Barclays Bank - Rubbish!

I requested Barclays Bank transfer one of ISAs to another bank in March this year. Here we are at the end of August and despite countless calls and letters, they still have my money and haven't transferred it. I get the occasional letter telling me it is taking longer than expected. Really!

T-Shaped people

I was reading a document about how the culture of an organisation has changed over the past 10 years. It referred to “T-shaped” people. “T-shaped” because they are deep problem solvers in their own specialism but are capable of understanding and interacting with a wide range of other specialisms. These are the kind of people that will enable collaborative organisations to come to life and squeeze most life out the collaborative tools that we offer. I agree.

Tiger on Track

This week I had another opportunity to take the Tiger on the track. Once again at Brands Hatch, but this time with the Toyo R888 track tyres fitted. What a difference they made. Handling was superb, such that we were cornering round the tight hairpin at Druids at between 50 and 60mph. Another interesting selection of cars made an appearance, although not many were faster than the Tiger. One that was though, was Tiff Needell giving hot rides in aid of charity in a Radical. There were a couple of incidents, including a MGF which turned over in the gravel at Paddock Hill bend. No serious damage to car or driver fortunately.

Our track time was uneventful until the very end of the session when (on the last lap) the car lost all power coming down the hill from Druids. We pulled onto the grass and had to be recovered by the marshalls. Further investigation suggested an electrical fault, which will give me a job for the weekend tracking it down and fixing it. The car has Lumenition Optronic electronic ignition and there are a series of tests that can be run to determine which component might be at fault. Sod’s Law will of course mean that it is the most expensive part (the power module) which has blown. That part is about £70. Other than that, the Tiger took a long hard session in its stride.

Why is end to end so hard?

These are tough economic times. We notice it at home. We notice it at work. In business, we’re all focussing on costs. And we all have targets. The big risk with an objective led and target based reward approach is that we miss the bigger picture. This can be particularly damaging in the intranet space, where developers of online services become very focussed on their own objectives, usually at the expense of the user. In this insular world, there is a danger they will think the work is done and objective achieved when the application is switched on. It doesn’t seem to matter that it’s inaccessible, unusable, and results in the user having to invest huge amounts of time being trained or trying to find their way round a poorly designed interface.

So, instead of individually focussed targets, we should be looking at team targets that take an end to end view. The measurement should start at the point the customer or sponsor has an idea, and follow right through to the moment when the user becomes happy and competent with the system. That way things will get joined up and we’ll shorten production cycles.