Rushing To Wait

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Jan 272012
 

Our doctors’ practice has recently combined forces with another practice and moved to a huge, purpose built, ultra modern building. The two practices continue to operate separately so each has its own waiting area. Ours occupies a very large and spacious area with dozens of seats. But why? With an appointment system, why do you need such an extravagant use of space.

When this building was at the planning stage, why didn’t someone take a look at the reason that they end up with a full waiting room. I can think of two reasons only:

  1. The doctors don’t start their surgeries on time. Not hard to fix!
  2. Consultations take longer than the allocated time. OK, so make the slots 12 minutes say, rather than ten. Or leave a catch up ‘blank’ appointment every so often.

These simple expedients could have saved a huge investment in unnecessary waiting space and reduced the frustration of appointment times having no relationship with the actual time of the consultation. Surely this is a classic case of devising a solution before/without considering the problem and its causes. A missed opportunity.

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Turn Off The Hairdryer

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Jan 032012
 

In his latest blog post, the BBC’s Robert Peston talks about interviewing the Tottenham Hotspur manager, Harry Redknapp, for a programme on football and business. ‘Arry, as he is affectionately known, is well known for his ability to motivate players and commented to Peston, “You know I think players will respond more by you telling them how good they are, rather than telling them what they can’t do. I find it’s no good shouting and screaming at players and telling them ‘you’re rubbish and you can’t do this’, because that doesn’t help anybody.” Although Manchester United’s Alex Ferguson is famed for his ‘hairdryer’ treatment of his players, it is exceedingly unlikely he could have become so successful unless he balanced it with a great deal of positive comment and encouragement.

Sadly it is something that many of us learn late on in life (and some never do). In sport, business or life in general, apart from the super confident (deluded?) most of us are all too aware of our shortcomings and need to be reminded of our strengths and abilities.

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300

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Dec 202011
 

I do not believe it! (Victor Meldrew) Since drafting this post, Seth Godin has blogged about the 4,300 items he’s written since starting his blog, originally in email format back in 1991. I think I’ve been trumped! Oh well, for what it’s worth, here’s my offering.

I’m going to bore you with a little history! This is the 300th post since this blog started in its original guise as The Watercooler. Some of the early posts were written by friends before I stopped nagging them and took full responsibility for what appears in print. However, my wandering mind first started dumping its thought in written form on the 26th April 2006 when Random Ramblings first appeared on my original website. Then, with the advent of my second website, RR became a monthly emailed newsletter. With this, my third website iteration, I started the Watercooler blog and for some while ran RR as a separate entity. But it seemed a bit unfair to inflict quite so much waffle on the world and so a few months back I merged the streams so now the monthly emailed Ramble is a collation of what appears in the blog, with a some mild editing.

Anyone who writes as much as I have over the years is either very creative or they nick ideas from elesewhere. I fall into the latter category. One of my key influencers is Seth Godin. I was rather taken with an eclectic list of a dozen pieces of advice Seth published recently. My favourites are:

  1. Borrow money to buy things that go up in value, but never to get something that decays over time. (If only the world had taken note!)
  2. It’s almost never necessary to use a semicolon. (He’s completely wrong on this!!!)
  3. Backup your hard drive. (Well reminded.)
  4. Taking your dog for a walk is usually better than whatever alternative use of your time you were considering. (Hmm, no dog.)

And just to finish off, here are three thoughts I’ve borrowed from elsewhere:

  1. A pessimist is never disappointed. (Eddie Kiely, a work colleague from many years back.)
  2. Smile – it confuses people. (Scott Adams – American humourist.)
  3. Strategies are okayed in boardrooms that even a child would say are bound to fail. The problem is there is never a child in the boardroom. (Victor Palmieri, US corporate turnaround specialist.)

Happy Christmas!

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Under Pressure

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Aug 312011
 

No, not a discussion of a Queen song, although it’s a pity I can’t add a sound track of Freddie Mercury. At the moment I have quite a few things that need doing in a short time. I’m under pressure. Or am I? As Seth Godin pointed out in his blog a couple of weeks back, I’m under pressure from myself. Most of the urgent items on my To Do list I have elected to add to it. Sure, if I didn’t do them one or two people might take a dim view but the world wouldn’t end, I doubt it would even make much difference to my life. And those disappointed folk would mostly forget pretty quickly.

Yesterday I was discussing fear of certain situations with Derek Norval, my co-facilitator of our Succesful Speaking workshops for people who are nervous of speaking in public. As Derek pointed out, although there may be deep seated reasons for our fears, we choose to be frightened. We can make a decision not to be. I remember reading a book where the author said that one day she took a decision to be happy. And so she was. In the latter days of my corporate career I would look for the positive in whatever situation presented itself. Sometimes I would make my colleagues laugh at the absurdity of my take on ‘positive’. But there is no doubt that if you look hard enough, there is nearly always that proverbial silver lining in every cloud.

By the way, I chose to write this post. Sure I hadn’t written anything for a while. But I could have let another week or two go by. After all, none of you has been banging on my door asking when I am going to write a new post. You have my full permission not to feel under any pressure to do so in future. And you can give yourself full permission not to do things that aren’t essential. And not to fear the consequences.

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Working For Free

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Aug 042011
 

Talk to people who are self-employed or run small businesses and they’ll often say, “Oh, it was only a small job so I did it for free”. Sometimes, particularly if they are offering a new service, they do work for free or heavily discounted to gain exposure, to have a base from which to gain referrals. Large organisations spend vast sums of money on projects for so-called ‘strategic reasons’. In reality, more often than not these are vanity projects or pet schemes of senior directors. An objective view would say that these schemes will only ever lose money.

Are any of these activities justified? In the case of vanity projects, almost certainly not. But what of the small business, the self-employed? There is an argument that says most people only really value what they pay for, so this would suggest that the discount route is preferable to the free approach. And clearly there is a limit to how much we can do for free. But I wonder whether we sometimes do free stuff because we lack the confidence to ask for payment. Which is kind of odd. Would we go into a newly opened shop and ask for free products so that we can ‘increase their exposure’? Whatever approach is taken, it should be part of a business plan that includes free/discounted as part of the marketing budget. And as with everything, the effect and benefits should be monitored.

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