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A #facilitiesmanagement Christmas Tale
‘Twas Christmas Eve at the office. As the sky began to lighten that morning, Bob the Facilities Manager sat in reception waiting for the receptionist to arrive and take over the desk. On the CCTV monitors he saw the black Audi A6 of the CEO glide up to the gate. His hand went to the control panel to press the gate open button for her – she never used her identity badge – but then he froze. From the driver’s window a pale hand emerged and wafted a small white rectangle at the sensor. The gate rose and the Audi entered the car park. Mesmerised, he followed the car on the cameras until it parked. Sure enough it was the right person driving. The angle she parked at would have been enough to show that, but the lady herself emerged and headed for the door.
Normally he would have made himself scarce at this point to avoid having any contact with her as she passed through reception. Not that she ever acknowledged him, but there was often something that had pricked her bile and some order would be barked out as she swept through. Today though he sat rooted as she emerged from the revolving door and flashed him as wide smile. “Good morning Bob. I seem to have parked across two spaces. Do you think you could get it straightened up for me?” she enquired, dangling her car keys at him.
After Joan had arrived to take over reception Bob went through to make them both a drink. As he waited for the kettle to boil he wondered at the CEO’s behaviour. A voice interrupted his reveries and he turned to face the HR Director. “Ah, Bob. I’ve got six new people starting and you need to get things set up for them”. “OK, when are they starting” Bob enquired, thinking that, at least, it can’t be today. “Not ‘til early Feb, but I thought that you might have a look up on the third floor and see where we may be able to fit them in. I’ve got the names and photos we took at their interviews so I’ll email those to you so that you can sort out ID cards and things” came the response. “Er, thanks” said Bob. He’d been expecting something as his team had seen all the candidates come in for their interviews, but six weeks notice to sort out things out? Unheard of; he didn’t usually get six days.
He took the teas back to reception. As he handed over her mug Joan passed him a post it note. “Old tight wad is on her way down” she told him. Tight wad was their name for the Finance Director. He stifled the retort he was about to make as a diminutive figure in an immaculate trouser suit emerged from the lift and came their way, offering Good Mornings” to them both. She held out the buff file she carried “Your 2011/12 budgets are all approved, so you can get cracking on your programme any time you like. The directors have also agreed to give up their designated car park spaces and to go open plan. It’s all there for you to start work on in January”. They sat open mouthed watching her go.
Mrs Bob came home to find her husband fast asleep in his armchair. A piece of paper had fallen from his hand; it was the list of jobs she’d left him to do. As she looked at him he seemed to be smiling. At least someone’s having sweet dreams she thought.
avoiding the swings and the roundabouts and getting things done
I was discussing here the other week how business goes round in circles; the pendulum swings from one way of working to another and back again, and I argued that we needed to be less reactive. It’s a question of balance.
Conversations arising from that blog suggested that I was against radical change, but I’m not when it is necessary. If you have to swerve to avoid someone then it makes sense to do so rather that endure a painful collision. However, I would ask the question, why did you not see them coming earlier?
This is getting to the heart of running any operation, and those of us in #facilitiesmanagement know the issue only too well. We are often having to fire fight, and most of us in the business will have seen times when we were so busy quelling the flames that we didn’t have time to stop them starting.
One of the things that I’m passionate about in any job I take on is giving myself time to be able to do things properly. Anticipation is really 90% experience allowing you to expect the unexpected. You also develop your own toolkit of things that allow you handle things quickly when the need arises to stop matters getting out of hand.
Being able to anticipate is also a product of reading the situation and spotting the possibility of a problem and preparing for it, taking remedial action. “Perfect planning prevents p**s poor performance” as one of my team used to put it, and that really summed it up for our team. Yes we had our fair share of panics in the early days, but we worked on them, thought about them, talked about them and would listen to any idea, no matter how daft it might have sounded at the time.
Over the first year we had got most of the seasonal issues better planned and, no matter how well our solutions worked we would always review them because sometimes they were too good and we could get the right results with less effort and/or cost. Sure there were times when we got it wrong as well (I used to tell them that if we were perfect we’d be running FM beyond the pearly gates), but getting it wrong teaches you far more that getting it right.
Having the drains up in a non threatening way I also covered recently. Building a team where people can speak frankly requires a tremendous trust in each other. It isn’t the easiest thing to achieve, and you can lose it in an instant if you’re not strong enough as a leader, but when you have it the team can, and will, fly. Team spirit is another major factor in being able to anticipate problems and head them off at the pass. The team will be watching each other’s backs and playing for the good of the team rather than for themselves.
I’ve used the FM environment here to illustrate the point, but it applies just as much across the whole business spectrum. A fired up and motivated team will have the bases covered and negate the violent swerves because they will see things coming. A business in this shape is not going to get caught up in the pendulum swings because they don’t need to. They can make and cope with the fine adjustments to strategy by deployment of the right tactics to achieve objectives.
