Managed by Morons

James: 0:03

hello, I’m James.

Jimmy: 0:05

Hi, I’m Jimmy.

James: 0:06

Welcome to A Job Done Well,

Jimmy: 0:08

the podcast about the world of work and how to improve the daily grind Today’s episode is something slightly different. I am going to be interviewing my co host James about the book that he’s recently written called Managed by Morons. We’re going to explore a bit more of what was behind the book and what drove to write the book, so you’ll get some interesting insights from listening to today’s podcast. But as intro to James. I first met him back in the year 2000. when the big question as James joined the company I was at was, did he look like Penfold out of Danger Mouse or Joe 90?

James: 0:52

Ah, he laughed.

Jimmy: 0:54

Both those references are a few years old. So anyone under the age of whatever will

James: 1:00

About 50 will

Jimmy: 1:02

not know what am talking about. but, the insights and advice he provided was outstanding and people realized that. He’s often described as Marmite, in other words, you either love him or hate him. My personal view is that those who would be in the hate camp probably just don’t like the truth because James often unashamedly and with his Usual dry wi deliver insights and advice and answers, and he speaks the truth. And some people just want experts to tell’em how great they are. And James only does that when it’s warranted. And as we’re going to hear, it’s not warranted very often we are going to go through a few questions. the book contains a lot of inspiration for the work that we do and we cover in this podcast. It is a best selling book, and it has some fantastic reviews, so if you haven’t read it, you should do. Anyhow, James, So first off, tell us, Why did you decide to write a book? Uh, so, I

James: 1:59

us, you decide to I was 54 years old, and I had just been made redundant. Maybe I’d told the truth one time too many. And, um, I’m sitting there thinking, Well, what on earth am I going to do now? And you go through the change curve when something like that happens. And actually I realized it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. And I sat down, I started to write this book, and it really was a chance for me to sit back and say, Ah, I’ve been working now for 33 years, what have I seen that I think works, what have I seen that I think doesn’t, and pull that together, and so it really is just a question of the world according to Lawther, how big organizations work, some very well, some not so well,

Jimmy: 2:41

Did you enjoy writing it?

James: 2:44

Yes, I did, actually. It was very therapeutic.

Jimmy: 2:47

What did you hope to achieve in writing this book

James: 2:53

It took me about 20 years, I think, from when I started work, to realize what was going on in organizations and the cultures that they’ve got. And there’s that phrase, isn’t there? A fish is the last to see water. So I hope that anybody who reads the book will… read it and think, ah, I get it now, I understand why that is the way it is, and start to see that actually it’s really straightforward to improve your organization if that’s what you want to do. because if they can do that… Their customers will love them for it. Their employees will love them for it. And ultimately their bosses will as well. So that’s what I hope to achieve.

Jimmy: 3:33

So, it’s not just to write another business stroke improvement type book. It’s the impact that you want to have on, on the reader.

James: 3:42

I want to sell millions of copies and retire to Barbados. That’s my aim. No, it is exactly as you say. Yeah, I’d hope people read it and do something with it. Well, if

Jimmy: 3:52

if you look at the reviews you’ve had so far, that would say that, you know, you’re on your way to that. I mean, just to, to quote a couple. there are numerous reviews that talk about it being a must read book. Thought provoking and insightful, and that’s, repeated many, many times. My favorite quote was James captures precisely and amusingly, at times, the terrible corporate culture we endure. So I think overall, oh no sorry, there was another great one as well. Brilliant, a witty and practical insightful book. It’s like they’ve never met you.

James: 4:25

Yeah, thank you very much.

Jimmy: 4:26

But no, I think in terms of what you were trying to achieve, um, if the reviews are anything to go by, you’re a long way to doing that. Even if you haven’t sold millions yet and Barbados,

James: 4:36

No. So were But my Mum likes it as well. So they’re a good company.

Jimmy: 4:40

Just to digress for a second, we went to a meeting with some people a few weeks ago. We were talking to them about how they might improve their business. the most excited I’ve ever seen those people was the end when you gave them copies of your book and they were all over you for signing them.

