South Africa: If only you knew how we roll

Travelling well

My friends and some I have travelled together with know that when it comes to travel arrangements, I leave nothing to chance. The comfort of travel is just as important as the destination. As I leave my home, I expect things to be just so at the very least, I expect standards, high standards and will not flinch at demanding them.

For my return after a month in Cape Town, I ran the gauntlet of things out of kilter with the arrangements I had made. My return leg was Cape Town – Johannesburg – Paris – Manchester. For the over 12 years I lived in the Netherlands, I have retained my loyalty with KLM – AirFrance, a slight inconvenience of stopping over in Paris or Amsterdam, but it redounds to the loyalty scheme, I can bear it.

It’s easy, not really

However KLM – AirFrance do not run domestic routes in South Africa if you do not fly directly to Cape Town from Paris or Amsterdam, your stopover in Johannesburg requires you retrieve your luggage and use partners they have agreements with to complete the final leg, it is neither a codeshare nor alliance situation, just an arrangement.

I could not check-in for my return flight because the KLM – AirFrance app redirected me to Kulula, the booking reference was invalid. I had to visit the airport to have this fixed, they could only make arrangements as far as Johannesburg and that was the beginning of my ordeal. [kulula is not a separate company, but is a trading name of Comair, which also operates flights as a franchisee of British Airways.

I have much baggage

When I arrived at the airport for my trip, I found out that my queue-jumping access was not valid for check-in, only after security. At the counter, the agent then came up with all sorts of rules, Kulula only allows one checked-in baggage for the hold and one as carry-on.

I was having none of it, the printout from the Kulula sale offices the day before already indicated I could check-in two pieces of luggage. The KLM – AirFrance app said as much too, for all legs. In fact, it would be risible to have a situation where at the point of embarkation you had less checked-in luggage than when you were in transit.

A bit of back and forth with some senior official who said the rules at the airport in our conversation took precedence over the contract to carry my luggage on my ticket. I was about to relent, it would have been easier to storm off to a KLM – AirFrance counter and have this trashed out. I shouldn’t be having that conversation, it should be between the airlines.

Flights of fancy

Eventually, as the preponderance of evidence and facts weighed heavily on the situation, the official instructed the counter clerk to check-in all my baggage as long as each individual item did not weigh more than 23kg. I was scooting it at 22.8kg and 22.2kg.

I made it through security before seeing off Brian on his earlier and on schedule flight to Johannesburg. Soon, it was time to board my flight but something was wrong, there was no aircraft at the gangway of the proposed gate. I was the only one with queue-jumper status, it meant little in the end.

Our flight was going to be delayed 30 minutes before we were told the boarding gate had changed. On arrival at the new boarding gate, more tales and fantastic stories before were told there was a fault with the plane and it had been taxied off to a hanger. I guess we knew something was on.

Terminal déjà vu

Then, the plane was cancelled and we had to board a bus to arrivals terminal where we were to retrieve our baggage, go up to the sales desk for us to be shunted onto other airlines and then the check-in process, security and all that. In all my years of travel, I have never experienced this, and the way the Kulula staff informed us and handled the situation could be better. They’ll score a 6 out of 10.

Anyway, there were some really helpful staff before a good number on that Kulula flight had connecting flights from Johannesburg, we were anxious but calm. One exception was a lady shouting at the staff, it was out of their control and it did her no favours, she was obstreperous and demanding, irksome to say the least.

How we roll

I was booked on a BA flight, run by ComAir Limited in South Africa, I haven’t flown BA since March 2000 just before the DotCom crash. I was allocated a seat when I checked in my luggage, but by the time I presented my ticket to board the plane after security, I had been upgraded to business class. The obstreperous woman thought she was losing out on favours questioning why some of us were in business class. Woman, you don’t know how we roll.

She never got upgraded and she probably stewed through the flight to Johannesburg. We arrived in Johannesburg about 2 hours behind schedule, had some time with Brian before I was on my way back home.

