Archive
things that go bump in the night – a Halloween special tale from the facilities front line
“We’ve lost about 100 yards of fence”. The words were succinct and, as it turned out, accurate, but when you hear them on the ‘phone at 0130 having been woken from a deep sleep to take the call they take a moment or so to register.
Outside the wind howled and the rain lashed on the windows. It was a foul night, but I was on call so I told the security guard who had rung me that I would be with him in about ten minutes and dragged on some warm clothes. My waterproof hi-viz gear was in the back of the car and I was quickly on my way. Read more…
getting facilities management out of the closet and into the mainstream
I am often asked what I miss most about no longer being an operational Facilities Manager, and I have a two part answer; on the up side I am glad I no longer have to put up with sitting at interminable meetings where the chair and many of the participants are ill prepared, but on the down side I miss making things happen. Read more…
the importance of being educated
I always find it sad when I hear people say that they’ve never used anything that they learned at school, because I have found what I learned in my school days to have been a help in so many ways. Read more…
with feet of clay it pays to tread carefully
I started this a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t quite finish and wrote a different Musing for that week, although it might have been quite prophetic given the news over the last week. I had been reading a few biographies and had been struck by one thread; whilst all of the people concerned have been highly regarded by some, or many, they have been flawed as individuals. Read more…
unclutter your organisation
I wrote last week about supporting the front line, and the importance of having a focus on what you have to do to deliver what your customers need. As regular readers will know I have a strong dislike of process for the sake of it and a belief in concentrating on what you need to do and not allowing yourself to be distracted by nice to have fancies. Read more…
supporting the front line doesn’t mean holding it up
I have been very lucky over the years in that I have been able to be part of some massive changes in the businesses for whom I have worked, from small parts in the early years through to influence and then responsibility. These days my role is usually one of influence because that is what mentors and consultants do (I can’t recall who said it, but I love the line about a consultant being like a castrated bull; he can only advise), but I do love the opportunity to get back into the trenches and do something. Read more…
put your own people first and let them handle the customer
I spend a lot of my life moving about, and have done since the early 80s. As a compulsive observer; it’s one of the ways that I have earned a living, I’m struck by how people behave towards each other. Read more…
you have what you’ve got: use it well and more will come
This wasn’t written with the financial crisis in mind, but, in proof reading it, it could well have been. My thoughts were more on developing teams and, because teams are made up of them, individuals.
If you lived in that ideal world of fluffy bunnies and blue skies then you could always pick your own team. Fortunately, at least for me, we don’t live there. It wouldn’ be much fun anyway as there would be no challenges, and so back here in the real world we will, as leaders, have to make something of what we have. Read more…
it began with a closed deserted diner, and a man too long without sleep
It had been a long day. The client meeting at a multi occupier office complex on a business park in the North East had been the usual bloodbath, but his ruse of putting the reallocation of car parking spaces onto the agenda had ensured that all of the big guns turned up instead of sending a minion. As a result he had managed to get his budget plans agreed, but it had been well after 5pm before he got away and the drive home was a six hour run if he could make it non-stop.
The early stages had gone well; just some heavy rain as he crossed into Leicestershire, but then warnings of overnight lane closures on the motorway had seen him switch to an old favourite cross country route that followed the approximate line of an ancient Roman road. Read more…
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