Many years ago (at least 30), as an engineer in the civil service, I was once asked on a project management course to draw a simple chart of my senior management structure. This I did. Showing the structure of the ‘Division’ in which I worked leading to a large amorphous cloud.
“What’s that?” the tutor asked.
“Well”, I replied; “I know how decisions are made up to a point, beyond that any decision-making is cloud based and I have absolutely no idea what rationale leads to the decisions that are made and passed down from the cloud”!
Incidentally a few years later in conversation with a retired colleague, we were discussing a project that was implemented on a national scale at great cost and of dubious cost benefit . He remarked that the project was going to be cancelled, but that when this was put to the manager who initiated the project he became apoplectic. On being faced with this and fearing the worst, his CEO withdrew the cancellation and a ‘authorised project’ dropped out of the cloud.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Cloud cuckoo land …
I remember implementing a matrix management scheme across a large engineering department, linked to a corresponding project management organisation. It made not a jot of difference to the way project managers managed, or engineers engineered, but the MD (CEO I suppose, these days) was happy. 🙂
Hello Colin:
Heads were up in some other place IMHO.
Speaking of “clouds” the latest pronouncements from Apple are predicting that “Cloud Computing” will be the wave of the future.
Let’s see if I have this right, I no longer have any local data storage or processing software so I entrust my data, processes and information to a “cloud” (owned and operated by a third party, which I am sure in the fine print will deny any responsibility for loss or damage thereto). If in future I need access I will be dependent on the third party, the software and the data still being around. Not for me I think.
I am convinced that Scott Adams (Dilbert) must have worked in a cubicle near mine.
Bearsy:
You were lucky, several organisations (and I use the word loosely) that I have worked for so separated the “Project Leaders” from the “Resource Managers” that all responsibility for any shortcomings could be and was denied by all involved. Any successful project was made to work DESPITE the system not because of it.
I always viewed the destruction of British Rail to be the ultimate example of matrix organisation . Separate the operating companies from the resource owners, Result, little or no maintenance of the infrastructure by the resource owners, (they do not care if the trains run or not), and little or no care and maintenance of rolling stock by the operating companies (they have no responsibility for track damage). Outcome chaos.
LW
Thank you – your first sentence said precisely what I thought, only you said it far more politely than my thoughts!
I’m not an engineer, as you know, but it strikes me that most ‘higher’ decisions are made by people with their heads ‘up in some other place ‘. It’s why the world is in the mess it is…
Now, so you think you could do a diagram for the current NHS management structure? It would help me greatly.
Sorry Peter: That Colin should be Peter, but at least I didn’t call you Phil. 🙂
Just come in from the garden, a ‘real project’ in which I’m trying to ‘fix’ things that I should never have implimented in the first place (at least not without more thought). But then I’m an engineer – what do I know about ‘cabbage butterflies’, ‘carrot flies’, et al.
If it’s the Phil I’m thinkin of, I miss his exhanges with Lord Melchet on the dark side!
Hello Pseu – I get all my advice on the NHS from Dr Rant at
http://www.drrant.net/
Peter: The very same, F1 and aviation engineering expert too.