Archive
vision? leaders don’t need vision
The need for leaders to have vision is a common thread through most thinking, and it has been for a while, but I wonder how many people really understand what it is and perhaps it isn’t really what is needed at all. Read more…
whether we like it ot not, weather will happen
It is back to reality today after a couple of weeks indulging my imagination in providing some holiday humour. I have been asked if my lift party made it back safely. Time will tell and I’ll see how I feel come Easter; perhaps another adventure will beckon? But it is back to reality and for many it is a grim one. Read more…
a thought, or two, at Christmas
I wrote the other week about how thrilled that I was when someone publicly disagreed with something that I had written. Disagreement is what moves us forward and allows us to grow and being able to challenge, in an appropriate way, an idea is important. Read more…
musings on learning and on lessons learnt
One of the things that fascinates me about learning is how often things just stay with you, even when you don’t always realise the significance, or sometimes that you’ve even learned them, and I try to think about this when I am training, coaching or mentoring people. Read more…
A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days
This is a quote from Goethe, and it seems very apt at the moment for my days are anything but ordinary for which I am very grateful. Read more…
teaching is a two way street
This week I will be wearing my logistics hat again as I am running a warehousing and materials management course and will re-visiting the delights of standard deviations, calculating point loads and similar mathematics along with the more practical side of what mechanical aids to use for various applications. Read more…
You don’t agree? Make my day and tell me
I was probably about 10 when I last did a cartwheel and, as a painfully thin child, I wasn’t too bad at them. To try one now at my current age, heigh and weight would not be a good idea for myself or my surroundings, but last week I was almost tempted to try. The reason for this juvenile excitement was news that someone had disagreed with some of my thinking as expressed in the FM World Diary column. I was delighted, because it is discussion and debate that moves things forward and helps ourselves, our profession and industry move forward. Read more…
musings on the role of FM
It is almost 45 years since I left school and went to work, ironically in some ways, in what we might now call FM as I was taken on as a trainee building surveyor for my first proper job in the back end of the sixties. Whilst most of what we dealt with was domestic property it did give me an introduction to a range of commercial properties from, shops through industrial buildings and on to farms and through that a graphic understanding of the need to maintain the asset and the issues of prioritising expenditure, especially when money is scarce. Understanding that linkage between the premises and the business should be at the heart of the debate over the future of the FM profession because there is always a driver there. At the simplest level this can be the the way an arable farmer will have different priorities to a livestock farmer, or the way that a shopkeeper will spend more on front of house than in their stockroom, but you can scale this principle up and apply it to Facilities Management as we now know it. Read more…
Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right
The quote is attributed to Henry Ford, a man who is both hero and villain depending on how you view him (or both from where I sit). And there you have not just one paradox, but two. Read more…
the obscure art of decision making
This week I wrote about planning; you can read that soon, but in doing so I covered the art of decision making and that is what this week’s Monday Musing is all about. You’ll know the old joke about “I used to be indecisive, but now I’m not sure”. Decision making is easy, so why do we make such a meal of it? Read more…
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