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Who would I have on the board of Me plc?
My friend Kwai Yu asked who would be on the board of Me plc. Having thought about this for a couple of days I’ve come up with some possible solutions here. I’ve taken a Fantasy Football approach with some of these, and have grouped them, as you will see, by category. So the nominations are:
The Entertainment Board.
First to invite would be Lionel Blair. If you wanted to personify the word irrepressible, then that would be Lionel. A positive mood to board meetings would be assured by his presence. Next up is Jane Russell. Here I’m not sure whether this would be as herself or one of her characters; maybe from the Outlaw, or Gentlemen prefer Blondes? Whatever, a smart cookie that one. Then I’d ask Doris Day. Let’s face it, whatever scrapes she got into everything always worked out in the end, and I’m an eternal optimist, so I’m sure that we’d go together well. We’d need legal advice maybe, so who else but Denny Crane; what could I add? Denny Crane! The final member of this board comes from the sporting world, and would be the late Sir Bobby Robson, the only member of this team that I have met. Two words sum up the reason for his inclusion; passion and loyalty.
The Former Colleagues Board
This one is made of people with whom I have worked and kicks off with Diane Santos. She was my boss for a time and was as straight as a die. I may not always have agreed with her, but I could always trust her. From the same team, her boss John Robson. John taught me huge amounts about leadership just by doing what he did. Later our paths crossed again when I was his business landlord and I’ll always hold him in high regard; a true gentleman. Very much in the same line is Mick Linsell, one time MD of Royal Mail and, for a time, my boss squared. Another who showed me the ways of leadership just by doing his job. And he stood up to Anne Robinson on live TV and came away with a draw.
The Historical Board
This one doesn’t go too far back, but I’d start off with a couple of politicians from the days when they were real people. Barbara Castle would be first pick. I may not have shared her political leanings, but here was a lady I would have liked to have known and maybe to have worked with. I’d team her up here with Sir Winston Churchill. Another with whom I would often have disagreed, but I love his way with words and his fighting spirit, a quality he shared with Barbara. Then there would be Leonard Cheshire, he of the Cheshire Homes and of Bomber Command. For me truly a great man and one who would bring a single minded courage to my enterprise. Finally here, and from much farther back, Vasco da Gama. I have a great admiration for those who just sailed off into the unknown to find what was there, even if that turned out to be death.
The Musketeers
Back in July ’96 I joined three guys, Chris Drew, Kelvin Little and Ian Tolley, in a team that we came to call the four musketeers (I was Porthos). We did truly live up to the One for All and All for One philosophy. We all still keep in touch even though we parted company in early ’99, having blazed a trail in those two and a bit years.
The winning team? The Musketeers I would think.
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Cracking codes and getting the secrets – a day in the life of JB
They meet in a quiet office overlooking the restricted area. Security guards with fearsome dogs patrol behind razor wire topped fences. She knows why JB is there. They waste no time on small talk; she slides a single sheet of A4 paper across the desk to him. He glances down the two columns typed upon it and nods. He puts the page into his briefcase, they shake hands and he leaves. Read more…
Can collaboration lead us out of recession?
Is collaboration the way out of recession? It isn’t new by any means, but looking back on the last twelve months for my own business we have just started our fifth collaborative venture in that period and have a steady stream of work booked through into 2012.
As I say, collaboration isn’t new. We did it a lot in the logistics industry and I saw more still when I moved over into facilities management (FM). You’d be competing with rivals on one project and maybe subcontracting to, or from, them on another. In both industries we all know each other and people move around from company to company.
Now when I put my purchasing trousers on and head over into that profession collaboration normally starts to get people a little uncomfortable to say the least. Suppliers talking to each other! About our tender! Fetch the red hot poker and we’ll teach them to behave! (Buyers aren’t that bad, trust me, but they do tend to get the twitches over these things).
But collaboration isn’t cartel working nor does it lead to price fixing when we are tendering against our competitors. We all know what a job is worth anyway and all have roughly the same cost bases, so the price we pitch for a job is determined by other factors and, once the sales team have their hands on the bid they all go into play acting mode as our respective teams pass each other in the client’s reception area as we take turns to go and do our presentations.
In my view collaboration has merits as a way of taking us forward. We have been in the trenches for a couple of years now. Some haven’t survived and others are yet to fail. Those that remain will share what market there is, and that market may be a little smaller in volume or revenue terms, but there will still be a market to service.
As is often the case in the sort of situation the business world has been in of late evolution of the supply side needs to match that of the market. Sometimes one will lead, sometimes the other. Doing things differently to meet the opportunities is what will make the difference.
