All of a sudden nothing happens

We're now in a state of panic: two weeks ago T. Aldous was asked to give the director a report-back on progress on last year's Action Plan so that he has something to tell the councillors when he sees them at the end of the month. It's got to be in today (holidays and other nonsense), so for most of yesterday and today T. Aldous has had the serried ranks of library management team (both of them) held prisoner while he compiles their list of glories. "I don't need an essay, just a bullet-point list of progress," says the director. An optimistic person might think that thirty-three man hours of high-powered thought would come up with a mighty list indeed. The optimistic person has no experience of the workings of T. Aldous Huxley...

T. Aldous, like the rest of management team, did his homework on the bus in to school and once it was handed in it was forgotten. So, far from last year's Action Plan being a plan of action against which to plot this year's work, it was just sooo last year, darling. Now it's time to report on how we did, they've got a few hours in which to work out what they meant when they wrote the Plan and come up with excuses why they didn't do it reasons for the changing priorities in the face of changing circumstances.

And they made sure that we were collecting the data for the reporting back, didn't they? Five to six, T. Aldous collared Frog Dropwort, our SureStart Project Manager, and asked:

"Have you got the figures for the number of adults and children who have attended the SureStart events over the past financial year?"

"I've got the figures on file but I've not collated them. When do you want them by?"

"I need them tonight."

Nobody had told Frog that this was one of the Social Inclusion Index Figures established in the Action Plan. By pure dumb luck, he had been collecting this data so that he could provide some information on the success, or not, of the promotional activities of his team.

Progress? As somebody commented: "For God's sake! How long does it take to write: 'We have done jack all this year'?"