Opinion: Nigerians paying to suffer great indignities

It is global no matter how local

The Nigerian Twitterverse was overrun with trending topics earlier today to do with a major concert that featured international artistes at a somewhat exclusive venue in Lagos.

I will not delve into the particular for there is much more to address with regards to the general which pertains to a Nigeria we will do well to divorce ourselves from if we are to make any progress as a people and as a country.

One is concerned that many do not realise that events in Nigeria now have a global audience and are subject to global scrutiny for the better or for the worse that it is important that those who identify as Nigerians both at home and abroad need to be aware of the responsibilities they bear along with the burden of duty that comes with being worthy and commendable ambassadors of our great land.

The concert was streamed live from the venue but that did not seem to compare in any way to the experiences the patrons had.

Oversold and under-prepared

The event would have had extensive publicity and garnered much interest with the sterling list of celebrities invited to compere and perform, it would appear the exclusive tickets labelled for VIPs and VVIPs were oversubscribed and sold but no adequate provision was made to accommodate the egos that thought they had bought exclusivity, comfort and class – nothing could have been further from the truth.

The reality was that the logistics were poor for accessing the venue that the patrons had to walk kilometres to the venue only to be bustled and jostled by bouncers at entry and then having inadequate seating or basic liquid refreshment.

Not what they paid for

To add insult to injury, the host appeared to be nonchalant about the ensuing chaos and like a typical Nigerian he would have attempted to bluff his way through the inadequacies to the extent that the patrons would have grumbled but accepted the indignities meted out to them.

Besides, the internationally renowned actor who was supposed to host the event that ran for hours was apparently only on stage for a grand total of less than 30 minutes.

Things ought not be so, people who have in their quest to sate their hedonistic tendencies by shelling out fortunes for access to glitterati should expect to be treated with dignity, respect, decorum and definitely not shabbily.

The insults we tolerate

But then, it goes without saying that if you are invited to an event you are probably a Very Important Person but if you have to pay to be seen with celebrities, you are anything but a VIP – access does not confer class; you are at best an interloper seeking to belong – I am not particularly sympathetic to people who assume airs of self-importance thinking their money can buy influence and thereby entitlement.

However, that said, Nigerians are in the majority mug-fodder (for mug, Nigerians will understand mugu better) to be exploited by the unscrupulous who trade on the low self-esteem or inferiority complex of the 'successful' but serious wanting in strength of character and demeanour.

It is not so important

There probably is a salutary lesson to be learnt, you do not have to be there if you have not been asked to be there by those who can smooth all the access required for you and remove the inconvenience I dare say rich plebs and wannabes suffer.

But in a country where we all troop like a stampeding herd usually uninvited to pay homage and burnish the egos of the powerful whilst wearing the most expensive watches but are so unschooled in keeping time, only a few of those who complained and fulminated vociferously will decline the opportunity to be treated with disdain if another event is staged at twice the ticket price and even less organisational preparation – we never learn.

His banker is laughing

If however any redress can be sought for the host to first apologise publicly and then offer compensation with the promise to do better, much progress will have been made. Reputations, perception and integrity should become front and centre of public life in Nigeria – crooks and confidence tricksters have held sway for too long.

Sadly, the age-old saying still finds true as it did at the very first time it fell from the lips of the original wise head – a fool and his money are soon parted.

Nigeria: Our way about things

Reviewing old events

I found myself in a phone call yesterday evening that developed into a post-mortem of an event I attended the weekend before.

One had castigated the arrangements and organisation of the event but this was now a time to offer excuses for failings in the hope that the focus would be taken off those that were clearly responsible for the atrocious circumstances we found ourselves in.

Time and again, we find ourselves short-changed by our leadership, the people selected to represent us and the others they choose to surround themselves with.

Business as usual

Patronage, nepotism and familiarity offers a sense of comfort in lieu of efficiency and competence, the result of which the parties end up in a situation where they cannot challenge each other to do better and achieve any level of excellence.

