MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Teams
We've got 12 groups and group 12 is the group of death - the
Senior Management Team. Every project has got a project coordinator,
a project administrator so we talk to the co-ordinators
and we say 'how is it progressing - what do you need?' Out of
the 11 projects, 3 have corpsed, some have been amended,
some have gone on really well, including producing stuff like this
(paper on organising). That's one thing it does but part of our job
is to get them into the method of project working and de-mystify
it. Project management is a management tool which, if it is used
by the Royal Bank, can mean redundancies because they are
looking at their business and saying 'well we don't want to run it
that way any more, we want to run it differently. - we don't need
these people in that place any more and we can't move them so
we're going to make them redundant and that's it.' So, forget the
results that occur which we're fighting against in the union to
achieve job security, look at the method. Why do you think
employers are successful, boneheads? Because they do that
sort of thing. And what we do? We sit on our fannies waiting for
the pile of shit that comes through the door and say 'well, what
do we do with that, then?' It's simply working in an organised
way with a start, a middle and an end. And you can't have a
negative outcome. It can only be positive. If you learn it was a
pile of crap, well at least you've learned that. You don't do it
again or you amend it. We're beginning to get them into that
mode. But that takes time and one of my jobs as a senior
manager, together with G and P, is to just keep on and on about
it. So whatever we do, we call it a project group. Now I've got
National Secretaries or other people coming in and saying 'I
want to set up a project team to look at our membership
records.' So instead of one person getting lumbered with it and
then the blame culture taking over which says 'you've failed'.
(Interviewee A)
So project teams were not just related to achieving the specific aims of
the projects, they were intended to impart a whole new way of working,
involving staff at all levels. This is supported by the comments of the
Joint General Secretary at a staff meeting in Bournemouth in March
2001:-
People would be involved whether they were familiar with it or
not because they could bring new ideas to the project group. R
did not want anyone to opt out. Unifi would pay expenses
wherever the meeting was held. If the staff had ideas of things
that were wrong, he wanted to hear about it. They knew more
about it than anyone else. The young members here knew more
about how to get young people involved than other people in the
union. He did not want any cynicism. Cynical views would be cut
out. They were not acceptable. The union wanted all staff to be
involved in the management of the union. Grade was irrelevant
(Note of UNiFI staff meeting, Bournemouth, 2 March 2001)
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