June 2019
A Committee is usually formed to establish standards and ensure conformity once something is already up and running, and I have always known that I did not fit in with the kind of people who relish sitting on committees. These folk seem to get a sense of achievement when the Chairman says, “Right we’re all agreed. ‘Next Item.’ Such people seem to regard verbal consensus as being the pinnacle of achievement and a virtuous outcome in its own right.
At the highest level of an organisation committee is a useful aid to setting a direction for an organisation and a place where Politicians and bureaucrats come together as they both work in a world in which ideas on paper are ends in themselves.
However when actions are required, a Project team is best at organising resources to achieve a specific goal. Project Teams work in the real world where they have to acknowledge that different people have different capabilities and abilities and that what makes a good bureaucrat is not the same trait that makes a good project manager. For example, the project manager does not aim for agreement for its own sake. Instead, he or she will use disagreement about priorities to energise a reduction in time scales, or may use technical clashes to create innovative solutions.
A Project team is not necessarily trying to achieve consensus as such, but is seeking an effective and efficient means of achieving a measurable objective.Such a team has a dynamic mixture of reactive chemistry working to convert energy and resources towards a given end. Individuals in the team may work together to assess situations and and take risks, whereas a committee, because of its drive to achieve consensus, standardise and ensure conformity, will try to eliminate risk. Of course, both mind-sets are necessary, but history teaches us that as soon as a committee thinks that it can do more than set a direction. and comes to believe it can also ‘steer the ship, things will go wrong big time.
On re-reading the above, I hope those readers who are trying to make sense out of what is going on at both national and benefice level, may be better able to understand why national politicians and benefice bureaucrats are having difficulty coming to terms with some ‘realities’ expressed by ordinary folk during recent months.
But enough of bureaucrats: A few weeks ago we dagged the sheep and were pleased that only one showed signs of maggots. We ‘Clik’d the lambs, and I rang the shearer to make sure he was willing to do the job again this year. The cost of shearing a small flock is very high and as the British Wool Marketing Board only pays us about £0.90pkg value, the cost of then taking the wool to the Board’s depot in Bromyard means lwe lose circa £5 per fleece. It is now better to dig a hole and let the wool rot. (How different things are from the time when peasant folk in Norfolk were driven off common land, (and some they owned) by powerful people because wool was so valuable that huge flocks of sheep were grazed in in order to meet the European demand for wool.
If there are no bright spots on the political front there is one on the on the technological. Recently, a neighbour very kindly sold us a small piece of land to make it easier for us to manoeuvre vehicles around the back of our cottage, and then another neighbour cut overhead tree branches to obtain height clearance. He used a battery powered pole saw and chain saw. I watched in astonishment as he cut an eight inch diameter, twelve foot long beech branch, fourteen feet high off the ground, and then turned it into a barrow full of logs in under six minutes. He took the battery out of the pole-saw and put it in the chain-saw as the branch thumped to the ground.
Lithium batteries now give a chain saw over an hour of continuous use. But other implements such as the brush cutter, strimmer or hedge trimmer run a lot longer. At only a half hour, charge time one battery may be all you need. In my case however, if I am chain-sawing cords into logs for a full hour then I too need to charge up my own batteries for half an hour. I am now convinced that batteries have come of age, and only just in time for the over-eighties to be able to carry on ‘Carrying On.’
Talking of carrying on however, reminds me of a true story from an old Canadian bagpipe player who was asked to play at a funeral for homeless man who had no family or friends. The service was to be at a pauper’s cemetery in the Nova Scotia back country, but because he got lost in the backwoods he was an hour late, and so on arrival, he could see no sign of a hearse but only the digger crew who were by now eating lunch. He apologised profusely and then went straight to the graveside to play. As the workers gathered round, he played from the heart as he thought of this poor solitary man who had no-one to love or mourn him.
He later recalled that during “Amazing Grace” the workers began to weep. So much so that he too found his eyes full of tears and his heart was full, but he carried on. At the end, when he was packing the bagpipes into his car, he heard one of the workers say,
“Well. I’ve never seen anything like that before, and I’ve been installing septic tanks for twenty years.”
View from the Pew 