Yet another pricey Olympics' exec drafted in by UK.gov - this time for broadband spending The Tory-led UK government is desperate for success stories with its big IT projects. As Whitehall ministers increasingly confess to big problems with various tech deployments, they keep turning to the private sector - and specifically execs who delivered the London 2012 Olympic Games* - to help rescue troubled schemes. Step …
Classic!
In fabulous form, an anonymous party charges in and takes the hypocrites crown! He cements his new found title of The People's Petard with a dash of xenophobia and a dollop of cultural stereotyping. Topping that is going to be tough! The next challenger certainly has his work cut out for him.
So, I give these workshops a few times a year where I help engineers and other technically oriented people develop their public speaking and communication skills so they can engage non-technical audiences without killing them through boredom.
One of the things I really focus on is not making statements that compound any earlier missteps or faux pas. It not only makes you foolish, it eliminates all credibility. If you can't communicate without tripping over yourself how can you possibly know what you're talking about. I believe I will add your comment to the presentation. I couldn't have designed a better example than what you've managed to do.
Even better! I bet you'd be a fucking rock star of great bad examples if it we had you on video! Go ahead and send maybe 20secs of video to my office and I'll see what the marketing people think. This is probably unnecessary for me to say, but do try and come across as angry with maybe a bit of self-righteous indignation. Will XXL fit you? That's the biggest Petard t-shirt we have. If you're going to need a bigger size I'll need about a week lead time.
I doubt even he could rescue the timescales, as they will be driven by physical limits, such as duct space, fibre supplies, staff who know what they are doing, etc, etc. Therefore when he fails he will be ceremonially slaughtered at some future time, given a quiet slide into some sinecure and a decent pension wedge. Meanwhile he has a nice salary to ease the pain of attempting to do an impossible job with a government minister sniping at him.
Well, look at it this way: Even in Ancient Greece, public sporting events were as much about repaying favors as they were about demonstrating Human athletic prowess. Criminals, unknowns owed favors for unspecified reasons and small time political figures went in to the games through the Prole Gate and left through the VIP Gate made men who now had their own leverage and sway.
So even if they still aren't able to get the IT part right, you can find solace in the fact that the UK has retained the spirit of the Games every bit as well as anyone else has done.
Here we have a major technology problem with various options around different types of technologies and in order to make sure that the public know how we will deploy the chosen solution the Govt appoints a man whose careers are made up of:
marketing directorships at Transport for London, and, perhaps more significantly, BSkyB. Plus his commercial role as a director for Locog.
Well I am sure that all of those people out there who are looking for a solid solution that delivers the goods will feel happy knowing that the web site will go down when they first order it, will have up to three opportunities to order it and if they are lucky might be able to place an order for something that no one else really wanted. But with the upside that the marketing of the delivery of the solution will be top notch.
Or am I being too cynical?? Personally I would have liked them to appoint someone with success in delivering a large scale complex and potentially bleeding edge IT project but then I was always fussy.
as the plan fails, and the government of the day looks for a scapegoat....
Then he'll get 'early retirement' with a full pension of say 50 k a yr to keep quiet and a tidy lump sum, and all the time before the plan fails he gets 200k a year.
6 months after failure , because he's chums with the new minister for(whatever) hes drafted in to run another failing government IT scheme and gets an even bigger payoff when it finally goes tits up.
Politics certainly doesn't have a monopoly on preferential job placement. In fact, I would say preferential placements in public bodies is more aboveboard than in private organizations.
Public officials have to be able to at least pretend they aren't handing out jobs as payment for favors. I would wager every business on the planet with 10+ employees has at least one person who has the job through outside request. I can be as preferential as I want, and nobody can say a damn thing about it.
I've always got a few positions open should someone come calling. Same with job/project work, I've always got a few jobs that can be sent out to someone else if they need a leg up getting started or having a rough quarter.
Even if it's not cost effective, it's still worth it. You've got to pay it forward. Our first $1M+ job was a favor from the father of a guy I met at university. The work not only got us a lot of attention, it got us in the door of an industry where outsiders don't often get to come and play. How can you not do the same for someone else?
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