I keep watching the performance of Paula Vennells at the Post Office inquiry with almost complete bemusement.
I have been a director of a number of companies in my time. I do not pretend that any were the size of the Post Office. That would be completely untrue but, even so, there are translatable experiences.
That is most especially so because I usually worked as a part-time executive director of many of the companies I worked for. In that role what I learned very early on in my career was that I needed information systems that made me aware of what was actually going on in the organisations for which I was responsible in law.
The systems for doing so did, of course, vary. With my involvement in finance, I inevitably developed good relationships with the accountants working in all those companies. Doing so was, however, never enough for my purposes. I knew I needed to know a great deal more about these organisations if I was to be sure the information that I was getting was reliable.
After all, as someone who had read about the way in which organisations work and who had developed their understanding of this issue from reading The New Industrial State by J K Galbraith at an early stage in my professional development, I knew that organisations do have a tendency to filter the information they pass up the hierarchy to senior management. To be sure I really knew what was happening I needed ways to work around that constraint.
I did just that. For example, one organisation of which I was a director for a number of years undertook quite sensitive microbiological work. As a result I went out of my way to visit our laboratories. I did not just talk to the manager, but to their staff as well, even though I readily admit that I had little technical competence in this area. That made me a specially aware of the need to understand what we they were doing, and the risks it created.
In another organisation, the company ran a 24-hour shift system for part of the year. The night shift ran a limited range of activities and were, therefore, by and large left to get on with things by themselves. Those processes were, however, pretty important in making sure the workflow for the rest of the day happened. I needed to be sure I understood why and what was involved and that risk in all its forms was being managed. As a result, I made a point of occasionally turning up to join those on that shift in their middle of the night break, to make the coffee and have a chat. That way I hoped to understand what was happening in hours of the day when risk might have arisen. I also got to know the people a bit and why they were willing to work in this way.
That last point was always critical. I always made a point of knowing as many staff as I could. I tried to recall things like partners' and children's names. Interests were also important to make sure that there were always points of communication. It was amazing how much information you could find out if you started a discussion with someone about the previous weekend's football results.
I never forget the reception staff either. Like taxi drivers, they always known what is going on. They were always well worth talking to.
Why say all this? Because if Paula Vennells is to be believed, she apparently undertook her tasks as chief executive of the Post Office in some sort of bubble, entirely isolated from the organisation for which she was paid a considerable amount to lead.
Again, if she is to be believed, she did not apparently know about significant parts of its organisation, or about the activities of those for whom she was responsible.
As a result, it is not at all clear that she knew very much at all about the basic operations of the Post Office, and most particularly so when it came to the sub-post offices, which were the backbone of the organisation where much of its activity took place.
I cannot help say that I am forced to come to one of three conclusions.
She was either incompetent, as well as totally unsuited to her role, both of which are entirely possible.
Or, she totally naïvely believed that she could obtain all the information she needed without checking its credibility. That is what I think she would have us believe.
Or, she is simply not telling the truth. 
I am not passing judgement: she has not finished giving testimony. What I am saying is that her apparent belief that there were large parts of the activity of the organisation that she led that she did not know about because, she claimed, she was not qualified in a particular area of expertise, strikes me as marking her out as totally unsuited to having a senior management role. It is to precisely those areas that I think a good company director has to pay the most attention - because they cannot avoid their responsibility for them by passing the buck to others, as she seems to have done.
That, then, leads to another question. That is how did someone so apparently unaware of the demands of a job at senior director level get appointed as CEO of the Post Office? Was it precisely because she did not ask awkward questions?
Nothing removes her responsibility for what happened on her watch. Paula Vennells was well paid for the stress she is now suffering, and she probably still enjoys a considerable pension from the Post Office. I am not in anyway seeking to excuse her. But I cannot help but think that the buck in this case goes higher, and most especially to the ministers who, as the representative shareholders of the organisation, appointed her. They need to be questioned in a great deal more detail on this issue. The failings are as systemic as they are personal.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
She was brought in to turn losses into profit. That means cost cutting or revenue growth . I don’t know how she was recruited or what her previous experience was. Given profit can only improve through increased revenue or reduced cost she must have been brought in to do one or both of those. This would mean poring over numbers with accountants (likely her CFO) and perhaps auditors. Given her complete lack of understanding of how SubPOs worked it is evident she hardly left her desk but spent her time in internal meetings with people who had never worked at the coal face and therefore did not understand the real opportunities for revenue enhancement or cost management
A very similar problem with the NHS, the ministers and the DH officials have limited or no experience of frontline NHS work, few have even rudimentary health training (let alone qualifications) experience of primary care is particularly lacking. Hence the mess the GPs are in. Treating it like a hospital without the building prevents it working properly. Primary care is demand led, secondary(hospitals) is needs led, and community, aka prevention(immunisation, screening, health protection, health improvement) is demographic population profile led, i.e. but peoples age sex and genetic traits and community profile.
