Tony Benn once made a speech about the problems with the National Health Service.
To illustrate the problem as he saw it, he used a metaphor.
Roughly it went as follows:
“There was a boat-race between a Japanese crew and a crew from the NHS.
The Japanese crew won by a mile.
So the NHS set up a working party to identify the problem.
They reported that the Japanese had seven people rowing and one person steering.
Whereas the NHS had one person rowing and seven people steering.
So the NHS brought in management consultants who confirmed the diagnosis.
They suggested the NHS team needed to be completely restructured.
It needed to become more efficient, more cohesive, for all-round better performance.
A strategy document was drawn up, complete with recommendations about streamlining the entire organisation.
As part of the restructuring a significant number of new appointments were made.
These included:
Three Assistant Steering Managers,
Three Deputy Steering Managers,
And a Director of Steering Services.
The single rower was then incentivised to row harder.
The Japanese team and the NHS team competed again.
This time the NHS team lost by two miles.
Management could clearly see the solution was obvious.
They laid-off the rower and sold the boat, in order to give the Director of Steering Services a large pay-out, “for making the hard decisions”.
This is how Tony Benn saw the way the NHS was being run.
Basically, too many chiefs and not enough Indians.
Too many people having opinions about work, measuring work, observing work, commenting on work, writing criticisms about work, theorising about work, dissecting work, analysing work, summarising work, and having meetings about work.
Too few people actually doing any work.
Which strangely enough seems to be the problem with most of the UK.
Particularly advertising and marketing.
If you want an opinion on work, or a theory, or a commentary, it’s like prodding a wasps’ nest.
Thousands instantly rush out, very noisily with opinions.
But if you want any actual work, a script say that can actually run, prod the same nest and it’s empty.
No one’s there.
Advertising and marketing people can give you an opinion about anything sure, but they can’t actually do anything.
Exactly like the situation you see at most road works.
One person down the hole digging and seven people standing around the top commenting.
Seven people with an opinion about what is wrong.
Theorists, strategists, futurists, semioticians, trend-spotters, media gurus, managers, executives, associates, coordinators, supervisors.
Everyone’s got an opinion, no one’s got a shovel.
Everyone turns up for a meeting about the work, then they all go off to lunch together.
In fact, the only person who isn’t invited to the lunch is the person who actually did the work.
He or she isn’t thought to be important enough.
Ha reminds me of when I did some commercials for an Indonesian clove
cigarette client.
Ciggie ads were still allowed in Indonesia.
The art d and I did some ideas.
Client oked them.
Next thing, M.D.,CD, suits, producers were planning to go shoot in S Africa.
Even art director didn’t get to go.
“Oh you’ll go for the next shoot,” agency promised.
Next one was in Spain.
Again the work was by the art director and me.
This time, I didn’t even get to go for the pre-pro.
So I quit.
Things got crazier.
To welcome the new Ozzie ECD the MD arranged a stills shoot for him in
Africa.
The photog was an unknown.
And it was a studio shoot.
They say that those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Someone up there must really, really hate us.
So true Dave.
And it seems the amount of people standing around watching the guy with the shovel are multiplying.
Incidentally, I had a similar situation to Robin a few years ago.
There were a series of idents needed. Urgently.
Common, modern-day situation… nobody had been able to crack them, the client was annoyed and the brief landed on my desk.
I mentioned they were urgent – these idents were needed by the end of play.
One planner, two account people, the ECD and even the team that had already had a go at the brief sat there and told me what was required and what the client seemed to dislike.
The ECD was very apologetic and even quipped “at least you’ll get to go on the shoot.”
I wrote 24 scripts that day and 8 were approved.
When it came to do the shoot in South Africa, three clients were going so three account people were needed, along with a new MD and a planner.
Oh and the ECD.
Meanwhile, I was sitting in Covent Garden working on the next brief that had somehow been left until the last minute.
Everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to change the toilet roll.
Taking a planner on a shoot simply means there are fewer bacon sarnies for everyone else.
These days, the only one who isn’t invited to lunch is a freelancer.
Recently worked on a freelance job for a well known fast-food chain where my creative partner and I sat on a table with about 8 other people for the briefing, turns out we were the only ones coming up with the ideas. The same 8 people took our ideas to a meeting to share with other agencies working on other parts of the account and then came back to the office to debrief us. Despite being told repeatedly that they’d had a very productive meeting they were unable to clearly report which ideas were liked/not liked, but it was a very, very, very productive meeting.