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experience is as to intensity and not as to duration – thomas hardy
Quite rightly experience is valued. When we are recruiting an employee or engaging a contractor we look for relevant experience, and when we look at ourselves we talk about having paid our dues; done the hard yard and so on. Read more…
I’m happy to aspire to things, happier still to earn them, but entitlement; no thanks
There once was a schoolboy who wasn’t too sure what he wanted to be when he grew up, but he was quite keen on factories and offices, even if he didn’t understand too much about what went on there. The day came when he had to get a job and, perhaps fittingly for someone who liked buildings, he began to train as a surveyor. A recession curtailed that career, and he found himself working for an insurance giant in the City, but even the prospect of one day stalking the floor at Lloyd’s placing business with the syndicates was not enough of a draw. No, this youth wanted an office and a secretary. He didn’t know why, nor grasp what he would need to do to get or retain such trappings, but that was what he wanted. The City was a bore and he drifted into the retail and wholesale trade where his aspirations were refined through visits to many a private office, sometimes to be rewarded but, more often, to be chastised. As he would stand and take his medicine he took in the subtle benefits of the corner office, of mahogany over laminate, of carpet over lino, of the North West corner over the South East and more. From his early forays into management positions it took almost 10 years before everything came together and he not only realised what he needed to be able to contribute to a business for him to warrant an office of his own, but was able to demonstrate it to the satisfaction of those above him. By then he was with an organisation where such things were carefully prescribed; 11m2, carpet, swivel chair (with arms), desk with two pedestals (lockable), visitor’s chair, 4 drawer filing cabinet (lockable) and 3 hook coat stand. His name would be on a plate affixed to the door and his name and telephone number would appear in bold type in the internal telephone directory. To these things he was entitled. From that first box in the corner of the room to the North West corner office and a secretary (OK, a half share of one) took less than a third of the time it had taken to get to first base, but a dreadful irony cast its shadow on this idyll. For now that our hero had achieved his aspirations and more, he found that he wanted to discard them. In arriving at the position where the buck for delivering results stopped where he sat, one of the key things he had learned about earning that place was that leaders needed to lead by example. At a time when there was a need for austerity and sacrifice all around, why was he sat in splendid isolation in a space that would take 6 workers in comfort? So the corner room on the top floor of the office was swapped, firstly for what had been a store room in the warehouse, and then for a desk in the open plan and then for cadging a desk. All of the trappings that he had aspired to for the first half of his three score years and ten were gone within about 4 years of him having achieved them. Aspiration was one thing, but amongst the myriad things he had learned along the way to that corner office was what it took to earn that position, and being able to do that, to work successfully at that level, was in itself fulfilling; the trappings that came with the job didn’t matter. To aspire to something is one thing. To earn it is another, but to be entitled? No thanks.
why do wives put up with it?
Lately I have been back on the train a lot, and have been reminded of a phenomenon I had largely forgotten. One of those strange ritual behaviours between the female and the male of the species that puzzles, even troubles me. So let me set the scene:
Join me on platform one at Swindon as I await an early Paddington train. As an avid people watcher I have plenty of material to work with in such situations; travel provides a fascinating insight into one’s fellow humans. The platform regulars are instantly recognisable, as is their pecking order.
But, just beyond the tracks, is activity in the north car park that has reminded me of a, to me rather sexist, behaviour that really should have died out in these enlightened times. A car will sweep into the car park, pull up near the station entry and from the driver’s side will emerge Mr Businessman, suited and booted for his day at the office. From the passenger side will emerge, well, for the purpose of this story, let’s call her Mrs Businessman, and she is dressed for doing stuff around the house.
Mr B will take his briefcase from the back and depart for his train, and Mrs B drives the car back to the 4 bed, 2 rec, 3.75 bath or whatever.
Now there are variations on the level of human contact in these vignettes, but most are pretty perfunctory at best, but one stands out: The Volvo estate is brought to a stop with some authority. Mr B emerges, takes his briefcase and strides away without a glance at his companion. She walks round the front of the car, seeming to distance herself from him as much as she can, and departs with a decent touch of wheelspin. It is a shame that she had to pause to adjust the driver’s seat and that the car is front wheel drive. If she had been quicker and had had rear wheel drive she could have sprayed him with gravel such was the violence of her leaving the scene.
What domestic strife had preceded this journey? What was the atmosphere in the car along the way? These are the joys of people watching, speculating on events.
But I digress. The point here is that this ritual, something that I have seen for as long as I can remember, still goes on. OK, it is none of my business how other people live their lives, but this behaviour is so alien to me and seems so insulting to the ladies, although they seem quite happy to accept it.