So how can we use an old idea like collaboration? In recent months I’ve heard businesses talking about self delivery more than subcontracting; reverse vertical integration as we used to call it. That’s fine if you can pull it off, but it may not be something that can work for everyone. On the other hand, some form of federal alliance is much easier to arrange and make work. It requires a shift away from traditional master – slave relationships and that means a change in mindset, but we are adaptable people and anything is possible if we are willing to make it so.
We know that the outsourcing model works for people like airlines that employ virtually no-one directly. From this position it isn’t hard to see an opportunity for alliances to grow and morph from shape to shape to meet demand. In the FM world we talk a lot about new ways of working, the office of the future and so on. Perhaps the world will be shaped by a much more flexible model of smaller businesses banding together to suit specific needs?
So is collaboration really the way forward? Who knows, but it’s one way forward and there’s a lot of it about. Can we make it work? Surely yes, because if the politicians can do it I’m sure business people can. And better.
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let the train take the strain, or is the car better by far?
Recently I had a meeting near London Bridge, but which way to travel? I go up to town about 15 times a year on average these days, and I’ve had bad luck with trains to and from Swindon one way and another in recent years.
An additional issue is that the cost is very high if I can’t book well in advance, and I try to keep costs down regardless of whether it is I or my client who is paying. A spontaneous run up to The Smoke from Swindon will cost about £120 including the car park for example. Another problem is the latter; car parking is a bit hit and miss if I’m not there reasonably early and, if I get there and can’t park, I’ve driven 15 minutes in the wrong direction and have therefore wasted about half an hour by the time I get to the M4 heading East to try an alternative.
Over time I’ve developed options for driving part way, usually to Reading where there is covered parking next to the station, a connecting walkway to the platforms plus extra train options from other routes that converge there. Nett journey time from my house to Paddington is about the same as going from Swindon, but the rail and car park charge is so much less that, even allowing for a mileage charge at HMRC rates, I can still do the run for about £35 less that by rail from Swindon.
Another option is to drive to Basingstoke. The extra mileage cancels out the slightly cheaper rail fare making it on a par with the run to Reading, but the traffic is easier and the cross country drive via my home town of Newbury is pleasant. The trains take me into Waterloo, so it is an easy walk from there to London Bridge, or across the river into central London if I’m going to, say, the IoD or Whitehall.
So I favour this hybrid journey of road and rail combined. Certainly it is less effective in terms of my green leanings, but it provides me with a cheaper and less stressful journey and, for the part I do in the car, is far more comfortable. Trains these days I find appallingly uncomfortable, and yes, I do understand that my size has something to do with that, but, whilst I accept responsibility for my girth, I can’t do a lot about my skeletal height and width. Train seating these days is clearly designed for dwarves and midgets and the lack of anywhere decent to park my carcass takes a lot of the pleasure away from what used to be a treat.
I loved taking the train, especially in the 80’s when I travelled around a lot of the UK by British Rail. And also trains in Denmark, Germany, France and the USA.
Even in my various spells of commuting into the City during the 60s into the 80s there was a bit more space and the seats were tall enough for me to have somewhere to rest my head, but then some idiot design team came in and refurbished all the carriages with small seats, plastic and strip lighting and the world of rail travel went on a downward spiral for me.
Now we have these ultra modern trains with their garish and lurid colour schemes that offer a period of torture rather than the pleasures of old. Yes, they are usually clean and reliable, but are they what we need to attract people onto public transport, especially given the, often extortionate, cost?
Such is progress.
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there’s a gunman! – another day on the facilities front line
The clatter of the helicopter blasted through the room, the windows wide open to seek respite from the sticky heat of early afternoon allowing the sound to penetrate what had been another quiet session in the office for our facilities management team.
Ten feet away Phil, my maintenance manager had picked up the phone and was crouched forward over his desk, one hand clamped to his ear as he tried to listen. He was duty manager that day, as evidenced by the words emblazoned on the hi-vis waistcoat slipped over the back of his chair. This was our HQ from which we ran 27 sites across the UK of which this was by far the largest with a perimeter of almost 2 kilometres.
Phil banged down the phone and motioned me out into the corridor. There we could talk. “It’s the police chopper” he told me, “they’ve had a report of a gunman”.
This was a few days after the Columbine murders in the US, and the memories of Hungerford, just up the road, were still very fresh for most of us. “The incident team are on their way” he said, and the sirens were audible in amongst the helicopter noise.
We grabbed our radios and Phil went to the main gate to meet the police and I went to reception to use the tannoy. We had around 1300 people on the site with over an hour before any workers were due to be finishing for the day, but there would be the inevitable delivery vehicles and visitors who might want to get on or off site to be dealt with and we had a well oiled process to put in place.
