Feeling erudite this morning?

[Phil Pascoe]

Have a go at understanding these extracts from a BBC job advert -

The corporation is looking for a head of change earning up to £78,000 a year, but applicants could be forgiven for wondering what, exactly, their duties would be.
The introduction gives a sense of the jargon that follows, stating that the successful candidate will be expected to “influence the success of the Terms & Conditions programme with far-reaching impacts” while also “leveraging opportunities for benefits”.

The full job description, which runs to four A4 pages, only serves to cloud the issue further. The head of change must “engage senior stakeholders to understand change impacts” and ensure that the “change environment is understood”, while simultaneously acting as a role model for “good practice change management competences and behaviours”.

According to its advert the BBC’s head of change will:

•Ensure that there is a defined and agreed vision, a clear picture of the future state, a fit for purpose Target Operating Model, and that the change environment is understood.

•Lead and manage stakeholder engagement and communications, set up advocacy and ensure ‘change agents’ are mobilised.

•Provide thought leadership and leadership for the change management profession — inspiring others and applying knowledge and experience to grow CM maturity.

•Identify overt and covert organisation culture and its influence on the change.

•‘Flex’ to changes in focus.

Copied from The Times.

 

[Hot stuff]

That would boil down to "Help, we're fecked and don't know how to sort it, if we can. We'll pay you £78k a year if you can tell us what to do."
ps, be on the look out for mysoginist, sexist, gay bashing paedophiles while you're at it.

 

[Fitzroy]

The world is a very different place to what it used to be. I’m frequently reminded that at just 42 I’m pretty much a dinosaur with regards to how the world is embracing technology, digitization, agile working and a raft of other stuff.

The heart of what my department does is solving engineering problems. However, the expectation of the people whom work for me, the company I work for, and society we work within, with regards to how we do that work has changed massively.

Society expects (rightly so) a safer work place every day, the company expects leaner solutions through use of technology, and new engineers are totally mobile and expect what’s good for them rather than the company (they are fearless at buggering off to a new job if they don’t feel rewarded/recognised, even during the current downturn in the oil industry).

The rate of change is increasing and I find myself, and my team leaders, often need a set of skills way beyond what an engineering manager/leader would historically have required. We used to drag in management consultants to support in this kind of change stuff, but without real skin in the game they never really help as much as you want. I see similar adverts inside my company and I know what the role is but trying to explain it ends up with a bunch of similar waffle.

Soz essay!

Fitz.

 

[Duncan A]

Obviously the first change should be to cut the c**p!
Duncan

 

[Duncan A]

Obviously the first change should be to cut the c**p!
...and the duplication!
Duncan

 

[Sheffield Tony]

This is a normal stage in an organisation going t**s up. The management know there is a problem. It is their problem, but they can't solve it. Of course, management are not going to do the decent thing and resign because they can't do their job. So they make an ill defined new post (because they don't understand the problem), and recruit someone in the hope they can solve it. The new recruit, with a poorly defined job description and reporting to people who don't understand the problem that needs solving will then probably recruit some juniors so that (s)he doesn't have to do any actual work, and sit back and enjoy the salary until the nice big redundancy cheque comes.

 

[Inoffthered]

The change within the BBC that is needed is to return to being a reporter of news instead of being the London arm of the Brussels Broadcasting and Propaganda Company.
Unfortunately the virtue signalling social justice warriors at the echo chamber that is Broadcasting House will merely fill this post with one of their numpty mates.

 

[NickN]

Seeing tripe like that advert makes me jolly glad I got rid of my TV fifteen-odd years ago...

Sadly, meaningless waffle in job descriptions is a growing trend that has yet to expire - perhaps it's partly because more and more real jobs are being automated.

 

[John Brown]

The change within the BBC that is needed is to return to being a reporter of news instead of being the London arm of the Brussels Broadcasting and Propaganda Company.
Unfortunately the virtue signalling social justice warriors at the echo chamber that is Broadcasting House will merely fill this post with one of their numpty mates.

I'm guessing you voted for Brexit.
OK, you won, and now we all have to live with the consequences of a decision that has made us the laughing stock of the world. Could you not simply accept your victory with good grace, instead of banging on about it whenever somebody voices a contrary opinion? I will freely admit to being a bad loser, but why do you have to be a bad winner?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I happen to agree 100% with Inoffthered - but that's by the bye. The criticism of the ad. is nothing to do with politics, so before the thread gets locked let's get back to it.

 

[deema]

For me, that seems fairly easy to underhanded! I don’t know a lot about the BBC but I will try and make my interpretation based on my perception of what it is.

The BBC isn’t as such a business, it’s role is to provide popular TV and news that is unbiased and representative as well as being inclusive of everyone who pays or has the ability to watch / listen to the BBC. As such, there are lots of different pressure groups who have an interest and voice in what goes on in the BBC. To make any change is extremely difficult, as winning over and gaining agreement of all the various groups is very hard, time consuming with little common ground between many of them.

