The Further Adventures of Billy Chippo

Billy the Fix-it Man

I’ve been away for a few weeks, and when I arrive back at work I find a note from the IT manager on my chair. He wants to see me immediately to discuss a serious and pressing issue. I pick up the phone and start to call my travel agent, but before I get through, the manager taps me on the shoulder and insists I follow him to his office straightaway. He doesn’t even wait for me to get some coffee.

“Now, Billy, I presume you know what this is about?”
“Well, if it’s the little matter of the payroll database being published on the Intranet web server, I can explain.”
“It’s nothing to do with the payroll database.”
“Is it anything to do with the Chairman’s expense claims being accidentally e-mailed to the Inland Revenue?”
“No.”
“The webcam in the women’s changing rooms?”
“I didn’t know about… Look, never mind about all that. The problem is Genghis Khan.”

For those of you who are not in the know, Genghis Khan is our chief international project manager. The problem is that to say he’s as prickly as a porcupine would be an insult to porcupines. The boss has been trying to get rid of him for years, but without success. As a last resort he decided a while back to seek advice from the most sneaky, devious and unscrupulous person in the department. Guess who that was?

“Billy, do you remember what you advised me to do before you went away?”
“Yes. If I recall, I suggested three possibilities. The first was to perform a reorganisation, make everyone reapply for their jobs, and see to it that he doesn’t get one. The second was to outsource a big chunk of the department and get him transferred to the supplier. The third was to propose a huge project to the Board with an outrageous budget, put him in charge, then when the budget request is turned down, make him redundant. Which did you try?”
“Well to be on the safe side, I tried all three.”
“And none of them worked?”
“Worse. They all backfired.”
“How come?”
“Well for a start, Personnel department insisted on being involved in the appointment decisions, and because they couldn’t fault him on anything, they gave him his job back. Once that happened, nobody applied to work in his section, so now we have no project managers.”
“And the outsourcing deal?”
“I’ve just got the tenders in, and none of them are prepared to take him on. Someone must have tipped them off. Now I have all the work of evaluating the tenders and placing a contract.”
“And the huge project idea?”
“I submitted a proposal to buy one of those big ERP systems and then to re-engineer all our databases into it. I costed it at fourteen million pounds.”
“You’re not saying the board went for it?”
“They did. The ERP vendor is turning up this afternoon to finalise the contract, and I don’t have any other project managers to supervise the implementation.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m not going to do anything, Billy. You are. You’re going to sort out this mess for me, or your contract will be terminated immediately. Take these tenders and the ERP draft contract. I have a management meeting to attend right now: I shall expect you to report back to me with your solution as soon as it’s finished.”

I return to my desk and break out the pint-sized mug that I keep for emergencies. I take it to the coffee machine and fill it to the brim. This is going to require some serious inspiration.

An hour later, I’m refreshed and back in the boss’s office.

“So, Billy, what’s the plan?”
“I think I can sort the whole thing out, on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You have to take me back as a permanent employee. In fact, you have to appoint me chief project manager and give me responsibility for the ERP project.”
The boss sighs and stares at me morosely.

“OK, but I can only do it if Genghis Khan leaves.”
“I’ll take care of that.”
“And what about the outsourcing tenders?”
“That’s easy. You just pick the most incompetent company, so that the rest of us look good by comparison.”
“We tried that before, when we outsourced the Help Desk. The users didn’t distinguish between us and the outsourcers, so we all looked bad.”
“Well then you pick the most expensive one, to make us look good value by comparison.”
“Hmm, there maybe something in that. OK, it’s worth a try. But how are you going to persuade Genghis Khan to leave?”
“That is my little secret. Now I must be off to complete the contract negotiations with the ERP outfit.”

The ERP representative turns up and I usher him into a quiet room. He starts to go through his proposal in detail, but I interrupt him and ask him to cut to the bottom line.

“Well, fundamentally there are two options. The basic product set costs five million, and the full range is seven million. That’s including installation and commissioning.”
“What if you undertake all the database conversions for us?”
“That would push it up to thirteen million.”
“And what if we wanted you to do all the project management for us, so I didn’t have any work myself?”
“Hmm, well that would make it thirteen and a half million.”
“And what if we wanted you to recruit one of our project managers as part of the arrangement?”
“I don’t quite follow.”
“Well, let’s put it this way. Take Genghis Khan off our hands and you can call it fourteen million.”
“OK, deal.”

We settle a few details and he leaves. Afterwards I’m left to ponder how funny it is that even the most intractable problems can be resolved by the application of a little inventive scheming. Now the boss is going to be delighted, Genghis Khan is going to get an offer he can’t refuse, the vendor has a big contract, and I have a new job with no work to do. And they say money can’t buy you happiness.