Having briefed heads of departments to keep people inside and away from windows as best as we could I went out to meet Phil and get the story. A passing motorist, reckoned to be a reliable witness by the police, had called in from his car phone to say that he had seen a youngish male in camouflage trousers kneeling and pointing a handgun at a pedestrian exit gate down at the south west corner of the site.
The police had the situation in hand with armed response units, dog handlers and others dealing with the situation outside of our perimeter. The helicopter had thermal imaging gear and was still cruising low over the site.
I left Phil to work with our security team to monitor the situation and liaise with the police. If we were dealing with a handgun we were fairly safe indoors because of the distances. Our only weak spot was the main exit which was an automatic barrier, but there was some cover for a potential gunman and a risk that an employee might decide to sneak out early. I laugh about it now, but I put on as many layers of clothes as I could and made my way down to the gate to make sure no-one tried to leave.
After an hour we were stood down with no gunman found, but it could have been real; we had had violent domestic disputes before including someone wielding a knife to deal with.
The moral? A well drilled facilities management team working professionally with the police handled something a bit out of the ordinary. These things come out of ordinary days at the office. Leadership and teamwork, knowing your processes and systems, mean you handle the mundane day to day stuff at the top of your game and allow your people to handle such extraordinary occasions with aplomb. Just another day at the office.
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press cuttings that feature or quote me
I often get enquiries about various articles, interviews and other press reports that I have written, or articles that have quoted or featured me, so here are the business related ones that I’ve been able to track down:
Jackie Le Poidevin, editor of LexisNexis publication Facilities Management, covered my interactive session on good practice in FM procurement with the Rising FM group in London on June 2nd and will feature that in an article for the August 2011 issue of Facilities Management.
FM World give me a kind mention in their preview of the Public Procurement Show in London, where I will be speaking on FM procurement good practice, see pages 16/17 of the 2nd June 2011 issue.
In the April 14th 2011 edition of Supply Management magazine, the CIPS journal, I helped out in the Adviser Q&A section. (Unfortunately they spelt my name incorrectly).
The March 2011 issue of Truck & Driver magazine features a tongue in cheek article by me on the life of an agency truck driver.
FM World kindly feature the Monday Musings column in the FacilitiesBlog section on their web site and in the fortnightly magazine that goes to BIFM members and other subscribers.
FM World featured the Monday Musings column of 28 June 2010 on its web front page. You’ll find the full bog on this WordPress site, but the FM World link is: http://www.fm-world.co.uk/comment/blog/could-you-recognise-a-customer-if-you-saw-one/
A feature in the 20 May 2010 issue of FM World magazine where I was quoted on the impact of purchasing in the FM sector http://www.fm-world.co.uk/features/feature-articles/fm-and-procurement/
A report in the November 2009 issue of Swindon Business News on my assisting the British Council with providing strategic purchasing training to the Jordanian Government http://swindon-business.net/index.php/2009/10/30/local-firm-to-assist-jordan-government/
A feature in the 1 September 2009 issue of FM World magazine on a Public vs Private Procurement round table debate organised by BDO Stoy Hayward at which I was one of the invited panel. http://www.fm-world.co.uk/login/?ReturnUrl=/features/roundtables/pound-for-pound/
Editorial in the 15 March 2007 issue of FM World magazine where I was quoted on the 2012 Olympic site project http://www.fm-world.co.uk/login/?ReturnUrl=/news/fm-industry-news/articles/olympics-procurement%3a-look-at-t5/
Editorial in the 25 January 2007 issue of FM World magazine where I was quoted http://www.fm-world.co.uk/login/?ReturnUrl=/news/fm-industry-news/articles/fms%2c-purchasers-need-to-cooperate/
A Day in the Life style feature on me in Romec Business magazine from 2003 http://www.romec.com/pdf/business/issue2/RB2-page14-15.pdf
At the time of writing all of these links are functioning, but some may require you to subscribe to the sites to obtain the full text. I’ll update this list as I track down other links.
Thanks to those who have enquired for their interest. I am happy to speak with journalists on business topics, especially in the procurement, facilities management, supply chain and logistics sectors.
Random Rants & Soapbox Favourites
Random Rants
These are any basic rants that I feel the need to get off my chest. Some will be the sort of issues that one of my bosses used to call my soap box moments: Those topics that make want to stand on a box on the street corner and preach about. Others will be more general observations on life that I feel the urge to write about.
In many cases these rants will be slightly tongue in cheek – I try not to take myself too seriously, even if I am making a serious point. I mean to cause no offence, but if I do, then at least I have made someone think. Feel free to respond.
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the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke 