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Businessman’s Blues

The Blame Game stipulated parameters of time / budget / scope of
work. I remain a firm believer in this principle
and advocate it at every opportunity.
Many years ago, I worked for a major UK retailer
in the Research and Development division of It is important to stress that continuous review
the company implementing new technology of progress, risk exposure and resolution of
from loyalty cards, to logistics, automated unexpected issues were always kept in focus
checkouts and a variety of other innovative in order to ensure stumbles along the way are
ideas. They had 5 stores throughout the UK, dealt with effectively, without dissipating too
branded differently from the mother company much energy and focus, by identifying the
and were open to the bemused public to shop in person(s) that may have caused the problem in
those stores as though they were normal stores. the first place. The exception being if someone
This division was set up as a separate legal entity is so obviously and clearly not doing their job
and in addition to field testing innovative retail or are collectively believed to be a disruptive
ideas, they attempted to make a profit, or at the element, then action must be taken to out-
very least, break even. place them from the project. However, this is
an exception rather than the rule.
I worked there for about three years and largely
enjoyed the experience and eventually moved Most, if not all of us, have experienced the
on when I had a better and more interesting 2020 Coronavirus pandemic. We all felt its
opportunity elsewhere. I gained a great deal of destruction and disruptive effects on our
experience with the R&D division, not least of societies, with varying degrees of intensity of
which was managing complex projects. damage. On the whole, most governments set
out to deal with the pandemic in ways that
My first project was a resounding failure best suited their circumstances and made
but, the company persevered with me and I judgments based on scientific and medical
felt duty-bound to try again and improve my advice they received from their experts, taking
project management skills to help deliver into account the degree of acceptance by their
another piece of this gigantic jigsaw puzzle. own societies of restrictive measures they
One fundamental lesson I learnt was to could apply to halt the spread of the virus.
deal with project risks / issues, regardless of
who was to blame for the situation in hand. A government would assemble a team of
Analysis of what went wrong or right was politicians, experts and implementers to
left after the conclusion of the project where review the situation on daily if not hourly basis
a post-mortem would be conducted with and come up with appropriate measures as the
participation of most, if not all, stakeholders. situation continued to deteriorate or improve.
It was the job of the project manager to ensure Given the last pandemic was the Spanish Flu
such a process took place at the end of the some 90 years ago, the World had little or no
project and resist fracturing the unity / team practical experience to draw on. So, these
spirit of the project by allowing finger pointing teams made decisions on the best available
during the lifetime of the project. evidence at the time. It comes as no surprise
that some of the decisions were spot on while
I was committed to this concept and carried others were inadequate, untimely, or wrong.
with me for the remainder of my career, aiming
to deliver the project objectives within the Being lockdown for days and weeks with little
or nothing to do, and with the help of many data
“Given the last pandemic was the sources, including social media, we resorted
to accumulating superficial knowledge on the
Spanish Flu some 90 years ago, the pandemic subject. We formed our individual

World had little or no practical views and validated these views with like-
minded friends and relatives to fortify our
experience to draw on.“ opinions. We became armchair critics of the

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