Well blow me down! Let alone worrying about a triple dip, can anyone even see a double dip? What I see is a large dip in 2008, followed by a sustained period of stagnation. To me, this is one, long, predictable slump and until something changes in the economic system, it will remain that way.

What then of the recent double dip? The first dip is obvious and anyone can see that in the data. The second dip though, is alleged to be between 2011 Q4 and 2012 Q2, with a sudden growth out of the dip in 2012 Q3;

The chart tells me that, unlike the dramatic first dip into recession, the second “dip” represents normal variation in our growth rate. The UK economy is flat-lining at the moment and any variations in each quarter are predictably minimal.

We can tell from the charts that the UK has averaged 0.3% growth per quarter over the last decade, but we can see that there are some distinct variations over that period. There is the relative boom of the early Noughties, which dives into the bust caused by the burst, banking bubble in 2008. Running some splits in the charts highlights these relative eras;

I have also added in a further note to the chart for reference. I’m sure it is just coincidence that the Olympics occurred during the leap out of the supposed second dip and a further coincidence that the economy contracted again straight afterwards. Maybe it’s just me, but did the Olympics not act as a beard and glasses disguise over a continuing slump? Hey; look at those brilliant athletes over there! No continuing hardship to see over here!

Whether the Olympics was the cause or not, it is that one quarter of growth that headline writers heralded as an end to the second slump and a move out of recession. It is also this one, solitary quarter of growth that the same headline writers are using as a comparative, to start us panicking that we are nosediving into a supposed triple dip. It is complete nonsense, borne out of pointless comparisons from one quarter to the last, with no thought for the overall trend and, to me, it is poor analysis and poor journalism.

Still, looking on the bright side, the imminent influx of 90,000 Germans for the Champion’s League Final at Wembley in May, might just pull us out of the slump for another quarter and everything will be right with the UK economy. There is a brilliant cartoon in today’s Independent Newspaper, which sums it all up perfectly

View it here: The Independent Daily Cartoon

Take a look at the below table, which details the average rate of inflation in the UK since 1751:

Assuming that the inflation rate is an indicator of economic stability and general well-being of the economy, we ask people to identify which of the eras suggest stability and good economic control. Made your choice?

Looking at the data, you or I would sensibly pick the period between 1750 and 1881 as one of the eras representing good stability and economic control. An average inflation rate of 0.7% sounds pretty good to me and ranks second only to 1882-1914 as a period of low inflationary bliss.

This of course, is the way that we are taught to view many different types of data. We look at averages to give us a feel for the general trend over time. The average suggests an element of normality; by definition the mean is the “middle” of the data range, so it makes sense for us to base decisions on it.

What then, if we view the same data in a different format…

Looking at the data in any form of time series shows up the problem with averages. Whilst the average RPI is comparable when looking at 1750-1881 and 1882-1914, the contrast in stability could not be starker. The former was an era characterised by huge swings from hyper-inflation to heavy deflation and back again, whereas the latter was a relative paragon of stability.

Therein lies the inherent problem with averages; they tell you nothing about the variation in the data. A series of data including 5,5,5,5,5 has an average of 5, but so does 10,2,6,1,6. This is why we teach people to view data in statistical process control charts.  SPC (or capability) charts give us the mean (average), but add “control limits”, calculated at 3 standard deviations either side of the mean. The control limits tell us about the amount of variation in the data and combine with the mean to give a far more complete picture.

Look again at the table of data, with the upper and lower control limits added in:

The UCL and LCL tell us the amount of variation we can normally expect from a system, unless we act to change the system in some way. They tell us about the inherent stability of the system we are measuring.

Now we have a more complete picture of the stability of inflation and the same question asked at the start of this piece generates a very different response. Our conclusion is that we should never use averages alone to understand the performance of any system. We should always view data in time series and look at the amount of variation, along with the average.