Good money can be paid to get professionals to do a job but the scent of money amongst a cabal of sycophants in the sight of power leaves charlatans pretending to ability and after the debacle they are never in fear of being made accountable having pocketed a tidy sum for doing the barest minimum.

When mothers speak

But like every educated middle-class Nigerian mother might have once said to their kids, their approval of other company usually ranges from – “Too good for my liking.” to “Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.”

In both cases, those statements were never ones of approval but they rarely get to the point where they proscribe the relationships but the point is clearly made.

It is with regret also that our official representative having excelled academically still has the village and marketplace atmosphere re-enacted with stomach-churning nostalgia in the northern European climes of The Netherlands.

Maintaining the poor impressions

There is no clamber to improve rather the selfsame narrative is reaffirmed leaving many disappointed but then in the mood of a party the subjective jollity might just distract from objective scrutiny.

Culpability of the dastardly organisation lies with those at the top and to think a religious leader was involved in the arrangements but made a complete hash of the event – you can only begin to imagine the chaos that accompanies the matins and the congregants in fervent supplication.

We deserve better

Did the conversation end with the put-down that should not be repeated? Something along the lines of by translation – A village girl who just happens to have a PhD – good breeding and the penchant for understanding the consequence of wrong delegation and assignment of duties does not come with the accumulation of letters.

When it comes to these people, “of whom little is expected much less is desired.” Nigeria deserves a lot better than this, she surely does.

Apes Obey! Lacks the power of organisation

A stampede amongst humans

A stampede is an unfortunate situation which might be natural in the animal kingdom but is completely inexcusable within the human race.

It can only arise where organisation and order has broken down and those in charge have failed to govern their responsibilities with any anticipation.

Lacking the power of organisation

My second instalment of the Apes Obey! Series touches more on lacking the power of organisation than on loving the display of power but failing to realise its responsibility, however, they are closely related.

In a situation where experienced people are losing their jobs and very qualified people are entering the marketplace but not getting job offers, one can imagine that any news of recruitment opportunities would bring in hordes.

Taking advantage of the vulnerable

With that knowledge alone, any organisation offering employment must first plan and then execute a process that allows them to cherry-pick the best people on the market without creating a chaotic situation that could endanger the lives of the prospects.

Besides, one knows that recruiters in a saturated jobless market can afford to exploit the situation and take advantage of the seemingly desperate-for-a-job crowd and in the process forget their duty to be responsible.

In other words, we have people who have jobs to fill but lack every organisational skill to fill those jobs efficiently.

The hundred-for-one-job market

In this case [Source: BBC NEWS | Africa | Nigerian stampede survivor's ordeal], there were 100 openings in the Nigerian Immigration Service which attracted 11,000 applicants; this could become logistical nightmare, but can be a simple manageable scenario.

Unfortunately, it appears the recruiters were completely oblivious of their market and ignored the fact that the desperate situation people face would not make them the most decorous crowd to manage.

Having not anticipated the over-subscription the applicants were instructed to run from the government secretariat to a college where they were to sit an examination in 20 minutes – such power but no inkling of responsibility for its use.

You can imagine the mayhem when the first batch arrived and a second batch were barred from entering the compound only to be trumped by those who arrived by bus a lot later.

Twice treacherous

It is one thing to treat the people like animals, but then to heap an injustice upon them is twice treacherous and most unfair.

People got knocked unconscious and some ended up in hospital, all because some civil service apparatchik could not organise a recruitment process and control the crowds that have dignified their advertisements with their presence.

Unfortunately, this lack of organisation is endemic, because at the weekend about a dozen people lost their lives vying for 1,260 placements from a pool of 130,000 applicants.

How it could be that fitness tests were conducted during the hottest part of the day that people expired with exhaustion beggars belief.

Some jobs might require the survival of the fittest but surely not to the death.

Culpable homicide at least

In all, the mishaps are not solely the fault of the vulnerable desperate applicants who are clawing at any slight opportunity but that of outrageous buffoons who do not seem to know their hands from their elbows.