James: 4:58

Yeah, we were, yeah, nothing as strange as folk, is there?

Jimmy: 5:01

Yeah, like the rock star of, business books now. I’ve Another question, one obvious one. Who, who are the morons? As someone who did have the slight misfortune of managing you once you know, who are the morons?

James: 5:14

once. Uh, the morons? so the morons are the people who are in senior positions, who are more worried about their own personal position than how their organization is performing and How their employees are and how their customers are so that people are just self important more worried about themselves than anything else

Jimmy: 5:33

So it might have been me then

James: 5:35

No, you were all right Mostly all right

Jimmy: 5:37

storyteller to your points. I really like the East of England ambulance story. Can you take us through it?

James: 5:47

Yeah, so I am I wrote a blog for a long time And one of the stories I tell in the blog, I was reading, I was reading the national press, it was actually a story in the Sun, so let’s not get too excited about it. But there was a story about, um, RRVs. they’re Rapid Response Vehicles. The government had instigated a target, and the target was that for 75 percent of all life threatening emergencies, an ambulance had to be there within eight minutes. It begs the question about the other 25%, but that was the target. And so, ambulance services have very sensibly, I think, invested in these RRVs, Rapid Response Vehicles. And these are things like, um, cars with ambulance written on the side, or motorcycles, so that they can get to, uh, the emergency quickly. And of course, these things only require one paramedic in them rather than two, so it’s actually a very sensible and cheap way to put capacity into the ambulance service. The problem is, of course, that some ambulance services would do what’s known as hit the target but miss the point, which is they get very obsessed about hitting the target, but then when they were there things would start to go awry. and one of the paramedics from the East of England Ambulance Service has said that, and I quote the trust has become so fixated with hitting the target by sending out RRBs. to stop the clock, that care, patient safety, and dignity are being badly compromised. So I read that, and I thought, there’s a blog post in here, and I was just making the point about targets and how organizations lose their way. oh, and I made a rather facetious comment about it’s difficult to get an 80 year old man into hospital when he’s had a heart attack on the back of a motorbike. a couple of days later, I got a very angry email from the East of England Ambulance Service. And they informed me in no certain uncertain terms. And I’ve got it here, so I’ll read it out. The Ambulance Service exists to save lives, not to provide a taxi service to the hospital. The East of England Ambulance Service does not have motorcycles. They would not put an 80 year old man on the back of a motorcycle, even if they had one. I needed to update my blogs post. If I didn’t. They’d report me and take me to court and to the Defamation Act and in future I should ask, before publishing, I

Scarlett 2i2 USB-2: 8:02

was a bit

James: 8:03

strong so I pushed back it became clear after a while that they weren’t really interested in taking me to court All they wanted to do was clean up their image in the media. And it begs the question, doesn’t it? Why would you invest money in a media relations department to harass second rate bloggers rather than spending that money on another paramedic? And I just wonder what it’s like to work in an organization like that. How does it feel? So that was the story. There is a nice twist to it, though, because they did have a point, I should have made sure they had motorcycles, and they don’t. But when I was in Norwich the other day, I saw a paramedic, and he was riding a bicycle.

Jimmy: 8:38

That is very environmentally friendly

James: 8:40

Absolutely. And I’m, you know, very happy for a paramedic to come and see me. I’m very grateful if he arrives on a bicycle. But if I need an ambulance, I’d like one there as well. As well, please.

Jimmy: 8:50

think it’s great. That’s my Favourite story in your book. Because I think it really highlights the how. I’m not sure how organizations and people behave around targets, but I, I’m the story’s even richer for me now that I know you, you actually read The Sun. And that’s, that’s, that’s where your analysis came from.

James: 9:07

Absolutely, it was a high quality analysis.

Jimmy: 9:09

And, and on my Marmite point earlier, I think the East of England Ambulance Service, clearly we know which side of that line

James: 9:16

earlier, I think so.

