The third way

It may interest your readers that when I was in industry, faced with a similar problem, our directors elected to choose a third way: to reduce overheads. This was because our customers would not pay higher prices and to reduce our output meant a slow death.

We abandoned plans for an expensive new headquarters and instead chose to rent a perfectly satisfactory office building on a nearby trading estate with easy parking. We encouraged staff without keyboard skills who wished to take early retirement to do so and recruited younger people who were computer literate, thus making it possible for one new to do the work of old two.

As the total number of employees slowly fell, less time was spent on intercommunication. In fact we soon limited the numbers attending any meeting to four or five and its duration to 30 minutes; this was achieved by insisting on the pre-preparation/circulation of short "position papers" on items for discussion, which were always read in advance by those attending. Minutes were brief and factual and widely circulated on screen on the basis of "need to know" so decimating the volume of paper. The few matters unresolved were referred to sub-committees of two or three. Interviews were restricted to 10 to 15 minutes at most.

Those who preferred working in a talking shop slowly drifted away and we were left with a dedicated core staff who all knew their limits of responsibility and which senior should be consulted prior to making decisions.

As a result, the actual number of formal meetings declined towards the legal minimum to support the Board and its few sub-committees. Quite soon, we stopped losing money and began to make some. As the company prospered, morale improved as our remaining staff took a real pride in the new success which had replaced the former torpid bureaucracy.

This is not just a parable; it actually happened... so that we balanced our books AND increased our output. Just a thought.

Derek Smith, Priory Road, Malvern.