Of course, an even better answer will point out that we should never form a judgement on one measure in isolation and that we need to understand other data such as the interest rate and wage inflation to gain the full picture of each economic era, but that’s for another blog on another day…

Want to know more about SPC Charts? This is a great place to start:

Donald Wheeler – Understanding Variation. Knoxville SPC Press Inc 1995

Read the Independent On Sunday article here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/hamish-mcrae/hamish-mcrae-events-have-overtaken-inflation-targets-8571904.html

The Government is going to solve the problems in the NHS by prosecuting anyone deemed to have fiddled figures to meet their targets. This angers me on many levels, so let me try to summarise the situation that Hunt is attempting to solve;

• Government sets arbitrary targets, which trigger punishments if not met.
• Targets become the important focus of attention for management, who push targets down the hierarchy, imposing them on the workers in the system.
• Government sets the policies and thinking, which dictates how managers create systems and budgets, by which people must work to meet the targets.
• Inadequate systems created by wayward thinking, cause targets to be missed.
• Fearful of the punishments that will arise, people do the only thing available to them to meet the arbitrary targets: they “game” the system.
• Patients die as a result of the poor systems, whilst management. focus on the targets and the workers.
• Government is provided with copious evidence that the focus on targets has caused the system to fail patients.

Targets do not work. There is a tidal wave of evidence that tells us this, from bankers to schools, via policing and the NHS, but consecutive Governments have clung to them like a comfort blanket. Targets give the illusion of control, but the truth is the complete opposite. I do not intend to go into detail on why targets are such a bad thing, as I have done just that in previous blogs. If you want to find out more, please follow the links I have provided at the end of this blog. @AndyTBrogan nicely summed up the effect of targets when he said that “in the short term, they may get people to do stuff, but they suck the heart and soul out of what they are doing”.

So, what are our Government proposing to do to improve things? Is it;

1. Abolish targets and refocus attention on the needs of patients;
2. Remove some of the worst targets, most prone to gaming;
3. Enforce the targets more rigorously and make it a criminal office to record inaccurate data

Only option 1 will work. Words fail me that any sane person could choose option 3. However, this is Jeremy Hunt we are talking about. To quote Deming; “wherever there is fear, there will be wrong figures”. This policy takes the culture of fear and ratchets it up to 11. More fear will lead to more wrong data, but it will just be more cunningly concealed.

Let’s think about Hunt’s proposal logically for a moment…

• How will prosecutors distinguish between an honest mistake and a deliberate fiddle? If I transpose a figure, did I do it deliberately or accidentally?
• Who will define exactly how the figures need to be prepared? Think of tax laws; is it avoidance of the target, or evasion?
• If figures were found to be falsified, were they caused by a “rogue” worker, or systemic fraud? How will we truly know?

To answer those questions will require policing. The logical conclusion is that figures will have to be more rigorously audited. Will we have a specific accounting body that verifies hospital data? How much would that cost exactly? Cost that is, in terms of the auditors themselves and the time and effort incurred by the NHS in preparing and checking the figures.

Criminalising data falsification will focus management attention even further away from the patient and further into accountancy and accountability. It is the wrong thing spectacularly wronger. This policy is like recognising that corporal punishment isn’t working and then proposing that we make it more brutal.

The problem is that the system is the main factor affecting performance. In turn, the system is affected by the thinking of those at the top. We currently pass responsibility for performance down the hierarchy, but do nurses actually have the power and authority to change the system? If they can’t change the system, the only way to hit the targets is to cheat the system, or cheat the figures.

So what to do instead?

The unavoidable truth is that sustainable improvement will not happen until the thinking changes at the top. If the thinking changes, it will allow us to replace arbitrary targets with measures of performance that are linked directly to purpose. The crucial part is that measures must be used to learn about current performance, but not to make people accountable. Instead they must be used by the people who actually do the work to help them improve the system.