The lack organisational skills even though there are tripped by the power to control but fail to realise the responsibility of bringing together crowds of people and conducting risky recruitment and fitness tests.

At the least, the heads of the departments that displayed such rank incompetence should face charges of culpable homicide because there is no way others would realise their duty to care leading to better organisation and understanding the responsibility of holding power if an example is not made of these organisations.

This is a sorry case of people being abused in an Apes Obey! Dynamic just as Lord Lugard’s words ring in our ears again – “He lacks the power of organisation, and is conspicuously deficient in the management and control alike of men or business; he loves the display of power, but fails to realise its responsibility”. Oh! So true

Don't ask that question

Managerial Integrity is tops

The last week had me in two interviews prospecting for permanent employment once again.

However, with some hindsight, I realize that I have gained knowledge about a lot of things in terms of experience and lessons but may have failed in the application of those ideas to subsequent circumstances.

In the last fourteen years of employment in Europe, 8 have been permanent contracts which exuded promise at the onset and ended in disappointment at the conclusion.

Having participated in an employee satisfaction which was part of a dissertation project of a fellow graduate student on an MBA degree, it was interesting to note the options that mattered to me.

In the end, it transpired that the one core reason why I left those jobs boiled down to the simple lack of integrity on the part of my managers.

Untruthfulness, concealment, cajoling, threatening, blatant lying, dishonest dealing and dirty politicking were some of the traits of the managers who in their minds thought they were being good managers.

They have led many of a feeble disposition to mental and health problems without any consideration that lives and livelihoods might be at stake.

In one case, it was about a manager who substituted himself for my training place, another tried to persuade of opportunities he could not offer to maintain interest and loyalty, even one had mastered the art of lying such that one was embarrassed for oneself and him too.

Potential over abilities

Anyway, I have had one manager who made an amazing difference to the work-life balance of his team.

Whilst he was well aware of everyone’s capability he did well to exploit potential, placing challenges in ways that not only developed the individual but gelled the team.

Alas! At times, management is perhaps more congenital than contagious, who knows, some people might really strive to manage their team than herd them in a bull run.

Two interviews cross purposes

The first interview was conducted with such candour and honesty, they had a lot to offer those who sought or had little and could not offer much to self-starters who have done that work of really charting out their careers.

That could easily be a foible, I learnt with some discouragement.

The other interview ended on the note of being asked to commit to employment when there were no clear indications of when the process would be completed or if it would be successful.

Biting my lip with restraint that failed woefully one could only remonstrate at what was seemingly bullying or a basic lack of decent interviewing skill. In fact, it was like interviewing a doctor from the perspective of the hospital cleaner.

10 years after the 5 year question

Where I however failed to carry over a lesson from times past was with the question of what I saw myself doing in 5 years time.

It is probably one of the worst questions to ask anyone at interview, but I am learning and still learning of how to deal with it.

This is the new perspective – layout what you see yourself doing in 5 years in the context of that job and organisation.

Then offer to ask the same question – Does the organization have the kind of career development that would view what I have said as achievable in less than that time and offer even more challenging opportunities that I have not yet considered or thought of?

Basically, this exerts the same level of soul-searching in the person, the organisation and that person’s relationship in that organisation.

The talk on interviews has only just begun.

Ineptitude unparalleled

A manager for the project-ile

You would be forgiven for thinking one has something against project managers. In fact, one does love project managers. Ones that know what a project is and then manage the project properly.

However, one has had a run of unkind fortune with a crop of the sort that defy commonsense in the face of reality and whose balls are too microscopic for observation with a microscope.

Nevertheless, there is a particularly nice person who happens to be yoked to the labour of project management, whose surname would remind you of that man-eating alligator you saw on National Geographic the other day.

His manager is of the view that he has a record of accomplishment of consistently delivering on projects in his care.

The track to ignominy or less

Indeed, he has a track record of delivering because many of the critical ends to his delivery end up on one's desk.

Being one whose personality of extroversion is too intertwined with one's job and professionalism as to be considered unhealthy, these things are done.

