Ken Murray had been hired in from outside the large group of applicants who applied for the recently vacated post of Software Manager. The Company's Information Systems Manager, John Wragg, heard of his exploits from a golfing friend, a counterpart who worked in the banking area. So John let the Personnel Director plough through the 80-odd people who responded to their newspaper advertisement, declined to add most of the nine short-listing interviews, and added Murray's name as a "surprise" to the three recommended for final interview.
Murray had about completed his current assignment, and was spending a month in Melbourne, on vacation with his family after a rugged eighteen months. Normally based in Hong Kong, he had been everywhere in the capitalist world, and was ready to put business travel aside for a year or two. He wasn't a "bank" person - merchant banks like his current employer were far more akin to the cutthroat competitive world of Adam Smith, even more than most larger corporations: they competed by moving large sums of money, with breathtaking speed, around the world, better and faster than the next guy
Nevertheless, a stint in one of Australia's largest companies would give him the opportunity to stay at home for a year or two, and he was quite willing to meet Wragg and his Personnel Director. In three months’ time, he would be an embarrassment to the bank anyway - the new International Funds Transfer Network was settling down well - and one had to start looking for new areas of achievement. Standing still in the career race was sliding backwards, in fact, against one's competition.
Wragg's problem was a classic case of senior management neglect, doubtless some of it his own, and now he was forced to take some unpalatable actions. More accurately, he had been forced to go hunting in a hurry for a senior-middle manager who would take some unpopular actions for him.
Wragg had a weak team. Over the last two years, he's looked down two levels in his group, and there really wasn't a suitable successor. Despite a firm personal commitment to promotion from within, he'd probably made a succession of appointment, direction and training mistakes over five years that got him into that mess. Now, reluctantly, he needed to look outside to strengthen his team. He was starting in the least critical area. Internal Software Management had a lot of good, competent bottom-layer technologists, who responded well to the day-to-day challenges and priorities. Their four section managers were, it seemed, good people-people, but they weren't the kind of creative, aggressive businessmen who could contribute on the next management rung. A go-getter might develop latent talents in one or two, if he gave them a really hard time, but it would take a year or two, and it was going to be a full-time job, with no outcome guarantees.
Murray had just finished doing that, in a very challenging cross-cultural and multinational environment, and the Personnel Director had been impressed with the two-hour discussion, just as Wragg had been earlier by reports in the Golf Club.
Two weeks later, Murray had come to work - differently. A week in Personnel, another in Corporate Planning, and only then did he "hit the deck". The background introductions ensured that he hit the deck running, though, and quickly secured respect for his thorough knowledge of procedures, objectives and current strategies. Into the bargain, he knew infallibly where to go to build up, within a few days, a network of internal contacts. They were selected for their independent views on the performance of his Database, Network, Systems programming and Capacity Planning supervisor/managers. Several of those contacts, knowing their own jobs might slide next under the microscope of recessionary scrutiny, were highly motivated in their desire to inform and educate.
The subject of supervisor performance came up naturally then at this week's meeting of Wragg's management group. It had been raised most weeks since Murray had been there.
“Early improvements will be slow," Ken Murray was saying. "Not much seems to have been done to provide management training in the past, and that's a costly oversight. Allowing for fluctuating workloads, it might be a year or so before there is much improvement in raw knowledge. Then we have to give them the chance to practice their new skills."
"Does it need to take a couple of years?" Wragg asked. "Management training might be a waste of time on some of these people, for all we know."
"No, it doesn't need so long. We'll have some better idea about people's potential in three months. I know we may have to shift some: we also ought to give them a go. I'm suggesting my predecessor overlooked some options there." Quiet understatement was the better way, Murray calculated, to keep the conversation positive and brief.
"So what's the plan, Ken?" Wragg wanted to know.
"The Software group has had a quiet time. The others might all need a shakeup, but let’s start there; they seem to be a fairly competent group technically. You want to know how long it will take? There'll be a lot of bitching and moaning - from everyone - over the next three months, but inside six months I expect we'll see any incompetence labeled clearly, possibly even relocated. We can discuss individual cases as they arise."
"How are you going to do it, Ken? We can all learn from the way it goes," one of the other managers asked.
"Sharpening up the quality of reporting is the main thing," Murray answered. "We need a big improvement in our visibility of operations and problems. The supervisors have to be on top of their sections: they need to know everything that's going on if we want to identify the opportunities. I'm busy getting on top myself, and some of your people are helping me do that. I want to know their jobs better than those Section Managers do - at least, it's going to look that way. I want to keep getting informed of problems, complaints, delays, traffic reports, and downtime summaries - all those things my supervisors ought to be taking notice of. They'll eventually figure out they need a lot more exception reporting than they're getting.”
"John has seconded me a couple of Systems Analysts and a clerk to keep me from getting buried, and I'll need those people for another three weeks, at least." He looked to the head of the big table, picked up Wragg's responding nod, and completed his report. "The good guys are going to get sick of my knowing more than they do, and they're going to set out to fix me: outsmart me.
“Then I can start feeding them some of the hard questions, the ones we pay managers to foresee and resolve, the ones that aren’t on the table now. The other guys, the less capable ones, will decide it's too much like hard work. Some of them will fix that problem themselves, others we might want to keep in another position. Those are some of the decisions that need care and discussion. It'll take a few months to get there, though."
The group agreed to watch, and co-operate where necessary, with the project as it evolved, and passed on to the next agenda item.
* * * *
That same day, Fred Hart had his own meeting, with two people in the City office on the Company's Audit Staff. The Audit Manager and his EDP Audit Supervisor were keen to discuss his proposal that they had some resources sitting within the computer that they weren't adequately using.
Ken Murray had greeted his suggestion with a heartiness and enthusiasm that seemed overdone. His people had installed the computer security software in the first place; so they were in a good position to provide some "top-up" training for the Auditors, who did seem to be floundering a bit occasionally.
The Audit people seemed calm - a bit cool, perhaps - about the inference that computer people could tell commercial people their job. It revolved around whether the computer could be trusted to check the computer's activities, and there were certainly arguments for and against.
EDP Audit supervisor James was explaining that they already collected a lot of computer data.
Fred had his opening. "We can see that. My people's suggestion is that you can use the system - even if only sometimes - to keep an eye on the procedures, too."
"You're suggesting we ask the computer to check itself? James asked, a trifle sarcastically.
"The last thing I’m suggesting," Fred assured him. "You can ask it to keep check on the people, though. You can tell it not to bother reporting all the normal activities, and only raise a note when something looks unusual. That way, you don't get miles of printout, and you never needed it anyway."
"We probably don't need all the reports we get," James conceded, "and we've looked at the Access Facility software manuals. The thing is, how do you define what's normal, and what isn't?"
"That does need a bit of work, and we are suggesting it's worthwhile spending the time to understand what your options are. I wonder if you're getting any value at all out of that software at the moment."
"You've asked that question yourself, Alf," the manager commented. "Why don't we see what he's offering?"
"Alright," James said," can you lend us someone for a while?"
"Yes, we thought if one of our people worked with you for a few days, it might be a big help. The man I've got in mind did the installation training sessions 18 months ago, and he's still got his presentation materials."
"Can you make that a couple of weeks?" the manager pushed. "Give us a chance to get the concepts and methods into practice if you could?"
"I don't know if we can shut three teams down for a fortnight," James queried his boss.
"I don't believe two weeks is warranted, really," Fred felt. "Once your people know what they can do, you'll be able to tailor your methods for each job, and you can spend years over that. Our top system man says it should only take a couple of days, but he thinks he ought to work with the people for a couple more after that. Why don't we say a week to start with? We can talk about a bigger project later, if that seems valuable."
Glaring his supervisor to silence, the manager pushed on. "We'll take that, then. Always pick it up later on if we need. Now, how soon can we make it happen?" Another malicious glare, to keep James in his place.
The manager lived permanently with the Company groups, divisions and offices that were too busy to do things by the book. He'd have to have a long talk with James later. It hurt like hell to see his own officers making the same mistake as they criticised in user groups. They needed to drop everything and fix their ignorance - or prove Hart was wrong.
"Well, we thought the experience could be very valuable," Hart answered, "so we're prepared to move fast. I thought next week, or the week after. Is that too soon?"
"It won't be," the manager responded firmly. "Isn't Jennifer Atkinson scheduled out of town next week? That trip can probably wait. Anybody else of your people we need to notify of a change of plans?" he asked James.
"No, we put Jenny on the team at Northern Districts warehouse. I think Tom might be scheduled to be in Sydney, though."
"You can change that. Give him a week in "school" instead, another week with his family. I think it's too good an offer to drag our feet on," the Manager had decided, and that was final. "It won't hurt for three teams to run without their EDP members. Sounds to me as though Tom will be four times as valuable a week later."
"If you say so," James finished lamely.
The Audit Manager delivered him a withering look of scorn, and they parted to get on with their separate arrangements for the next week.
* * * *
The surprise development couldn't have suited Lester any better. He had been studying his options for over a week now, and however he looked at it there were going to be a few tricky situations. Workloads could easily clash.
He was enrolled for the Investment course offered by Melbourne University. It seemed the best way to get a fast start into the next phase of his planning - the way to dispose of a couple of million dollars, competently and quickly, after the fact of a transfer of funds.
The course ran for four nights, six to 9 p.m. , Monday to Thursday. It was only his work with Rod McAllister that made a night-time course possible, only barely possible, at all. He had a valid need to be in the office, on call by Rod and keeping an eye on his progress, during normal civilized working hours. That gave him a valid claim to steer clear of the tasks that had to be done out-of-hours, and a good chance to leave regularly in time for classes. To help his chances along, he had casually spread the word that he was looking forward to a week of night courses on Australian Literature. He'd pondered for a couple of days over the two extremes of credibility for his workmates. If he mentioned Microprocessors, somebody else might decide to come too, whereas with Pottery, Lit or some such, they'd wonder whether to believe him.
But then Fred brought up a prospect of a "salvage" project for the EDP Audit staff on the computer's security software package. Lester still had the Overhead Projection slides he'd made up a year or more ago, and his daily work had kept him quite familiar with the package. He knew - how well he knew - how poorly they used it in Audit. He was sure he'd wow the pants off them with the latent power they had there. They could make their lives so much easier.
Wednesday night, Fred brought him the good news.
"You'll need to hand Rod's supervision over to one of the others for next week. The session with the Audit people starts first thing Monday, if you can be ready in time."