The only circles you will find a team like this going round are of the Plan, Do and Review kind as they constantly improve their performance.
Use your environment to help the environment – the ultimate in recycling?
In Facilities Management (FM) we pride ourselves on our buildings and how we run them, and I think that we have been early adopters and champions of sustainable and environmental issues. But are we doing enough? In terms of what we can do in our own right we probably are close to it, but how much are we influencing the people that we look after?
Whether we are an in house or outsourced FM service provider we are unlikely to be able to bring about significant sustainable changes on our own, but there are ways that we can collaborate with others to influence and be influenced by them. The key to this is, to use the word in its original meaning, our environment.
Consider the environment in which the building(s) we manage and the people who use it live and work in: The local geographic environment. Do we talk to our commercial and residential neighbours on issues of common interest? How about the local authorities; do we have any dialogue with them? What about how people get to work? Some of these issues will fall into the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) remit, so are you talking to them about what FM can offer and finding out what they have on their agenda? There are a lot of opportunities.
Consider the business environment that the people in the building work in. What business are they in? What do they want to showcase? What is the image that they are trying to portray to the outside world? Do you talk to the PR and Marketing people (other than when they want a desk moved)? FM has a lot to offer; we manage a lot of the things that interface with the outside world that can affect image and people’s perception of the company.
Your building’s occupants have an outside life, and that is another of the environment that FM impacts on. We manage the place where these people work for about a third of their day. We recognise that impact in terms of job satisfaction and people retention, but do we acknowledge that it also has a powerful impact on people’s moods and they way that they will interact with family and friends when they are away from work?
The ripple effect of the things that we do in the building(s) we manage goes out into the world around us, but often we are too involved in managing the splash to see where the ripples go and their impact. If we take that analogy literally, we know that ripples on a pond will cause erosion in the banks, so what impact are our ripples having in our local and business environments?
There is the “I’ve got enough on my plate” argument, but I would counter that by suggesting that getting to grips with some of these issues can take away existing pressure points and give you more time to manage. If your occupants are more content then you’ll have less complaints and the same applies to neighbours. If you’re building good relations with various internal and external groups you’re raising the FM stock and gaining a fan club; neutrals are better than enemies and fans are better than neutrals.
Over the years I’ve run all sorts of schemes, some of which seemed very off the wall to begin with but all paid dividends. There’s not room to list them here, but feel free to ask. Talk to others and collaborate on mutually beneficial projects. Using your environment to help the sustainable and environmental agenda is something to consider: The ultimate in recycling?
The art of diplomacy
On my recent US trip I got to chatting on the plane with my neighbour on the subject of tact. Exploring some of the differences between the way Americans and Brits do business, he felt that we place too much emphasis on what he termed diplomacy, hence tact. Straight talking is the way to go, he said.
It’s an interesting point, but I’ve always worked on the basis that people are, thankfully, all different, so you work at a relationship and modify your style accordingly. This has worked for me over the years whether that relationship is private or business, and for the latter, whether it’s been with my boss, my team, my peers, supplier:customer or customer:supplier. I don’t claim to have always got it right first time, but I usually made it work.
Where there have been failures it has tended to be through a lack of clarity. This was one of the reasons why my new friend felt being diplomatic was wrong, that we just danced around the point whereas his approach went straight to it.
In theory that is all well and good, but in practice I’m not so sure. One of the arts of leadership, and something that is very effective in negotiation, is in getting someone to do what you want them to do, but because they think that they want to do it. Being direct will rarely get you your desired result in those circumstances, but a more tactful approach usually will.
The direct approach is also something that does not cross cultural boundaries too well either, and so is often wasted if used in international dealings. Where did diplomacy come from in the first place? It came through cross border dealings where reaching a compromise was often the way to peace and survival.
Compromise is also often a dirty word with those who like the direct approach. I’ve been on many teams where, when we’ve been discussing our approach to an upcoming negotiation, there have been people who have wanted to take a “no compromise” position. Well, there are two key problems with that way of working. The first is that you are leaving yourself with a limited position and, to a degree, painting yourself into a corner which you should never do. The second is that, if you succeed, all of the compromise falls onto the other party. Maybe that isn’t a problem in a one off deal, but it is not the way to be building long term relationships.
Using tact, taking a diplomatic approach and being prepared to reach compromise are not signs of weakness. They are the trademarks of someone who will make successful deals over a long period of time and who will also probably be an extremely good leader.
People who act like this get things done, build happy teams and they make deals that people are happy with. They establish that reputation and people want to work for and with them. They will not be regarded as a soft touch either, because no-one that generates that level of success over a period of time can ever be a soft touch. They just become respected players, and that is another good thing because they don’t let ego get in the way.
You may sometimes have to be direct, but don’t forget that it’s people that you have to work with to make things happen. Knowing how to work with people is therefore crucial to success. Tact and diplomacy will serve you well as tools, so learn how and when to use them.