One cannot afford to be besmirched by the glowing incompetence of an individual ready to stitch you up for any of his failings.

You have to that one is only a fraction of the majority that cannot stand to countenance the alligator in a professional capacity – or the lack of it.

My civility tested

On more than one occasion, some emails, which might eventually feature as classics of professional put-downs, are cast as pearls to swine to our dear friend without impact; apart from highlighting his tomfoolery.

"This represents that worst set of data one has ever received in relation to data, please sort it out". Said one.

Another said, "We have to work to avoid situations where brinkmanship rules over procedural and methodical processes".

Yet again, "To now foist that error of judgment on me is completely disingenuous. Please reflect and reconsider your purpose and actions".

In a darts competition that would have been maximum points, considering this was circulated to a readership that would have cringed at the bluntness of expression.

Our friend is so thick-skinned he would have prevented the sinking of the Titanic.

I will tell you what is unacceptable

A number of instances have arisen where tin-pot little managers of no importance than heading departments in persistent vegetative state for the lack of creativity and innovative thinking.

Departments populated by a gene pool so diverse from the people who live down your street, it could give credence to evolution – God forbid!

After debunking some flawed and inadequate planning, the reply arrives – "It is unacceptable … Blah! Blah! Blah!

I will tell you what is unacceptable – It is unacceptable that

• You commit to customers without knowing the availability of your deliverables
• You leave out core elements of your project resources and then expect a last minute redress to sort out your mess
• You escalate issues to solve your problems when you should have communicated effectively well before it became an emergency
• You think you can demand goodwill having used up all political capital in pursuit of unachievable goals
• You remain immune to knowledge

Immune to knowledge

Some people are beyond teaching or just cannot learn, when put in charge of projects in which one has deliverables, one falls a victim of unparalleled ineptitude.

Time to see the company shrink – I am stressed!

Corporate inversion to produce excellence

Losing that Corporate umbrella

Having worked in a number of organisations, conglomerates and enterprises, one has seen the tyranny of pointless political battles, internal markets, Russian-doll-empires and departmental rivalries that beset all good intentions of the board of directors.

The Organisational Chart

The Organisational Chart, possibly created in that dreaded PowerPoint or this time Microsoft Visio (See earlier blog on PowerPoint), creates the fertile ground for the at times credible generalisations that:

• Working for the same organisation does not mean you gel as an organisation.
• Each departmental function is an unchallenged monopoly in that organisation.
• Collective responsibility of corporate goals is dispersed amongst departmental heads who work a double agenda of both trying to be efficient and the desire to succeed the incumbent corporate officers.
• Responsibility is aggressively acquired from other units for successes and promptly evaded and blamed on other units for failures.
• Employee value and talent is lost in the bean counting of cost-centre accountancy.

One is saying that the comfort of working under the umbrella of ABC Corporation is failing the corporation and stopping the corporation from evolving fast enough to respond to the change necessary for its profitability and survival.

The logic of proper outsourcing

Imagine your organisation being changed into something completely from what it is now. It now just consists of a board of directors with the ideas and capital for a particular venture.

• The facilities department becomes a facilities management firm competing in tenders to provide a block of offices and run all the facilities necessary for a corporate headquarters and the satellite offices.
• The legal department becomes a law firm providing legal advice to the company and any other companies needing that expertise for a fee.
• The personnel management department becomes combined talent resourcing and payroll management firm managing all Human Resourcing needs for a market that includes your organisation and the departments that have become firms.
• The finance department becomes a corporate finance advisory firm and facilitator for managing the board's capital interests in this venture.
• The IT department becomes a service provider of end-to-end IT services to the organisation and all the firms employed by the board for the organisation. The IT firm also competes on the open market.
• The marketing, sales and publicity departments become a PR firm with professional research and marketing facilities, holding a respectable PR budget.

This is the same organisation with a centralised core of the board with a clear set of goals, requirements and principles. Now, each firm competing on the open market to fulfil the requirements is faced with tougher choices to either perform or face extinction from competition.

