Rarely indeed can I speak from a position of knowledge or experience; not that my ignorance will ever stop me spouting views on the beautiful game, as readers of The Mag have probably noticed.
I played football to a rubbish standard, I was a pretty poor man-manager in Fleet Street and I succumb to illogical conclusions all too often. A bit like many folk, I guess.
This week, however, I feel duty-bound to comment on Jim Robertson’s report that Arsenal FC (aka the Woolwich) are shedding about 60 jobs or 7% of their workforce.
Perhaps you assume my response is prompted by some strange obsession with the former south London outfit and their — how can I describe him without breaking the libel laws — interesting manager.
Well, think again. The fact in Jim’s article that caught my eye was the involvement of a firm of management consultants in this cost-cutting exercise.
Look up the definition of management consultant in any dictionary and this is what you will find: “One that advises business or industrial firms in the conduct of their affairs and in devising and installing more satisfactory procedures for their use.”
So far, so good. Sounds eminently sensible, eh?
Then consider an alternative description of a management consultant, devised by somebody on the inside of this industry: “One who steals your watch, then charges you a fortune to tell you the time.” OK, I have tweaked the words a little but this is what Martin Kihn says in his book House Of Lies. He should know, having worked for a powerhouse New York consulting firm.
Being generous, I will assume some of these highly paid so-called experts know what they are doing, that they don’t simply walk into a business with no first-hand knowledge of how it works and tell the directors after a few weeks: “That person’s job can go; so can his; and hers.”
To hell with being generous. We need to start at the beginning. Management consultants are hired and given a lot of money to make a company more efficient; in other words, to get more blood out of a stone. They are not hired to suggest the company increases its spending or hires extra staff, are they!
The contract they sign might not say “we want you to help us save money by cutting jobs” but that is the reality.
Full disclosure: Boston Consulting Group, the firm who presumably used a fine-tooth comb when examining Arsenal, were hired by my former employers at The Sunday Times about 13 years ago.
Before anyone thinks: “Ah, Ritter is an embittered old fool who lost his job when BCG highlighted his failings,” I would just like to confirm my departure from Fleet Street was not even remotely connected with the arrival of management consultants. Don’t flatter them, please. I might be an embittered old fool, however . . .
Two blokes from BCG walked into the sports department (that sounds a little like a Dave Allen joke, doesn’t it?). They stood out because they were wearing expensive suits, while the production journalists they were observing could muster barely one tie between them.
They also stood out because they asked the sort of question any young hack with half-a-brain would consider to be a joke. “Can you tell me why you are altering that report? Is that necessary? Did the reporter make a mistake? Why are you reading that newspaper?”
To which the sub-editor with decades of experience might reply: “Because it is wrong. Yes. Yes. Because it’s part of the job.”
The reason they stood out most, though, was that when the clock ticked round to squeaky bottom time, when the sub-editors and their supervisors were engaged in the weekly rush to send pages to the printers, those very management consultants were nowhere to be seen. We called this sometimes frantic part of the working week Head Down, Mindless Boogie. That’s the polite version, anyway.
“Ah,” you might say, “better time management would eliminate this chaos.” Perhaps it does in some normal industries but Fleet Street is a bit different. Only Mystic Meg could predict for sure what will happen when Spurs lose again and the owner tightens his finger on the trigger.
Call me old-fashioned but I would have thought the busiest hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning would have shown these charlatans why the department employed a certain number of staff and freelances. Instead, the relative lull before the storm became the focus of BCG’s analysis; for want of a better word.
What the management consultants needed to tell those who had hired them was: “We noticed a lot of these blokes were reading the newspaper.” Well, of course we were. We were checking and rechecking names, dates, matches and every other fact that goes into a sports section (or any other section of a newspaper) to try to ensure it was as accurate as possible.
Until 40 years ago, before the print unions overplayed their hand and found themselves locked out, each newspaper employed non-journalists to do a lot of this work. Yes, there was massive overemployment in Fleet Street and the provinces, but there were far fewer errors slipping through the net.
Once Eddie Shah, Rupert Murdoch and the rest finally grasped the nettle, the production journalists aka sub-editors were landed with the jobs formerly done by printers. Thousands of jobs were no more.
The so-called Wapping revolution eliminated the danger of wildcat strikes, of a spanner in the works (literally and figuratively) but it also meant production journalists, who were nearly always former reporters, were expected to do the work of their former well-paid colleagues as well as what they had been trained to do. The safety nets went the same way as the printers. Out the door.
Anyway, back to the management consultants, the ones stealing your watch who charged you a fortune to tell you the time.
I don’t actually blame them; they are allowed to masquerade as experts and given loadsamoney by morally weak company bosses. One reason is that when the workers being made redundant start asking why, the bosses can say: “We have had an independent review of working practices and these are the conclusions. Don’t take it personally.”
How much more convenient and arm’s length is that, when compared with: “I’ve known you for 30 years, you’re a bloody good worker and colleague but we are desperately trying to cut budgets.”
Management consultants are many things but one thing they are not are fools. Who wouldn’t accept £100 an hour to tell the management what should be done? Just ensure you say what they want to hear . . .
Having shed the safety nets provided by the printers in the 1980s, managers have been busily shedding sub-editors in this millennium. No wonder the standard of journalism is declining as quickly as newspaper sales.
None of this is new, obviously. When the bosses want to boost profits, they look for a soft target, an easy option. Ditch the most qualified and experienced staff, who tend to be the highest paid. Cut the number of employees, reduce the median salary, see the balance sheet improve, award yourselves a whopping pay rise and everyone’s a winner, babe.
Don’t waste a second wondering how the remaining staff will cope with extra work. We’ve seen it with the Salfords. We’ve seen it at the Woolwich. Both clubs are controlled by Americans.
Newcastle United is not. Whether that makes a difference to how the unsung employees at St James’ Park are treated, only time will tell.