Jimmy: 9:17

Anyhow, was one thing that you would recommend a business does to thrive which you talk about in your book, what would be that one thing that you would pick out. most

James: 9:29

important I think the most important thing an organization can do is get really clear about its purpose and what it is trying to achieve. Because all of the businesses, processes, systems rewards, mechanisms, everything should line up behind it. achieving that purpose. And if an organization isn’t clear about its purpose, then it will get itself in the right pickle. So, an example of an organization that I think has a really great purpose is Netflix. So, Netflix, if you go online, you can search now, their purpose statement says Our aim is to entertain you, no matter what your tastes, no matter where you live. And that’s great because you can really, A, your employees can really get behind that. But B, you can start to measure it and you can start to see if you’re achieving it. So when we say entertain, what do we mean by entertain? How do we know you’re entertaining people? And the whole thing about wherever you live, well, where’s your coverage as well? So there you’ve got something that you can tell whether you’re getting better or worse. Employees will get excited about, and it really is focused at your external consumer or customer. Other organizations, though, aren’t as… clear at all. I did used to work for Mars, so I’m probably a bit partisan on this

Scarlett 2i2 USB-2: 10:46

So

James: 10:46

Hershey’s, their mission statement is to have marketplace leadership. Everybody wants marketplace leadership. How does that set you apart? And also, if you want marketplace leadership, there are a number of ways in which you can do that. Now I’m not suggesting that Hershey are doing this, but you can get into all sorts of monopolistic positions. You can do all sorts of fraudulent behavior. All of those things will help you achieve marketplace leadership. Whereas really, I think for Hershey’s, they need to be providing the best tasting chocolate. Because if they provide the best chocolate, then their consumers will love them for it. And then they will get marketplace leadership. So it’s that whole thing about what is your purpose, is it customer focused, and can people get behind it.

Jimmy: 11:28

And, what’s the one thing that Well, you think organisations should stop doing you think organizations should stop doing?

James: 11:34

Well this is my personal hobby horse, so the one thing that many organisations do is they have really strict, performance management processes. And I think those processes are really divisive and don’t help create teamwork in an organization at all. But let me just split it up a little bit. So for one of those processes to work. Three things have to be true. The first thing is you have to be able to spot a difference in performance between people. The second thing you have to have is that if everybody is incentivized, that that will improve their performance. And the third thing that has to be true is if everybody’s performance improves, the organization performance will improve. When you start to think about it logically, those three things are bobbins. So I’ve gone from being Mr. Golden Balls to Billy No Mates in the Space of a and my performance didn’t change at all. The thing that really changed was my boss changed. So is that measuring performance or is that just measuring how much, how well you get on with your boss? The second thing is the whole thing about incentives. Well, if you ever tried incentivizing your teenage daughter or son to tidy their bedroom, you’ll know how well that goes. so they really don’t work at all. And then finally, the whole idea of improving the individual bits. How often have you worked with somebody who’s improved his look bit so he looks absolutely fantastic? And to hell with everybody else. So, those three things don’t hold true.

Jimmy: 13:05

Not sure about don’t work, but trouble with incentives is you get exactly what you incentivize. Nothing more, nothing less. And in your example, as soon as you stop incentivizing them to clean their room, they will stop cleaning their room.

Scarlett 2i2 USB-18: 13:18

Yeah, and then it looks like there’s been an explosion in

Jimmy: 13:21

What was the most difficult part of. Because I’d imagine for you, you know, being a bit of an introvert and you know, liking to tell people what to do, you know, writing a book, I don’t know why you didn’t think about it earlier. Writing

James: 13:33

writing the book is easy. It’s persuading people to read it is the difficult bit.

Jimmy: 13:37

But that seams to be going all right so far

James: 13:40

far, so good.

Jimmy: 13:41

was Would you write another

James: 13:43

asked When I was writing it? I asked both you, Jimmy, and my wife to shoot me if I ever decided to write another one. And I’ve started writing another one.

Jimmy: 13:52

Yeah, and at the risk of answering the question for you, you do have a you ever going to be the problem for you. It was all the faffing around afterwards to, you know, edit it and get it all in good shape that caused you problems. But you’ll be pleased to know I have been on the dark web and I am ready for your attempts at a second book.

