Marshal Management.

I am now an officially trained I.O.M. TT marshal, which allows me to marshal at motorcycle race meetings on the island and in the UK; a very small cog in the best management structure I’ve ever experienced over forty years in industry. It requires over five hundred people, mostly unpaid volunteers, spread out over 37 miles of track to respond instantly to any incident. Race Control goes to Chief Sector Marshals, to Section Marshals and their teams, six Travelling Marshals, two Coarse Cars and two Airmed helicopters, all connected by a network of over a hundred Tetra radios. The result is an injured rider can be in hospital in less than 20 minutes from the moment he or she falls. I am so impressed with the clarity of purpose of the whole thing. No inter-departmental rivalry or buck passing, no vying for promotion, no levels of self-importance other than the importance of one’s role. Everyone is friendly but intensely focused on doing his or her best. Industry would do well to study its example. It appears this very high level of effectiveness is largely due to there being no profit involved, just the saving of lives. Profit, differentials of salary, differentials of power and the resulting competitive hierarchy all seem to militate against effectiveness. Maybe when we can be promoted to the place of our best contribution rather than our level of incompetence we can unleash our true human capabilities. And maybe the happiness from making that contribution is a better form of wealth than salary, and in the case of the city, bonuses.