thedanglingmodifier.co.uk

Britons are – according to the pollsters this week – more pessimistic about their country’s economy than the people of other ‘leading’ nations. And Stephen Roach, Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, has warned of:

“a further destabilising outbreak of asset bubbles”.

Of course I don’t understand these words, but I suspect it means that we’re all going to lose our jobs and homes. That is everyone except my contact in the Employment Service who, in cheerful mood, has sent me a sample of the ‘Jobcentre Plus Lean’ newsletter.

The wonderful thing about this is how upbeat it is in the face of harsh economic times. As unemployment rises someone has to administer the claims, so I don’t begrudge the job centre staff talking “about the new and exciting future” as long as – if I do have to sign on – they’re nicer to me in this recession than they were in the last.

But I’m afraid I can’t be so generous of spirit when it comes to the acronym-spinning marketing ‘professional’ who was paid to come up with ‘Lean’ as a word for… what exactly I’m not sure, but let’s read on.

job-centre-leaflet-lean (pdf, 412 KB, 5 pages)

The ‘corporate voice’ – in this leaflet at least – swings between bureaucratic civil service speak and ever so-excited Americanisms. It lurches from ‘reporting back from the Transformation and Product Management Directorate (TPMD)’ and aiming ‘to identify where TPMD can further support Operations going forward’ to ‘getting the low-down’ and telling the reader to ‘check it out’.

So what on earth is Lean? Ask Neil, the Lean Champion. He says:

“I see Lean as being like a disease that spreads throughout Jobcentre Plus and will infect our organisation. I would like to see Lean embraced within all of our structures. I want to expose as many people as possible, as quickly as possible to the Lean virus.”

Okay Neil. A strange choice of metaphor, I have to say, but may be you meant it nicely. And what exactly is a ‘Lean Champion’? Neil says:

“The Lean Champions will be our vicars on Earth.”

May be it’s me, but I find that quite sinister, almost as scary as Debra from the Apprentice, which is funny really because if you scroll further down  you come across Jane Finn, the “vicar on Earth” for the Northwest. And she looks just a bit too much like Debra from the Apprentice. In fact I think she is Debra from the Apprentice and she must have dyed her hair black for the show.

I’m more than half way through the leaflet and by now I am desperate to find out what Lean is. It doesn’t seem to be anywhere in this flaming pdf! (How I hate pdfs!) I have to resort to acronym finder in my desperation. Please don’t let this Lean be “Law Enforcement Awareness Network”.

But then as I scroll down I see this on page 5:

“Lean is about eliminating waste from our processes to improve customer service and to increase capacity.”

Of course! And to illustrate this you have another acronym, WORMPIT, and even a little illustration to go with it.

Yes, WORMPIT. The marketing professionals have really excelled themselves. I mean clearly they wanted ‘P’ for processing, but they actually meant ‘over processing’ so they’ve had to put the ‘over’ in brackets after the ‘processing’.

That doesn’t matter too much does it? Not when you’ve got something as self-explanatory as WORMPIT. It’s almost as good as SMART and SMARTER. Perhaps as the recession goes on the Jobcentre Plus will get itself a SMARTER WORMPIT.

For those of you who hate pdfs as much as I do and can’t be bothered to open one, this is what WORMPIT stands for:

“Waiting
Over-production
Rework
Motion
Processing (over)
Inventory
Transportation.”

I’d say that was about as clear as, er… sh*t in a wormpit.