I have been here before. Well, not exactly in this particular location, but in exactly this situation before. It’s Monday. It’s summer. It’s very, very hot, and I have nothing to do but sit in the shade of a large red and yellow umbrella and try to understand why I am out of a job. This time it’s the Mediterranean, the last time it was the Great Barrier Reef.

Friday was different. Friday was three days ago. On Friday I had a job, a responsible, well-paid job. Why, oh why had I quit? On Friday I had been convinced that I was right. Now I look down at the sand and say out loud, ‘I was right. I know I was right.’

I play the scene through in my mind. I can hear Jane knock, open the door and come into the office. She’s carrying a sheet of paper. I turn, look up at her and smile. She holds it out to me and I take it off her. I can see myself reading the memo. I can even feel my blood pressure rising, just as it had then. I grab at the phone and punch in numbers. A lady answers at the other end, singing, ‘Infotech Solutions Limited, Hans de Vries’ office, Jenny Jones here, how can I be of assistance?’ I hear myself slam the door to my office behind me. I see the sunlit windows of the executive corridor flash by as I stride across the deep pile carpet. Usually I count them as I walk past, a habit I have developed over the years. This time I hardly notice them. I swoop through the door labelled ‘Managing Director’, past Jenny without saying ‘Hello’. Suddenly I am standing in the middle of the office, leaning over the enormous walnut desk. I’m really mad. I’m ranting.

What has ended my 15 year career at Infotech Solutions Ltd, is the ‘Go-For-It’ Project. The title of the initiative had been dreamt up by Hans de Vries, our MD. He had attended a seminar on Total Quality Management. For him it was an evangelical experience. The very next day he had called a seven o’clock breakfast meeting of the board. I was the only non-board member present. This was not unusual. As one of our firm’s project leaders, I was often invited to crisis meetings. But this was different. There was no crisis, in fact business was going very well. Hans had talked excitedly for about half an hour about how all our competitors were gearing up to ‘eat our lunch’ and that we could only look to the future with confidence if we went for it.

At this point he had turned towards me and asked me to spearhead something he described as ‘Our organisational culture transfusion’. It is hard to be told that your organisation’s future depends on you and only you and not be caught up in the hype. I had readily accepted. My job as project leader was to plan and control the implementation of a series of initiatives which would be championed by various board directors. I expected it to be a challenge but I didn’t really understand what I was letting myself in for.

There were two real problems with ‘Go-For-It’. The first was that no one at Infotech had the faintest idea how to change a culture. We didn’t even really know what a culture was. I think that I learnt slowly as the project progressed. Although I learnt slowly, the rest of the organisation did not learn at all. It simply stayed ignorant. So steadily, a gap in understanding grew between me and everyone else. This gap made it more and more difficult for me to communicate with the senior managers in terms that they understood. They would argue with me over points which I felt were irrelevant to the progress of the project. I had to keep saying to myself over and over again, ‘I am right, I am right, I am right.’

They didn’t really understand many of the words I started using, such as empowerment and process quality. For example, they couldn’t understand why I could not give them a progress report stating the percentage completion of the project. They were also concerned because there did not seem to be a long-term spend budget for the project; the main reason for this was that I would only propose spending money on items, such as training, once I had fully understood the need for it. And that tended to happen only when I felt that it was the way to make sure that progress would be made. This made it look, to senior management, as if I was out of control and making it up as I went along.

The second main problem was that, although no one would admit it, no one, including Hans, was really sure of the purpose of the project. Was it: to give us a better working environment; to improve product quality; to reduce running costs; to empower the staff; or was it something else? At every bi-monthly meeting it seemed to me that the steering group would invent a new purpose for the project. Some directors took advantage of this lack of clarity and launched initiatives, which they had been wanting to pursue for years, under the ‘Go-For-It’ banner, claiming it was in line with the objectives of the project. For example, the Personnel Director pushed through a new appraisal and review process. The process was very time consuming, especially for line managers. What was worse, in taking up so much time it was in direct conflict with another initiative on individual productivity and performance improvement sponsored by the Operations Director.

That was last year. Last Friday I stormed into Hans de Vries’ office, thumped the desk and put forward an ultimatum insisting that I either got support from all the members of the board or I was leaving. He couldn’t guarantee their support and now I was on a holiday of indeterminate length.

