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September 2, 2006
"This layer of middle management"
This is Susan Hill's response to Bill Neve. I want to hear from people who actually work day to day in libraries what they think of what Bill and Susan have said - don't worry, you don't have to reveal where you work (and I won't let any other commenters reveal it either), but this is an important message that can be generated by this blog. The people who think they hold the strings of influence are reading what is said here, and sense their grip to be growing weary. Their days are numbered.
"It is always, always this layer of middle management churning out reports and going to wall-to-wall meetings on non-subjects.. same in the NHS, same in Social Services.. they are in thrall to jargon mainly because none of them have been well educated. They have been just a bit educated mainly on jargon and political correctness, so that they see themselves as having a Higher Education but they know nothing. They have read little. They are uncultured. They talk in an uber-language and they have absolutely no contact with the real world, in their job-lives anyway.
It is never the front line - never the nurses,doctors, library front-staff,soldiers, teachers, social workers on the ground who actually see the families.. they are the ones who know what`s wrong and could probably put a lot of it right but their hands are tied by the middle managers and their jargon and their political correctness and the boxes they have to tick. Until power and money goes to the right people nothing will change. But it never will. The others are there until the end of time and a nice index-linked pension. They will certainly never have to leave because of stress and exhaustion."
Posted by Perkins at September 2, 2006 2:18 PM
Comments
Greetings, Mr Coates;
I am a library assistant at a certain South Coast library, which is part of a service currently undergoing a 'development program' - indeed, it is one which you have visited to give a talk to recently (a talk which I regrettably had to miss due to a shortage of staff to cover the desks - quelle ironique!).
All these things seem to ring true, but what seems to be discounted is the resisitance of large entrenched systems to any sort of change; a resistance that cannot be laid at the feet of individual people. Local government institutions are notoriously hidebound and moribund, and the way they are structured is intrinsically opposed to any serious upheaval of the status quo. In the sciences, it is an accepted truism that any functioning system (e.g., an electric motor) the system reacts to external forces by trying to regain its baseline state. It is my belief (through observation, not any training in the social sciences) that human systems work in a very similar way.
This is not to demonise anyone at all; putting myself in the shoes of the middle management, I'm pretty sure I'd find any number of reasons to progress slowly on any serious change in policy or working methods - first and foremost to avoid upsetting and disenfranchising people who in many cases have been doing their off-counter jobs for decades. Indeed, the rumbles of approaching change are having regrettable effects on staff morale already, and actually heightening conflict and resentment between different sections of the service.
Our service is dying by inches - I've been a part of it for two years, and it is already clear to me. Radical change is indeed required, and I hope to goodness it happens. But equally, I cannot help but see the service as being comprised of individual people, and hence seeing that radical change that may be good for the service will have serious effects on the lives of the people who work in it.
It would be easy to return to my youthful class-war militance, and cheerfully wave placards calling for the unseating of the pen-pushers and desk-jockeys, and the emancipation of the frontline staff to the degree that we actually had sufficient people-hours to get books back on the shelves within 24 hours of having them returned. I'd love to see the service operating more effectively - it might stop the dreadful bleed of usage that we witness month by month which, coupled with repeated cuts in funding, is crippling our ability to perform the basic core of our jobs, let alone 'tick all the boxes'.
Change needs to happen, and soon. But demonising the middle management will actually retard the process - it is they who really need to be won over. How this could be accomplished, I have no idea - I'm just a book worm who finally landed the ultimate job after years of factory work and service industry tedium. But ultimately, me must be humanists as well as futurists - desk-jockeys are real people, with families, infirm parents, troublesome children, long-term ailments and all the other problems that everyone faces. Yes, their jobs are easy, overpaid and (in some cases) almost utterly pointless and unnecessary. But we can't perform the corporate version of lining them up in front of a firing squad and expect them to simply acquiesce like cattle. It would be not only unethical on our part, but unreasonable to expect it of them.
In my (humble, and probably misinformed) opinion, the best route for change would be to start insisting that the middle management become more involved in floor duties on a day to day basis. If they don't want to work counter, there's plenty of shelving, take-on, prepping and repairs to do, the stacks of which would be significantly reduced by a few hours a day of application. This would have the effect of either demonstrating the actual level of backlog we really have at the front-line (which I am positive is not really understood or realised), or encouraging them to migrate to departments where someone doing nine hours a day shuffling paperwork could actually have some beneficial effect - I've heard that the housing service is always on the look out for fresh talent.
Sorry for the length of comment, but as you can tell this is a subject that is not only very current and raw in my workplace, but one that I care deeply about.
Posted by: Armchair Anarchist at September 2, 2006 11:45 PM
Tim,
I think a round of applause is deserved for "Armchair Anarchist!"
He or she speaks from the heart.
Posted by: Margo Harker at September 4, 2006 8:36 AM