Monthly Archives: April 2010

Apr 19 2010

How to have a meeting?

I smiled yesterday that my local Ambulance Trust have issued guidelines on ‘meeting etiquette’ as reported here in the Daily Mail.

It seems that a manager has managed to write seven pages of rules! Arguing that it only cost £20 to write the Trust are defending the story. They say that it is intended to make meetings more productive. The latter is commendable. I haven’t seen the document, but on the face of it the problem is in the length! And the bitchy part of the story suggesting they should spend more time cleaning ambulances that writing rules.

We do seem to get bogged down in bureaucracy.

I spend a lot of time in meetings. I try to make that time productive, but it is not always successful – sometimes it is out of my control. I Chair lots of meetings too. This can be challenging!

My rules about meetings can be summarised in 10 points – much less than seven pages:

1. Have a strong Chairman / Chairwoman (the PC term ‘Chair’ is twaddle – a ‘Chair’ is for sitting on)
2. Only invite people who can add to the meeting
3. Ensure that there is an agenda – and that people read it before the meeting
4. If there are papers to go out make sure they so so a week before the meeting. If you are an attendee – it is your duty to read them before you get there!
5. Limit the time of the meeting (or at least the key component parts)
6. Have one meeting – chatter between people needs stopping!
7. Don’t stray from the agenda – ‘any other business’ should be for one or two items only!
8. Make sure there are clear actions from the meeting – and identify who is doing them – and by when.
9. Shoot those who are shooting from the hip!
10. No mobiles…

There are more, but I think much of this is common sense. The meetings need to be respectful of others. It is business – not personal, but that is no excuse for rudeness or aggressiveness.

I am not sure about the American idea of making people stand up – but keeping meetings short is good. Remember that our attention starts to wane after about 45 minutes!

Apr 18 2010

I am now officially broke!

It was bound to happen sooner or later!

Jade and Andrew

I am really delighted that my ‘little girl’ Jade has got engaged to Andy with plans to get married next Summer.

I was slightly suspicious in the week when Andy text me to ask if I would be in Starbucks later on Monday afternoon. Although I am often in Starbucks, I wasn’t planning on doing so. We made plans to meet the next morning (I am often in Starbucks in the morning!) The plan was to discuss Andy learning to play squash.

And that’s how the conversation started!

But it didn’t finish there – he asked if I would mind if he asked Jade to marry him. I said yes.

12 hours later so did she.

Now the race is on to sort the venue et al.

I was going to blog this on Wednesday but was forbidden from doing so. I had to wait for all of the family to be told properly!

So there we are, I will now be officially broke. Happy – but broke!

Apr 17 2010

Would you like a coffee with your flake?

There was news emerging at the weekend that Kraft are going to woo the British public with a chain of 60 cafes.

Only the crumbliest flakiest coffee?

So competing with Pret a Manger, Costa, Nero and Starbucks looks to be the target.

The Government announced last week took a big stick to Kraft, telling them they had acted “irresponsibly and unwisely” during the takeover. Bet they were quaking in their boots.

Undettered by this beating, they are searching for stores in London and in provincial towns – in high street positions. Fireplaces and fireside chairs will be the brand image. How quaint.

But what grabbed me about this story were two things.

First, the price point – ‘affordable afternoon teas at £14.50 per person’. Kidding right? – £29.00 for two people to have afternoon tea? This makes my Starbucks look more affordable by the minute.

Second, they will be selling 6 foot long Twirls, Curly Wurly and Flake bars. 6 foot long! Prepare to feel quite sick – and forget that healthy eating stuff!

‘Would like to go large with that Sir’ transfers well from Burger King!

Oh, and there will be twelve types of hot chocolate available:

No fat at all, really low fat, maximum diet, diet, half fat, quarter fat, skinny, bog standard, extra fat, thickly sickly, Max fat, Solid and heavy.

I am not sure this going to catch on.

Apr 16 2010

How much damage by the ash?

The stories yesterday about the Icelandic Ash cloud caught my eye.

It made me sneeze and the car stop?

I felt sorry for all of those passengers stranded at airports as the whole of the UK airspace was closed down. Iceland’s volcanic ash was enough to suggest that airplane engines could be affected. This is due to the ash being primarily made up of silica – a form of glass. It would potentially tear the engines apart.

I think it might have affected me personally.

Firstly, I drove from Derby to Birmingham and sneezed all the way; Could this have been a reaction to the ash? Had it got past my pollen filter in the car. Was I allergic to volcanoes? It certainly hurt – and made the journey hard.

Secondly, this morning my car ground to a halt on the way to work. Could this have been the very same ash? Had it permeated the engine and brought it to a stop?

There are dark forces at work all around us. I was suspicious.

OK, I might be stretching the point a bit – in fact I had hay fever yesterday and I ran out of petrol this morning! Neither day were ‘good’ on the ‘goodness’ scale!

But I think to avoid the embarrassment of running out of petrol I am running with the ash story… As always, I am keeping this quiet!

Apr 16 2010

Places and Spaces (big spaces)

On 25 March the Treasury published a report on how public services can work together to save money. The initiative (don’t you hate those) is called Total Place.

At the heart of this new initiative is to see how the public sector can save money or get better value for money. Pretty laudable stuff. There are some headlines emerging as the document comes into the public domain:

Worcestershire Council think they will save 10% by improving property management.
Kent County Council think they will make £278m from property disposals
The North West Improvement and Efficiency Partnership will save £68m in five years
Lewisham Council will save between £6.5 – £15m a year through better procurement

I can see that this is all positive.

But I was with a client a few days ago in the public sector – they were wryly observing that there have been some Government figures disclosed to them about property usage – one department has 100m2 of property per employee! The department?

Allegedly – The Treasury – the same Treasury who have announced this new initiative are the ones with a football pitch each.

Some of Governments property assets may be held for historic reasons and so, whilst the headline is quite shocking (think about how much space that is when you site at your 2m2 desk!) this is not really the point.

The push is going to be to ‘reward’ or ‘recognise’ those organisations who make efficiency savings. This is usually the case – departments are heralded as being pathfinders or leading the way…

But what about the rest of us – who have been on an efficiency saving drive all of our working lives? Or those estates in the public sector which are tightly run. It’s not so easy for them to reduce overheads by, say, 10%.

The point is that that the baseline is wrong. You cannot draw the benchmark at a point in time- you need to look at many more data sets.It is not right to have a broad brush – especiually to those organisations who have already started on the process.

The race began some time ago!

Apr 15 2010

Nottingham in London

The reason I was headed off for London yesterday was to represent Nottingham – with others from the private and public sector at an Invest in Nottingham event.

Centre Point

Last night around 160 people gathered on the 31st floor of CentrePoint in London.

The location was stunning – with fantastic views of the City – both sides. Originally built by Harry Hyams, controversially it lay fallow for many years. It is ‘of its time’ but clever.

But the event was a real success in showcasing Nottingham. Jane Todd, CEO of the City, Derek Brewer from Nottingham County Cricket Club and Alex Gourlay CEO of Alliance Boots all spoke.

The success stories were shared – Boots employ 20,000 people in Nottingham and are older than Marks & Spencer and Sainsburys – 160 years this year! They have a reason for being in Nottingham – Science.

Jane spoke about the Science City and Core City status. But also about Nottingham’s ambitions for the future – The World Cup 2018 bid and Robin Hood. The new Southside business district featured too.

But there was a theme about ‘partnership working’ – and I think this really was at the heart of the evening. The partnerships between public and private sector, between public service, business and sport.

Derek rounded up with some news about how the sport offer in Nottingham was being promoted through all of the major players – the Cricket Club, Notts County, Nottingham Forest and a plethora of smaller sports too. The intention is to capitalise on sport – for the benefit of the City. More partnerships here!

As for me, I met up with some of my London based clients – and was able to introduce them to some of the key officers at the Council. This seems to be a new chapter for the Council – being much more accessible – which is to be applauded. It is also essential that we make Nottingham a place where it easy to do business.