So three different approaches are required that must communicate effectively with each other, and listening is the great art of communication. Something managers seem to have overlooked, including political groups.
@ Mark T
That’s a first class summary of the real world, and also why creating artificial markets within and between sectors is so stupid.
The NHS ought to be a comprehensive integrated service, and its objectives cannot be met efficiently or effectively, by a profit driven model.
A quick comparison between the % GDP spent on health in the USA, by comparison with those countries with health as a public service, and then a quick look at relative health outcomes would put that shibboleth of free market ideology to rest.
Well, you have gone up a few notches in my estimation.
The fact that you have been involved with business’s that made things is something you need to make more of.
But these days with the internet is surely cant be very difficult for anyone with an ounce of curiosity to find out what a business does and in your case the sort of processes it runs, and thats even before you start visiting the coalface as you did.
Yet what we seem to get is case after case where it should have been obvious to anyone on the know what was going on but they either chose to ignore it or not look.
I suggest that it was just too convenient not to.
The Government set up inquiries of this kind for multiple purposes; principally to stop immediate criticism of government, spend so long preparing the report everyone has forgotten, retired, died or it seems remote from current crises. And pass the buck to the institution directly being investigated. It hasn’t worked so well in the blood scandal and Covid, because people are slowly learning, and the scam isn’t working well now – because it is overused, and people are beginning to notice that the reports are never implemented, nothing ever changes, and the only beneficiary is Government and politicians. You are being scammed by Government.
One famous quote comes to mind…..
“I know nothing Mr Fawlty”.
@Gordon McAdam
Sargant Schultz (Hogan’s Heroes) ran around saying the same thing:
He would often exit the scene with his catch phrase “I know (see, hear) nothing!”
HI Richard,
I firmly believe that she is both incompetent and dishonest. I would suggest that this is a trait that runs through most CEOs of large UK corporations (sweeping statement, I know). The only reason people like her , and others, arrive in these positions, is exactly the reason Starmer is where he is – Yes men who won’t rock the corporate boat.
I would also argue that the UK is the most corrupt, authoritarian government currently in the world (although US is close behind) and that would include the usual suspects the the UK likes to denigrate. It is down to people like her in business, government and media that it is this way.
Regards
I’m hoping the auditors and the finance director(s) will be cross-examined as it’ll be interesting to see how they can claim to have acted in good faith. Did either know that Fujitsu were accessing and altering raw accounting data that was fundamental to the PO’s performance?
If not why not, and if they did why didn’t they blow the whistle? Did the FDs think it was normal/Ok for an outside company to be able and permitted to alter raw data? Likewise the auditors?
And when will Fujitsu be cross-examined? The few people who have already appeared are only the tip of the Fujitsu iceberg.
If it were changed on maps to read “Corrupt Britain” it would be a great deal more accurate.
My perception is that many if not most senior executive roles are filled at least in part as a result of what I can only call the “old boy network”, where one’s background, friendly relations with those making the appointment, whether directly or indirectly, education, etc. all have a significant impact on the assessment of candidates. Skill, experience, and proven competence in earlier roles on the other hand tend to be undervalued.
I don’t know if it has the slightest relevance but I have been struck by the very large number of women in senior positions in the Post Office. ‘ Sarah this, Alice that, Jane, the other’ I haven’t noticed a single senior executive with a male sounding name.
There have been quite a lot, I think
John Warren will know more
Not sure I can help much. Crichton is a lawyer, Van den Bogerd spent over 30 years in the Post Office, and Alice Perkins was a Civil Servant in Dept of Health an Treasury. Vennells presented a very different, and diffident (lost, out of her depth) witness at the Inquiry, compared to the assertive corporate leader I recall, confidently repudiating challenges from MPs at the Select Committee around (was it) 2015; and projecting a clear image that she was in charge and knew her brief. It is noteworthy, and a weakness of legal-driven Inquiry process, that it fails totally to capture the ‘informal’ reality of business, when the reality of business is effectively controlled and managed informally, and not captured by texts. Texts are typically for the record, and some way from a literal representation of the facts.
