What other people have learned about the cuts business

Bosses set the agenda

George Osborne has achieved something important.  He has got us talking about the cuts.  What cuts are we going to make?

What is the point of consultation?

We all have an opinion and inevitably, so do I.  But mine is somewhat different and borne out of living through dramatic economic change, not once, but several times elsewhere in the world.  To boot, I was working as a both as a management consultant and a line manager, so I learned a far bit about the “cuts business”.

What is the point of writing blog posts?

I pondered today the point of writing out what I learned.  No one is going to listen. Believe me, that is the first lesson.  We are going to talk a lot and listen little.  I am already doing that as I tune out of the “101 complaints” that are drowning the air waves and Twitter streams.

Then I decided to write after all.  Not because anyone will listen or even that I have anything very important to say.

But simply because I write.  That’s what I do.  I write to organize ideas that swirl around my head as I respond to what I hear in conversation and simultaneously work on other big projects that won’t see the light of day for a while.

What other people have learned about the “cuts business”

So these are the three issues that I will probably write about today:

• Our general response to being asked to “cut”: bosses who don’t have cheque books big enough to run the organizations they run
• Using consultants in organizations: managing up-skilling
• Negotiating with public servants: talk service not money