Group Efforts 21

Group Efforts
The Diary of a Workgroup Manager

Episode 49 (1998)

Life is sweet, Amrat's mysterious, the grass is greener and Llewellyn's a strange shade of puce.

Thursday 2nd.
It's generally agreed that post-takeover life is remarkably like the pre-takeover version. The Old Man still stalks the corridors of power, Costello still runs the management meetings, Online Progress Monitoring still goes offline at 5.45pm every day because of an Automated Backup clash which no-one seems able to fix, and Bedford A is still two weeks behind because of missing documentation. The overall feeling is of slight disappointment, especially after Danny's enjoyable rumour that Llewellyn was being phased out in favour of an automated voice-response system proved groundless. Only the occasional Broadleys PLC internal vacancy notice, plus a large pile of Group Management Training leaflets on Cathy's desk, remind us that we are now part of a major organisation.

Tuesday 7th
The management meeting, attended by a real live Broadleys executive. His name's David Chapman, and he's a newly-appointed member of our board. More intriguingly, he's also an I.T. specialist, a fact which clearly has Llewellyn unable to decided whether to brown-nose or be defensive. Chapman tells us that Broadleys is a committed IBM user, and that he's looking forward to working with 'Chris' in extending cross-group I.T. synergy. This causes 'Chris', who appears not to have been briefed beforehand, to go such a violent shade of puce that Andy offers him a medicinal mint. Chapman then tops this off by saying what a huge success IBM's acquisition of Lotus has proved, and how Broadleys now feels able to confidently buy into Lotus's applications strategy. At this point Llewellyn excuses himself, and heads for the toilet. Post-match consensus is that interesting times lie ahead.

Wedneday 15th
Andy, like a true professional, has already established some Broadleys HQ contacts. He tells a packed All Stars gathering (venue, Peg's) that our new masters are, indeed, heavy users of both IBM kit and Lotus software, the latter including Notes, which everyone's heard of but no-one can describe. The really good news, however, is that - joy of joys - Broadley's standard-issue spreadsheet is 1-2-3. Arrangements are made for a ceremonial burning of Excel manuals in the car park outside Llewellyn's office, once 'Chris' receives the instruction to follow group policy and adopt 1-2-3. Andy assures us this will not be long in coming, as he's already got his contacts working on it. Suddenly life under the new regime seems amazingly sweet.

Friday 24th
It seems that Andy isn't the only one with contacts at Group HQ. June and Rose darken my door, state that Broadleys overtime rate is 75p per hour more than ours, and demand immediate parity. Telling them I'll look into it, I'm about to delegate the problem to Cathy when she arrives and demands a properly monitored personal development programme like Broadleys graduates get. Danny, at least, seems unaffected by tales of greener grass, until he asks whether, of all things, Broadleys generous paternity leave terms will now apply here. I email Sheila for an update on Danny's domestic situation, and she replies that Broadleys departmental administrators get 64MB Pentiums and colour inkjets. I start a memo to Costello about this dangerous group-envy trend, but Andy rings to say that he's got the details of Broadleys management perks, so I shelve it and head for the canteen.

Monday 27th
Amrat, who's been away learning the mysteries of Group Information Management Strategy, suddenly reappears. He's pretty mysterious himself, revealing only that Broadleys have their own intranet which we'll be hooked into soon, and that yes, they do use an awful lot of Lotus software. When we ask him about Notes he turns vaguer still, mumbling something about 'groupware solutions' and 'high replicability'. This causes George to do his famous bullshit-ometer mime, and the lad to beat an embarrassed retreat. Later Amrat comes round for a private chat, at which he asks if I'd like to reinforce my legendary status as an I.T. pioneer. I say no thanks, but, seeming not to hear me, he produces a brown envelope containing a CD and a photocopied manual. The manual says 'e-Suite pre-release' and the envelope has my name on it. My status is, it seems, being reinforced whether I like it or not.