I would never have dreamt of behaving like this with any of the ladies I have shared my life with since I flew the nest over 40 years ago. I know I’m not unique here as the guy who lives opposite is equally as happy to have his wife drive him as he is to drive her, but he and I do seem to be in a very small minority judging by my observations.
Maybe all of this is covered in the Handbook of Inter-Gender Relationships, I don’t know. Perhaps the ladies concerned are quite happy to have things this way. Maybe it means that they don’t have their driving criticised by some chauvinistic oaf. Possibly one of them might read this and enlighten me.
I hope that they do, because I would love to know. Whilst I’ll never find out what the story behind Mr & Mrs Volvo was, my natural curiosity is aroused and do I like to learn something new every day.
the day the town stood still – another adventure on the facilities front line
Picture a typical English market town of around 70,000 people. Like many such places it developed around a crossing of main roads north/south and east/west. To one side of the town centre the two main employers had neighbouring offices and each had satellite sites around and about.
It is a hot August day and the FM team for one of these big sites are coping with the usual issues. In their corner of the ground floor sit the three ladies who comprise the site management, one of whom has the Duty Manager hi-vis tabard draped over the back of her chair. They have just been joined by the big boss who is up for the day to talk finance with the client senior team. Their conversation continues as the Duty Manager turns to answer the telephone, but tails off as the others pick up on what is being said on the phone. They wait as the call is concluded. “We have a suspicious package at the annex” she tells the others. The well oiled machine swings into action.
Crossing the road we find that someone who has been away from the office for several days has come back to find a pile of post and messages. As he has been wading through these a colleague has mentioned one from an “Irish guy” who had seemed very anxious to establish if this was the right address and this, plus a strange padded envelope in his mail, has aroused his suspicions. He has taken the package down and given it to the security guard before explaining his suspicions and the guard has placed in carefully on the ground outside the front door before raising the alarm.
We called the Police as we evacuated the site and tried to find somewhere for 100 or so people on a scorcher of a day. The police arrived and evacuated the neighbouring building of our hosts; now we had around 1100 people to worry about as the only place we could move them to safely was our main car park. Then Special Branch arrived and closed down the block and the roads around it, including the main east/west road through the town. In the distance we could hear more emergency vehicle sirens, but they didn’t seem to be making any progress.
Then one of our runners arrived with news that we had a fire at another of our offices nearby and could we provide assistance. A phone call to them revealed that the catering team, whilst making their own lunch after completing serving the tenants, had set fire to the kitchen. Quick reactions on their part had put the fire out as far as we could tell, but we could not take a chance without the Fire Service checking things out, and the sirens we could hear were the fire engines stuck in a gridlocked town.
Military experts turned up and dealt with the package which turned out to be harmless, but we were told that we were right to have acted as we did; there was enough wrong about it to have not taken a chance. The fire brigade found a long way round and were able to confirm that there was no further danger in the kitchen down the road and the town’s roads slowly unblocked themselves.
We dealt with a couple of people who fainted in the heat, and a few bad tempered individuals, but otherwise things went well for an afternoon of simultaneous emergencies.
One of those days on the FM front line when the planning, training and practice paid for itself.
what do look for when you need someone to help?
One of the problems with leadership thinking is that a lot of what is currently being put around comes from people who have studied the subject, but who have never really done it themselves. Would you take golf lessons from someone who had never played? Or someone who had bought a set of clubs and a video and taught themselves the rudiments? Hopefully not.
This difference gets further amplified when someone who has been shown how to do something gets to try and do it. Take a musical instrument; lots of people can get a tune out of one, but how many can really play one? Does someone who does a decent karaoke turn make a good singer? I can drive a car, but whilst we share the same initials, I’m no Jensen Button.
What makes the difference is talent. Good leaders can take the tools and use them to best effect in the same way that any virtuoso does with an instrument.
Most of these self styled leadership experts put across a one size fits all solution which, if you think about it, is fundamentally flawed. Leadership is about leading people. People is plural; it refers to a group of individuals. And that is the key word; individuals.
People are different, and this leads to a real dichotomy for leaders. One the one hand current social thinking is that you should treat everyone equally, but how do you do that when everyone has different needs?
Leadership involves a range of techniques to motivate people according to their own needs. I don’t respond well to people getting angry with me; One of the most effective things ever said to me when I screwed up badly was a very quiet “Bowen, you’ve let us all down. You’ve let me down, but, most of all, you’ve let yourself down”. Other people would treat that with contempt though, and the guy who delivered it knew the difference; there were others on the team who, in similar circumstances, would have been blasted against the wall by a withering stream of invective, but he knew me well enough to know that that would not work on me.
That leader didn’t deliberately set out to teach me how to do it, but the example was there for any of us to follow and adapt for our own use. And I did.
A good leader will know what makes each member of the team tick and will apply the right techniques, but then there is the question of what to do when you face the team all at once. Gung ho speeches don’t do anything for me, but I’ve seen first hand how they can get a team going, and there is a synergy factor that comes into play in those situations, but you have to get it right and catch the mood. No-one can teach you that. It’s about working an audience and you learn by doing (and getting it wrong a few times).
A potentially good leader will have latent talent that can be developed. They then need the opportunity to lead and, for those who get the chance, they have the opportunity to hone their skills. Not all will make it, but it’s better to have tried and failed.
Good leaders don’t necessarily make good teachers, (but someone that teaches classes successfully will be a good leader). If you want to learn about leadership you first have to have the opportunity to do it. If you want help in learning, you need someone who can pass on to you the benefit of their experience.
back to the floor – the sequel
I am a big fan of bosses going back to the floor and have written about here a few times, one of which, on my adventures in logistics, was picked up by Truck & Driver magazine. It is an opportunity that quite a few senior managers spurn entirely, and a in poll I conducted a couple of years ago around half of the responses were a resounding No, so why am I so in favour?
One crucial reason is that it allows you to see what life at the front end of your business is all about. Now there are those that will argue that you don’t need to know that, that you have layers of people along the way that can worry about those sorts of things for you, but knowing your business makes such a difference to the way that you operate. Those that truly walk the talk are, in my experience, the ones that have done the job and can still get in the trenches and pull their weight.
Steve Jobs at Apple has a superb story about the difference between a Vice President and a Janitor, the punch line of which is around the Janitor being able to give reasons why things aren’t done, but the VP has no such room for things not being right. I don’t know whether or not he has ever done the janitor’s job, but he understands the issue and, let it not be forgot, he was once on the front line himself.
My own enthusiasm came about gradually. My early efforts to climb the management ladder were with organisations that insisted on management trainees working in every department of the business to get a grasp of what they would eventually control. Later, as I got to run operations of various types there would sometimes be a need to solve a problem when all hands to the pump was the order of the day and so there were always opportunities to get involved.
As I got into more senior roles and began to devise and implement major improvement projects, being able to get in have a go at the job was often a powerful tool in firstly working out the right solution, but also in understanding how to implement the solution to best effect and to get my people behind the change. The other thing that back to the floor delivers is a clear understanding of what is really happening. As my pal Ian Berry puts it, are they walking in the halls what is says on the walls (is your mission statement really reflecting what goes on in the business)?
Often it isn’t, and that disconnect can destroy a business quicker than anything else. So in all of my senior roles I have committed time to working on the front line occasionally; I’ve driven fork lift trucks, vans and lorries, I’ve been out with the security team, spent time on reception, cleaned the toilets and more. All of that has helped overcome problems and make improvements that might well not have happened otherwise.
So it is with great pleasure that I’ve been reading of Lionel Prodgers’ experiences of going back to the front in FM World lately. Lionel is a top man in our industry; he’s done it all and has nothing to prove to anyone, so all credit to him for putting himself about to such good effect. I hope that others who read of his exploits are inspired to have a go themselves.
Pick a job and put a day in the diary; I’ll bet you enjoy it.
never mind the hats and dresses, what about the organisation
It may come as a surprise to some that I spent most of Friday morning watching the Royal Wedding coverage on BBC. I didn’t watch it all, but had the TV on from about 0730 and finally turned my back on it after the fly past (which, prior to the day, was the only thing that I was interested in).
So what got my attention? Not the hats nor the dresses, nor, although I do love it, the pageantry. No, it was the organisation.
I grew up organised, even if I didn’t realise it for until well into adulthood, but my father was a gardener by profession and his bible was the Raeder’s Digest Gardener’s Year. He would pore over this time a couple of times a week, making his plans for the next 3-4 weeks and comparing where he was against his plan. He was never formally taught project management, but learned it along the way.
In similar vein my mother was a professional cook, and whereas Dad would be planning his projects in weeks and months, Mum would be planning in hours as she would juggle all the elements to land each course of the meal just when it needed to be served, regardless of whether it was a light meal for one or a banquet for a hundred. For both it was all about being organised and organising others.