There are 5 tests of a good performance measure. To be truly useful they must;

1. Helps us understand and improve performance
2. Be derived from the work
3. Demonstrate capability and variation
4. Be in the hands of the people who do the work to control and improve the work
5. Be used by managers to actively, act on the system

Which brings me to the second article, which alleges that the Government was guilty of  ignoring data on hospital death rates Professor Sir Brian Jarman, who co-founded the health statistics and research service Doctor Foster, claims that in 2010 he sent the then health secretary Andy Burnham a list of hospitals with higher-than-average death rates, but no action was taken.

The fundamental fact that most people fail to understand is that producing any sort of performance data does not in itself change anything. Measures can never provide us with any answers, but good ones will prompt us to go away and ask the right questions. Used correctly, managers can identify where they need to go and look, to see what actual performance looks like and why it is delivering the data seen in the measures. This is absolutely not achieved by sending others to carry out audit and inspection. This is managers using data intelligently to go and see the work themselves, which is the only way to understand and improve the systems they ask people to work in.

None of these changes are possible until the thinking changes at the very top of the NHS. If Government continues to believe that fear improves performance and enforces it with inspection and prosecutions, then the future looks very bleak indeed.

Here are some fantastic links that explain why targets do not work;

Try almost any of Inspector Guilfoyle’s blog entries here;

http://inspguilfoyle.wordpress.com/

Type targets into the search box here;

https://www.vanguard-method.com/

This is a great summary piece, which provides further links to plenty of evidence;

http://systemsthinkingforgirls.com/2013/02/17/the-9-main-arguments-for-targets-deconstructed/

You can also read my previous blogs to see the effect that targets had on me. For example;

http://www.perfect-flow.com/blog/barclays-bonus/

Whilst driving home yesterday I was listening to BBC Radio 5 Live. The discussion turned to the financial results for Morrisons supermarket and their lack of an on-line presence. During this discussion, the reporter stated that home deliveries were likely to be replaced by click and collect over the coming years, as “deliveries are inconvenient”. Inconvenient for who exactly? For the customer? Nope. For the supermarket? Ah, I see…

Now don’t get me wrong, I can envisage some circumstances where it may be preferable to go and collect goods rather than have them delivered straight to my door, but surely they should be few and far between? For the majority of people, it should be far more convenient for goods to come to you, rather than you go to them? If not, then how to explain the popularity of the remote control; remember the inconvenience of having to get up from the comfort of your chair and go and change channel with the buttons on the box?

Certainly, in all of the services that we have redesigned, it has proven far better to “pull” what you want to where you need it, rather than be “pushed” into leaving your location to go and pick it up.

So why then is the popularity of click and collect usurping home delivery? It strikes me that this is for one reason; on-line shopping is marred by the downright terrible performance of the various delivery agents. This is what turns the delivery option from the most convenient solution to an inconvenient one. It is the fault of the on-line shops that they have failed miserably to get to grips with delivery. However, rather than redesign the service to put it right, they are trying to sell us a solution that suits them more and the customer less; they can’t be bothered to get the goods to you in a convenient way, so you’ll just have to go back to getting them from the shop instead.

This brings me to my second observation this week:

Now stop me if I’m way off track here, but Amazon’s on-line offering is attractive because it helps us all avoid a trip to the shops. No parking problems, no crowds to negotiate, no worries about lack of stock when we get there. So you could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw these Amazon lockers installed at a large shopping centre. You buy on-line for convenience, but you have to go to the same shopping centre you were trying to avoid, to pick up your order! This is the most astounding version of “failure demand” that I have seen for quite some time. The lockers are there purely because Amazon has failed to deliver the goods to you at a time that is convenient. This is click and collect gone mad. Here’s an idea Amazon, if your customers have to go to a shopping centre to pick up the goods they buy from you, why not have a range of items on show there. Maybe customers could even purchase the items on display whilst they’re there? I know, let’s call it a “shop”. Revolutionary!

