Office life
What a waste of money
Holly Budd
Institutional soft-headedness, the rotting of the corporate brain that leads to a dis- abling condition of complacent self-regard punctuated by outbursts of silliness, takes many forms. They include a concern for image above product, lavishing money on bricks and mortar rather than reinvesting, stressing communication at the expense of communicating (none so deaf as the Com- municator jammed on 'send), worrying about mission statements, the use of self- bewitching management-speak, strident professions of 'caring', any form of self- advertisement to the effect that the organi- sation is doing what it is supposed to do anyway, and all forms of buttonholing nice- ness. Such manifestations are rarely paid for by those urging that money be spent on them.
The latest fad here is murals. Cave paint- ings, medieval wall-paintings, the odd Renaissance ceiling, even the Bayeaux tapestry I can accept, but there's surely no excuse for doing it now. Apart from their lifeless tedium, 20th-century murals are indelibly associated with tyrants, with state socialism and with cheerful welcomes to inner city wastelands. Their naïve style, charming in children, is unconvincingly affected by adults, even by those for whom there is no artistic alternative.
I knew nothing of the nonsense until I returned to find half the Board prancing around the main entrance with a pallid bleached blonde wearing designer jeans and a German army jacket and with her nostrils apparently pinned together. I didn't hear her try to speak but learned from an enthusiastic Board member that she was a top-flight muraliste who had gracefully accepted a generous commission to transform our 'shop-window' into some- thing more welcoming, impactful and visu- ally exciting, something in keeping with our new marketing profile. The mural would show galaxies of happy staff in open-plan offices diligently concentrating on their Work while bellowing into 'phones and falling over themselves to reach out to cus- tomers. It was after lunch. I went to see Arthur, our Line Manager. He agreed it was nonsense but there was nothing he could do and he didn't believe in gesture politics. Richard, our chief Exec- utive, I know more personally; and because of that I try to avoid putting him in an awk- ward position by discussing work. I made this an exception.
`Of course it's silly and wasteful,' he said, `and of course it'll be scrubbed out within five years. But it's flavour of the month with the Board. Gives them something harmless to do, keeps them off the streets.' This was on the street, I argued. Such self- regarding frivolity is likely to be self- destructive. What will customers and shareholders think we are for, if this is how we spend time and money? What about our real work? Richard raised his eye- brows.
There was no point in a one-woman cru- sade but I wanted to hear someone take responsibility for it, publicly and unequivo- cally. My free-ranging job means that rea- sons to talk to Board members are not hard to contrive and I tracked down several during the following week, careful not to let too critical an edge into my voice. Who, I asked, wanted the mural?
Nobody. At least, nobody would admit to it. There was a lot of waffle about a range of harmless ideas to cheer the old place up, about staff alleged to be wild with excite- ment, about image-enhancement, about the need to show that we weren't a lot of old fuddy-duddies and about ideas whose time had come. Although no one would actually lay claim to the idea and argue openly for it, they would not hear argu- ment against. When I tried I was told we had to move with the times; once that old shibboleth had been wheeled on I knew that nothing else would be heard.
In all organisations an idea can take on a life independent of argument and then it is momentum, not reasoning, that compels acceptance. If everyone else believes there is a hippopotamus loose on the second floor and you say there isn't, no appeal to evidence is going to help. The only thing that can drive out such an idea, I conclud- ed, is another idea: graffiti instead of a mural? I daren't even mention it.
'I was shot at, but did the police do anything?...Nor
Previous page
