Well, after the last couple of weeks of serious musings, I figured you deserve a giggle (of the tragicomedic kind). Here’s a diagram I used for my (self-funded) MBA, showing the structure of the department I worked in at the time. A local authority children’s services department, as it happens:



Just to clarify, this is merely a representation. There were ten or more heads of division, scores of service managers, and goodness knows how many team leaders.

Now here’s a little GCSE business studies question for you. Underline the words that either describe this place of work, or are likely to apply to it:

Hierarchical, bureaucratic, inefficient, inflexible, under-overstaffed, infuriating, disempowering, child-centred

Tip: this is actually an odd-one out question.

It was my job to ensure that managers at every level – and as you can see there were quite a few levels – did the following: business planning, service delivery, regular monitoring and frequent evaluation.

In short, I was paid to make sure that managers actually managed. Because managing wasn’t something that many of them did. So crap only knows what they did do.

But, you know, I am sure that these people are best placed to know what’s right for every child. They are the professionals, after all. We can’t possibly have anything to fear.

(I do hope you don’t think any less of me for this disclosure. If it helps, I hit a table and walked out after about 6 months, although 6 months later they still thought I worked there.)