Mr Schofield made a comment on BoE and independence blog wrt neo-liberalism.
Another way of looking at the Post Office scandal and the people responsible is that, this is a symptom of neo-liberalism – everything is market/profit focused with results such as those unfolding @ the enquiry. What is described could also be chracterised as a design feature of neo-liberalism where in theory individuals count, everybody is a rationale economic actor, markets need light regulation etc. All nonsense and bullshit.
Reducing the Post Office enquiry to a couple of naughty individuals is a mistake. It is the neo-liberal system that is at fault – applied to in this case a Post Office that in its latter stages evolved into a quasi-social institution.
Agreed
A key deceit of the neoliberal free market fiction is to insist on the free, voluntary exchange between all actors on the basis of mutually agreeable terms; yet to deny the gross disparity in power that usually occurs and the extreme asymmetry of information.
Actually lying or simply failing to make any effort to find out and rebalance matters, regarding the latter, shows total moral failure at the most basic level of being human.
Vennells is a product of that system as well as an operative in it, even a sort of priest (of that system!) I tend towards your first two remarks: incompetence (the Peter principle: the system doesn’t actually want truly competent people) and naivety (she said she was too trusting, ffs! Doesn’t Rev Venells know the scripture: “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?”)
I haven’t been following this closely, and I don’t have tv, so I might be wrong, but I wondered why nobody was struck by the numbers of people who, it appeared, suddenly had their fingers in the till and nobody asked how probable is it that a new IT system would make previously honest people start taking thousands out of their business.
Or is like the sat nav that you follow on an improbable route because it must be right until you get stuck in a muddy field?
The Post Office management were predisposed to assume there was a lot of fraud and criminality occuring at post offices prior to the computer system being implemented. The fact that so many more incidents of apparent fraud were “discovered” after horizon was installed, simply confirmed their bias.
A perceptive observation. Let’s follow that through. What does that tell you about what senior management actually thought of their own people; rather than the tearful ‘I love the Post Office’s rewriting of history. Vennells is a product of neoliberal, free market business culture. She worked for numerous businesses. Love is not a functionally operative neoliberal term; save as a scriptural abstraction, rolled out and celebrated each Sunday. I have always assumed that the functional absence of ‘agape’ in British public and business life was the object being celebrated.
I have been CEO or CTO of more than a dozen SMEs, and I totally agree with this blog post. It is inconceivable that a CEO on top of their brief could have had so little knowledge of what was going on in their organisation. Vennells is certainly incompetent, and now lying her ass off to protect herself.
There is also another point. As with so many organisations these days, the Post Office has apparently completely forgotten that it is there primarily to provide a service to its customers. The best way to turn around a loss-making business is often not to cut costs or increase margins, but to provide a better service that people want to make use of.
Sam Steyn KC is certainly taking a more abrasive line this morning. It would be so much healthier all round to hear from her, ‘I screwed up.’
I sense a complete absence of management by walkabout at the PO.
If a manager/CEO wants to understand their business and protect themselves from being isolated or shielded by gate-keeper executives, they need to set aside diary time and make ‘unscheduled’ visits around the business. Go and sit next to junior staff at their desk; stand at the end of the packing track; talk, share, ask and listen—and remember names, family, even the pet’s name, where they went on holiday last year and write it down later so that you have a starting point the next time you visit. Then, and only then, might staff begin to trust you and open up.
The best sources of info in my last place in the City of London were the messengers who had all-floors access and the in-house nursing sister—between them they knew the mood of the place.
It’s called getting down to the coal-face, which the Viscount Dudley admirably did in the eighteenth century; he’d get up at 4am wearing rags and in the dark join the miners making their way to one of his pits, he’d put on a thick Black Country accent and find out from them what was really happening in his pits! (NB: I’m not making an argument for feudal pit masters!)
I agree with this approach
1984 (or perhaps 1985). Lancer Boss – UK forlift truck company – run by two ex-army officers (Guards I think).
