Olympics Irony Special

Spotted at the Wedgwood Visitor Centre, the birthplace of modern pottery, in Stoke on Trent:

(Click on them to enlarge)

(This is the Olympic Games which mailed me today to declare that it's only SEVEN DAYS until 100 DAYS TO THE OLYMPICS! - so that'll be 107 days, then).

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr…

While poor Lou is lying awake in agony down in the Land of the Long White Cloud, I've been undergoing painful experiences of my own: another Negotiating Committee while we try to work out how to resist the Triumph of the Managerialists (they've upped the redundancy offer by 40%, so they're clearly getting desperate), then my mother dropped off some household goods. In the time it took her to limp up the stairs (she's 65 and broke her ankle a while back), the parking people gave her a ticket, which I'm appealing.

Mum was bringing a load of crockery I'd bought in Stoke. It's good stuff, but virtually none of it is made in the town of Doulton, Wedgwood, Spode except for Moorcroft - more victims of capitalism. Stoke City FC is nicknamed The Potters. You can get a mug with the shield and The Potters. Despite virtually every fan having a family member who worked in the potbanks, the mug's made overseas…

This book sounds quite useful for dealing with The Managers: it's called Death March and explains what happens in institutions with inhumane strategies:

The symptoms are obvious: The project schedule, budget, and staff are about half of what is necessary for completion. The planned feature set is unrealistic. People are working 14 hours a day, six or seven days a week, and stress is taking its toll. The project has a high risk of failure, yet management is either blind to the situation or has no alternative. Why do these irrational projects happen, and what, other than pure idiocy, leads people to get involved in them?

Edward Yourdon has produced a wise and highly readable book on the entire death march phenomenon and the best way to steer through one. He takes a close look at the types of projects that often become death marches and the corporate politics and culture that typically produce them; Yourdon helps you examine your own motivations and those of corporate managers who enable death marches to take shape.

Much of Death March is about the human element of highly stressful projects. The author's plain-spoken observations on the dysfunctional organization--the Machiavellian politics, naive optimism, lust for power, fear, and sheer managerial stupidity that guide so many death marches--make for a refreshing change from other project management books. You'll also find much practical advice to help you survive, everything from negotiating with upper management to breathing life into faltering projects. He'll even help you determine if you should look for another job.

If you've ever worked in a death march situation or been a client of a company addicted to death march management, this book will help you understand what happened. More importantly, it will help you prepare for future encounters with death marches.

Anyway, time to do some actual work - a quick refresher on Henry V and some Welsh literature theory.

You can take the boy out of Stoke

…but he's still most impressed by the Staffordshire pottery used in this posh hotel (Thistle Parc, Cardiff/Caerdydd). That's how to spot Stokies anywhere (that and the Stoke City shirt worn for all occasions). They turn over the plates.