Maybe then it was natural that I would end up working in areas where organisation and planning were crucial. From teenage work on the farm to my early days in retail and wholesale logistics through running M&E tenders to computer programming and IT project, corporate strategic planning, logistics management running big sheds and on to FM the one key thing that kept me climbing the ladder was that I got things done, and that came, directly, from organisation and planning. Perhaps it was truly bred into me.
Coming back to the Royal Wedding I was sat with the Berkshire Belle enjoying a mug of tea and watching the crowds enjoying themselves when the timetable for the event came up (the Wonder of Wokingham herself is an ace planner; she used to manage distributions for the largest retail network in Europe). One of the experts on TV was asked about the time that the Royal couple would emerge onto the balcony, and said that it would be between 1315 and 1325 as they wouldn’t want to miss the fly past at 1330.
Now this was before 9 and we got to speculating on the organisation that went into an event like this and what it would take to pull it off over the course of the day, and that was what really got me riveted. Later in the programme Sir Malcolm Ross gave some insight into how they did things and I have enormous professional respect for the likes of him and those who put these events together.
As an FM I have been involved in all sorts of special events, including conferences and Royal and VIP visits and know what those take, so the sheer scale of something like Friday’s wedding fills me with awe, but also with pride. In the UK we know how to do these things and to pull them off with such élan.
We have the advantage of Royalty, tradition and venues, but that would be so easy to waste. The eyes of the world were on the UK last week and they were treated to a fantastic spectacle of pageantry that ran like clockwork. To those who made it happen, I salute you.
if we want the best to choose from, someone has to make a difference
We often choose something; sometimes because we want to, and other times because we have to, but how do we choose? There has to be some form of measurement that helps us to compare. It may be as subjective as colour or style or more objective as in, say, performance or size. These choices may be personal or business, but we all make them every day.
Those who try to influence us in these choices will strive to pander to those choice triggers. The world of advertising had a field day in the post WW2 eras as the production capacity switched from military needs to consumer goods and fed an increasing affluent society.
From the 1970s onwards a series of events; oil crises, financial downturns and such saw the boom years come to an end and competition to persuade us has become more and more sophisticated, these days with social media and the like playing their part in parting us with our cash.
Some of all that is on a personal level, but business has seen a parallel experience although the choices here are normally much less subjective. Whether we are in facilities management, logistics or any other business discipline we are much more performance related in our decision making and so those who would sell us have looked to raise the bar in that area.
We talk of excellence in what we sell and what we seek. Consider this quotation; “In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away” Antione de Saint-Exupery sums it up well there, but what is this state to which we aspire?
Does competition drive excellence? To some degree it does, but if we take sports as an example of competition, there are those who will demonstrate how to win with minimum effort; Sir Jackie Stewart will tell you all about winning at the slowest pace for example. Following this example there are a lot of companies that are content to just be better than the rest rather than to excel.
Am I suggesting that we abandon the quest for perfection just because of this? No I’m not. The point I’m making is that what happens when we look at competing solutions is that we pick what we see as the best to fulfil our need as we see it at the time. Now that may not be a great solution, but better than what we have now and better than anything else so we choose it. If it helps us achieve something then it may well be worth accepting but, if not, we probably won’t, or shouldn’t bother. Hobson’s Choice, as we used to say.
What we want is to have great things to choose from, and that is what those of us in the service industry try to create and deliver. It is what competition should be all about in this context, and there will be times when we have the right thing for the moment; when we catch the wave and ride it in. It will be a transient moment, sure, but getting it right and creating the thing of choice is such a buzz that you’ll want to do it again and again.
If we truly want to make a difference we have, as my friend Ian Berry down under will tell you, you have to change what is normal.
Perfection made be hard, even impossible, but doing something extraordinary is within reach of us all, so why not try? Make a difference.
You can’t take yourself too seriously. If you do you are buying your own con – Ferrol Sams
It’s a quote I found in a book entitled Last Bus to Albequerque and it struck a chord with me when I first read it back in 1994. I used the first half of it as one of my over the desk mottos; the whole thing was too long and, in any case, if anyone thought that I was a con artist I didn’t want anything over my desk that appeared to confirm that view!
But the sentiment is a strong one, and it took a while for me to realise that I had fallen into the trap of taking myself very seriously indeed; the blinding flash that showed me what a complete idiot I was making of myself was an unpleasant realisation. As I write these words now I am transported back to about 1984 when I had that moment on the road to Damascus so to speak.
Having been able to see the problem and deal with it made a big difference to me in many ways, both professional and personal. I began to enjoy myself and I got even better at what I did as a result. When I adopted the strapline of “25 years of having fun whilst making things happen” last year, that is exactly what I meant.