James: 14:19

you very much.

Jimmy: 14:21

Thank you have got loads of stories. I’ve picked out the East of England one which is now doubly my A starred story now that I’ve discovered your source material was the sun. But what was your favourite story from from the book?

James: 14:34

I’m not sure it’s my favorite story because it’s quite horrific, but it’s maybe the ultimate example of a dysfunctional organization. So in the late 1950s, Chairman Mao set about reforming China and he had this thing which was known as China’s Great Leap Forward. They put in place those massive changes to agricultural and industrial policy because Chairman Mao wanted to overtake the UK and America as the world’s biggest nation. And they did all sorts of things, but just three of them, to give you a sense of it, was they enforced close planting of rice seeds in paddy fields because they thought that close planting would give higher yields. Thing they did was they urged people to eliminate the four pests. And the four pests were mosquitoes and rats, flies and sparrows. and the third thing they did was they set up back yard steel furnaces. So each small commune had its own steel furnace where they would create and produce their own iron. The problem was these initiatives didn’t work at all. They took people’s, time away from the field because it was effectively an agricultural economy. All the backyard steel furnaces did was hoover up scrap, which was knives, pots, and pans, and produced low quality pig iron. and they spent hours banging pots and pans to scare birds. The And smashing eggs in nests and things like that. and the close planting, it didn’t increase yields at all. It reduced them because of the rice plant competed with each other. 1958 should have been a bumper year for the harvest, but much of it rotted in the fields because the peasants who busy doing all the other things that chairman Mal wanted, to make the problem worse, there was a plague of locusts that year, because everybody was scared off the birds, the, who were their predators, so the locusts came and ate a lot of the crop as well. So it was an absolutely disastrous harvest. but then what happened, was all the local bureaucrats swooped in to seize the supposed surplus of grain which had been generated by mouse policies, and there was widespread famine. It’s estimated that 22 million people died. But the politicians and civil servants, they didn’t want to admit they had a problem. So they did a whole host of hideous things. Doctors, for example, were forbidden from using the word starvation on death certificates. And gangs of Maoist political supporters harrased or killed anybody who dared to speak out., It’s estimated that 22 million people died, but despite all of this, China was a net grain exporter. exporter. it’s a rather extreme example, but you can see the same patterns in lots of organizations. You get bullying cheating, and people aren’t prepared to face into issues and problems. And perception becomes more important than performance. And managers become more interested in themselves than their employees or their customers. So when you asked me, you know, who are the morons? Well, there’s a really good example. It’s Now it’s a fairly long story, but the things that you see in that story are things that I’ve experienced at work. So people won’t speak truth to power because they’re scared of people, their bosses, and people won’t admit they’ve got a problem. People set stupid targets and then do everything to hit them. And then you get some really hideously dysfunctional situations. And those are the morons, that’s what causes bad performance.

Jimmy: 17:51

Probably shouldn’t have asked you what favorite story was though, that’s more, more of a horror story. We’re going to go now into a quick fire round. So you haven’t got a lot of time to think about this James, I know you like to study things for a while, but just give me the first answer off the top your head. What was the best bit of advice you were given?

James: 18:09

meeting, think to yourself, wait. And wait stands for, why am I talking? Mainly because I’m talking rubbish most of the time. But actually, I know what I think, but you don’t know what other people think. So it’s best to shut and hear what other people think, rather than repeat what you already know to be true.

Jimmy: 18:27

First job Did you

James: 18:29

You did get free Mars bars. And what’s really interesting, most people, you have I have one or two Mars bars a day, that’s your limit, but some people just couldn’t stop and they ballooned, but yeah.

Jimmy: 18:39

friend of mine worked for McVitie’s and he told me a story that bourbon biscuits were made from all the scrapings off the floor of all the other biscuits. They put me off bourbon biscuits, they were my favourites. Didn’t your experience at Mars put you off any of all

James: 18:55

No, they were all very good, I would thoroughly recommend them.

