Do YOU think local government bullshit bingo callers are born, or made?
You may have noticed that in the past seven months my blog postings have been a little sparse. This is because I was promoted to a management role - Acting Deputy Intelligence Manager - at my workplace, a London local authority crime and disorder reduction partnership. I put all my time and energy into this role, which left little for me outside of work to expend on my blog.
Today I interviewed for the permanent position. In a two horse race. Against a guy who is five years younger than me and has no management experience. I didn't get it. I'm a little pissed off and surprised.
Pissed off, because I know I did a good job and I really enjoyed being manager. The worst thing is knowing that everybody at work and even some of my friends will now secretly be thinking, "Ah, Leo must've been a bit shit not to get it". Which I wasn't. Any time I had an issue, such as not delegating enough, I addressed it. I recognised and learnt from my mistakes and didn't repeat them.
Surprised, because I have many successes to show for my time as manager. I developed an innovative way of showing the performance of our Safer Neighbourhoods police teams by combining their performance - against priority crime, against fear of crime and level of resources deployed - that gave an easy to understand overview and let the user drill down to the specific variables, the individual crimes or resources. I developed an innovative product that showed teams the people likely to be committing crime in their area, based on PPO, ASBO, ABC, school exclusion data, DAAT/DIP data, with photos and briefings of their likely MO. I identified data gaps and filled them, for example linking up with social housing suppliers' logs to get details of incidents of ASB that were dealt with on the estate and not by the Council or Police (and thus not recorded by us).
When the police rolled out their problem solving process, I developed and standardised the analytical products used to baseline, set aims, deploy tactical resources and evaluate the success of the process in tackling the crime or disorder issue and trained the analysts in applying the techniques. These techniques and my management of their application was so successful, a problem solving inspectorate at the Territorial Policing Headquarters recognised Westminster as being "a flagship borough for problem solving documentation". I also dealt with all the day to day things involved with running a team of analysts - managing performance, or taking misbehaving staff through the disciplinary process. Et fucking cetera.
Is this starting to sound like an interview? Well not like a local government interview, because in local government, hard work and success are not rewarded. What is rewarded is an ability to waffle bullshit answers to bullshit questions such as, "How do you value equality and diversity?", and "Do you think leaders are born or made?". Both of these were in my interview. Never mind the innovative processes I put in place - what's really important is playing bullshit bingo.
At the end of the day, my successes counted for nothing. Instead of spending the last seven months developing innovative and effective processes that brought real value and recognition to my department, I should've just sat on my fucking arse and learnt some bullshit bingo that would make the PEOPLE who run these things tick the right fucking boxes.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to focussing on things other than managing an intel unit. Such as blogging. It's good to be back.
Today I interviewed for the permanent position. In a two horse race. Against a guy who is five years younger than me and has no management experience. I didn't get it. I'm a little pissed off and surprised.
Pissed off, because I know I did a good job and I really enjoyed being manager. The worst thing is knowing that everybody at work and even some of my friends will now secretly be thinking, "Ah, Leo must've been a bit shit not to get it". Which I wasn't. Any time I had an issue, such as not delegating enough, I addressed it. I recognised and learnt from my mistakes and didn't repeat them.
Surprised, because I have many successes to show for my time as manager. I developed an innovative way of showing the performance of our Safer Neighbourhoods police teams by combining their performance - against priority crime, against fear of crime and level of resources deployed - that gave an easy to understand overview and let the user drill down to the specific variables, the individual crimes or resources. I developed an innovative product that showed teams the people likely to be committing crime in their area, based on PPO, ASBO, ABC, school exclusion data, DAAT/DIP data, with photos and briefings of their likely MO. I identified data gaps and filled them, for example linking up with social housing suppliers' logs to get details of incidents of ASB that were dealt with on the estate and not by the Council or Police (and thus not recorded by us).
When the police rolled out their problem solving process, I developed and standardised the analytical products used to baseline, set aims, deploy tactical resources and evaluate the success of the process in tackling the crime or disorder issue and trained the analysts in applying the techniques. These techniques and my management of their application was so successful, a problem solving inspectorate at the Territorial Policing Headquarters recognised Westminster as being "a flagship borough for problem solving documentation". I also dealt with all the day to day things involved with running a team of analysts - managing performance, or taking misbehaving staff through the disciplinary process. Et fucking cetera.
Is this starting to sound like an interview? Well not like a local government interview, because in local government, hard work and success are not rewarded. What is rewarded is an ability to waffle bullshit answers to bullshit questions such as, "How do you value equality and diversity?", and "Do you think leaders are born or made?". Both of these were in my interview. Never mind the innovative processes I put in place - what's really important is playing bullshit bingo.
At the end of the day, my successes counted for nothing. Instead of spending the last seven months developing innovative and effective processes that brought real value and recognition to my department, I should've just sat on my fucking arse and learnt some bullshit bingo that would make the PEOPLE who run these things tick the right fucking boxes.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to focussing on things other than managing an intel unit. Such as blogging. It's good to be back.
Labels: bullshit bingo, burtons' suits, local government
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