Archive
A Patient’s Progress – The Book
For those that remember my series of stories on life in hospital, the 20 or so stories that appeared here were a little under half of what I wrote during my stay, and I have pulled the whole work together in an eBook.
As with my previous book it is on Kindle to begin with, but I will start looking at the paperback options in a week or two. You can buy the Kindle edition here: A Patient’s Progress
My hospital sojourn interrupted the process of another book that was also almost ready for publication, and I want to resume work on that with the aim of having it on Kindle before Christmas, so watch this space.
2013 could see a number of publications from me depending on how other work goes; writing is a very time-consuming activity!
wardrobe malfunction! it’s back into the closet!
I really must stop writing these prophetic posts. This morning’s Monday Musing had barely hit cyberspace when my tea making activities were interrupted by an ominous rumble above me. The Berkshire Belle was then heard getting out of bed and that moment every Facilities Manager dreads was upon me, for the client’s voice was heard to call “we have a problem”. Read more…
asset management; a hard lesson
Asset management is very much at the forefront of my thinking at the moment, and in a very personal sense. It was about 4 weeks ago that I took a long look in the mirror and decided that I needed to apply some first principles to my main asset; myself. Read more…
midweek musings on how to treat people that you’re trying to win business from
Last week I had a message that someone had called my office asking for me. They declined to give a reason for their call.
The next day they called again, and then again. I knew by now who the company was and, having looked them up on the web, knew that what they were offering was of no interest to my business, so when I got yet another message I rang them to ask them not to waste their time and money. Read more…
technology should push us as well as pull us
If you’ve followed my Tweets over the last few days you’ll know that I have changed my mobile (cell) ‘phone last week. This was part of a long overdue strategic issue for me; overdue because I had been procrastinating about making the change from something that I used for calls, and the odd text, to something that made sense as an integrated office tool for the itinerant way of working that is my life. Read more…
midweek musings on menswear at work
Talking to people about formal business wear at work this week, there is no sign of any abandonment of the collar and tie for men. With all of the moves to try and dispose of the tie, why is it still with us? Read more…
Weekend Musings on Change
It is a while now since Monday Musings settled into its current format and I would like to make some changes. As yet I’ve not entirely decided what these should be, but what follows is the way that I am thinking.
The 600 words every Monday at 0600 UTC was a challenge that I was happy to meet. Over the years that I have been hitting that target I have written in a variety of styles and on a range of topics. Musings was intended to be a vehicle for serious topics even if I do get them over with a periodic use of humour, but the 600 words once a week has become something of a constraint, or at least from time to time it has.
I will keep the Monday column going though, simply because it is a good discipline and one that I find very useful in terms of business writing. Six hundred words in a standard font and size is a single sheet of A4 paper, and being able to set out an idea on a single side of paper is something that anyone in business should be able to do.
But when I wrote I Don’t Have My Decision Making Trousers On, the old Musings posts that I incorporated into that book all benefitted from being re-written with the freedom of however many words it took. In some cases they were improved by condensing them, but in most cases they came out a little longer. The 600 limit also precludes some of the stories that I have wanted to tell and a few of those drafts that I had stored away found their way into “Trousers”.
So what I have in mind is to keep my 600 word format musings coming through on Mondays, but to be able to bring in anything else that crosses my mind as and when it does. That leads to the second change, and this is also something that I’ve not yet decided on, but I will change the name of the blog. Monday Musings was somewhat un-original; there are many blogs with that title, but so far every alternative that I can come up with is also either in use or too close to someone else’s pride and joy for me to want to muscle in.
The change of name will therefore come when I get that spark of inspiration to find a new name for it; there is no hurry.
So it is business as usual, but with a gradual change over the coming weeks. Thanks to all who read what I write here, and another thanks to those who leave a comment, Tweet the blog or talk to me about things that I have written when we run in to each other.
Weekend Musings on Ethics
The next Monday Musing will be somewhat harder hitting that some, but the whole issue of ethics in business and public life is something that I think we need to get a grip on, hence some of my blogs and more public writings around now.
When I was younger there was a value in public service and that was still very much in evidence when I first began to meet with government figures in 1983, but it seems that much of that has gone. The people who we elect are there to serve us, or at least the greater good and not themselves. If you look at the code of conduct for even the humblest of clubs or bodies there will be something there about conflicts of interest and the like, but so few seem to even pay this lip service.
And then there is the incompetence factor. We have elected officials from this government and its predecessor who have failed in their duties to the public and yet have the gall to shout and point fingers at business people. Ethics? Honour? Sense of duty? Character? I was brought up to believe that these were fundamentals; where did we lose sight of that?