Like most of these networking events, it is difficult to know how successful they are immediately – but my views about marketing to the 5% I have blogged about before was repeated last night.

Nottingham was punching above its weight and was able to showcase the City in front of a fairly influential and important audience!

There is another ‘Open Day’ on 27th May – back home (north of Watford) – which gives investors, developers and other interested parties the ability to see beyond Powerpoint – and come and touch and feel!

Apr 14 2010

The race is on… have you noticed?

In case you hadn’t noticed – the race is on. The election has been called and the runners and riders are lined up. I can’t help but wonder if there is any enthusiasm to engage with the process.

Its a limited choice...

The last six months or so have submerged politicians to a level below the famous duck pond. Mired in the expenses scandal, they appear to be a cynical shower. And no party has really escaped the backlash.

However, in view of the current economic situation, this is probably the most important election for many years.

Looking within my world of commercial property, what has changed fundamentally in the last 13 years since the last time we had a ‘competitive’ election and how can the next Government help the property market?

One area has to be the amount of red tape and regulation. The rules and regulations now permeate every part of what I do – from having risk assessments before visiting a site to checking if there is an asbestos register to making sure there is an Energy Performance Certificate.

Some of the regulation is perfectly sensible – and where safety is concerned it shouldn’t be compromised. But some of the other regulation is simply a barrier to getting business done.

One field which has become increasingly complex is the planning system, which places a severe restriction on property development.

The Conservatives say they are planning major changes to the planning system with a view to making it less bureaucratic. Their current policy is for major amendments to the preparation of Local Development Frameworks together with the abolition of a whole tier of regional planning, national targets and the Infrastructure Planning Commission.

The planning system would then be based on the principal of ‘open source’ with a basic national framework but with the majority of input from local communities giving local people the power to engage in the planning process.

To ensure that ‘nimbyism’ does not take root, the Tories are also proposing to incentivise Local Authorities to promote development by allowing them to keep any Council Tax from new homes for a period of six years.

It will be interesting to see other plans as the manifestos unfold.

The other feature of the last 13 years has been the increase of stealth taxes including Stamp Duty Land Tax, landfill tax and empty property rates.

We need to quickly reverse the empty property rates legislation – before we have ‘constructively vandalised’ too many of our perfectly good buildings. These stand empty because of the market – not a lack of desire to let on the part of the owner. No Party has pledged this – they claim not to be able to afford to.

Stamp Duty is now a potential barrier to the market. Property needs to have liquidity and a 4% tax on transactions over £500,000 is a significant sum. A reduction could help the market.

Rumours of a VAT hike if the Tories come to power are not helpful – especially for our non-VAT registered clients. It impacts on fee costs and building works.

Of course, the real feature of the last few years has been the rise and fall in property values. Hard evidence is always difficult to find, but there are examples of falls in values of up to 50%. The property sector has been hit hard by the recession and we are not out of it yet. The inevitable cuts in public sector spending are likely to further impact on the property and construction sectors especially if unemployment increases as a consequence.

An important characteristic of a healthy property market is the availability of bank finance. Whilst it is obviously important that proper regulation of financial institutions is put in place to ensure that we do not have a repeat of the ‘credit crunch’, any control should be as light-fingered as possible as there is a danger of over-reaction, which could stifle the whole banking system.

Whatever else is needed out of the forthcoming election, a prerequisite is a firm mandate for one of the leading parties so that they can take the difficult decisions required on the economy as soon as possible. It is only in times of economic growth where rents are rising steadily that the property development market can flourish.

So it’s back to the race. Bookmakers are expecting a record £25m of bets on what is being called the tightest election for a generation – though that will still only be one tenth of the sum gambled on this year’s Grand National. Does this mean a complete apathy for politics? Probably, but if you don’t vote then you can hardly complain about the winner of the race.

Apr 14 2010

Trains pt 3 – when is first class not first class? At Derby!

This will be a very short post – I am waiting at Derby Station for my train to London. More of why I am in London later!