The Organisational Chart is no more a hierarchy but a star with one reporting line between the office of the board of directors (the customer) and the firms that provide customer service. The complete inversion of corporate government.

The Board Expects

 For the fee the office of the board pays for each service they have acquired they should expect the following:

• Clearly set contract service levels and penalties for default.
• Professional customer service with performance metrics, which include bonuses for exceeding expectations.
• Well planned and organised project deliveries that cut the muster of competitive market scrutiny.
• Firm managements that can negotiate realistic timelines, costs, requirements and deliverables.
• Considerable improvements if the service contracted is provided or the option to renegotiate or fire the service company if they under perform.

The Firm

The firms face the continual test of if their service is worth paying for; they have to cost and value every negotiated settlement balancing the provision of service with staying competitive.

 This would do wonders for the erstwhile department in these ways:

• All resources that have survived for so long under the corporate setting but brought no value to the company would be exposed and offered severance terms.
• Projects properly researched before any negotiations begin and only within the resources available to service that project.
• Poor management within the firm would be under pressure to perform or depart.
• The level of service required or the firm would require skilled personnel on better remuneration to fulfil contracts signed.
• Market forces would compel the firms to adapt to trends more quickly.
• The organisational issues which plagued the larger organisation and were buried the weight of internal rivalries would have a smaller field of play, but its impact would be immediately felt and dealt with.

The individual

How this affects all the individuals involved depends if you are on the board to demand or in the firm to provide a service.

If on the board your question would be - If I had to pay for this kind of service from an external firm, what should I demand and expect?

If in the service firm, your question would be - Would one get away with giving this level of service if someone had to pay for it?

The Utopian Organisation

The mindset of the organisational entity is completely changed and that is outsourcing in Utopia, if only the world were a perfect place.

Alexis' PowerPoints were her shoulder pads ...

Don't Panic - take a deep breath ...

On getting to work this morning, I heard the word Outbreak - hit the PANIC button - not yet really.

It was that rogue Blaster worm from a PC that should never have been connected to our network. The lucky culprit was spared a verbal from me - well we are quite well patched up against that one threat, but it could still be a nuisance.

Allow the C(?)O to think

Remember your first picture book and wax crayons, when you had to colour in all those white spaces to create your own lively work of art? Thinking pristine thoughts, ideas flourishing, creative juices flowing like water off the lip of the Niagara Falls.

At least at that age you did all the work, by being creative and possibly artistic.

However, look what the world has turned into, you have been through kindergarten, primary and secondary education, have some hot degree and an MBA from the top business school; having reached the pinnacle with Chief(?)Officer as your title, the people who report to you bring you a weekly picture book in PowerPoint.

You do not have to do anything; rather, they have to explain what all the pictures mean to you - by Jove! All those years of experience in a career to be rated just below the intelligence of a toddler.

Because, because, because, because, because ... your reports are playing the game of who is the teacher's favourite kid.

Rotten Powerpoints

PowerPoints are just as bad as what was unleashed on us by Japanese Karaoke, garish colours [as toneless singers yodelling worse than a track on the Sound of Music] with every imaginable transition enough to hypnotise you into thinking you are getting informed. A visit to the shop floor would tell you what your reports have been keeping from all the while.

The staff are not the happy smiley lot who say hello in the elevator trying hard to keep from telling you are they overworked, underpaid, under-motivated and continually lied to by your reports who would have a fit if integrity were ever mentioned in three paragraphs after you mention their names.

The Utopia of top-down communication does not exist, however, under the influence of a PowerPoint the fainting spells created by the sycophancy that masquerades as loyal obedience would make you need a defibrillator to hear the WHOLE TRUTH.

How does this all affect me?

I have to fill in time sheets in duplicate, reports in triplicate, PowerPoints in duo-decagate (sic) in 12s, I meant, and still inform you of the incidents, projects, unexpected failures and resolve them all before close of business.

