Monthly Archives: April 2015

65 – Service suppliers to local government. What do they do differently and why?

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Posted by Parkinson                                                                                       350 words

integrated systems

It has always intrigued me that the major suppliers of services to local government operate quite differently. What are some of the differences and why?

The first difference that is obvious is the investment in enterprise management systems. Some are better developed and more integrated than others but all have a third party accredited quality (ISO 9001), safety (AS4801), and environment (ISO 1400) systems. They will also have a corporate operations manual and a management manual setting out company policy and requirements. Continue reading →

64 – Ambition, culture and performance. A tale of middle management in local government.

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Posted by Whistler                                                                                          750 words

cathedral

I was recently involved in a discussion where the metaphor of the three stonemasons came up. The person telling the story described the response of the three stonemasons to the question ‘what are you doing?’ You may know it.

The first stonemason said ‘I am making a stone’. The second said ‘I am making a wall’. The third said ‘I am making a cathedral’.

The purpose in telling the story was to illustrate the various motivations of people at work in local government and that, hopefully, we are all here to make a cathedral and we know it. Well, I started thinking about how many of the workers cleaning the same public toilets every day, or mowing the same parks, or emptying the same bins, think they are making a cathedral. The chances are that they are just diligently making a stone. Whether it is used to make a cathedral or not is probably not important to them and never will be.

Then my thinking moved on to thinking about myself and the other middle managers I deal with. Surely we are all making cathedrals? Continue reading →

63 – ‘The more experienced the managers, the more they trust simple intuition’. Or do they?

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Posted by Colin Weatherby                                                                         700 words

intuition

Some time ago I posted on an idea from Richard Farson’s book, Management of the Absurd – Paradoxes in Leadership. This post has been inspired by another chapter in that book.

Farson says that the one quality that top executives say separates them from their less successful colleagues is their intuition. Their ‘immediate visceral reactions’ to people and events are usually accurate, which makes their judgements valuable. Farson defines intuition as the ‘accumulation of many learning experiences that have sensitised them, making them able to read situations quickly’. It is a quality that allows top management to make fast decisions that are effective. However, when top management starts to lack confidence, they start to apply formal processes to make decisions. They replace their immediate visceral reaction with complicated analytical thinking. Continue reading →