First class at the back of the queue

For the first time, I have been organised and bought tickets for the train in advance. And because I am after the rush hour, it is cheap. I decided not to catch an early train back tomorrow too, missing the madness of rush hour. The cost – £40 return – first class.

Having arrived at the station with 30 minutes to spare – and only having 10 wasted trying to give the car park machine money (a familiar theme) I headed off to the first class lounge. For a change this is actually on the departure platform.

But it seems that there is a problem. There is a £5 charge – because I have bought my tickets in advance – and the tickets are ‘really cheap’. So £5 to sit for 15 minutes? In an empty lounge. The upside is a free coffee and free wifi.

I did express my ‘issues’ but it seems that the first class ticket is not all that it seems! The girl was very apologetic – ‘a lot of people complain’…

So, I am sat in the Muffin Coffee shop, £2.25 for a cappuccino. And I am logged onto the first class lounge wi-fi.

But don’t tell anyone!

East Midland Trains – you have a lot to learn.

Apr 12 2010

Local Pubs – an uphill battle to survive?

I am not sure how accurate the website is, but the Lost Pubs Project suggests that 10,000 pubs have closed – at a rate of 25 per month. Certainly the BBC were reporting in mid 2009 that the figure was 52 per week. Anecdotally, we all notice pubs closing around us.

Honey I burnt the chicken...

My local pub is Middletons at Wollaton on the outskirts of Nottingham. I can walk there. And stagger back if need be.

The pub was upgraded a few years ago – in its previous incarnation it was a bit on the rough side! But a new couple took over and turned it into a gastro-pub. Great food and beer at good prices. Sadly they couldn’t pay the rent and so had the pub re-possessed from them.

We are always quick to bemoan the loss of local facilities and the closure of the pub was quite sad really – so when it re-opened we patronised it again. But our first experience was quite poor. Although we put this down to them having new staff, it did put us off.

On Friday, after a hectic week we went back to try again. Unfortunately we had to wait 55 minutes for the Steak & Ale pie and Warm Chicken Salad. I think it only arrived because I reminded them.

When we paid I was asked the obligatory “was everything alright?” – to which I replied “no’. The wait was too long and the chicken was overcooked / partly burnt. I was really delighted with the explanation – it was because they had rushed the order after I had asked where the food was!

This is not my idea of good service. I felt as though it was my fault.

I still believe we should support local businesses – and we should give people a second chance. But I give up here.

I don’t blame the barmaid – but the landlord was in earshot of what I was saying and said nothing. I think they might need some clues about customer service – but not from me. When we came out we noticed how quiet the car park was, perhaps that should have been a clue earlier?

Isn’t there a saying that says acquiring new customers can cost five times more than satisfying and retaining current customers!

Apr 11 2010

I want one of those – golf carts

I am getting to that age (!) when I am contemplating an electric golf cart. Being a web fox I have been doing some research today.

Hammond, Garratt and Lyle - hi ho silver away

And I have found the answer! It’s not what my golfing mates will be expecting (they too have purchased or are purchasing an electric golf trolley). But I think it will be cool…

I am thinking it can be no more embarrassing than Richard’s remote control buggy that seems to have a mind of its own – it nearly wrapped itself around a bunker! This was just after he had chased it after it went AWOL. “Teething problems” he remarked.

when I was in San Francisco with the Sheriff of Nottingham last year we hired Segways for three hours and went on an amazing tour. They are great fun – but perhaps ‘cool’ isn’t the answer. One of the reasons they have not taken off here in the UK is that there is no clear position on whether you can ride them on the pavement or the road. In San Francisco the rules were that you had to ride on the Road – which was, at times, quite challenging!

So there are no issues here – there are no silly rules on Golf Courses?

On the other hand – I might go for something a little more conservative! Like a Motocaddy!

UPDATE 17 APRIL

I was running out of time before I tear the Borders apart, so headed off this morning for European Golf in Arnold and splashed out on a PowaKaddy… It’s charging up as I blog!