I’m writing this at the early hour of 5:40am, in an effort to get an item ready for my blog today. I recognise the importance of having something new for the blog on a regular basis. This is in order to keep the search engine spiders coming back. The more material you have published online, the more is indexed and that increases your chances of being found by readers.

As to why I’m up so early, it’s because I’m going to Bristol on the train. I’m fortunate that there is a direct link between Warrington  and Bristol so the journey shouldn’t be too bad, around three hours in total.

I don’t have a set time to be there but I want to make it at a reasonable time in order to get things done.

The visit is part of my company’s effort to dramatically improve productivity.  I’ve been seconded to the team that is implementing the changes in our group. We are being assisted in the process by a group of consultants.

What I’m reading at the moment is “The One Thing You Need To Know… About Great Managing, Great Leading And Sustained Individual Success” by Marcus Buckingham. To tell the truth it is not the only thing I’m reading. I usually have at least two, usually more, books on the go as I’m interested in the ideas I can pick up from them.

Back to “The One Thing…”I like it for several reasons: it is well written and has interesting mini biographies used to illustrate his points. But the main  reason I like it is that it seems to be grounded on facts.

There is a mass of advice out there based on nothing more than the author’s opinion and this is true of every subject matter under the sun. As human beings we are designed to create explanations for what we see around us. This is both one of our greatest strengths and weaknesses. The upshot is that it seems there are more available explanations  for things than there are grains of sand on the beach.

Th problem is that that, while we provide explanations and theories in abundance, we don’t feel we need to test them before adopting them and advocating them as true. So to find someone who does test, as good science tells us to do, is very important.  Such people as Martin Seligman in positive psychology or James Brausch in internet business come to mind.

Marcus Buckingham with “The One.. ” and his other books draws on Gallup research and other scientific material to form his conclusions.

I’m driving to Derby today after being in Milton Keynes yesterday. Both trips are in connection with our company reorganisation of support staff. We are doing this, with the assistance of a team of US consultants in order to improve productivity. I’ve no problem with that, both the pilot and initial results from our rollout are very positive.

My concern is that, along with the productivity initiative, we’ve made a major change to our management structure at the lower level. A whole group of junior managers are now without a role. Although for the most part they are currently engaged in the productivity rollout activities, when that ends they will be looking for alternative roles. They may or may not find jobs within our company.

The issue for me in all this is that these are young men and women on the first rung of the management ladder. They are by and large the most able, and enthusiastic of our younger generation. That is why we promoted them.

The management reorganisation no doubt looks good to our gung-ho senior managers. But nowhere in their equations or plans is factored in anything about the loss to our resources of the talent, commitment and knowledge of our operations and staff that these young people contribute.

Quite clearly to my mind, we could have had the productivity gains without the associated destructive management changes. And yes, a reduction in junior management numbers was necessary but that could have been done with less impact

The problem is that none of this damage can be directly measured and attributed. Our productivity gains hide the damage and will ‘prove’ that senior management were right.