The ICE toolkit for a developing world is online now and available for all to see

What exactly is the toolkit?

The toolkit is an open-source set of materials and ideas to help engineers plan and deliver infrastructure for international development, poverty alleviation and the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It's a first in the civil engineering field and the work of ICE Past President Paul Jowitt and his Apprentices.

How can you access it?The full toolkit is now freely available to all engineers worldwide. For more information on the toolkit, please email apprentices@ice.org.uk

"Engineering is at the heart of most human endeavour, and to integrate it in this way to specifically address the problems of the developing world is admirable and to be encouraged. I salute this brilliant and original idea." 

Bill Nighy, Actor and Oxfam Global Ambassador

The cards on sustainable infrastructure are particularly clear about the challenge we need to help address to ensure access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene.

Source: Morella, Foster and Banerjee 2008

Paul Morrell, Government Chief Construction Advisor - Major Strategic Priorities and Opportunities for Construction

Buildoffsite Stakeholder event (29 September 2010).
http://www.buildoffsite.com/pdf/Events/Stakeholder%20event%202010/Paul%20Morrell.pdf


http://www.buildoffsite.com/pdf/Events/Stakeholder%20event%202010/Richard%20Ogden,%20Buildoffsite.pdf

Change reaction

Energy requirements of different forms of passenger transport.

more Sustainable Energy - without the hot air David JC MacKay
Figure 20.23. Energy requirements of different forms of passenger transport. The vertical coordinate shows the energy consumption in kWh per 100 passenger-km. The horizontal coordinate indicates the speed of the transport. The “Car (1)” is an average UK car doing 33 miles per gallon with a single occupant. The “Bus” is the average performance of all London buses. The “Underground system” shows the performance of the whole London Underground system. The catamaran is a diesel-powered vessel. I’ve indicated on the left-hand side equivalent fuel efficiencies in passenger-miles per imperial gallon (p-mpg).Hollow point-styles show best-practice performance, assuming all seats of a vehicle are in use. Filled point-styles indicate actual performance of a vehicle in typical use.See also figure 15.8 (energy requirements of freight transport).

Analysts: 'The recession has ended'; the continuing revolution

I really don't think we have seen the full impact of the major structural changes that are continuing to be necessary to address issues arising from the internet and climate change; reduced transaction costs impacting on supply and demand challenged through optimising/prioritising energy and water use.

During the 'debt decade', as I believe we are stuck in, we will have to learn to severely curtail our expenditure to pay off the excess of the past, and that may help us set off on the right path. It is going to mean a radical change in leadership, expectations and behaviour to make sure the UK pulls through which I'm not sure many of us fully realise and the government its really in a position to be too open about.

For me we need to be really taking out waste in the economy - including excessive consumerism, inefficient energy cycles and unfettered long distance travel - plus we need to put more detailed thought into the full life cycle cost of assets and services. At the same, we have processes and organisations which need radical overhaul; e.g. aspects of local government which is by anyone's measure in need of becoming more efficient and effective and simpler to access.

This implies revolutionary change in employment models, forms of employment itself, our use of transport modes and in our wider economic activity internally and globally. We are ill prepared for this change as we know as little about the direction of travel and the means to get there as people did at the start of the industrial revolution!

The good news is that I believe the UK has many strengths in our favour;
- a temperate maritime climate in a relative benign region free from material, sudden climatic and seismic events
- a reasonably secure source of potential future energy and fresh water supply
- a free-ish market based and educated democracy that values participation in society
- being on a naturally attractive and fertile island!

100 day plan - Share your dreams and let others help you with the interpretation! Confucius

Every company has tonnes and tonnes of data, but they are all asking the same questions. Information and knowledge are table stakes. Insight and foresight win.

In other words, don't ignore the spreadsheets and marketing studies but figure out ways to go beyond them. "We're all swamped in information. What we're looking for is ideas. We're trying to get to the future first."

'Fail Fast, Learn Fast, Fix Fast'

Success is inversely proportional to the time spent doing Strategic Planning. The further one gets from Head Office the more likely we are to have a 100 day planning process.

Feel like Family - Play like a Team - be Demanding & Caring

IDEAS - the Age of Ideas - Keep in Touch

Moving from Attention to Attraction Economy
Information > Knowledge > Interruption > Permission > Experience >>> ATTENTION
P&G soap adverts > Tesco / Carrfour > Customer (screen & mobile) in charge of decisions

Think through heart - Power to People (consider Mary Quant's mini skirts - KR early job)

• interruption >> Attraction
• reaction >> interActive - having an influencing dialogue
  
• marketing AT >> connecting with
• RoI (investment) >> RoI (involvement)
• Rational >> Emotional

embed 'Lovemarks' (nb Saatchi & Saatchi copyright the Lovemarks Co) - Evolving beyond Brands