They took @ pop @ Jungenheinrich (German forklift truck co) – failed and then got taken over by …Jungenheinrich.
One of the first actions of the CEO of Jungenheinrich was to walk round the L-B shop floor. Comment by staff – first time that has ever happend.
The two pillocks that ran L-B were the usual brainless mustochioed types that the army was good at producing @ that time.
One reason why Germany still has a manufacturing base – owned by Germans – and the Uk has – none (owned by Brits).
Does anyone think someone(s) in senior postal management will serve jail time over this?
If sub-postmasters who were innocent served jail time, it only seems fair that guilty senior postal management should serve jail time too.
Then again, I am a Yank and throwing people in jail is what Yanks do! LOL! LOL!
The only person who might, so far, is Paula Vennels, for perjury – and I think that very unlikely
It goes much wider than that. It seems to me there is a fair chance that the chap from Fujitsu might be prosecuted for perjury – clearly his evidence about the functioning of the Horizon system used in many cases was not true, and others knew it – and there must be a case for some at the Post Office to be prosecuted for malicious prosecutions or perverting the course of justice.
At a systems level, there is a problem with the rebuttable presumption that computer evidence will be correct, unless there is evidence of a fault. Let’s see the known errors log. (If there is no errors log, that tells its own story – the IT provider is incompetent because they are not tracking the errors. )
I keep wondering why, if no real money was actually missing from the sub postmasters’ accounts , did the accountants at head office not notice and double check the balances.
I too wonder that
The problem was Horizon double counted some deposits – so there did seem to be missing money
Worse than that, what happened to the money the PO dishonestly extracted from SPMs? To make up the mythical shortfalls.
Straight to the bottom line of the PO, boosting their profits.
Ive followed this over many years and have been glued to the enquiry over the last few days. I’ve managed and reviewed many large programmes and customer/supplier relationships as well as board level teams. I also know some of those involved in the reviews – Nick Wallis’s book is excellent.
Like others, I have no doubt that Vennells (or Venals as I think of her) is either:
a) Grossly incompetent in not knowing what was going on in a fundamental part of the business’s operations
b) Deeply dishonest in leading a cover-up of the problems, even though that had disastrous consequences for SPMs
Or probably both. Sadly I doubt that she will ever be held properly accountable. She should be in court but it is hard to see what she might be charged with, which illustrates the utter lack of accountability in the corporate world, despite extraordinary pay and rewards. The financial crisis demonstrated that big time, where there was no punishment for any of those who led those organisations and were responsible. See also water, where the stench of wilful incompetence and greed is overwhelming.
The issue is much broader than the Post Office
Much to agree with
Perverting (or attempting to pervert) the course of justice is available and already being considered for the Fujitsu ‘experts’ who lied to the courts during trials. Plus perjury for those who gave evidence in trials and, potentially for those giving evidence in this enquiry. Outside criminal charges I believe that a number of legal professionals will face enquiries by their regulatory bodies and possible disciplinary action.
White collar failure of a disturbing kind for the most part has been decriminalised. They are determined to be “nice people”, and therefore don’t mean it. Our law could be more rigorous, but it isn’t. What we have seen in the Post Office Inquiry is the weakness of textual evidence. People think the ‘smoking gun’gun is a metaphor. It isn’t. In our law you need – a smoking gun.
I watched the three episode docuseries ‘Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office” and the actual documentary “The Real Story of Mr. Bates vs The Post Office” and if what I viewed was 75% true & correct then at least five people should severe jail time. Countess innocent people had their lives ruined.
These five(+) people would definitely serve jail time in the US. People go to jail for perjury in the USA, just ask Michael Cohen. There is a class system in the USA but the USA class system means NOTHING and has *NO merit in any court of law with regards to white collar crime.
*Donald Trump as a previous President is a different story but it is because he is a previous President.
Lord Sikka wrote this gloomy piece back in January, filled with foreboding, concerned there’d be no meaningful prosecutions as the people in charge were the govt itself so obviously there’d be no appetite for them. Once Labour are in though, that could all change… or maybe not, seeing as how there have been at times Labour ministers in charge so they won’t want to be highlighting their own failures either. The good ship Status Quo will probably sail serenely on then… https://leftfootforward.org/2024/01/the-post-office-scandal-shows-how-unchecked-power-of-corporations-and-wealthy-elites-can-bludgeon-people-into-silence-and-submission/