and rider a good doing over
- Denying the existence of the dead horse
- Re-structuring the dead horse's reward scale to contain a performance-related element (obviously..)
- Suspending the horse's access to the executive grassy meadow until it improves its attitude and makes good all productivity shortfalls.
- Finding a mentor or buddy for the dead horse.
- Examining the cost-savings accruing from de-skilling the dead horse function.
- Re-aligning the organisational aims to better fit the needs of the dead horse.
- Outsourcing the management and/or the riding of the dead horse to a specialist dead horse management company
- Bringing in a team of expensive external consultants to focus on dead horse optimisation.
- Re-branding the dead horse a 'Fair Trade Horse', and affixing prominent Fair Trade insignia to its hind-quarters.
- Scrutinising and challenging the dead horse's expenses claims, and leaking baseless related accusations to the media and the dead horse transparency unit.
- Setting up a free-phone customer service hotline to handle complaints relating to the dead horse fiasco.
- Re-designing the dead horse's shoes so that they can be made of bamboo and re-cycled.
- Setting up an inquiry into the dead horse, preferably headed by a dead horse and answerable to other dead horses.
- Appointing a top advertising agency to promote the benefits of the reduced carbon hoof print of a dead horse compared to the ridiculously out-dated and unsustainable notion of a living horse.
- Off-shoring the stabling and veterinary support of the dead horse to somewhere in the Indian sub-continent.
- Sending the dead horse on an outward bound or log-carrying weekend with other dead horses.
- Lobbying ministers and pressure groups for the extension of European standards to encompass the special qualities of dead horses.
- Nationalising the dead horse.
- Making the dead horse redundant, giving it a hefty golden hoof-shake, and then retaining it as a consultant at five times its previous annual cost.
Send your articles and pics to -
Newsletter Editor: elizabeth.consalvi@consultant.com
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