Brushing off the Small Print
Over the weekend I was informed by a major UK retailer that toothpaste is not a dental product. You may find that as bizarre as I did, but it is true, as far as they are concerned within the limits of the relevant promotion.
Whatever their logic in drawing that line for their promotion may be my view is that it is another symptom of a malaise that we really should have stamped out by now; that of the Small Print. We had started to make real progress a few years ago with having clarity about things, even in those last bastions of the Small Print, the insurance and travel businesses, but it has begun to make a comeback.
Probably one of the drivers has been the budget airlines where, in some ways rightly, they have segmented their product to offer the customer a wider choice. We haven’t quite reached the “Inside or outside seating sir?” level, but, like many, I began to use budget airlines for business travel and was more than happy to just take a briefcase and be able to waft up to Glasgow and back for about a fifth of what it would cost me for a return fare on the train to London. The trains have followed suit with advance bookings and such since and it all helps to keep costs down if you can make the timings work and accept the risk of not making it to the airport or station in time for your booked return. Personally I don’t find that the web sites that you book through are particularly misleading or hard to use; fortunately I still have enough functioning brain cells to understand that being late is too late whether it is one minute or thirty. Either way I’m late and it will cost me regardless of why I’m late.
I’ve read recently that the Government want to introduce legislation to stop such companies not telling you that there is another 3.5% or similar to pay by credit card until you get to the late stages of the transaction. That’s fair enough I suppose, but in general I’m not hugely in favour of legislation at this sort of level. In fact I’m not in favour of Government interfering in business at all if we can help it, but the problem with some of this is that the people marketing these products view their customers as gullible enough to be drawn in far enough towards the purchasing decision before they clobber them with the real deal. However, this is the dodgy second hand car salesman technique that people of my vintage will be familiar with and sooner or later there will be a backlash.
So much for the B2C world, but we’re not like that in B2B are we? Unfortunately we often are, most often because we haven’t taken the basic steps of being sure about what we are buying and understanding the deal. Like me at the weekend we have rushed into the transaction thinking that we were on to a good deal but not having made sure that it was as good as we thought.
For me the choice was easy enough; pay up or walk away, but what if the deal had been for equipment costing a six figure sum or a three year service contract? That is not the sort of deal that you want to make a mistake on. Take your time to understand what you want and why and always make sure that, Small Print and all, the deal you make will deliver what you need.
Useful Tools – Pareto and the 80:20 Principle
“We couldn’t get our heads out of the trench for long enough to see which way the bullets were coming from”. The speaker was one of the many people I worked with; in my younger days, almost all of my male colleagues had been in the armed services. I thought that the expression was wonderful and much better than not seeing the wood for the trees. Over the years that I have been at work it has been very apt because, so often, people are fire fighting the small stuff so much that they can’t work on the things that would deal with the cause of all that small stuff.
My colleague’s problem would have been solved by what we call in management speak the helicopter view, but it is one of the reasons why the military always like to capture the high ground; they can see what is going on and that makes it so much easier to manage.
In business we have that dreadful expression “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. I say dreadful, because I’ve heard it parroted so many times by people who want to spend so much time measuring and pondering over the results that they rarely ever get round to managing anything, but the expression is true. The trick in making it work is in what we mean by measuring.
If you are under constant fire you don’t have enough time to do the job properly let alone start producing all sorts of statistics, but measurement doesn’t always have to be so formal. Try this as an example: Walk into one of the working areas at your firm and just stand to one side for two or three minutes. What do you see and hear? Is it quiet and calm, or are people looking harassed with ‘phones ringing and high levels of noise? Is it tidy or is there stuff piled all over the place?
What you have just done is measure with your eyes and ears and you will have formed a pretty accurate assessment of that team. This may well be one that you would not have got from their numbers, because the performance statistics may well show that the chaotic team are hitting their targets, but observation is every bit as powerful a measurement tool as the graphs that come off the computer: There is nothing wrong with measuring by rule of thumb.
If you are a young manager wanting to make things work better then start by using those eyes and ears that you got as standard equipment when you came into the world. Even when you are under terrific pressure there will be information that you can use to help you. You will know where your biggest problem area is, so think a bit about why. Pareto’s 80:20 principle suggests that 80% of your problems come from 20% of what you do, so try putting that to work. Say you are getting 10 calls a day from Finance about invoice queries. If you can put that one thing right that could mean those 10 calls stop, and then you suddenly have that time free to look at another problem. You won’t solve every one, but if you can start to give yourself time to stick your head up and have a look around you are on the way to gaining control.
And if your boss is into formal measurement, just tell them that you are working to the Pareto principle, the 80:20 rule. Pareto is a probability distribution, but also works as a rule of thumb.
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