Jimmy: 18:58

How long ago did you work for Mars

James: 19:00

I worked for Mars 20 years ago.

Jimmy: 19:02

Break.

James: 19:04

Right the way

Jimmy: 19:05

What? What was your worst job?

James: 19:07

My worst job, or the worst company, I can’t

Jimmy: 19:09

Worst job. Worst job.

James: 19:10

My worst job was measuring or weighing frozen peas in a cold store at minus 32 degrees C for an eight hour shift. And, well,

Jimmy: 19:21

And, well, sorry, I was gonna ask you next your best company, but that’s miles. Yeah, I can’t tell you

James: 19:29

I can’t tell you that.

Jimmy: 19:30

I signed Why can’t you tell me that

James: 19:32

Because I’ve signed a piece of paper which says, I’ll never talk about

Jimmy: 19:35

I’m never talking about it. My favourite book,

James: 19:41

my favorite book, my favorite business book, or my favorite fictional book.

Jimmy: 19:44

my favourite business book,

James: 19:45

Uh, talked about it earlier on Drive by Dan Pink. If you haven’t read it, you should, and if you can’t read, you should google it because he does a super 15 minute video.

Jimmy: 19:55

Fiction book then.

James: 19:57

Go for big fan of crime fiction. So one of. fiction, so one Either, there’s a French author called Pierre Lamarche, who’s written a book called Alex, which is really, really clever, but brutal. Or, if you’re not into brutal, there is a book called The Seeker, by S. G. McLean, who was actually, I’m led to believe, Alastair McLean’s niece, but it’s about one of Oliver Cromwells enforcers during the interregnum, so a bit of historical crime fiction.

Jimmy: 20:23

Favorite food?

James: 20:24

Favorite Food Curry.

Jimmy: 20:26

Favorite film?

James: 20:27

Favorite film? Oh,

Jimmy: 20:32

I was going to say that, can’t be

James: 20:36

wise guys. Good fellas? No Good Fellows is Wise. Guys, I’m going with Wise Guys.

Jimmy: 20:42

right. Okay. That concludes the quick fire round. Just a couple of final questions just to wrap things up. Can you just tell us what was your writing process? How did you go about writing your books?

James: 20:57

back on Wise Guys. The latest Mission Impossible movie. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve gotta watch it. Um, what was my writing process? Well this sounds a bit random, and I think this is the, the nub of it. When I was 21, 22, so I’d just come out of university and I got a degree, science degree, and I thought it was the bee’s knees, and my dad, bless him, my dad’s got a degree in history. And I said to him, you know, why did you waste your time studying history? And he looked at me the way only a father can look at his son, and you know, that sort of withering look, and he said, because people behave the way people behave. And for the past 33 years, I have seen the same patterns over and over again in different organizations. So what I did was I looked at all the different dysfunctional patterns, all the things that go wrong in organizations. and I enjoy reading a lot, so I looked through all the stories and things that I’ve heard, and I just matched the patterns up to the stories. And really, that’s what I did. Yeah, I hung it around a book that I’d read, a very interesting book about Formula One, where they talk about focus, and they talk about learning and culture. But it really was, these are the things I’ve seen that really don’t work. How can I tell these stories without dobbing myself or my previous employers in it? And that’s the way I went about it.

Jimmy: 22:15

1, And how can people find out more about what you and I do?

James: 22:19

Ah, very simple. Listen to the podcast. I think you have to like and subscribe, although I’m not sure what the subscribe button is, but like and subscribe. The other thing you can do is have a look at our website a job done dot, jobwelldone. com and look under the services section and that will tell you all our wonderful services and what we can do to help you.

Jimmy: 22:36

Thank you, James. Hopefully everyone’s enjoyed today’s podcast. A glimpse behind the curtain of the book that James wrote, Managed by Morons. If you haven’t got a copy yet. Get one and, have a, have a read it will be worth your while. Trust me.

James: 22:52

Thank you.

Jimmy: 22:53

Thank you.