It really is great weather. The sea is a light greenish-blue colour which matches the sky perfectly. The sky is the same colour as Blue Curacao, the main ingredient of my favourite cocktail, Blue Lagoon, a concoction of lemon, vodka, and mineral water, poured over ice in a tall glass and coloured by adding an equal measure of the blue liqueur. I look towards the horizon and take a large sip and then return my mind to the problem I have been working on all holiday. I say to myself out loud, ‘You keep repeating to yourself that you are right. If you are right then how come you are in this mess?’ In my heart I knew that I had done the right thing but I can’t really explain to myself how I have got to an end result which I haven’t planned for and don’t want.

I don’t really understand and I never have. During twenty years in management, I had often been given responsibility for projects. The twenty years had passed quickly but not completely unnoticed. They were punctuated, stretching backwards, like poplar trees lining a long, straight, Roman road, but planted at uneven distances. There they were, my initiatives, my projects. It was supposed to always be the same. The excitement at the start of the project, the initial briefing, working out what was to be done, getting a team together, getting the bulk of the tasks done and then passing it over to the final users. But it never was. It was never as smooth as that; hiccups, backtracking, surprise grillings by senior managers, cash crises, late deliveries, concessions. Things always seemed to go wrong and I’d never really understand why and I still didn’t. I’d asked other people and discovered that they were also mystified. It seemed that most people thought of it as a black art.

‘The problem is that each project is different!’ I’m talking to myself again. Along that twenty year journey, I must have attended dozens of one day courses and seminars on project management. I went in search of the Holy Grail. Usually what I took away was more like a plastic cup; a few good ideas and hints. ‘They try to teach you a set of complex tools, usually to help with something like timetabling tasks or assessing risks. I can learn them, but no one else back at work understands what I am on about. And anyway, Murphy’s Law means that it is pointless to rely solely on critical path assessments since all of the problems which come up are either unscheduled or are people problems.’

My mind wanders reluctantly backwards over my time at Infotech. The last time I almost resigned was over the Office Relocation. I am not enjoying recalling the past. I feel like an old soldier recalling the terrors of crossing a minefield in the dark without the aid of a mine detector. Frightened of blowing himself up or perhaps, even worse, being hit by the shrapnel from a mine set off by one of his platoon. Even now, after all those years, I still feel my palms dampen.

Office Relocation had been my first internal project. Unlike all the other projects at Infotech this was one we were doing for ourselves to ourselves. There was no outside client. There was no money to be made directly, only money to be spent. Spent on subcontractors such as the removals firm. The reason for the move was to reduce our costs by moving to a cheaper area, reducing the amount of office floor space and by reducing the number of individual offices we required. It was this; this second requirement which was the source of my problems. I’ll never forget how my life changed when it was announced that I was to lead the relocation and would be responsible for all its aspects including office allocation and car parking. I instantly experienced an upsurge of popularity, for the following two weeks, I met and got to know more people in the organisation than I had during my previous six years.

There were two types of approach. I preferred the first, which basically constituted approaching me at the coffee machine or in the canteen, asking if I would be working late and offering to buy me a pint. Later, over a drink I would first be gently questioned (so that they could find out what the choice of office accommodation was). Next the conversation would switch to a long list of reasons, medical and non-medical, why such and such an office was an essential matter of life or death for my benefactor. Over the second pint, (also generously provided free), I would mumble an explanation that, ‘things are still in an exploratory phase’. ‘No decisions have been made yet.’ and finally that, ‘I can’t promise anything but I will certainly bear them in mind when the time comes.’

The second approach was in no way subtle and was reserved for use by directors and senior managers. I would first hear on the grapevine that so-and-so was in no way pleased by something I was alleged to have done. I would then be urgently summoned to a meeting, in their current office (so I could see how palatial it was). I would arrive and be asked to wait, for at least fifteen minutes, by a stern looking secretary. Meetings were usually scheduled so that I would either see the MD going in or coming out of the director’s office. I then had to sit through an hour long explanation of why this-or-that department was absolutely essential for the success of the organisation and listen to stories about how this-or-that department had saved the company from ruin many times in the past.

The other thing I recall from that internal project was that few people, if any, stuck to what they agreed in meetings or discussions. It seemed as if, not having written contracts, they felt free to do as they pleased, when they pleased. Once, I completely lost my temper with the Personnel Officer. He had promised to deliver lists of needs for our disabled staff. We needed the information in order to allow us to start the process of allocating space. Without it, we could make no progress with anything else. I called him up when the report was two days late and he flatly denied ever having offered any information. I flipped. I told him in no uncertain terms, both what I thought of him and exactly what I expected from him and by when, adding a description of how his widow would find him if he did not follow my instructions to the letter. The volume of my voice must have been tremendous, it had a similar effect to the trumpets at Jericho. The half-height partition walls of my open plan office did not actually fall over, instead I found myself completely surrounded by sixty heads staring at me over their tops. I have never felt so embarrassed.

