Management??
Chris Croft
★ Writer and Keynote Speaker, Project Management and Time Management, Negotiation Skills ~ UK-based. Top 10 video trainer in the world - LinkedIn Learning and Udemy.
GRENFELL HOUSE from a management perspective
I hope the enquiry finds lots of root causes and comes up with lots of ways to improve the system and prevent a repeat of this tragedy.
However, we already know the cause, because in the end EVERTHING IS MANAGEMENT’S FAULT
Here are some of the possible scenarios that I think we might eventually see from the enquiry:
Processes not followed
MANAGEMENT’S FAULT
Processes out of date / not updated / no process for updating processes
MANAGEMENT’S FAULT
Wrong people doing the fire safety checking: either not trained or inexperienced or not suited to the job
MANAGEMENT’S FAULT
Problem known and ignored by management because…..
it’s too big to fix, appeared too small to worry about, there are so many that you can’t do them all, it wasn’t urgent enough to get done, or (a popular one which I personally don’t subscribe to, but who knows??) the rich people running the tower and making the safety decisions didn’t care about the poor people living in the tower
MANAGEMENT’S FAULT
Problem not known about my management because….
No reporting system set up, problem overlooked because there were so many, or there weren’t enough people allocated to safety - perhaps because of cuts
MANAGEMENT’S FAULT
The people who were meant to ensure safety were fooled by the suppliers who said the materials were OK, either deliberately or accidentally. But why didn’t the safety people do their own tests / proper research? Or if they did, why were the tests inadequate? Lack of skills or time or money or staff?
MANAGEMENT’S FAULT
Who is ‘Management’? There will be a management tree going up from the Tower owners/managers, the construction safety testing people, and the Council, and they all have a hierarchy that can’t have been doing their job properly. Knowing or not knowing: which is worse??
So then it’s just a question of how high up you go. Does it go all the way up to Teresa May? I think probably yes, because whatever level you want to stop at, there is a boss above that who either didn’t know and should have, or did know and did nothing. So for something as big as this, it goes all the way. Sorry TM, as a leader (and it’s the same in any organisation) you’ve only got three jobs, which are Vision Systems and People. Leaving Vision to one side (that’s a whole other article, a whole other area of failure) you were meant to have Systems that work, and the right People in place to implement them, and you failed on both of these.
IG Manager. NHS 2017-24. Civil Servant 1999-2017.
7 年Good management depends on accountability and the will to look at people not assets
Maintenance Planner, Saint Elmo Project, Julia Creek
7 年Here in Australia this product has been used on public buildings e.g. The Princess Alexander Hospital in Brisbane Queensland Australia, though as happened in GB the government would have you believe there is no issue. I suppose the problem is too big and the cost (loss of life) is too small to warrant the expense in replacing this product with another safe product???
Independent Construction Consultant
7 年The foregoing situation is what the now proceeding inquiry has to unravel.
Independent Construction Consultant
7 年So, how did cladding without the required resistance to fire spread first of all become specified, secondly proposed for use and finally approved for use? There should be no means by which this situation can arise, as the designers have professional liability, the contractors have public liability and the approving authority have regulatory liability. Three distinctly different areas and it only takes one of them to refuse their consent for the chain of catastrophic events to be prevented. This leads to a conclusion of collusion on the part of all three parties, or simple fraud on the part of one of the parties by providing false information for their particular link in the chain?