So what can on-line retailers do differently to avoid us making unnecessary journeys to click and collect? The big logistics companies seem to be reasonably competent at shipping goods between their depots and manoeuvring your shopping to a dispersed location, somewhere not too distant from your home. Where it all falls down is the last leg of the journey that gets it to your house, when you want it. The delivery companies make a hash of it because they do not understand demand. They “push” delivery dates and times at you, rather than allow you to choose the exact date and time that suits you. If you could choose an exact time for delivery and the delivery driver predictably arrived at the time you chose, how often would you go to collect?

Is that sort of service just pure fantasy though? Well, no, as it happens. The same principles are currently being used successfully to get a repairman to the customer’s house at the exact time that the customer chooses as convenient. The repairs company records their promptness not in terms of am/pm slots, or even hours late. They record how many MINUTES early or late they are, compared to the exact time requested by the customer:

The chart shows that the repairman was an average of 9 minute early and, predictably, no more than 21 minutes late, or 41 minutes early.

Moreover, if the repairman needs parts to complete the repair, they don’t click and collect from a nearby merchant. Instead, they continue working on site, whilst rapid response delivery drivers source the parts and deliver them in minutes; where and when they need it. This is truly understanding demand and designing a service to meet it. The counter-intuitive truth is that it’s also cheaper, as wasted time and effort has been removed from the flow of the work.

So next time you click and collect, rather than trust the delivery service, think about the lucky people in Portsmouth, Stoke and Bradford who receive the service we all should, but rarely do. The good people of East Anglia are about to benefit from the same revolution and if on-line retailers don’t wake up to this and do the right thing, then they might just have taken their foot off the neck of our high streets.

Suppose your current car insurer offered you an enhanced policy, which you accepted. The price is just slightly more than you could get elsewhere, but it’s worth it to avoid the hassle of changing insurers.

Three weeks after taking out the policy, your insurer sent a threatening email because you had “failed to provide your proof of no claims discount” for the “new” policy. Surely some mistake, but you can’t ignore the request, so have to ring the number on the email to ask the insurer to provide themselves with their own proof of no claims. That phone call is failure demand; caused by the insurer failing to do something right in dealing with your renewal. It is registered as “demand” hitting the insurer’s call centre and wastes time for both their staff and customer. It also irritates the customer to the point where they might well not renew next year.

Of course, that ridiculous example would never happen in real life, would it?

Now, I’m sure you’re somewhat ahead of me here, when I tell you that this wasn’t a hypothetical example at all and I made that exact call this morning. Now at this point, it’s only fair to say that I was happy to renew with the insurer as they have been very good to deal with up to now. A couple of years ago, they processed my late night badger incident without fuss or delay; excellent! However, this renewal has been an exceptional lesson in how not to provide customer service.

Mistake number 1: The team who call you to push their “multi-car” policy work on a different system to the regular policy staff. This causes hilarious fun for the customer, as they have to repeat information to both offices independently.

Mistake number 2: It’s my own fault for changing cars just before renewal, but the people who deal with your policy changes throughout the year are not allowed to deal with them when they fall within a week or two of the renewal date. There is, of course, no guidance for this in the telephone mis-routing system and you must flounder between switchboards until someone takes pity on you.

Mistake number 3: The classic result of the horrible segregation of duties in 1 & 2, leads to the inevitable failure demand outlined above, when one team can’t talk to the other and the customer is asked to provide proof of no claims when renewing with the same insurer.

Bonkers.

Maybe this was a one-off and I was just unlucky? Well, no actually. When I queried the request for proof of no claims, I suggested that it might be difficult to get hold of proof due to the ineptitude of my previous insurers! When I told the (very good) call handler that he might know of them, he chuckled at what he knew was coming. You see, he had received god knows how many similar calls before and unless there’s one, terrible person at the insurer who keeps screwing up the switch from single to multi-car policy, I strongly suspect that their system is a bit shit.

Here then, are some suggestions for the Senior Management at my insurer:

1. Put your call handlers together in one place, with one IT system and allow them to deal with all types of demand, without handing it off to someone else. This makes the customer very happy and will actually save you money as it will deal with issues more quickly and lead to less calls being received.
2. Offer your customers the best deal you can at renewal, first time. Why heavily subsidise one type of insurance to make it attractive, when it comes at the expense of current deals which suddenly become uncompetitive? This creates the need to set up separate sales teams to lure people away from their current arrangement, before they fall into the hands of rivals. This wastes more money and alienates your customers. Which is bad.
3. Don’t send out threatening, standard-issue emails to your existing customers, especially when they make you look very silly indeed and cause more waste for your staff and your customers. How many calls do you think your staff have dealt with as a result of this policy? How much has that cost you in staff time and lost business?
4. Try listening in to some calls in your operations centre. Hey, why not even try measuring the amount of failure demand that you are receiving? Do not panic when you realise it makes up the majority of the calls you receive.
5. Don’t do any of 1-4 without understanding that the problems are your fault. Your thinking and decision-making created the dreadful systems that your excellent staff have to work around each and every day. Maybe try reading Freedom From Command And Control by John Seddon before you do anything. It might just save your business.

This was supposed to be about my own recent experience of NHS treatment, but that blog is now on hold after I went to visit my Gran in hospital today. She’s 92 and was in reasonable health until recently. Yes she was frail and had suffered a couple of falls, but her underlying health was ok. She was admitted due to a chest infection. Much to my regret, I hadn’t seen her for a couple of months and I really wasn’t prepared for the sight that greeted me, as I barely recognised the person I saw.

Firstly, her weight has plummeted to 38kg. All the “skin and bone” analogies in the world cannot begin to describe her frailty and I am struggling to find the right words in truth. Her weight has dropped by 10kg since she was admitted a couple of weeks ago, simply because she is not eating the meals provided. There are several reasons for this, part of which is her stubborn, picky, personality, but a whole heap of it is because the weaker she gets, the less able she is to feed herself. My primary concern though, is that none of the staff seem unduly worried about this aspect of her care. No one is helping my Gran eat and no one appears engaged in supporting her nutrition. This is basic stuff isn’t it? She now has eye and mouth infections to add to the chest infection she came in with.

When I arrived at the hospital, no one actually knew where my Gran was. Her whole ward had been moved, the reasons for which I was in turn told were “political” and/or “financial” and were due to the need to amalgamate some other parts of the hospital. When I found my Gran, the staff on the ward were confused, harassed and stressed. The hospital is a modern facility, but appears to be in turmoil. The system is broken.

The others in my Gran’s ward are all in a similar state and I see the same problems with their care as I do with my Gran’s. what particularly troubles me is something that can seem quite trivial. The ward used to be on the 3rd floor, where the patients had a reasonable view out of the windows. There is precious little life in the patients, but at least they could see the life in others outside. So when hospital management made their spreadsheet decision to move my Gran, which of them decided it was perfectly ok to put her in an internal space on the ground floor, with no windows and no natural light?

These patients cannot move about freely. They move from their bed to the chair next to their bed and back again. What fuckwit thinks it’s ok to leave them in a cramped, confined space with no view and no link to life? They have no tv, no radio, no stimulation at all as it happens. My Gran sits in discomfort and waits for her daughters to visit. She has nothing else to do. She is visibly upset at the lack of a view, but I very much doubt that the person who made that decision will see the consequence.

Is it any wonder then, that my Gran has lost the will to eat? She is in the most vicious of vicious circles and I really don’t think it’s good enough. I couldn’t bear for my Gran to die there. I have pleaded with her to eat her meals and enticed her with the prospect of seeing the outside world again. She will probably never return to her home now, but the least she deserves is a dignified end with humanity and the correct levels of care. My Mum has recently had her hip replaced and her sister is blind; neither are in a position to provide adequate care to my Gran.

There is lots more to tell, but I am confused now about what I should expect from the staff. Should someone be helping my Gran clean her teeth and nails? Should someone be brushing her hair? Should someone come when she cries out for help? What counts as necessary care?

