My influences: Mary Elizabeth ("Bunty") Tracy

I grew up in Knowle, in south Bristol. My parents were both from Somerset, my mother from Watchet, in the west and my father from Sandford, near Winscombe, in the north; my brother Martin is five years my junior. Initially we didn't have a car but then my father bought one and we began to go on day trips to visit my parents' friends and relatives. We often used to stay with my maternal grandmother in Watchet but the day trips were to a variety of other people.

One of the families to which we made regular visits were the Tracys, in Winscombe. James ("Uncle Jim" to me) was my father's uncle on his mother's side; he had been one of Somerset's first motor mechanics and had run his business from a large shed at the side of the house. He was a great racconteur, and I remember him talking about the titled people for whom he had worked, though his stories are lost in the mist of time. His wife had died before I was born but his two daughters, Bunty and Peggy lived with and looked after him. He died when I was still quite young, as did Peggy, who had had a senior role in local government in Somerset.

Bunty lived for a good few years after and it was clear that both my parents held her in considerable esteem. Visits to her were always a joy. In particular, she used to treat children, including me, as fully paid up members of the human race, and was interested in our hobbies, our opinions and our experiences. As I grew older and went to Bristol Grammar School I was not surprised to discover that she was a head of department at the grammar school in Weston-Super-Mare. She would show us things and explain things and I always felt fulfilled by our relationship. I have always tried to emulate her in my dealings with children, my own and other peoples'.

Later, she became a Licenced Lay Reader in the Church of England and, as I had become involved with Church organisation at a Deanery and Diocesan level, we had even more to talk about. When she eventually died she left me a few specific bequests: a Communion chalice was no surprise but there were several other items I couldn't explain; I can only imagine they were things in which I had expressed interest as a child. At about the time of her death but for reasons unconnected with it I came to the conclusion that I was agnostic but I've been able to find a home for the chalice with a minister who uses it and understands its significance to me.

People who have influenced me

I am conscious of the fact that a number of people have said or done things throughout my life which have influenced me profoundly. Most if not all of them have no idea how profound their influence was, and I have never thanked any of them. Sadly, some of them are already dead, so my thanks will come too late. However, I want to set the record right and share with my readers the insights I was given. I originally intended to post these anecdotes in more or less chronological order but my memory is not as well organised as I had imagined.

I shall be pleased to have feedback from anyone and, if any of my readers knows the whereabouts of anyone I feature, please let me know.

Douglas Adams and Consulting Practice

To the extent that they are trained to be consultants, and in their consulting practice, management consultants usually start an assignment by talking to the project sponsor and/or senior management and then forming a hypothesis about the problems they have been engaged to solve. It is therefore inevitable that, during the rest of the project, they tend to accept data that supports their hypothesis and discard data that challenges it. It is also inevitable that, during this process, they become more and more committed to their hypothesis and increasingly reluctant to challenge it. There may be professional consultants to whom this criticism does not apply, but they are in the minority.

The justification for this arrogance - and it has to be described as arrogance - is that they have been schooled in the belief that their training and previous experience mark them out as superior beings able to make this kind of judgement. However, let us consider an alternative view.

If, whilst I am interviewing a member of client staff, or a customer, or a supplier, or anyone else, and I ask them a question, I may often get an answer that doesn't really seem to be an answer to the question I asked. So what is happening? There are three possibilities:

a)   I am not asking the question clearly enough, or in a form that the interviewee can understand, so I am getting the answer I deserve.

b)   I am quite clear about the question but, for some reason, the interviewee doesn't understand, or doesn't have the experience to enable him to answer the question.

c)    I am quite clear about the question, and the interviewee's answer is also clear, but I don't understand his answer.

The typical consultant will probably recognise condition a) and re-phrase his question. He will be justified in discarding answers that satisfy condition b) - if he realises that is what has happened. But he will discard answers that fulfil condition c) and, in so doing, discard information that may challenge his hypothesis or even lead to a new hypothesis.

Which is where Douglas Adams comes in. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was first broadcast on Radio 4 in 1978/9 and, some years later, was made into a television serial. And as fans, and many other listeners and viewers will recognise, the plot includes several sudden and unpredictable changes in what constitutes reality.

In January 1992, Douglas Adams appeared with Melvin Bragg on the South Bank Show in what can only be described as a happening, in which many of the characters from the Hitch Hiker's Guide drifted in and out and had an impact on the interview. At one point, Melvin Bragg said (l paraphrase), "Throughout the series, you are clearly fascinated by alternative realities and/or alternative universes - what was the origin of this fascination?" Douglas explained that, at the age of 10, his father had taken him to London Zoo and was explaining about the animals as they looked at them. When they got to the rhinoceros, his father explained that the rhino's most acute sense was smell, and not sight or hearing as for humans. Douglas began to wonder what the world must be like if one perceived it through the shifting, eddying, sometimes enduring and sometime ephemeral smells - and realised that it must be a very different world to the one inhabited by humans.

Eventually this led him (l paraphrase again) to the realisation that every sentient being has a different but equally valid set of perceptions of the universe. Which raises philosophical questions about what we mean by reality and even whether there is such a thing as reality. If you want to find out more about this, read Bertrand Russell - I can't help you!

However, even staying out of the philosophical deep water, it is quite clear that no management consultant, however experienced or clever, has the right to assume that his perception of reality is THE reality.

Shrinkage

 At the time when I was working for ICL in East Anglia the primary focus of my support role was to explore with my customers opportunities for introducing stock control and production control systems. One of my customers, a small manufacturing company, was seriously interested and we were successful in helping them install and operate a stock control system, with a concomitant requirement for additional computer equipment.

All went well, except that there was a small but persistent difference between the stock levels forecast by the system and those revealed by a stock check, and I was much exercised by the task of tracking it down.

One Friday afternoon I was chatting with the computer manager about plans for the weekend. I explained that I was fitting out a cupboard in my new home so that we could use it as a wardrobe. The problem was, I explained, that I couldn’t find a piece of metal tube long enough to serve as a hanging rail. “I can probably help,” he said, “come with me.” We walked across to the stock shed, which was surrounded by a high fence with a locked gate. He produced a key and opened the gate; we went into the shed and found the length of tube I needed and locked the gate. “How do you come to have a key to the stock shed?” I asked. “Oh, all managers have them, and we can go and take anything we need.” “How do you record this on the stock control system?” I asked. They didn’t, of course. Problem solved.