Archive
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…
if you must have rules and regulations at least make them workable
Society does need to have some rules in order to function, but at what point does regulation cease to be effective? The problem with regulation is that it needs to be enforced otherwise it is pointless and so one aspect of creating rules has to be the practicality of implementing them. Read more…
being responsible for your own actions
I have just been sitting in the waiting room at my doctor’s surgery and I passed the watching the information being presented on the TV screen there. One of these was on house fires and was advising me to get out in the event of a fire being discovered with a strap line something like; “Your life is more precious that possessions or pets”. Read more…
are your KPIs a helping or hindering (and do you know)?
The other day Martin Read was posing the question of KPIs in the FM World Think Tank. This is a topic Dear to me heart as previous columns here show and I am firmly of the opinion that there is too much made of measurement in general and KPIs in particular. Read more…
You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take – Michael Jordan
Niki Lauda recalled this quote at Silverstone on Saturday afer Lewis Hamilton had aborted his qualifying lap in Final qualifying at the British Grand Prix thinking that conditions had worsened and that he had pole position in the bag from his previous effort only to find that five others were able to beat his time. Read more…
how to handle a wayward genius
They say that genius and madness go hand are close and perhaps events at soccer’s World Cup illustrate this point, but how do you cope in business with someone who is extremely talented, who delivers great things and yet is capable of acts of equally extreme folly? Read more…
time is too precious to waste
Sustainability has been a big issue for a while now but when you try and discuss it rationally you often find that, like many things there are not just polarised views, there are many extremes. Read more…
make a choice and get off the fence; it isn’t that comfortable up there
One of my regular topics here, but rightly so for being able to make a decision, even a poor one, is beyond so many people and seems to be a greater problem when collective thinking is involved as in the case of an organisation’s management. Read more…
“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit”
These words are attributed to Harry S Truman, the 33rd President of the United States of America and there is an obvious logic to them. Read more…
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the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke 