People who fail upwards, AIBU to ask how they do it?

[Feelinggoodtuesday]

Just that really. I’m looking at the whole Chris Grayling situation and can’t quite wrap my head around how he was even mooted for that intelligence select committee role given his shambolic record, most recently as Secretary of State for transport. I mean, I’m unfortunate enough to have to rely on the northern rail franchise and I recall the mess with the timetable last year. And of course who can forget what he did as justice secretary. How does he fail upwards, I need to know because clearly I’m doing it all wrong, working hard and succeeding in various positions but still have to fight to prove I’m more than capable of upward movement! Help please. How can I fail by lack of effort but still get promoted? Thanks !

Still, at least she's not doing anything important now. Only leading the covid Track and Trace.

@notalwaysalondoner

I think the private sector is catching up with rewarding mediocrity if not poor failures (I accept good failures and calculated risks because we must innovate and push boundaries). I’m in a profession where technical capabilities is just as important as relationships (think fee income) and I’m amazed by the woeful competencies of senior colleagues like myself (technically and relationships-wise). I do sometimes catch myself asking who that eff gave these guys a seat on the table... how and why?

Sadly, I'm not remotely surprised by his appointment. First he's hardly unbiased politically, and secondly, did anyone expect more from this bunch of self-congratulatory chums?

I used to work with someone like this. Was useless at their job. Everyone else kept leaving and repetedly told senior managers they were leaving because of this team leader.....lazy, useless, up ineffective.

Senior managers did bugger all and let him carry on lolling around the office not doing anything while everyone else burnt themselves out trying to pick up the slack.

I think he must have had something on the senior team.

Promotion & advancement in politics isn’t based on ability. It’s based on patronage, loyalty and ideological compatibility. When Johnson promotes Graying, he isn’t promoting a failed transport minister. That’s irrelevant. He is promoting a fellow traveller, one of us, a loyal hard Brexiteer.

How on earth do you think the notoriously thick, useless and obnoxious Priti Patel became Home Secretary?

Thecazelets

“It’s always gone on but I wonder if we’re just more aware of it now.”

I think we have one of the most antediluvian cabinets in modern history: a central casting mob of old boy self congratulation and echo chamber politics. I’m sure it’s easier for these people to get ahead now than it was 15 years ago.

People keep mentioning “the old boys network”. THAT is the epitome of failing upwards. They’re the ones who do this and promote their peers. It’s an acceptance of “Oh well, he tried at thing, now let’s see if this suits him instead.”

It’s an acknowledgement that they “deserve” to be there in those positions simply by birth and not by actual intelligence or capability. And don’t bother qualifying it by saying “merit”. Being born white and male is axiomatic as “deserving based on merit”.

Nepotism.
Or other connections of a similar sort.

"How on earth do you think the notoriously thick, useless and obnoxious Priti Patel became Home Secretary?"

I'll print this and wear it on a T-shirt proudly.

The whole cabinet was selected for ideological purity on Brexit. Useless, inept, corrupt. Oh, and useless.

And in further news today:

Firm with links to Gove and Cummings given Covid-19 contract without open tender
www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/10/firm-with-links-to-gove-and-cummings-given-covid-19-contract-without-open-tender

The Cabinet Office has awarded an £840,000 contract to research public opinion about government policies to a company owned by two long-term associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings, without putting the work out for tender.
[...]
The government justified the absence of a competitive tendering process, which would have enabled other companies to bid, under emergency regulations that allow services to be urgently commissioned in response to the Covid-19 crisis.

However, the Cabinet Office’s public record states that portions of the work, which involved focus group research, related to Brexit rather than Covid-19

^^ This hiring by the private school and Oxford-educated, middle-class white man from a landowning family with a castle, who plays at being oh-such-a-rebel when he puts out job adverts for "mavericks" just like himself.

With his job adverts he bypassed Civil Service hiring procedures designed to reduce "jobs for the boys" and the hiring of "people like us."

And with his contract-letting he bypassed the competitive tendering that's designed to reduce the use of public funds as a swill-trough for "chums".

And having seen central government procurement in inaction, can I just say these payments seem notably prompt?

The company Public First did the first work on 3 March and were paid on 18 March. They were also paid on 20 March, 2 April and 27 May for subsequent work.

IME this is unusually swift even when there's a contract in place.

Which there wasn't. The actual contract wasn't entered until till 5 June – and covered the above retroactively.

Maybe the Cabinet Office accounts department is magically different from all other parts of central governments, to hand over money so swiftly, with so little paperwork and largely on trust. But this is the same Cabinet Office accounts department which is supposedly so tardy with its paperwork that it can't even issue a project code promptly.

(NB tardy issuing of project codes is a known problem – but IME it usually goes hand-in-hand with even tardier issuing of payment.)

Someone's enjoying having the keys to the cash box slightly too much...

It's not just nepotism, or being male, or being white, although all of those things perhaps matter to some degree.

It's being a person who has held lots of offices and positions, and thereby is seen as "an experienced pair of hands who can navigate X and motivate Y". It's about scale - can a person work and operate at that kind of level and scale and be effective enough? Someone who people are used to, who knows enough important folk to get a project moving.

The experience, no matter how poor the outcome, leads to more experience, because those around him are too lazy and dumb to actually look outside of the "experienced hands" thing.

It's why Serco and the like keep getting contracts. Why for a decade and a half, the same names kept relegating clubs from the Premiership and yet getting another job despite their failure. Why certain ministers keep getting job after job despite failing publicly.

We seem to rate "experience" over competency, every time.

@LiveintheNow fantastic. Thx so much for posting that link . Describes my former boss exactly .
It’s fascinating... genuinely .
Department of 20 had 13 people leave in a year !!
It’s bonkers

Thanks for the replies all. Interesting but depressing to have to face up to the fact that we could be do better (well those in authority can make better decisions that generally filter down the systems / institutions within their influence or control) but fail to.

Work in the NHS. I know SO many people who have failed upwards. Apparently it’s too expensive to sack them, so they get moved upwards, into management and away from patients.

Not read the full thread, but having just watched the Storyville on the collapse of Lehman brothers I would love to know how Richard Fuld reached the top with a salary of multi millions. He came across as odious and totally and utterly incapable...

It's staggering about Grayling isn't it? The only thing I can conclude is this government is trolling us. They are coming up with a "just when you thought we couldn't do anything more appalling we have".

I just imagine Cummings constantly whispering to Johnson "do what you like! Don't apologise for anything!"

Or should that say "do what I like!"

Dh, who's never worked in an office, thought it was unbelievable that David Brent held the position he did....

@MrsIcandothis

"How on earth do you think the notoriously thick, useless and obnoxious Priti Patel became Home Secretary?"

I'll print this and wear it on a T-shirt proudly.

Me too 😂

Alas, this thread now merits reviving:

Coronavirus: Dido Harding to be temporary head of new health agency
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53813480

Coronavirus: Public Health England 'to be replaced'
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53799854

It is pretty common in the private sector. Most CEOs and execs are overpaid buffoons. Execs with failures that would condemn any normal worker continue to get new management posts and board seats

Being white, male and middle-upper class is a sure fire way to do it.

So, for the second time this week, the bad pennies on this thread have cropped up again.

Public First, run by Gove & Cummings' pals, which got Covid-19 contracts without open tender? Guess what their next gig was?

Firm linked to Gove and Cummings hired to work with Ofqual on A-levels
Exclusive: Public First was given communications contract without competitive tender
www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/20/firm-linked-to-gove-and-cummings-hired-to-work-with-ofqual-on-a-levels