Despite everything I know, I have always put complete faith in the NHS to provide those necessary levels of care, but what I am witnessing is confirming all my worst fears. All the evidence suggests to me that the system is horribly broken, but I hope I can stop it from breaking my Gran.

All she really needs is a healthy dose of nutrition and a window to look out of. In 2012, is that beyond us?

If I ever find myself in Pizza Express then I usually have the same base pizza, Quattro Formaggi, to which I add whatever ingredients I fancy at the time. I know I’m not alone in this, as I have often received comments from the staff about other diners who do the same.

When handed the revised menu last night, I looked in vain for the Quattro Formaggi, which has disappeared. Now, in the great scheme of things, this is not a matter of life and death, but bear with me. In their wisdom, management have decided that we all want “Bianca Formaggi” instead. This still involves lots of different cheeses, but changes the blend and, importantly, does away with the tomato base altogether, replacing it with some cheesy sauce.

Now that just isn’t what I want from my pizza, so I asked the waitress whether it was still possible to have the old-style topping instead. She said it wasn’t, but she could get the kitchen to make one specially for me, with a tomato base alongside the new cheesy topping. She knew she could do this, because she had already done the same thing for others who also bemoaned the passing of the Quattro Formaggi! Incidentally,in my experience, Pizza Express staff tend to be very good like that and are always comfortable with veering off the set menu to meet customer needs.

Anyway, as you’ll know if you’ve seen the Chicken Wings video, the crux of the matter is this; when my order was rung through the till, there was no way of entering exactly what I had eaten and my dinner was charged as a new “Bianca Formaggi”. This has some interesting consequences for Pizza Express’ sales figures. Indeed, when management sit down to review the success of their new menu, their monthly board pack will no doubt show a successful introduction for the Bianca abomination. Sitting in a boardroom detached from the work, it would be easy to slap each other on the back and talk of an inspired decision, that shows the decision-makers know their customers inside out.

What a different view they might get if they went to spend time in their restaurants and saw how the actual meal served to the customer, differed from their data. You see the data says “Bianca”, but the customer says “Quattro”.

This brings me to my main point. There is much to be learned from data and it is essential to management. However, it is always dangerous to use data in isolation without also understanding the work. Use data wisely and it will prompt you to ask all the right questions. The answers however, lie firmly in the work, with the workers, wherever your customers are.

Incidentally, I highly recommend a browse through https://www.vanguard-method.com/  , as the depth of information available in the new site is hugely impressive. A word of warning though, it’s highly addictive. I only intended a quick browse but several hours later, I had to be forcibly removed from it by my wife! If you’re very unlucky, you might stumble across this strange chap in the library section. Enjoy!

The answer is to turn the system on its’ head and build it with enough flexibility to absorb the variety of work needed to meet customer demand. In plain English, we ask the customer when they want us to turn up and we give operatives all the time and materials they need to complete the right fix. This has the effect of turning the little boxes into a large, irregular, jigsaw puzzle. Now the problem becomes, how to put the pieces together?

This very theory sends shivers down the spine of most traditional thinkers. I know, I used to be one. We think we cannot possibly let customers decide on appointment times due to all the “what ifs”. What if everyone wants Monday at 10.00? What if no one wants Tuesday at 2.00? What if all the 9.00 repairs on Wednesday end up taking all day and we miss all the other appointments? What if, what if, what if!

So what actually happens if we let customers choose when they want their repair done? I mean really give them a free choice and a specific appointment time. Unpredictable chaos right?

Well, we did it in Portsmouth and this is what happened;

The chart for June shows that lots of people did want times between 8.00 and 9.00, which gave us some initial problems. Actually though, this was ok, because it was the only time of day that all the operatives need to start repairs simultaneously. What we really wanted to understand though, was whether there was any predictability to the pattern? Here then, is what happened in July;

Now we were interested and for the first time, really believed that we might be able to resource against customer demand. What we learnt was that offering customers the opportunity to choose their own appointment times produced predictability of demand;

Just to be doubly clear here; the customers were absolutely free to pick a time that suited them, without anyone pushing them to particular time-slots and the outcome was stunningly predicable demand. This is not what my traditional head was telling me would happen.