• Lovemarks - Loyalty beyond Reason
• Owned by people
• adding mystery, sensuality and intimacy

• Irreplaceable moving to Irresistible
• Consider axes of Love and Respect

• Not transaction... having relationship
  

Go beyond Green - How sustainable are you really?, You'll be here tomorrow but your dreams may not.
GREEN >> BLUE
environment >> environment + economy + society + culture
fear >> radical optimism
obligation >> opportunity
planet & consumers (who wants to be called a consumer?) >> people
global problems >> individual passion

krconnect.blogspot.com

full script of Institute of Director's annual convention speech

Importance of success factors - Porter Drucker Bennis Peters

Tom Peters - Management by Wandering Around WBWA

Slides from Tom Peters on.... Eight Basics
Strategy, EXCELLENCE, Kevin Roberts' Credo, Success is a function of..., Hard is Soft, Soft is Hard
more at http://www.tompeters.com/slides/special.php

Tom Peters - Try It!

Extract from Tom Peter's master powerpoint slides.
more at http://www.tompeters.com/

Tom Peters - EXCELLENCE. BEDROCK. LEADERSHIP.

Extract from Tom Peter's master powerpoint slides.
see Tom Peter's website and http://blogs.ft.com/management/

Black Swan - the impact of the highly improbable

Nassim Nicolas Taleb

JHP: Everything it says it is on the cover. A great read and one that makes sense of so much....

Change

Change agents need more than raw analytical power to solve complex business problems; interpersonal skills are also critical if they are to lead others through change. Important traits for a potential change agent include empathy, strong communication skills, perseverance in the face of challenge or ambiguity, and an ability to deal with conflict constructively.

Change agent teams must also make a strong effort to hire people with an appropriate mix of skills. A balance should be struck between young “academic types” who have strong analytical capabilities and seasoned managers who have proven track records within the organisation. Working together, these two types of employees complement each other, broadening the team’s skill base and providing for the two-way transfer of knowledge and capabilities within the team.

Why doing business with the dragon is a Chinese puzzle

Extract from Jeff Randall in Daily Telegraph
Are other British companies likely to attract Chinese money? Indeed, has Britain fully woken up to the opportunities and challenges of China's breakneck development? When it comes to commerce and education, are we looking in the right direction?
I put these questions to Richard Pascoe, Director of the China Policy Institute at Nottingham University, the first overseas institution to be allowed to establish a satellite campus inside the People's Republic. His concern is that too many British businesses fail to grasp the significance of our cultural differences.
"The rewards from doing business in China can be great, but so are the risks," he said. "You don't win business by cold-calling. To succeed, you can't just fly in and out. You need to spend a lot of time there.
"You have to demonstrate that you are in for the long haul, building something to last. China's legal system has developed rapidly over the past 20 years, almost from scratch. The regulatory environment can change quickly. All of which makes durable relationships very important."
The biggest barrier, of course, is language. Mandarin has no alphabet as such, but about 60,000 characters. Worse still for the untrained Western ear, words change their meaning according to tone. Ma, for example, has several translations, including mother and horse, depending on how it is said. Get that one wrong and you can be in serious trouble.
"Overseas businesses with a fluent Mandarin speaker have a huge advantage,'' said Pascoe. ''Going through interpreters is full of pitfalls. That is where misunderstandings happen and deals go wrong. Companies need bilingual and bicultural staff."
About 50,000 Chinese citizens are studying in the UK - and the numbers are rising. Unfortunately, too few Britons, it seems, are heading in the opposite direction. Our mainstream education system is simply not equipped to offer Chinese.
A handful of independent schools, such as Wellington College and Brighton College, make Mandarin a compulsory subject for new entrants, but it is almost non-existent in the state sector. Last year, just 729 pupils sat the GCSE examination.
Of Britain's 130 universities, only about a dozen, largely those in the premier league, including Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, as well as Nottingham, have centres for Chinese studies. Durham is closing down its East Asian Studies Department.
Nottingham University's Professor Shujie Yao says: "There is generally a lack of interest and understanding of China among British people. We're desperate to recruit British experts on China, but there is a shortage of talent. So we hire staff from Germany, Ireland and Australia."
Should we be surprised? Not at all. Given that 38pc of all pupils who sat English GCSE last year failed to reach C grade, and the number of schools abandoning French and German has never been higher, lessons in Mandarin and contemporary Chinese culture remain a luxury that very few can afford.

Successful company leaders empower their people to execute their company’s mission and then hold them accountable to do so

That’s the essence of a new book titled, “Vital Factors: The Secret to Transforming Your Business - And Your Life.” The book’s co-author Lee Froschheiser is the chief executive officer and president of Management Action Programs (MAP) Inc. in Sherman Oaks, Calif.
Froschheiser was recently interviewed over the phone by SBT executive editor Steve Jagler.

SBT: One of the lines in your book is a reference about how effective leaders don’t spend most of their time telling people what to do. Instead, they create a system that empowers people to understand and execute the company’s mission statement. Is that a core principle of your book – empowering people and then holding them accountable?
Froschheiser: “The essence is to get people to understand what the right things to work on are, and empower them and train them and coach them. And when I give my speech in Milwaukee, I’m going to talk about empowerment, and what goes into empowerment. And then, you’re right. You’ve got to hold people accountable.

“I can go into companies and ask employees, ‘Do you feel empowered?’ And a lot of times, they’ll say, ‘No, I don’t feel empowered.’ As a leader, empowerment doesn’t mean they (employees) get to run amuck. As a leader, empowerment is that you train and develop and they understand that this is what I need to work on, and I’m going to be held accountable on this. It takes a lot of energy to tell people what to be doing all the time.

“I like to use the analogy of a buffalo herd and a gaggle of geese. I go fly-fishing up in Montana all the time, right in the heart of Yellowstone National Park, and there’s always buffalo herds there. If you ever watch a buffalo herd, a buffalo herd truly does have one lead buffalo. Where the lead buffalo goes, that’s where the herd goes. That’s why the buffalo hunters could wipe out so many buffaloes. They’d find the lead buffalo, they’d shoot it, and the rest of them would all stand around, waiting for the lead buffalo to move. And what happens in companies when the leader is always telling people what to do, is you become a buffalo herd. When the leader’s not there, guess what? Nothing happens. What you really want is an organization where there’s empowerment, and you become that gaggle of geese, where, when the lead goose gets tired and falls back, the next one takes the lead. And you don’t have that in an organization if you don’t have empowerment. So, you’re right on.”

Knowledge Paradox & a Competency Framework for Knowledge Management

Overload - objective to learn something new
Seductive Technology - promise > capacity to use (culture lags)
Business as Unusual - old leverage of physical assets

_________________________________________
Competency Analysis (from BT seminar 2000)
Learn - Innovate - Collaborate - Integrate - Lever
_________________________________________

Learn - BUILDING KNOWLEDGE - prepared Mind
- response to opportunity / threat
- competing on foresight

Innovate - CREATING KNOWLEDGE - open mind
- foster creativity, value ideas
- capture flow of ideas - process
- adapting physical spaces
- rewarding
- execute fast

Collaborative - SHARING KNOWLEDGE - collective mind
- community, sustainable relationship = share knowledge, working together with feedback

Integrate - STRUCTURING KNOWLEDGE - connected mind
- (Knowledge plus Knowledge) K+K = Value
- Connection outside usual boundaries
- Visibility / Transparency
- adapt and integrate change
- long planning cycles - dynamically reconfigure organisation

Lever - USING KNOWLEDGE - productive mind
- make productive use of resources and assets
- knowledge grows with sharing
- smart decisions on share/ protect

Strategy and Values (26 April)

· Reminder that at the end of the day the shareholders will be expecting optimum performance from their capital

· Source of potential competitive advantage from Values is probably Innovation and Professional Delivery, but that from Innovation ultimately we need to be able to show we can increase margins

· That Boards/SMTs need to consider what they are adding to ownership of a particular business and are they the natural owners

· Market value of a company will be driven by sources of competitive advantage which will be mainly intangibles

· Low margin business model of construction doomed to fail in long run –as no slack

· Quality of earnings hierarchy in city eyes; low products/projects [tough], services [some annuity’ through to Intellectual Property

· If a business buy a huge amount of services/ materials you immediately would consider that company must be stunningly good at purchasing

· Emergent & Determinant forms of Strategy

Reasons why strategic plans fail

There are many reasons why strategic plans fail, especially:

• Failure to understand the customer
• Why do they buy
• Is there a real need for the product
• inadequate or incorrect marketing research
• Inability to predict environmental reaction
• What will competitors do
• Fighting brands
• Price wars
• Will government intervene
• Over-estimation of resource competence
• Can the staff, equipment, and processes handle the new strategy
• Failure to develop new employee and management skills
• Failure to coordinate
• Reporting and control relationships not adequate
• Organizational structure not flexible enough
• Failure to obtain senior management commitment
• Failure to get management involved right from the start
• Failure to obtain sufficient company resources to accomplish task
• Failure to obtain employee commitment
• New strategy not well explained to employees
• No incentives given to workers to embrace the new strategy
• Under-estimation of time requirements
• No critical path analysis done
• Failure to follow the plan
• No follow through after initial planning
• No tracking of progress against plan
• No consequences for above
• Failure to manage change
• Inadequate understanding of the internal resistance to change
• Lack of vision on the relationships between processes, technology and organization
• Poor communications
• Insufficient information sharing among stakeholders
• Exclusion of stakeholders and delegates

Leading Change

John P. Kotter, professor of leadership at Harvard Business School expands in this book on a 1995 article he wrote for the Harvard Business Review. The amount of change in organizations has grown tremendously over the past two decades, and the rate of change will only accelerate in the next few decades. No wonder change, and leadership through change, are foremost concerns of CEO’s today.

Kotter's Eight-Step Change Model

Culture Change

In order to set out a view on Culture Change it is necessary to define a view on both culture and change with respect to organisations.

Culture

Culture is not just defined by formal things, such as mission statements and a company hierarchy, it is also defined by “soft” factors. Gerry Johnston of Cranfield Business School classified these factors as

• Rituals and routines
• Stories and Myths
• Symbols

These factors themselves help to define how people will intuitively respond in certain situations and reflect the values of an organisation. Stated and documented Values may not reflect well those actions that people adopted particularly in stressful or unfamiliar situations unless these truly reflect the culture of the organisation. Organisational cultures are particularly difficult to change.

Another way of considering the culture of an organisation, from Schein 1997, is to conceive it as consisting of three concentric layers with Values (as above) on the outside, Beliefs in the middle (more specific and are issues which people in the organisation can surface and talk above) and Taken for Granted Assumptions at the core – sometimes referred to as Paradigms (these are the aspects of an organisation that people find difficult to identify and explain).

There is no absolute right or wrong for a corporate culture and the appropriate culture will be in part dictated by the needs of the organisation to deliver a given strategy.

Charles Handy, in Understanding Organisations (1993), characterised culture into four key types.

	characterised by
Type of culture	strategy driven by	MO (modus operandi)	suited to deliver
role culture	committees	structures and systems	efficiency repetitive tasks	WorkManager process control
task culture	teams	shared values ad hoc procedures	projects or tasks innovation	MODern Housing Solutions & Defence Estates
power culture	leaders	command	rapid response	Armed Forces
personal culture	individuals	personal creativity expert power	innovation

Change

Management is becoming increasingly focused on the question of managing change. It represents a crucial switch from viewing companies as static entities to seeing them as dynamic organisations in a constant state of flux. Learning to live with change is for some people almost counter-intuitive. Traditional managers have almost always been conservative and, by definition, abhorred change. We need to learn to love change and feel comfortable with our creative intuition – in particular we need to make compassion, harmony and trust the foundation stones of business.

The ability to change per se is an overarching business imperative to survive and succeed and culture change is no different except that it has longer time horizons and will be driven by the strategic and operational needs of an organisation.

Role in effecting and leading culture change

Background

The last 10 years of service delivery that preceded the Housing Prime Contract was characterised by 20+ contracts covering a range of geographic areas and contractual responsibilities. These contracts were performed by subsidiaries from at least 5 construction to services companies that had inherited staff from the Government’s PSA; these staff had been integrated into their parent companies’ corporate culture to a limited extent as contracts had been let for only 3-4 years and staff had been ‘TUPE’d’ from one company to another during the decade. In addition the split of responsibilities between Establishment Works Consultants (EWC), focused on ‘white collar’ compliance and inspections, and Works Service Managers (WSM), focused on enabling delivery and administration of subcontract arrangements, has led to a divergence of values and cultures.

In addition to this we to need consider the interaction of cultures of Defence Estates, the armed forces hierarchy and the Service families themselves.

MODern Housing Solutions’ Values

MODern Housing Solutions has selected 5 key Values to help deliver the new organisation’s strategy and objectives. These are

Openness and Collaboration; by developing our staff and creating an open, rewarding place to work where success is the norm, best practice and lessons learned are shared and where challenge is welcomed.

Mutual Dependency; by collaboration to achieve each others objectives, working with customers and suppliers so that risks and rewards are shared.

Professional, Innovative Delivery; getting it right first time, smarter, better and faster. Constantly searching for and implementing fresh approaches to delivery, best practice in fulfilling our customer’s needs.

Sustainable, profitable growth; Striving for efficiencies in processes and methods, which increase the quality of our service to customers.

These Values do not entail proscriptive procedures in all cases but provide our staff with the blueprint that enables them to know how to behave and perform services in cases where procedures are not written down (those Taken for Granted Assumptions as set out above). The Values are there to drive to the core of changing the organisation’s culture but they need sound training and awareness, strong role models and strong policing of people who are not prepared to adopt the expected norms.

Roles to effect and lead this change

The key roles are to

• lead the change management process and ensure that all our people understand that it is everything that we do will be measured by how well live to the company’s Values
• provide an excellent role model for people to understand how to behave in situations - leading by example
• tackling non-compliance of people, wherever they are in the organisation, by applying the values and then taking appropriate disciplinary action
• evangelise on the benefits of our values and culture in all our forms of communication; e.g. posters, emails, presentations & newsletters