I went for a walk at lunchtime to watch more of the demolition of the (old) Main Library on campus. Like many people, I have a large number of happy memories of that building, not least the 12 years I spent working there. And while I’ve moved on to bigger and better things now, it … Continue reading “The end of an era”
Data mining my working life
I’ve been collecting statistics on all sorts of aspects of my working day for a while now. I record how long my meetings last, who they are with, how much time it takes me to get to them, and also track how much time I spend on courses, at conferences, and engaged in any social … Continue reading “Data mining my working life”
The Cost of Password Resets
Do you know how much it costs the University each time you forget your password? At the IT Service Desk we deal with at least 1,000 forgotten passwords a month (14,675 over the last year). The process of enabling a user to reset their forgotten password takes around 5 minutes from when the user phones … Continue reading “The Cost of Password Resets”
Making professional presentations
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been writing a presentation that I have to give as part of my ILM5 qualification. I give presentations fairly regularly (in fact I’ve given two since I started writing this one), but this one is different in that I’m being assessed on every aspect of it, and the … Continue reading “Making professional presentations”
Lean and Lean Six Sigma
As well as studying for my ILM5 qualification, I’ve also been undertaking other training and development. A lot of this has centered around process improvement, which is going to play a larger part in my role going forward, and which is something I’m very interested in anyway. As part of this I attended a day-long … Continue reading “Lean and Lean Six Sigma”
Managing for efficiency and effectiveness
The latest module of my ILM5 training was called Managing for efficiency and effectiveness. I was a lot more comfortable with this as a subject than budgetary control, and my main learning point was that I was on the right track with a lot of the things I’m already doing, and that the way I … Continue reading “Managing for efficiency and effectiveness”
Immediate reflections after this week’s session
After doing two days of training about efficiency and effectiveness the main learning point is that I’ve got a fairly good system for staying efficient and effective already. I manage my time well, use appropriate tools to track my work progress, and manage to achieve a lot in a relatively short period of time. I’m … Continue reading “Immediate reflections after this week’s session”
Negotiation
After doing a course on negotiating (and reading Getting to Yes which I enjoyed more than the course), I find myself analysing every negotiation I see (in real life or on TV). My conclusion so far is that there are a lot of people who are bad at negotiating, and many of them have roles … Continue reading “Negotiation”
Notes inspired by The Phoenix Project
I’ve just read The Phoenix Project as research into my own change project. A few initial observations: We need to eliminate anything that doesn’t add value to the customer and anything that represents dead time. Using Lean principles to eliminate waste should lead to greater productivity and customer satisfaction. It requires taking a step back … Continue reading “Notes inspired by The Phoenix Project”
Budgetary planning and control
I attended the second module of my ILM5 training last week, which covered budgetary planning and control. This is an area of work where I don’t have a great deal of experience, but one which I feel I’ll need a decent grounding in if I’m going to move any further in my organisation. The content … Continue reading “Budgetary planning and control”