So once we understood the pattern, we could resource against it. We did this by giving our operatives one job at a time and asking them to estimate how long the job would take, once they had thoroughly diagnosed the job from site. Once you know what upcoming appointments you have and when your tradespeople are likely to be ready for their next job, you can start to resource control. Well blow me down, it’s only a way of creating a flexible appointment system to fit in with the customer!

As a result of understanding demand we were able to measure our ability to meet appointment times in terms of minutes early or late, rather than hours and days. On average, we were 9 minutes early and predictably, were no worse than 41 minutes early, or 21 minutes late:

Whilst the data shows a few days where things went slightly out of kilter, they were few and far between and mainly caused by adverse weather or traffic conditions. Even on the very worst days, we are still talking MINUTES late!

There are several consequences of this change.

Firstly, more repairs are competed in one visit. The first visit might take an hour and a half, but that’s better than two visits of an hour each. Better that is for the contractor and the customer. The contractor ends up with less appointments to fit in the diary and half the amount of travel and the customer only needs to wait in on one day instead of two.

Secondly, because the trades person turns up at a time chosen as suitable by the customer, the customer is actually in when they call. In a previous blog I gave the example of an organisation who’s access rate had leapt from 67% to 97% by employing this method and we have seen similar results everywhere this has been implemented. Imagine what your tradespeople can do with all that time they used to spend traveling to jobs they can’t get in to…

Lastly, the end to end time on the repair from the customer’s perspective was reduced substantially. Last week I witnessed a plumber who went to repair a leak in the customer’s kitchen. Whilst repairing the leak, the tenant pointed out a dripping tap that had got progressively worse since the leak was reported. Despite having the necessary parts in his van, the plumber apologised and said he couldn’t fix the tap as it wasn’t on his job ticket and not enough time had been allocated before he had to get on to his next appointment. The tenant had to ring back in to report the dripping tap, which was raised as a separate repair on the housing system. Two repairs, both seemingly completed on time and in budget when viewed in isolation. However, if you were the customer, would you view them as two successful repairs, or one long repair, which caused unnecessary waste of time?

View the service from the customer’s perspective and allowing the trades person to complete other repairs while they are there is always the right answer. What is less easy to understand is that it’s also the right answer for the repairs company. Allowing the extra time to do the second repair removes entirely the travel time for the second visit, as well as the second phone call from the tenant and all of the paperwork around the second visit. Doing the right thing for the customer nearly always results in removal of waste and unnecessary costs, so why not go and give your customers a damn good listening too.

Each operative in the repairs service had a box. Inside each box you would find the job sheets batched together, to make a day’s work for that person. Each repair was a nice, neat box too. Each one allocated an hour of time to fit nicely into the 9 hour day our operatives worked. 9 hours, 9 standard, job-shaped boxes.

Except in times of high demand, where we would cram 12 of the hour-size boxes into the 9 hour framework, somehow expecting our people to speed up by one third, or hoping that we would turn up at a time that was sufficiently inconvenient, so as to miss the customer and fast-forward to the next job.

Apart from the obvious stupidity, there is one, blinding problem with this type of system. The company needs repairs to be nice, standard, box-shaped jobs that fit perfectly into their capacity for work. How else could you plan the day?

The trouble is, the actual repair work is decidedly not box-shaped. It is nobbly, irregular and spiky. It doesn’t fit neatly into the regular boxes because, guess what, repairs contain many variables that mean they don’t all take an hour. The very same task will take significantly different amounts of time in different properties, because joints are too tight; leaks are difficult to trace; furniture needs to be moved; the boiler was fitted in a location that doesn’t allow easy access; the root cause can only be arrived at by discounting several other options; changing one part means that another then needs replacing; the customer is lonely and wants to chat; we need to go shopping for parts that aren’t in our van stock.