Phew! The day has only begun; even the sun has got its hat on.

Agreement at the top ... progress below?

Top dog 1

Guys, let's stop this spitting contest right now. It's add zero value for anything or anybody.

Top dog 2

This is the last Email if this kind that I expect to see from both X as Y.
I don't want to see these discussions in E-mail anymore.
They don't contribute to a better organisation.

Two directors on opposite ends agree that what we were doing did not help the organization, I suppose there is a lot they could have done to prevent the ugly situation that developed today, long before now.

It took the statistics of the success of a patch deployment over the weekend to bring us to a point of resolution – suddenly; we have leadership...

The story unfolds...

The day was going to start a little late; I had a Good Samaritan's job to do in helping a friend who was in dire straits. That had to be done early in the day because it had bothered me all night.

Anyhow, before I left home, the call came in - something to do with the patch updates we had rolled out over the weekend - well, I was expecting something close to chaos, but as the day grew older; it yielded surprises that made the surprise rather surprising.

My technical colleague is quite a competent chap; [I interviewed him in December] we work so well as a team; though I am supposed to be in an architecting role and him in an operational role. The big boss is quite determined to create Chinese walls as thick as those on the Three Gorges Dam to allow for sheaves of paperwork that impress no one but provide unnecessary bedtime reading to the CIO.

However, after 8 years of deploying and managing Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) systems; you learn that communication and interfacing with your customer is key to the successful management of technologies that connect to every desktop in your enterprise.

Well, I quite taken aback when I learnt on Friday that he had to recreate the intricate patch deployment package we had already tested with the business about 2 weeks before. I was off to Cologne early that Friday evening in some trepidation that something might be missed out and we would end up with a deluge of calls.

We got calls, but not a deluge, on one site two PCs had failed out of about 400; due to the fact that a self-healing process introduced by Microsoft about 4 years ago had kicked in during the deployment of a certain patch.

This function, which is part of the Windows Installer technology introduced with Microsoft Office 2000, requires that if an application is corrupted or misses some files; the PC can contact the original application files and restore all the missing components. This becomes a nuisance if the original files are on the network and are not contactable.

I took great pains to ensure that we do not need to contact these network sources, but one seemed to have slipped through and was generating a bit of a kafuffle.

Anyway, not being one to throw statistics issues for the sake of it; I still find that I am prone to that foible when it comes to what SMS tells me after a deployment. We generate a whole spreadsheet with the percentage successful in bold red "read me out loud" font and herald the parade of knights.

In this instance, out of five sites, three were quite successful with some errors in single figures, and two had a higher number of errors of almost 70 PCs for some reason we needed to investigate; all of which was highlighted in our statistical report.

However, we the occupying forces could not have been prepared for the guerrilla warfare perpetrated by disgruntled old regime personnel; the incessant drive-by shootings, air to email missiles, terrorist comments to destabilise our implementations, Trojan horse calls which were old problems used to buttress "me too" issues in the 3 sites where there were hardly a failures - for example.

"So I can't give the exact number of PCs where the installation went wrong, but I know that there are at least 2 users with installation problem that I know of."

I suppose 2 out of over 80 is just the problem I need this morning.

Well, you can almost read the frustration in that comment. We set the precedent for George W. Bush on the principle of pre-emptive engagement when we conducted an aggressive takeover of the IT Infrastructure of that company last November.

This was necessary because most of that team constituted a stumbling and obstructive block to the need to update out IT infrastructure and consolidate all our processes. Most were offered an incentive to leave and the bleakest prospect if they stayed.

However, those that were retained were never really intimated with the fact that they had been demoted from third-line support to somewhere between first-line and nominal second-line support. Their management tried to deal with this with technology rather than simply communicate this to those left behind.

The day grew older with commentary running like trench warfare, getting muddier and less forgiving. Till I landed my riposte...

"I could almost say some of the comments below are not entirely representative of the users' views if you are also in the job of promoting the benefits of the Mozart PC infrastructure to your users."

Ouch! I am not the one hurting.