Initially the role is to understand what each groups interests and drivers are, what they will accept and where there may be room for compromise. Once established, it’s to take the general direction that the BBC wishes to move in and find a compromise agreement that generally meets everyone’s needs as well as ensuring the BBC takes a step forward in the right direction. It’s a job where you can’t win, and anyone looking for a win win solution will fail. The role is one where no matter what you do, you will be criticised and accused of not being inclusive by at least one party regardless of the decision.

So in summary, political astute, skin like a rhino, always see the positive, never give in when facing adversity, good humoured and never get ruffled.

Reminds me of senior roles in many a PLC I’ve worked for! I remember being accused of having a board of directors that was not representative. Yes, it was all male, white and over 40. So, for the next board member we went to a professional international recruitment company with the remit that we wanted to be more representative. Focus on finding us candidates that did not follow the stereotype of the existing make up of the board . They wrote the job ad. to avoid any institutional bias. They did the first round of interviews to present a short list again, to avoid bias. The result? Well the same as we had always found, 100% of the applicants they put forward were, white, male and over 40.

So, yes we needed a third party to demonstrate what we already knew, that we weren’t biased or instructional in our thinking. It was a condition of the industry / area / type of job that attracted a certain type of person. We couldn’t do that ourselves as we were considered to be at fault! Sometimes it’s really necessary to have a consultant / third party these days to prove your inscence due to the popularity of seeing faults / biases in everything. It does exist, but not everywhere! To end the story, we were still considered at fault as we hadn’t tried hard enough and not gone out a economic third or fourth time to find alternative candidates and had ‘taken’ the easy option of hiring someone who conformed to our biase!

Now, taking the point raised about resigning, knowing the ‘biased’ version of my story, should I have resigned as I was incompetent?

Equally, Most people who work for someone think it’s only natural that on occasion they will make an honest mistake. To err is human after all. They don’t expect to lose their job or have to resign for a genuine error. They accept they may be given a warning, retrained or something short of being depositited on the scrap heap. What amazes me though, is that as soon as someone starts to rise up the ladder are assumed to take on god like abilities and are expected to be perfect and never make the slightest error or poor judgement. Further more, their profound insight enables them to see into the future and anticipate and work around every conceivable error that those who work for them may make. If anything goes wrong, irrespective of the cause they are expected to fall on their sword. I like the quote ‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her’

That’s not to say the incompetence and deliberate poor judgement shouldn’t be tolerated.

 

[Inoffthered]

I'm guessing you voted for Brexit.
OK, you won, and now we all have to live with the consequences of a decision that has made us the laughing stock of the world. Could you not simply accept your victory with good grace, instead of banging on about it whenever somebody voices a contrary opinion? I will freely admit to being a bad loser, but why do you have to be a bad winner?

Pathetic! Unlike you I have absolutely no problem with contrary opinions, it is a pity that the state broadcaster has ceased to be a reporter of news and is the eipitomy of a bad loser. I apologise if that has triggered you and I suggest that you return to your safe space.

 

[treeturner123]

Hi

I worked with the BBC a few years back and found the 'management' good at the technical side ie how to broadcast, but poor on almost everything else except for one thing....

How to waste huge amounts of money on innumerable things both tangible and intangible. At this they exceeded all my expectations!!!!

Phil

 

[graduate_owner]

Well if that is the job advertisement, just imagine what the interview would be like.

K

 

[Phil Pascoe]

=D> Yeah ........... doesn't bear thinking about, does it? :lol:

 

[Claymore]

When do ya start Phil ? too many big words for me. 9-)
Brian

 

[lurker]

Surprised no one has mentioned W1A

 

[NickN]

Surprised no one has mentioned W1A

The Sun has... :mrgreen:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5178828/b ... itcom-w1a/

 

[RogerS]

OK...leaving aside the verbiage of the advert and the HUGE scope that the individual is expected to undertake, it does boil down to basic Change Management. And like it or hate it, if a company is good at change management then they will succeed. It is as simple as that.

All organisations undergo change at some point in time or another. Now think of a bathtub curve and apply it to change. There will ALWAYS be naysayers and doom mongers with any change. That affects the morale of everyone else. There will be a dip in whatever metric you want to measure. Change management seeks to reduce that dip. It's all about communication.

Then we trundle along the bottom of the bathtub curve until things start to get better. People realise that it's not as bad as the naysayers said it would be. And we then start to rise up the other end. Change management is all about reducing that time.

And yup...I am a great believer in good change management. Still would't want that particular job though !

 

[porker]

Interestingly that job advert looks almost exactly the same as my current job description. I moved to one of the UKs largest telecoms companies as a Programme Manager and recent changes have defined it as the BS shown above. Anyone who has worked in a large multinational will know what they really mean but it really is nonsense which means they want a project manager to change from this way of doing things to that way and to put in place measures to see if it is being successful. The hiring manager wants someone to do all the work who he can either fire if it goes wrong or take the credit if it is a success. They won't actually know what it is they want so you will need to define that too. Cynical - yes but it pays the bills and it's all a game. Also they won't get anyone any good because they aren't paying enough.