Archive
musings on crisis management and the Ebola virus in the USA
I have been following the Ebola issue rather closely, or should I say it has been following me for here in the USA you can’t escape coverage of it. Read more…
if your behaviour is right you don’t need rules
In the days when I ran Facilities Management operations one of my concerns was that we should not move into jobsworth territory. This can sometimes be hard to avoid because FM is often placed in the role of enforcing corporate policy, and this is a grey area where right and wrong meet the rules. Read more…
let’s outlaw management speak
Following on from last week and some of the things I mentioned on meetings another aspect jarred with me the other day; management speak. Read more…
meetings; what a waste of time
Is that how you feel about meetings? It certainly reflected my view for much of my management time and influenced the way that I ran meetings myself. And whilst much of the fault lies with the participants, the real blame for a bad meeting lies with the person chairing. Read more…
how to influence, or even join, the top team
In many of the business specialisms we talk about improving our influence in the boardroom; we want to have that presence amongst the movers and shakers and have a place at the top table, but how do we get there? Read more…
is every work day being different a good thing?
One thing that is likely to grab my interest on TV, and there isn’t a lot these days, is a fly on the wall style programme. Whilst I accept that these things are carefully edited so as to keep people watching I do enjoy looking behind the scenes. Read more…
customers, processes and bureaucracy
A couple of things around customer experience have inspired this week’s musings, one of them personal and the other through something on TV. Read more…
a secret ingredient of leadership
Look up the characteristics of leadership and you will see the usual suspects; charisma, decision making, vision, caring for their followers, character, courage and so on, but there is another key ingredient that rarely gets a mention and that is the subject of this weeks musing. Read more…
does a team need a captain?
I often use sporting analogies in this column as they provide a graphic parallel with life in any organisation; the small group doing their best to compete and overcome the opposition. Even individual sports these days seem to involve a team for we talk about Team Murray with regard to our current tennis hero or take golf where whilst the player plays the shot they seem unable to do so without half an hour of discussion with their caddie beforehand and have trainers, dieticians, psychologists and all sorts waiting in the wings, but I digress. Perhaps my editor needs to be alongside… Read more…
eternal vigilance is the price of dishonesty #quote
This is a quote attributed to John Z De Lorean, automotive legend if not for all of the reasons he might have aspired to. As a fervent deregulator I do appreciate the need for some rules, but the question of how many we have to have is always a hard one to answer. Read more…
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