I finally solved the problems of matching people’s actual needs, egos and status, by ignoring actual needs and simply ranking the offices by desirability and advantages and then matching them to our organisational chart. It wasn’t perfect but at least it saved me from being lynched by everyone.

I had joined Infotech by accident. After my three months in Australia, where I had hung about and done exactly what I was doing now – nothing – I had returned to London. Two further months of aimlessness had broken my irresponsible spirit and I would have taken any job offered. As it was I had taken a job in the construction industry. An old school friend had suggested that I apply for a job as an assistant to a quantity surveyor he knew who was involved in a development in the city.

As assistant to the quantity surveyor, it was my job to ensure that everything went strictly according to plan from day-to-day. I had to make sure that there was no wastage in either tasks or materials. In practice this meant an eye for detail on just about every thing happening on the site. The complexity of the job amazed me. Individually the tasks themselves were simple enough but the complexity of the interconnections between the architects, electricians, bricklayers, scaffolding experts, geologists, navvies and engineers were simply mind boggling. I began to appreciate that each of the skill groupings thoroughly understood their part of the task. They had, in fact, built up significant expertise by doing more or less the same thing on several previous projects. The difficulty with the building project was that it was large and complex and that their skills had never been used in that particular combination before. I enjoyed meeting and working with such a wide range of groups each of which seemed to have its own language and characteristics, from the navvies talking about, ‘IG lintels’ to the draftsmen with their ‘Oh no! Not another rev!’ which they would shout at any junior architect who walked into the drawing office.

In spite of that, the job hadn’t suited me. Focusing on details and being mean are not part of my character and I found that after a while everyone seemed to have worked out a way of getting round me. My next move took me into IT. My move away from Property was caused by property, or to be more accurate, my landlord. My landlord had a son who was ‘into IT’ and over a lunch-time drink he mentioned that there were a number of jobs going in his company in what he called ‘systems’. He seemed to think that with my academic background I would have no problem picking it up.

So I joined what was called Infotech Solutions Ltd. The business concept was to use information technology to supply business solutions to organisations. Our sales literature used the words Effective, Efficient, Productivity and Profit in all twenty-four combinations. The claim was that we helped businesses achieve these much desired states.

I’d been looking for a proper job. What I got was projects. I was given the title ‘Assistant Systems Analyst’, but in reality, at that time, our roles were not so well defined and I was more of a general dog’s body / trouble shooter / progress chaser. Chasing progress alone was a full time job. I spent the next two years hot on the heels of a series of projects which ran, ran and ran. In the end we nicknamed them Locos, (short for locomotives) to try to encapsulate the way in which they gradually gained momentum, shot off down the wrong spur of track, so that no one knew where they were, and with those on board finding them impossible to stop. My most vivid memory is that of the programmers constantly promising that since they were ‘90% of the way there they would only need another week to finish off the job’ and insisting that there were ‘only a few bugs to find and sort out’.

When, eventually, the day of unveiling finally arrived, without fail, a ritual would take place involving the end users, the ones who actually would have to live with the wizardry. As if working to a pre-written script, they would use the words ‘slow’, ‘awkward’, ‘difficult’. This would be followed by expressions like ‘once you get used to it’ and ‘why has the screen frozen?’ After a suitable period of silence the users would decide that there had been much change but little improvement and would begin to demonstrate their ingratitude by insisting on a long list of modifications.

I look back over the sea. The sun has started its slow inevitable descent into the sea. In three hours it will be dark, a black sky studded with bright pinpricks of light. But it won’t last, there is a gentle breeze already, a breeze which will eventually blow dark clouds across the sky, blocking out the light and covering up the clear view, backwards in time. I stand up and stretch. ‘Isn’t it funny that when you’ve seen it before, it is so easy to predict the future from so few clues. Shame it isn’t the same with projects. If only I’d known at the start of each one what I knew by the end.’ I sigh. If only we could predict the future and avoid the unpleasant bits. ‘Ah well, that’s life.’

