Thinking out of the box (10)

Thinking out of the box (also thinking out side of the box, thinking beyond the box or thinking the unthinkable) is a metaphor that means to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. The cliché, has become widely used and refers to novel or creative thinking. Thinking out of the box, is forcing yourself to give considerations to options that you might discount in the first place. To think outside the box is to look farther and to try not thinking of the obvious things, but to try thinking beyond them.

It's November the 5th a day when we celebrate the life and death of Guido Fawkes the only man to enter parliament with honest intentions. While we celebrate bonfire night, lets give some thought to another bonfire that was inspired by parliament. The bonfire of the quangos that helped to create the Canal and River Trust.

The Canal and River Trust is coming under ever closer scrutiny. It seems that each and every utterance or publication that is made by CaRT is picked over and analysed in great detail. Now I believe that if you were to ask one of the higher beings within the trust hierarchy, they would probably say its just boaters 'nit picking.' Ask any of those who do the picking over and they would say its because the trust is overly secretive. These same people who take CaRT to task would say that they don't trust the trust to do the right thing. There is a huge chasm in ethos between the two sides.

There are two significant issues. The lack transparency and the lack of maintenance. With a huge 45,000 backlog of known defects, CaRT is tackling this with a fifty million pound cut in the spending that is needed just to stand still. The backlog of maintenance is the huge elephant in the room that everyone in the senior management structure of CaRT is trying to ignore. Nine major structural failures so far this year are a grim testimony to the truth. There are still a couple of months in the year to go.

No matter how long you delay publication of bad news - it remains bad news. No matter how hard it is to accept responsibility someone has to show the intestinal fortitude and front up. Otherwise Joe Public and the boat owning community sees the continuation of the worst days of the old British Waterways management.The nub of the problem is a continuation from the days of British Waterways. Information was closely guarded, because it was bad news and an embarrassment. It's even more closely guarded now. Plus the information that should have been published in a timely manner had to be forced out of BW and into the public domain. Information that should have been published in a timely manner by CaRT has to be the subject of Freedom of Information requests. Even then, there is still much that remains to be published.

Coming more up to date, it should be remembered that its the same old BW people with few exceptions that are still in place. That their old habits die hard and that old 'Us and Them' silo mentality still exists. Albert Einstein said 'No problem can be solved from the same level of conciousness that created it!' Never was that a more true statement of fact.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins130982.html#I1lifEZGD4kEmDMt.99

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins130982.html#I1lifEZGD4kEmDMt.99

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins130982.html#I1lifEZGD4kEmDMt.9

There has been a fundamental change with the creation of the trust. BW could in the past afford to ignore the people and encourage the Us and Them. This is a change that CaRT to its cost has still failed to recognise. We are now all in the same boat together.

I have said this before and I will continue to bang the drum about it. The Canal and River Trust has to succeed where British Waterways failed, there is no other alternative available. Financially CaRT sold itself short with the government when the quangos where thrown on the bonfire. There is not enough cash available, no matter the fine rhetoric used to dress up the issues. There is still not enough cash available and now small scale tinkering and head in the sand mentality is prevalent. 

The barriers between the trust and the general public are up and are not going to come down any time soon. It's almost a self fulfilling prophesy. Everyone now has an expectation on the senior management to fail - and giving credit where credit is due, senior management continue to deliver the goods. Managers it seems like big numbers. I wonder what the scale of bonus payments will be this year?