Council chief executive Stephen Hughes urges staff to make paper butterflies

Jul 16 2009 by Neil Elkes, Birmingham Mail

A SERIES of “wacky” motivational emails from Birmingham city Council chief executive Stephen Hughes urged up to 30,000 staff to make little paper butterflies.

The three high-concept origami emails were designed to drum up interest in the council’s business transformation initiative by encouraging staff to transform a humble piece of paper into a butterfly – but instead left the £200,000-a-year boss wide open to ridicule.

They were based on the chaos theory concept which suggests that a butterfly flapping its wings in a rainforest can set a chain of events in motion causing a hurricane on the other side of the world.

But instead it caused chaos in offices throughout the city as confused managers, civil servants, librarians, social workers, accountants and secretaries either dutifully folded their tiny works of art or wondered whether Mr Hughes had lost the plot.

Later he described the emails as ‘wacky’ and admitted the stunt perhaps went too far. But his enthusiasm was apparent in the first message which asked: “Ever thought that things should be different? You’re not the only one. The good news is that you have the power to make changes and create something special. Starting right now.”