bookmark_borderOne Minute

My current role is changing a bit, with some additional responsibilities being added, specifically around line management.

As such, I’ve been reading The One Minute Manager and have to admit it’s given me a lot to think about.

The basic principles are to instill any team members or staff with a simple structure in which they can operate by breaking down the main management tasks of praise, reprimand and goal settings, into one minute activities.

The one minute goal setting helps set, review, clarify and agree on (SMART) goals.

One minute praising and recognition makes sure you are rewarding people as soon as you spot a behaviour you want to encourage, which in turn help set the expectation of how they should behave.

And one minute redirection and reprimand ensures that any deviations from the expected behaviour are caught as soon as they happen, making sure it is clear that the behaviour isn’t acceptable, again setting the expectations of how you expect your staff to behave.

The book itself is told from the point of view of a young manager who is struggling to find his way. He visits a successful manager who slowly reveals all of the secrets of one minute management. It’s not a big book, just over a hundred pages, and it’s certainly not a dry read as you are following the story to see what the young manager will uncover next. Yes it can be a bit over the top on occasion but all of the points are well made.

If you manage a team, no matter how big or small, I’d recommend you pick up a copy as it will undoubtedly change the way you think about how you manage your team.

The One Minute Manager (from Amazon UK, currently less than £5.

bookmark_borderHow to write an instruction manual

BBC Radio 4 are broadcasting a 30 minute show on this topic.

Engineer Mark Miodownik presents an instruction manual on how to write an instruction manual, exploring the history and the future of product guides and how they chart our changing relationship with technology.

He looks at how product guides have changed over the centuries, from the very first examples, written by James Watt on his new ‘copying’ machine, to the latest Ikea pictograms.

In the first half of the 20th century, manuals not only described how to use your television, but also how to fix it. Now, the first few pages of any TV manual contain stern health and safety warnings about the dangers of tinkering inside the TV.

Mark travels to Yeovil to visit Mr Haynes, of Haynes car and motorcycle manuals, to ask whether people still need a manual to fix their vehicle. As our products get more sophisticated, is the instruction manual becoming extinct?

One to catch I think, hopefully it’ll be available afterwards online as well.

bookmark_borderOne & Other

I know what I like.

It’s a phrase I use quite often when discussing art, mainly because it’s not an area I’m all that familiar with having never really studied it other than the odd wander round a gallery or two.

I’m quite open to most forms of art, and I’ll happily wander round an installation and see if it has any impact on me and, digging into my opening phrase a little, if something manages to illicit an emotion from me then it falls into my definition of ‘art’.

I don’t limit that statement to a specific set of emotions, there is much beauty to be found in disgust, as there is horror in the mundane. But sometimes I find myself baffled and, worse, disinterested. At that point I’ll happily concede that I do not appreciate whatever it is that is being offered to me, whilst retaining the right to change my mind in the future (such are the vagaries of something based on emotion).

So I currently find myself at odds with… er.. myself, with regards to the current art installation One & Other:

This summer, sculptor Antony Gormley invites you to help create an astonishing living monument. He is asking the people of the UK to occupy the empty Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, a space normally reserved for statues of Kings and Generals. They will become an image of themselves, and a representation of the whole of humanity.

To which my instant reaction is “poppycock”.

Placing random individuals on a televised stage isn’t art, surely? And, with the greatest of respect to the “plinthers”, the little I’ve seen doesn’t suggest it is more than some art students and random oddballs doing, well either little of interest, or lots of things that aren’t interesting.

And so the voyeurs are lapping it up, having gotten bored of Big Brother, the tourists and crowds in Trafalgar Square are drawn to the cameras with hopes of their 15 minutes of fame. My disinterest kicked in big time.

Until the other day when, channel hopping, I caught some coverage of a young man who was filling in for an someone else. He didn’t have anything planned, he was bemused and awkward and the loneliness of the plinth became evident.

My interest slowly woke up and I started to think about this piece of art.