But I’d tried to get a better understanding of what happened in projects. Over the years I’d also tried to discuss these problems with other project leaders. Though I thought that it was a problem, talking to them made it seem as if I was on my own. As a rule they tended not to confess to having any problems at all! Those who admitted to difficulties usually described them in the past tense. I understood their behaviour since I myself had often put on a brave and confident face as the only method of surviving disastrous projects. This made fellow project managers secretive about successes and failures and very difficult to learn from. That was another strange thing about managing projects, it wasn’t like being a line manager. If anything at all went wrong all the fingers automatically pointed directly at you. The only aspect in which it was similar was that if things went right you could almost guarantee that someone else would get the credit.

Maybe I can work it out for myself? After all, I have lived through so many myself. ‘Right, that’s settled then. What was that quote?’ I remember. ‘Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.’ ‘By the end of this fortnight I really want to have understood how it all works.’ I shall start off by looking back over my own experience.

I start to try to remember my past, always a difficult thing for me - I love the new, I love progress, I love pushing forward. I decide to think of myself after I graduated. I had taken two years off before going to University which meant that I was a very mature student. A bit old for employers who were looking for a fresh, bright, young graduate. Also, I don’t think that my bushy beard and long hair helped much. So I was delighted when I was offered a post as a research assistant at the University. The money was not brilliant but I compared it to living on my student grant, and it felt as if it would support me in unparalleled luxury. The thought of being able to live in a heated flat again was too enticing and I’d accepted the post immediately.

I was to study the molecular structures of Soy proteins. The Green movement and Vegetarianism were growing, there was a need to develop meat substitutes. High protein soy beans could substitute. But once cooked, they smelt and tasted like beans and gave you wind. You couldn’t make them into casseroles. At the time no one had a clue how to make vegetable protein taste and feel like meat. It was a challenge. If only you could, then you could make your million. Organisations were willing to pour money into studying molecular structures. This they thought held the key.

I was young. I’d dreamt of being a scientist. It looked exciting. And it was funded by two commercial organisations. The Confederation of Soya Bean Growers (usually abbreviated to CSBG) and KET Ltd., a heating equipment manufacturer. The bonus of being commercially funded was that I could sniff the scent of a real job in industry if all went to plan.

My boss was an egghead. At twenty-five he’d established the structure of a particularly tricky molecule using a piece of equipment he’d invented, designed and built. He was a tall, thin, arrogant man with a bushy beard, called Costerly. Since he had the only, very expensive piece of equipment needed for the work, he was invited to lead the two year, quarter of a million pound project. The open goal of the project was to find out the right strains of soya bean to process on KET’s equipment as meat substitutes. The Prof.’s hidden goal was really only to find an opportunity to use his equipment to study new and possibly Nobel prize winning molecular structures.

It was a terrible time. Demoralising and depressing years. Years spent repeating experiments, having to rely on often erroneous analytical results from a group of demotivated, demoralised co-workers who were bored with the equipment and didn’t understand the project goals. The boss did not communicate directly with us. I think he used telepathy to keep us all up-to-date and co-ordinated. Unfortunately none of us had the telepathic skills needed to receive his messages. He constantly invented new goals and experiments for us, and refused to take us seriously when we suggested that we were all more than slightly miffed at the way things were going.

Three years later, we’d spent four hundred thousand pounds, were one year late and, although we now had some very academically interesting micro graphs of molecular structures, we had no real information for our commercial sponsors. Well, what I mean is that we continued to call them sponsors although six months after the start of the project KET got a new managing director who didn’t share his predecessor’s enthusiasm for the project. And the CSBG was having difficulty maintaining the interest of its members. The year after we started was both warm and wet and the bumper crop which had resulted had led to a price war, prices had plummeted to a tenth of the previous year. Most of its members were either fighting each other or had given up the fight and simply gone bankrupt.

The Vice-Provost, who initially had seen the project only in terms of the financial benefits it offered, was not prepared for things going wrong. As the relationship with our sponsors deteriorated (the CSBG wouldn’t pay-up, and KET were threatening to sue us), he grew fatter and balder with every letter of complaint he received from KET or the Confederation about the lack of progress the project was making. He put more and more pressure on the Prof. to deliver. The Prof. kept us working on his agenda and simply used it as a way to put us under more pressure.

For me, it all came to a head one afternoon when I heard that Prof. Costerly had unilaterally cancelled a series of experiments I was planning simply because they didn’t make use of his precious equipment. I hit the roof, told him that the project did not revolve around his ‘stupid, expensive and trashy pile of junk’ and described what he could do with his project. I was very graphic in my instructions. Later that day I bought a bucket shop airline ticket to Australia. It was the furthest I could get away for the least money. I really have come full circle.