Lead well and prosper.
TCB
Is the office dead? Or even dying?
Is the office dead? No, not that TV show, the real place that many of us have worked in over the years.
What got me started on this was reading on line a posting from a public sector facilities management colleague talking about some of the alternative ways of working and plans to do things that I’d done, also in the public sector 15 years or so ago. There’s nothing new under the sun, but in the same week I also read something on the mayor’s plans for transport in London whereby, if my memory serves me correctly, they were talking about catering for a significant growth in the numbers of people coming to work in central London in the coming years.
Now, as I mentioned above, I can recall being involved with a working party with HR and IT colleagues many years ago through which we did all sorts of things including drop in centres, hot desks, shared desks, hotelling and much more. We changed the working hours of buildings and even worked with business neighbours, bus companies and local councils to change public transport routes and timetables, almost eliminating the rush hour at one location, green commuting being high in the agenda before I remember hearing that as a term.
Charting my own work style and pattern, I find it a little ironic looking back that, having got far enough up the greasy pole to have landed the corner office and a share in a secretary, I gave up that office for something smaller, but in the middle of the action, then shifted myself into the open plan, then to a shared desk before, in about 1999, becoming truly location independent, i.e.; I worked out of the back of the car, hotel lobbies, supermarket coffee bars or anywhere that I could find, but this would often be, say it quietly, an office.
I can remember 30 odd years ago a lot of trumpeting about the paperless office and yet that is still nowhere near a reality. Yes, we have embraced email, but it has done nothing to eliminate paper; we’ve seen more success in that goal from electronic invoicing and payment systems. Photocopiers and printers still proliferate with all of their other environmental impacts besides paper consumption.
Our offices have certainly changed over the 40+ years that I’ve been at work, but I would argue that this change has come from social factors as much as from technological and operational ones. We don’t have the same hierarchical structures that we used to. Work is much less formal and I believe that it will be the social factor that does as much to shape the future of the office as anything else.
Humans are sociable animals, and there are synergies that come from having us in one place. Yes you can do that virtually, but the dynamics of having us in one place at the same time can’t be beaten, especially when you add the ingredient of the infrastructure that an office provides.
Technology will play its part, but that will be shaped by the demand of the people. All of the gadgets that we enjoy and the way that we use them is coming from us folks. They aren’t being forced on us; the way we use the current generation of phones, computers and other gizmos shapes the next wave, and that will be with us soon enough.
My belief is that the same factors apply to the way we use offices. I don’t know what tomorrow’s office will look like, but there will be one, I’m sure.
Home thoughts from abroad; a postcard from America
Oh to be in England, now September’s here? Not really, no.
I’m taking a few minutes of quiet time in between business and the essential hospitality that goes with it, at least it does more so here in the USA that maybe back home. Shortly I will be back on show when my host’s guests start to arrive and we get down to some serious socializing and, it has to be said, networking.
So, home thoughts from abroad? For me this is more home than home in the sense of where I live. Yes I know that I am British, and I am proud of that, but I am more at home here in the US than I am back in Wiltshire and, if I had the chance, I’d set up home here for good.
For me there is a lot about America that we have seen wiped out in the UK. People do care about each other here and there is a much greater sense of community spirit. In many ways it is like the England that I grew up in in the 1950s and 1960s. Nostalgia may not be what it used to be, but I am nostalgic for a time when people were far less self centred; my Monday Musing last week talked of the Musketeer’s motto of “One for all and all for one”. So much of what I see back home is more like one for all and every one for themselves.
Here there is a much simpler attitude in most people, and it shows up in the way that I am being looked after. The whole concept of me being over here and staying alone in a hotel is an anathema to the people that I’m meeting, so a range of hospitality gets lined up for me to meet families and friends. This isn’t expense account stuff either; it is a genuine desire to welcome a stranger and look after them.
Back home people often mock the “have a nice day” culture, but here it is, in most cases, genuine. This morning I went for a walk down a couple of blocks to buy a newspaper. I’d not got far before I fell into step with someone heading the same way. By the time we got to the news stand I knew his name, what he did, the names of his wife and his children and how they were doing at school and he’d had broadly equivalent information from me. When I used to commute into London by train there would be the same herd of us heading off to the station each morning for the run into Liverpool Street, but in three years of doing that I got to talk to two other people. Everyone else just kept their heads down and ignored those around them.
The Americans bring this warmth into much of business, whether that be BtoB or BtoC. In most cases there is a real need to give the customer service that goes a bit further and that’s great. It makes doing business a pleasure. Sure they are hard negotiators, and yes there are sharks, but doing a deal here is a very different experience to doing one back home.
Maybe some of this is just because it is a change for me. It’s nearly a year since I was last over and it could just be the grass being greener on this side of the hill. Maybe I would find it less attractive if I was here full time. Maybe not, and I have to come home soon anyway.
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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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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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