I’m still thinking to be honest. There is something that galls me about it, the exploitation of those who stand atop the plinth, reduce to a number for the most part, and the voyeuristic nature of the entire thing.

But it has me thinking, considering why I am reacting to it the way I am and if that isn’t what art is all about, then what is?

I know what I like. Even though it can take me some time to make up my mind about what that means.

bookmark_borderOn getting older

I am middle aged. I am in the middle of my life, the young foolish years are behind me, the more sensible, thoughtful years, lie before me.

Or so says convention but, you know what, I can’t say things like convention have ever bothered me all that much.

Don’t get me wrong, I am very conventional in all the nuances of the word. I live in a semi-detached house, in a cul-de-sac. I have a sensible car, I have a good job, I have Sky+ HD and many other trappings of middle age, middle class life. Oh dear, did I just say I was middle class?

Anyway, none of that is really what I was going to discuss. Instead I was going to muse on how my body and mind have changed in the past few years, through various factors, and how much I’m enjoying being me.

But that all sounds a bit twee and I very much doubt that it will be of much interest to anyone else, other than me (I do find myself endlessly fascinating, it’s true).

Suffice to say that I am noticing that I am aging. Not something I’d been hugely aware of in the past but then what young man ever is? Mostly I am realising that life goes on, regardless of what happens, something that you can really only get a feel of from life experience.

I say all this against the backdrop of yesterdays date. It was supposed to be a special day for our family, but things changed so instead I sit here and remind myself that, no matter how hard it is now, life goes on.

bookmark_borderWeekend Mantra

I must not waste the weekend. I must not waste the weekend. I must not waste the weekend.

The reason I’m repeating this is because, from Saturday afternoon until late Sunday evening I have the place to myself.

And the footie season is starting.

And I have a list of things that need done around the house (yeah, one of THOSE lists).

Not to mention my own lists of things I’d like to get done, one of which is to formulate a plan on how to start a social media/community driven website for an organisation.

I’ve already pondered a day of lounging around on the sofa, drinking coffee, eating pizza and chocolate hobnobs and varying my viewing between said sport and whatever silly big blockbuster action movie I happen across.

Where as what I should be doing is, for example, sanding down the bannisters, or painting that section of the living room that got a little ‘cat damaged’ when we first got Oll-E.

So.

Say it with me!

I must not waste the weekend. I must not waste the weekend. I must not waste the weekend.

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bookmark_borderThat sudden tightness

Driving home tonight along the A82, I’m doing 58mph in a 50mph zone.

As I approach a corner a motorbike zips by me.

I round the corner and just as I pass the exit ramp from the local quarry, I spot a blue light.

Shit.

I immediately take my foot off the accelerator but don’t brake, too obvious.

Fuck.

The lights flash as the police car pulls up behind me.

Crap.

What do I do? I’ve never been stopped before. Ohh I feel sick to my stomach, guess I’ll have to just take whatever punishment they hand out. Wonder how it will effect my car insurance. Dammit, what an idiot.

And with that the police car accelerates, pulls out, and passes me. Round the next bend he cruises up behind the motorbike and motions him into the next layby.

Thank fuck for that.

I often drive too fast. Not stupidly, if it’s wet I slow down, if it’s busy I slow down but on a clear night, on a dry empty road I will admit I tend to go over the speed limit more often than not.

I know it’s illegal, just as I know I shouldn’t for a huge number of reasons beyond that, emissions, wear and tear on the car, the cost of diesel and so on. But there is always that part of me that manages to justify it to myself.

Later on, once I’m on the M8, I spy another police car on the other carriageway who has stopped the driver of a Subaru, and then later on the M74 a third policecar, a third set of blue lights dance across my eyeline as I cruise past at a steady 72mph (the joys of cruise control).

I pull off the motorway and all too soon I’m on the last few roads home, doing 46mph in a 40mph zone.

I just don’t seem to learn.