Virgin Brand Values - aide memoire

based on information available on the group's website

The Virgin brand revolves around delivering 
- value pricing, high quality, fun, great customer service and innovation 
whilst at the same time being 
- authentic, people-oriented and hip 
and associated with 
- Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson and his personal reputation.

Virgin Group Brand Values

Fun = enjoyment and humour, not offensive and incompetent

Value for Money = simple, not cheap

Quality = attention to detail, not expensive for the sake of it

Innovation = challenging convention, not different for the sake of being different

Competitive Challenge = responding to consumer needs, not being irrelevant

Brilliant Customer Service = empowered, not unprofessional people

sounds great - what can I do to help...

First UK concrete gravity platform, built in the UK for the North Sea.

Low Carbon Construction - Innovation & Growth Team - Emerging Findings

....a couple of recent HMG reports to look at - links are in the titles

Contents

1. Executive Summary.
2. Introduction
3. Industry-Wide Issues
4. Major Projects
5. Housing
6. Non-Domestic Buildings
7. Distributed Energy
8. Infrastructure
9. 2050 Group
10. Future Work
11. Industry Engagement
12. Acknowledgements


Annexe A: A process map for market transformation
Annexe B: Summary of recommendations and propositions
Annexe C: Members of the IGT Steering Group and Working Groups

Strategy for National Infrastructure - March 2010

.......Infrastructure UK has three key objectives:

• enabling long term investment;• developing effective long term plans and priorities; and• improving delivery.


In the last five years an estimated £150 billion has been invested in the economic infrastructure
of the UK, predominantly by the private sector. The demand for investment in economic

infrastructure in the UK is expected to be in the range of £40-50 billion per annum until 2030,

and possibly beyond. This is significantly above historic levels.

Electric charging point - models

Reference: http://www.electriccarsite.co.uk/electric-car-charging-points.
This is clearly moving on a pace with a fair number of charging points already in London.
Other UK resource has a searchable map of charging points.
In the news Government puts up £30m for electric car chargers Independent

Electromotive has already installed their system in the City of Westminster 

The Right Track - High Speed 2 (HS-2) paper by Bow Group

This is a good read. The proposed accelerated timetable over current HMG plans is good as is the intent to take the route via a Heathrow Hub and to maximise regenerative benefit to UK as a whole.

The Right Track – a 100 page report by the Bow Group brings together a range of option studies on HS-2 to create a commentary on ‘Delivering the Conservatives‘ Vision for High Speed Rail in UK. This envisages a start in 2015, 2 years earlier than the current government’s plans. A copy of the report can be found here 

Risk headings - aide memoire

EXTERNAL RISK SOURCES
Political
Economic/Markets - Financial and monetary
Social
Technological
Environmental/Ethical
Legal

INTERNAL RISK SOURCES
Systems
Security
Structure
Strategy
Skills & Staff
Style & Shared Values (Culture)

Cold calling emails

Personalisation and context
Focus: emphasis is on the value for reader, making it worth reading.

A call to action: suggests action to contact to set up a call; a self-confident approach that can contrast with impression given with more desperate overtones in an email.

Clear language: well written and error free, taking the time to care, which makes reader feel more respected

Confidence, Clarity, Compliance and Competitiveness - key ingredients in winning

Evaluators look for the following in tender submissions
confidence
- this comes across in the language used
clarity
- is about keeping the message simple and relating to their requirements
compliance
- is vital and can only be achieved by ATFQ both accurately and fully (whilst also following the guidelines in an ITT which may seek that the structure of each response includes 'Benefits', Challenges' and' Evidence'
competitiveness
-In addition to the above, it is also vital to be 'competitive' by including what is better about OUR proposal over that of our competitors'. Always remember the strengths and weaknesses of having an incumbent position

Dartford Crossing Study April 2009

Interesting study including analysis of current supply limitations, nature of demand and future options to meet anticipated demand.

You might have thought from reading the report that additional capacity is required sooner than the Forth Replacement Crossing. This is even more relevant in light of the fact that this is a strategically important crossing with v little in the way of a contingency options in the event of something unforseen happening (not mentioned in the report. 

New Civil Engineer

Department for Transport - report download

Six ways to make Web 2.0 work - McKinsey Quarterly

Article is at © Copyright 1992-2009 McKinsey & Company

Web 2.0 tools present a vast array of opportunities—for companies that know how to use them.
FEBRUARY 2009 • Michael Chui, Andy Miller, and Roger P. Roberts

Source: Business Technology Office

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....

