Thursday 2 March

Thursday 2 March

Just seen some video of Nargis being ‘fired' by Sir Alan Sugar on the latest edition of ‘The Apprentice'. Actually glad that it was her and not hyped-up-mop-haired Jo. She is quite mad, but makes captivating TV!

Sir Alan seems to like Jo. He feels Jo may just have ‘it' to be one of his people. Whatever ‘it' is.

And there you have it. Sir Alan is rubber-stamping the theory that it is not only ‘Person - Job Fit' that is required, but more importantly, ‘Person - Organisation Fit'. The sophisticated way of looking at the old adage, ‘if your face fits' sort of thing. At a deeper level it is having the right type of personality and creative style to align with the company's culture.

How many people in your organization are recruited with cognoscente of their basic personality inventory? More to the point, does it work in practice?

Do let me know, I love to check theory in practice.

Monday 27th February

I've just watched 3 minutes of wonderful TV on Channel 4. Baxter Dury, the son of London's late lamented bard and leader of the ‘Blockheads', Ian Dury, has just explained why Richmond Park in Surrey has a park bench to honor his Father. Basically, because his Dad adored Richmond Park for all the serenity, peace and sense of calm that it provided him with.

The bench is lovely. Solar panels generate the power to play Ian Dury's music, which is freely available to the users of the bench. They can access it through earphones so as not to disturb passers by.

Marvelous. Thoughtful design with function and grace, plus innovations to ensure affordability and up keep. Also, most importantly, Ian's Dury's love of the chosen environment's serenity, peace and sense of calm has been retained.

Don't you just wish all project's could be conceived, realized and maintained with such love and passion?

Saturday 25th February

Isn't the front cover of this week's edition of QS News marvelous? Yeah, takes us all back to a time when things were done properly, with grace and verve. Measured in fact, and precise. A time when you knew where you stood, where certainty was the by-word, things were ‘just so' and stability reigned. The Victorian era no less, when Britain had an Empire, respect and good decent values.

And we believe that ‘spin' is a modern day occurrence?

Obviously that was the front that Britain attempted to live up to in those now far off days when the ‘Founding Fathers' of today's QS ‘Brand Name' firms took their first tottering steps into the world of commerce. Things went wrong all right, and the pretence of order, calm and goodness was not all as it was ‘billed'.

That said, it most certainly was a lot less hectic back then. Things didn't change at the mesmerizing pace they do now. Technology was in its infancy, travel was something only the rich did, and at their leisure, plus communication was hardly sophisticated. In fact ‘communication' hardly existed in the terms that we understand it now. Overall, things were far less fast, fraught and nowhere near as complex and a zillion miles away from the chaos that we experience regularly today.

So, although a lot was mere pretence, our ‘Founding Fathers' and their peers could instill control, plan with a measure of certainty and predict future occurrences with far more accuracy than we can ever hope to today. It was a far more stable and less hectic period in time.

So it was with interest I reviewed the piece in today's Guardian by John Crace on the state of the QS profession. What would our Founding Fathers think of this man's denunciation of their proud profession? Turn in their graves no doubt, appalled at our generation's inability to seize control and get the workers to do the job properly.

As with all pieces that attack a profession, there will be a response that not all situations are like that and what is under fire is merely the minority report. Well, let's at least listen to the ‘complaints', because all organizations who are customer focused know that is how to improve the ‘offering'.

Yes, in cost management terms, Wembley is a disaster. So too was the Channel Tunnel, the British Library and the Scottish Parliament. Guilty as charged. The QSs responsible displayed an inability to predict out-turn costs of these projects. The thing is, was it actually possible to do so?

Crace stated that QSs get it so wrong because of their belief that "everything can be bought for the best possible price, that the sun will shine 24 hours a day and that everything will fit perfectly". OK, a tad over the top, but it is satire after all. That said, as with all lampooning, it is not a million miles away from the truth. What Crace appears to be describing is that QS's believe they have the ability, as did their ‘Founding Father's', to plan, control and predict. If this were the good man's angle of his complaint, I'd say he is not far short of the money.

The QS profession, and the rest of the industry in fact, have to get with the script. We really can no longer manage our major projects like Granddad used to. In any way, shape or form. The scenery has changed. The world is dynamic, complex and fast paced. Or as American management guru Tom Peters has been known to describe it; crazy.

The level and type of control that could be exercised in those by-gone days will never work in today's world of palm held computers, where the world appears to come to us and change is not a generation thing, but one that occurs almost in a instant.

Realising developments like Wembley, the Channel Tunnel, the British Library and the Scottish Parliament would have been hard enough as it is, even in Granddad's day. They all seriously difficult projects. The thing that sends them into a tailspin as a cost management exercise is the ability of those involved to make changes at speed with the assistance of technology, whilst we are all still desperately attempting to dog the projects over the line with, at the end of the day, basic manpower. Lets face it, the headlines at Wembley just recently have been how many men are working so many hours to get the state of the art design building finished. There is a serious imbalance there don't you think?

Yeah, so, what are we to do? Well, aware as I am that by the end of this year, my blogs ‘To do List' for our great industry is going to run the size of a tome, let me still set out my stall:

We need to get better at change overall. In fact these days it is constant transition. Change Programs per se are just off the mark. We need to manage chaos and complexity, not try to control it. To do this successfully we need a far greater appreciation of the phenomena itself. We need to get better at integrating the project team so all appreciate the problems that one another face with a ‘Wembley type' project. We also need to be far more realistic when managing the expectations of our clients.

We also need to listen more carefully to the complaints we receive, even from the likes of the humorous and satirical Mr. Grace. As Peter Ustinov said, "comedy is simply a funny way of being serious…"

And Finally…

"something nice to study phoning up a buddy being in my nuddy"
From the inimitable Ian Dury and The Blockheads hit record, ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful'