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
Six questions construction leaders should ask themselves about quality
A frightening question hit me as construction disasters mounted at the end of the last decade: Edinburgh schools, the catastrophe of Grenfell and the collapse of Carillion: they each stemmed, all or in part, from issues of poor quality.
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Why Bigger Goals are Easier
This week, something a bit different check out our vlog exploring why bigger goals are easier.
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Engineer or manager? It’s time to decide
Early in my career I noticed the best cars in the car park belonged to the managers. So I got into management as fast as I could. But I wasn’t trained for management, nor was anyone else so I pushed hard and got promoted. Constantly pushing hard wasn’t good for me, the people I managed, my organisation or industry. If you want to be a successful manager or train up great managers in your company I have got an incredibly useful tool for you.
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Construction Playbook: five things to know
My strategy in business is to be ‘incredibly useful’. 20 years in it still seems to be working. Every now and then the Government publishes something that changes things but few execs have time to wade through it cos they are busy working the bottom line. Case in point – The Construction Playbook. In this week’s post I explain five things to know about the Playbook. Hope you find it useful.
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Command and control: construction’s outdated leadership style
People skills rarely feature in established routes to construction’s professional qualifications and it is from this gap that many industry problems arise. We are plugging that gap and scaling up to change the construction industry, Anne Okafor explains how. But first let’s talk about Command and control: construction’s outdated leadership style…
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Here’s your chance to get some headspace
Headspace is what my customers value most. Even as little as an hour a month of purposeful thinking with excellent people can make a difference to the strategic soundness of a project or organisation. For this reason, I am setting up a Mastermind group…
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Introducing: the DIY team away-day
If you are settled on having an in-person team away day we can support you remotely and you save 60% of the cost of us doing it for you. Introducing the DIY team away day…
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Thinking about my thinking … and yours
I’m thinking about my thinking here. Raw, my thinking is seldom joined up and its rightness is questionable. I’m also thinking about your thinking; well not necessarily yours but what I observe out there. And there’s also a chance for you to think about your thinking. And I have created a diagram – hopefully its useful. What do you think?
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What’s possible – revisited
What if everything that can be invented has been invented and there was only one way to overcome the predicament and that one way wasn’t working. It would be pretty hopeless, right! How often do we hear people say ‘there’s only one way to do this’ or they leap for the first solution and then give up cos it didn’t work. Or what if there was unlimited possibility and we all got together and worked it out? Today we are revisiting what’s possible and an essential update to ‘management’ that will enable it…
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If you want to be game-changing, change the game
How can a black belt throw someone twice their size? How can you change your project or organisation? Here, we are talking about the hierarchy of levers in living systems. Beware of novices promising quick turnarounds…
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