AA62
Yes, an oft repeated term at that time. It arose from CDPs' policy the previous year, that he did not want engineering project managers managing engineering projects. He announced 600 job cuts, just after everyone had moved from London. He was hated, and everyone I know had a little smile when Haddon-Cave dug a hole and shoved him in.
His problem was that the policy I mentioned earlier, new recruits skipping 5 grades, meant a huge disparity between staff at the same grade; so he chose to dumb down to avoid embarrassment. He should have been demanding that all staff satisfy grade minima. (Today, I'd say a mere handful in DE&S do). For example, I had two engineers of the same grade in one of my teams in 1997. One had airworthiness delegation and managed work that in other parts of MoD attracted sizeable teams. (He's still in, and one of the few). The other was minutes secy to a minor meeting, and entered data in a database. The latter was not to blame in any way, and in time became useful - but in a very narrow field, meaning he didn't meet minima. But the other was bored out of his skull, because he knew he was doing work beneath (what he considered, correctly) his paygrade. Equally, he was annoyed because the pay structure at the time favoured the inexperienced. This wasn't easy to manage, not least because Servicemen looked on aghast, as their system tends to avoid such disparity. Both OR and front line were given contact details if they had queries on any given subject, but all naturally deviated to the guy who knew how to solve the problem, even if not his job.