Spare a thought for the managers

You’d be amazed how many meetings and conference calls and e-mail exchanges I’ve had to be involved in with regards to the oncoming BREXIT mess. We’ve seen about 147 different ‘Possible Effects on Profitability’ reports; some of them worrying, some of them nonsensical. It all has the feel of a ‘Y2K’ scenario, where there are a number of people having fun scaremongering and a lot of other people making money by suddenly becoming ‘experts’ on something that no-one really has a clue about. It’s all so very tiresome. There was another vote in the Commons last night and I am proud to report I still have no idea what the outcome was. Maybe it was all agreed on 100% and the whole thing will run smoothly now. Maybe it was all rejected and Theresa May is now facing a leadership threat from within her own party and a vote of no-confidence from MPs and a General Election. Maybe Captain Marvel flew in on a hoverboard and slapped them all into non-existence. I really don’t know. And I’ve got to the stage where I really don’t care, either. We could be kicked out of Europe in a no-deal defeat and be forced to surround the British Isles with a wall and I don’t think I’d so much as frown.

But my personal views don’t match up with my professional situation, unfortunately. Those Above are trying to plan and plot for every possible outcome, which is ludicrous. It’s like a boxer trying to plan a defence for every possible combination of punches his opponent might throw at him. Why not just have a broad-reaching idea of how to proceed, then wait to see what happens? Chances are the final solution (poor choice of words, sorry) will be a bit of this and a bit of that, and not one of the 10,000 possibilities they’re trying to be ready for. And of course the result of their panicked projections is more work and worry for the likes of me. We’re supposed to be putting all these spreadsheets in place regarding workforce changes for each likely (or unlikely) ‘endgame’, so that ‘whichever way the cards fall’, we’ll be ‘ahead of the game’ when the pull-out occurs. These are actual phrases they’re using, by the way, not my own way of describing what’s happening.

I may have said this before, but it’s all so very tiresome.

So I’m ignoring it, as much as I can. My view is that neglecting current importances in favour of speculation and guesswork is short-sighted and bad for business health.

So there. Back to Plague, Inc.

RC 13-3-19