My Short Stay at Stormont

I spent Tuesday morning at Stormont in Belfast, a formidable parliamentary building with a chequered history. I note that most tweets about Stormont use the hash tag #onthehill and you can see why from my photograph. I was acting as a “witness” and giving “evidence” to the Northern Ireland Assembly Committee for Finance and Personnel as part of their Inquiry into Flexible Working in the Public Sector in Northern Ireland. The briefing sounded so official and the setting so formal that I wasn’t sure what to expect and a tad apprehensive.

 

But I have to say that my hosts greeted me warmly and even the panel made attempts to be friendly and put me at ease. In my introduction I mentioned that I used to be a researcher within the Civil Service to which the Chair replied “we will not hold that against you”. Later, when discussing new workplaces, one of the committee members mentioned “there is the one from Morgan Stanley where one of its employees said that she enjoyed being in the office so much, she did not want to go home” to which another member replied “that says more about her home” and another “you wonder what kind of home she comes from” until they were told “you cannot go there”. It seems Civil Servants are human and humane.

 

Seven Cs of Change

If you dont have the energy to read this blog then listen to it on YouTube.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent ... It is the one that is the most adaptable to change”.

This is one of my favourite quotes on change, from the legendry Charles Darwin of course. The literature is littered with quotes on change such that Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, in circa 500 BC postulated that:

 

“The only thing that is constant is change”.

The aim of this blog is to briefly introduce you to change management. I will start with a little theory and then move onto my own change management process. A process I developed a few years ago when with AMA, derived from Kotter and others. I call it The Seven Cs of Change.

Why is there resistance to agile working?

Tomorrow I have been asked to make a five minute introductory speech on: "Why is there resistance to agile working? Trends during recession and the issue of productivity”. This is what I intend to say.

 
I remember the days before the recession. I had been implementing new ways of working, that’s what we called agile working then, for around 12 years. I had become despondent that agile working had been hijacked by the property and FM industry as a more devious means of reducing the cost base. I’ve always maintained that if you simply want to save money on property costs then there are easier ways to do it than go through the heartache and mental strain required to implement agile working - for example cram all your people into a cattle shed in the north.