Getting a laugh out of every day isn’t always easy, and there have been times when black humour has won through. I won’t repeat some of the jokes here because I recognise that they were offensive to some, but in the context of our team and the moment they were just what we needed to lift the mood. The best ones were, of course, the ones that punctured my dignity and I’ll share a couple here.
My team and I managed a diverse property estate and most of the team would have to travel to get to a common location, so hotels provided a neutral venue, but at the previous couple of meetings I had felt it necessary to mention standards of dress; we were on show and the welcome board in reception told everyone which company we represented. After the second warning one of the team challenged me quietly and suggested that suits and ties were maybe too formal, so could we not have a smart casual regime, maybe golf clubhouse standards? I took the point and smart casual was the order of the day for the next meeting. I turned up in golf shirt and chinos to find the rest all in their best business suits – game set and match to the team.
Another time I had been banging the environmental drum and we had begun to have our site vehicles and equipment painted green in an effort to raise awareness amongst our tenants and generally push the Green boat out. Then came a meeting to discuss the issue of the latest set of site manuals for our tenants. “I suppose you want green binders?” I was asked, and the answer was, of course, “Yes”. On leaving that meeting I was reminded that I should wear overalls when on that site as it was both protocol and would be part of the new Health & Safety plan in respect of wearing personal protective equipment (lead from the front John). I mentioned, sheepishly, that my girth had outgrown my overalls and that a new set were needed. No problem, they’d be waiting for me on my next visit. And they were, in lurid green! Team 10, Bowen 0.
You can’t take yourself too seriously.you do, no-one else is going to take your side.
come in number 6, your time is up – when the boatman calls….
I wrote here the other week about how we might be remembered, a thought brought on by having seen a couple of the buildings I used to manage demolished. Time passes; things move on.
This week other incidents have sparked me off along the same lines though. One was being reminded of two 40 something ladies meeting on a road I frequent two or three times a week, and the other was the pictures of the water sweeping in across North Eastern Japan.
Like many of us I watched in awe as the water swept in. I’ve been through three earthquakes in my time, including one in California that I slept through, as well as a couple of hurricanes, so I have some feel for what nature can do and the sheer power that can be unleashed, but to watch helplessly as that tidal wave swept ashore was a humbling experience.
We sometimes forget that the gift of life is a privilege and not a right. It will take a while before we know what the death toll is in Japan, and other parts of the region affected by the earthquake, but it seems like we could be talking about a six figure number. None of those folks knew that this was the day that they would die. They went off in the morning to do whatever it was that they had to do. Some will have had to be in what became the danger zone, other will have been sent there by the law of chance; the maintenance engineer sent there rather that to higher, safer, parts because of a call for help for example. Fate is a fickle mistress.
When your time is up and the boatman calls your number it is all over and your time here is done. The meeting of the two ladies is a case in point. I was 6 miles up over the central Atlantic when they met, but it was a time that I might otherwise have also been on that road at about that point in space and time. Their meeting was no social encounter; each was alone in their respective cars when they both needed the same piece of tarmac. Travelling in opposite directions they met at a closing speed over around 100 mph and neither survived*. Up until four or five seconds before the impact neither would have had any notion that this was their time. Had I not been elsewhere I might have found the finger of fate pointing at me that afternoon, but the Berkshire Belle had booked us to fly on that day rather than the next as planned and I was safely parked in a window seat on a 767 at the time of the crash rather than driving myself home on that road.
In the words of the legendary Sid Collins we are all speeding towards death at the rate of sixty minutes in every hour. We don’t know when the call will come, so what we do with our time here is important. If we can do something positive for the world and the people around us then our time here will not be wasted.
As I say, our time on Earth is a privilege and not a right. We all have a choice of what we do with that time. What are you doing with your time here? Remember, life isn’t fair either, and we may not get as much of it as we would like, so never mind what you’d like to be remembered for; try and make a difference and do it today: You may not get another chance.
* I had been told this by one of the locals, but in 2013 I found that it was not true. In the accident one of the ladies died and the other was severely injured, but later recovered. In one of those awful examples of fate it was the innocent party who died instantly in the collision, but the survivor was the one who caused the accident. Having been observed shortly before the crash driving at high speed and erratically, according to reports, she had over twice the legal limit of alcohol in her system. She fled abroad to escape justice, but was returned to the UK where she received a jail sentence. Her recent appeal against the severity of the sentence was turned down.
The local paper summarised the incident here.
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