……………… me

So what is there to tell?  I was born some while ago (too many years) in Kent but now I live in a small village in the Cotswolds.

My wife, Caroline, and I moved here in 1986 and I don’t really think we were expecting it to be quite like it was (and still is).  We moved from near Dartford in Kent, where our house there would, at one time, have been in the countryside but not when we were there – though the house still had a cottagey feel.

Where we live now is definitely ‘in the country’ although it’s not remote or ‘in the middle of nowhere’.  When we moved here it was like being on holiday all of the time – apart from having to go to work of course.  But, coming home of an evening, and at weekends it was like being on holiday.

After some 38 years it still seems a bit like that – though some of the novelty has worn off now.

I am now retired from work 🙂 – it sounds so final!  I used to work as a business consultant for a large international consulting and systems integration company.  I was with the company (in one of its many guises) since 1998.

Prior to that I was head of a specialist development team in a small Software Development Company.  I joined them in 1989 (the year my son was born) after about six years with a large-scale Electrical Distributors.

I’ve worked in all sorts of market sectors – finance, health, military/defence, Government, transport etc. etc.

My retirement came about when I took a redundancy offer from my company.  I had really enjoyed my work in ‘IT’ but not so much in the latter years.  The performance management culture is killing our workforce.  It has its supporters and they are no doubt convinced that it is ‘the way’ to operate a company in today’s climate.  I disagree.  It’s a way of operating an organisation when you know no better.  It’s a way that those who are not really in touch with a business can tell others how to run it.

This whole approach is flawed in my opinion and I see many different professions gradually burning themselves out because of the unnecessary demands that working that way bring on the workforce.  It’s the same in the health sector, education, law, both public and private sectors and every other area of business I can think of.  Everybody worth their salt is eager to ‘get out of it’.  Thankfully I now am ‘out of it’, have been for over 10 years now, and I don’t miss it one bit.

Caroline also finished with teaching, something she loved for over 30 years.  Eventually the pressures of performance management, OFSTED inspections and increasing unrealistic demands took its toll.  It’s the same old problem I’m afraid.