My Blog
This blog is for me, it’s my sketch pad where I think things through and work things out. Having worked ‘stuff’ out I think it’s good to declare it, so I am sending it to you. Hopefully you will also find it useful.
Latest Posts
How do you feel about this?
It’s good to ask people how they feel about this or that: the work we are doing together or the conversation we are having or what it’s like around here, or the film or that experience or the new process or programme, our relationship or whatever. Often people start their reply by saying “I think…
Working with a coach (Part 1) – a challenge for managers and leaders
[The challenge is right at the bottom] Years ago when I was a manager my coach said to me “Dave your communication is the response you get”. At the time we were working on my communication skills. I explained to her that I’d spend ages drafting memos (this was before e mail) yet seemed to…
No, this needs to be done properly
(1993) Having just finished a project with a team of seventeen staff, my boss Jim said to me “Dave we haven’t got that much on so I want you to run this small job”. He went on to say there wasn’t much in the budget for staff so you need to do it ‘one man…
Dropped right in it
Sometimes I ask people to look back over their careers to a time when they were most fired up, exhilarated, excited about their work. The most common answer I get back is “when I was dropped right in it”. Looking back over my 40 years in the construction industry that certainly is the case for…
The Agent’s Report
When I was a young site engineer I worked for a project manager called Richard. He was very accomplished, one of the companies top project managers and went on to become a director. He was a superb manager, really good with people. He knew construction inside out and was never phased by any problem, so…
Happy anniversary
Forty years ago today, fresh out of school and armed with one “O” level (art) I started work in the construction industry. Bill, the bloke who took me on called me trainee civil engineer. He was the Resident Engineer on The Whitley Bay Coastal Interceptor Sewer, part of a bigger scheme to clean up the…
This is me stepping up in response to a big shock.
The Brexit vote is a massive shock to me and from what I see and hear it’s a big shock to the ‘system’. No-one knows what is going to happen and there is huge uncertainty. Already I have spoken with executives who have had orders cancelled, downgraded their forecasts and are contemplating shedding staff. For…
What would be exciting?
In his book The 4-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferris states asking people ‘What would make you happy?’ is the wrong question. And that people don’t really know what would make them happy. He says the opposite of happy is bored and the antidote to boredom is excitement. I can relate to this. For example when I…
Making meaning and then expressing it in a way that connects.
One of my passions in life is writing – mine and that of others. I am an introvert – I ‘think my talking’, whereas extroverts tend to ‘talk their thinking’. Most often I think my talking by writing things down: in my journal, my note pad, blog posts and books that I have written and…
How do you bring about change when you have no hierarchical power?
Constructing Excellence in the North East asked me to give a talk on ‘Leadership’ to young professionals in their Generation for Change (G4C) group. Rather than turn up and talk I identified fifteen questions they could explore and then on the day asked them to vote for the five they were most interested in. We…