I’m looking forward to chatting with Robin at next Tuesday’s Pension PlayPen coffee morning.
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The direct link to the webinar is here
Robin and the Regulator
Robin and I once went head to head at the DWP – I think I wanted to scrap the dashboard. I got the vote from the civil servants – Robin got the laughs. I don’t think they understood – Robin was in deadly earnest.
There is a certain archness in his approach which will appeal to those with a sense of irony.
Robin’s a little older than me and he’s starting to take things easy.
You can imagine him, hanging out in the park, dreaming up nameplates for the bench he sits on.
Nothing’s quite what it seems when you listen to him, but when you stop listening, you realise that your mind has been nudged sideways and you start looking at things a little differently.
Which is odd, because – far from being on the fringes of pensions, Robin has spent his life within the machine. He is a character who should be taken very seriously indeed!
I have a question for this mornings session. LDI has wiped out the last 15 years total DB contributions. Why the conspiracy of silence. Lessons are not being learned.
The effect is well described in an article I was reading describing the useless activity prevalent in Britain today. Splendid Unaccountability is the subtle art of movement without achievement.
It comes in three flavors.
Flavor 1: The Insignificant Improvements.
Think of cleaning the archive, rearranging the desks, or optimizing expense reporting. None of these activities actually help making great strides towards worthy goals. People look busy though.
Flavor 2: The Utopian Quest.
Under the umbrella of ‘an important cause’ organizations put massive efforts towards unrealistic epic goals. A characteristic feature is that results can only be measured in vague terms, and focus is on effort and input. You typically find this behavior in heavily political environments, where moral duty is used as an excuse for any lack of achievement.
Flavor 3: The Passion for Process
The process is all and all is process. In these type of environments, the highest virtue is adhering to processes and systems. Processes are everywhere, while the original purpose of processes often have completely been forgotten.
All three flavors have this in common: The complete unaccountability for any results ensures that there is no finish line, no end, and no closure. ‘Done’ is an alien concept. Instead, more and more resources are required, because breakthroughs and progress are always right around the corner.
Splendid Unaccountability is a subtle trap: It provides plenty of excuses for not taking actual action towards pragmatic results.
The first rule of your life is not to waste it.
Interesting, fun. You’re make a good case for smaller government, and in our world less regulation. I can imaging the above three points being used in a training presentation by TPR.