Daniel was a senior scientist who had taken early retirement from an agricultural research establishment. He had had a distinguished career, publishing many academic papers and had led a team with an international reputation. Besides being a successful scientist, he also prided himself on his business acumen having worked all his career in the commercial sector.

Daniel was tall, bearded and well-meaning. After a few months of retirement, when he had redecorated the house inside and out and conquered the garden, he looked for something else to do. His wife, though fond of him, was also keen for him to find an outside interest. For many years she had been used to having the run of the house during normal working hours without anyone getting under her feet. She ran a small PR agency from an office at home and she was finding it hard to adjust to having a husband at a loose end.

In his spare time, one of Daniel’s near neighbours was chairman of the local marriage guidance council. Over the past couple of years when they met at social events, they had had a few conversations about marriage guidance and Daniel knew that his neighbour was casting around for a successor. After some thought, Daniel volunteered to become involved and was invited to one of the committee meetings.

Daniel was welcomed with open arms as someone with useful business experience and with time on his hands. At the next AGM, Daniel was proposed and seconded as the next chairman and voted in unopposed. The retiring chairman couldn’t disguise his relief.

Daniel took to his new responsibilities with typical thoroughness and set to work to tackle some of the problems that faced the charity. His predecessor had briefed him on these and identified the key problems.

There were three priorities. Firstly, to improve the finances. Apart from voluntary donations, they were totally dependent on grants from the local authority. Secondly, to find some way to reduce the embarrassingly long waiting list of clients asking for an appointment. Daniel knew that marriage guidance councils were not set up to provide an emergency service, but he considered that having to wait six weeks or more for a first appointment was unacceptable. Thirdly, to find out why there was such a disparity between the ‘productivity’ of different counsellors. The figures showed that, on average, some counsellors would have three or four one-hour sessions with each client, while others would have twelve to fifteen sessions. Daniel was very puzzled by these differences.

Daniel soon found that whatever he suggested was met with fierce resistance. Admittedly it didn’t help that he kept saying, ‘When I was in business we used to ... .’ There were many instances where Daniel’s ideas from the commercial world triggered outrage. For example, he suggested that they should introduce a minimum charge for counselling sessions and encourage those who could afford it to pay more. This was howled down by the counsellors, who insisted that the service had always been accessible to all, irrespective of their ability to pay. He suggested that they should try to raise funds from new sources – perhaps from employers in the area, arguing that marriage guidance reduced stress and absenteeism. But the majority of counsellors were strongly of the opinion that it was right and proper that the local authority should continue to provide the funding. He suggested that the waiting list could be cut by having some counsellors who saw clients promptly to make an early assessment of their needs and decide whether they should be allowed to jump the queue. Shock, horror – this would create a dangerous precedent and mislead people into thinking they were an emergency service like the Samaritans.

Within a few weeks, poor Daniel was feeling that he was in an impossible position. He had never before come across a group of people who were so risk-averse, so determined to resist change. At work there had, of course, been many instances of resistance but somehow it had been easier to win over hearts and minds and, as a last resort, to impose a change. With volunteers it was a totally different experience. There was no way to insist on a change without risking them going off in a huff and the whole service collapsing.

Meanwhile, the waiting list grew longer. In desperation, Daniel called a special meeting of the counsellors where he gently, ever so gently, suggested that the counsellors with a typically fast turnover of clients could compare their working practices with those who tended to take longer to achieve, ostensibly, the same outcome. He hoped that some good practices might emerge that would help to improve overall productivity.

Unfortunately, none of the counsellors took to the notion of ‘productivity’ and some, inevitably the ones who tended to have numerous sessions with the same client, immediately took offence. This was no less than an attack on their professionalism, indeed on their integrity. Did he for one moment imagine they were hanging onto clients for longer than was absolutely necessary? The idea was outrageous! They, and they alone, were trained to judge when their clients were ready to disengage from the counselling process.

Doing his best to appear undaunted, Daniel cited some figures showing that the national average was six counselling sessions per client and that some of the counsellors were greatly in excess of this. This, of course, was a terrible mistake! It was naïve of him to imagine for a moment that statistics, from whatever source, would win the day. He was met by a barrage of objections – the need to be client-centred, how averages were misleading, how statistics proved nothing, how each client’s needs were unique ... and so on.

Daniel went home to his wife, a broken man. Like all rational scientists, he licked his wounds and pondered his experiences for a few days before calmly resolving to resign at the next AGM.