Variation in repairs work is endless, but that really does not suit the repairs company. If we stay and trace the leak properly at job one, then jobs 2 to 9 already allocated to that operative are suddenly under pressure. So what happens? We make excuses to put the job off. We say we need parts or a second operative with specialist skills. We deliberately miss later jobs to make up time on our schedule. We work too fast and make do rather than repair properly.

We let the customer down.

Regularly.

Repairs operatives in the social housing sector leave “sorry we missed you” cards in up to a 1/3 of jobs attended. Really.

Good news then, this low-tech solution has been largely superseded by shiny new IT systems that schedule jobs for us. That must be way better, mustn’t it? Sophisticated mapping techniques plan the work so that each operative has a much better travel schedule between jobs and a circular route means they end up near home.

But hold on a minute. The new technology optimises routes to help who? In theory, the trades person is rewarded with a better route and a swift return home and the company wins by having the operative spend more time fixing and less time driving.

Just a small point, but what has this actually done to improve the service for the customer?

The inherent problem is that the new planning systems have virtualised the old boxes. The systems still plan out work based on standard repair times and guess what? The actual repairs still don’t fit the straitjacket. The same excuses still have to be made, to put the job off to a second visit and avoid disrupting the day’s schedule. The customer still doesn’t get what they want; a first time fix at a time convenient to them.

In fact, the new wave of repairs scheduling software has simply ensured that tradespeople get to each “no access” visit more quickly and efficiently. In my experience, they have done nothing to meet the actual purpose of the service; a first time fix at a convenient time. What an advance!

As things stand, too many repairs services rely on the flexibility of the customer to fit in with the standard boxes, whereas the customer wants flexible appointments to fit in with their lives. This actively brings the repairs provider into conflict with their customers.

So what’s the answer? There is a better way to schedule repairs that actually takes account of what the customer wants and allows them to book an exact appointment time of their own choosing. It also absorbs variety in scheduling and allows the operative as much time as they need to complete the right repair. I’ll explain how in part 2 of this blog, to follow shortly.

We were always huge advocates of the pre-meeting. This was usually designed to gather together “surprises” for our clients. We did this to counter the surprises we knew they were also saving up for us. If we had saved up more damaging, embarrassing surprises about their failings than they had about ours, then we ‘won’ the meeting.

We generally had two items on the agenda for the pre-meeting. Firstly we had an excuses team, whose job it was to negate the surprise bombs that we expected our clients had lain for us. If we could carry out a controlled explosion of their surprise bombs, then that would put us in the driving seat;

That complaint from the lady at no.32? We quality controlled that one and we’re almost certain that the tenant had tampered with the controls; not our fault at all. Look; here’s the QC form that says exactly that!

The job at no.72 where the older gentleman said he had waited in all day and we didn’t turn up? Here’s a copy of the “no access card” that we pushed through the door and here’s the operative’s time sheet for the day in question. Would you believe it, his tracker wasn’t working, otherwise you could have had a copy of the readout to confirm that he went there… He did though, we can all agree on that can’t we?

The second team were there to dig up all the surprise bombs we could find for our clients. We wanted a detailed list of any duff information that we had been passed, or bad decisions they had taken which had caused problems in the work. These were surprise bombs that helped lead the counter attack, if any of their bombs got through our defences. If we successfully exploded all of their bombs, then we could elect to hold some of ours back for next month; bonus!

These were “partnering” meetings by the way, in case you were wondering.

It was much like a game of battleships really. You may have sunk our frigate, but we took down your aircraft carrier, so we win!

However, playing battleships doesn’t usually have an end customer that gets forgotten about, whilst you prat about with pointless oneupmanship. Most so-called “partnerships” normally do. Sod the customer, we’ve got a contract to manage.