China - historical territories and 1914 Republic (days of empire)... from Wikipedia

Click on links

Brilliant Quotes Of Management

extract from http://www.hftonline.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1937

Recently, a magazine ran a contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from their real-life managers. Here are some of the submissions:

1. As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks. (This was the winning quote from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corp in Redmond, WA.)

2. What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter. (Lykes Lines Shipping)

3. E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business (Accounting manager, Electric Boat Company)

4. This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with it. (Advertising/Marketing manager, United Parcel Service)

5. Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them. (R&D supervisor,
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing/3M Corp.)

6. My Boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only needed corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she couldn't edit it. The disk I gave her was write-protected. (CIO of Dell Computers)

7. Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say." (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)

8. "How About Friday?" My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said, "That would be better for me." (Shipping executive, FTD Florists)

9. "We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees." (Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)

10. We recently received a memo from senior management saying:
"This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the subject mentioned above." (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division)

11. One day my Boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said "If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!" (New business manager, Hallmark Greeting Cards.) (Note: He must be related to my boss!

12. Speaking the Same Language: As director of communications, I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company's training programs and materials. In the body of the memo one of the sentences mentioned the "pedagogical approach" used by one of the training manuals.

The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR director's office, and told that the executive vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn't stand for "perverts" (pedophilia?) working in her company.

Finally he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired - and the word "pedagogical" circled in red. The HR manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary, and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told me not to worry. He would take care of it.

Two days later a memo to the entire staff came out directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo by pasting words together from the Sunday paper. (Taco Bell Corporation) roflmao

13. This gem is the closing paragraph of a nationally-circulated memo from a large communications company:"(Company name) is endeavorily determined to promote constant attention on current procedures of transacting business focusing emphasis on
innovative ways to better, if not supersede, the expectations of quality!" (Lucent Technologies)

European Strategies for LCCS

Low-cost country sourcing is probably one of the most powerful means for realising cost-savings opportunities. In March 2005, Ariba Inc. and Supply Management Institute (SMI) conducted a collaborative research project on the topic of low-cost country sourcing (LCCS) to investigate how procurement officers are using this to improve competitive advantage. The research questioned 200 Chief Procurement Officers at large companies from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK with the aim of investigating how they carry out low-cost country sourcing activities to improve competitive advantage. More specifically, the study addressed the following questions:

•  Which locations are most important for sourcing today and five years time?
•  Which supplies are suitable for sourcing in low-cost countries?
•  What risks are associated with low-cost country sourcing?
•  What measures have companies taken to facilitate low-cost country sourcing?
•  What is the impact on corporate performance from low-cost country sourcing?

The findings show that low-cost country sourcing can have a positive impact on company performance in terms of cost and quality although the time dimension remains to be a challenge.

Moreover, the findings suggest that low-cost country sourcing activities must be carefully planned, executed and evaluated in order to cope with risks and other types of costs that may offset benefits if not done properly. Some of the key findings are:

• Companies are still sourcing extensively in the home country, followed by neighbouring countries. Thus, nearshoring is highly prevalent today and the situation will persist to a large extent until at least 2010. 48 percent of the respondents rank their home country among the three most important sourcing countries.
•  Over the next five years, the value of goods and services sourced in low-cost countries will increase by 64 and 60 percent, respectively. In other words, low-cost country sourcing will increase dramatically by 2010.
•  China is the most important country for low-cost country sourcing today, and its position will strengthen even further by 2010. The number of respondents rating China among the top three most important sourcing countries is expected to increase from 30 to 45 percent.
• 48 percent of the respondents align LCCS strategy to the corporate strategy to a high or very high extent. 61 percent of the respondents claim to involve senior management in formulation of visions for LCCS to a high or very high extent.
•  Quality and total landed cost savings are the two most widely implemented performance metrics. These are implemented to a high or very high extent among 56 and 45 percent of the respondents, respectively.
•  70 percent of the respondents have experienced positive impact on total costs, 61 percent have experienced positive impact on transportation costs and 50 percent have experienced positive impact on labour costs.

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.

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

On Integration, Consolidation, Reorganisation, etc...

"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralisation."
Caius Petronius, AD 66

Overhead as a function of turnover

Example of how overhead may vary with turnover

2002 Actual vs 2004 Budget

Standard 1 for Condition - Criteria

Included as an aide memoire...