A Christmas Trivial Pursuit

Many of us will, at some stage in our careers, have found ourselves involved in proving the business ‘law’ that, ‘work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.’

The law was devised by Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson, who started life as a naval historian, but found fame with his humorous observations on the world of business. He launched his theory in 1955 in the Economist, as an observation on the ever-expanding nature of bureaucracy, the continually rising headcount and related costs.

He waggishly predicted that at some point the number of admirals in the Royal Navy would inevitably exceed the number of fighting ships. As proof of his work’s continued relevance in 2008 this prediction came to pass as, by then, the Senior Service had 41 admirals and only 40 ships.

It’s with almost perfect irony that the essential truths behind Parkinson’s observations led him to be considered as an important scholar of public administration and management.

He called another of his insights his Law of Triviality. Here he argues that members of an organisation, or board, give disproportionate weight to trivial issues and that, ‘the time spent on any agenda item will be in inverse proportion to the sum of money or complexity of the subject matter.’ He suggested the hypothetical example of a board spending more time discussing the fabric of the bikes sheds than the specification of the nuclear reactor that the cyclists would be working at. This became known as the Bike Shed Effect.

It’s this effect that perhaps gives an insight into the reasons underlying the parlous state of marketing, and its declining status in the boardroom. This is evidenced by the fact that: 

·       Only 7% of FTSE 100 board directors have any marketing expertise

·       The current lifespan of a CMO is shorter than that most endangered of species, the Premier League manager.

·       CMOs consider their greatest challenge to be getting C-suite buy in to their plans

Picture the scene as the CMO sidles in to present his multimillion pound marketing plan to the accountant-heavy board. The engine of growth of the business is at stake, but it’s big numbers, and it all sounds complicated and risky. (Have you ever met a numbers man who likes success being related to the mysterious coupling of magic and logic?)

The board quickly considers its options

·       Cut the budget back to a level that puts less at stake. . .coincidently the level at which the marketing programme becomes ineffective and leads to the CMOs replacement

·       Take the ‘no risk’ option and trouser the budget

·       Advise the CMO to come back with a plan with more logic and less magic

And, as the crestfallen CMO shuffles off to pimp his Linked In profile, the board moves on to a lengthy debate about a less taxing agenda item.

Perhaps we could test this theory with an analysis of how many FTSE 100 companies have an aesthetically pleasing bike shed.

Compliments of the season!