Powerful and productive teams

This week I’m in Aberdeen facilitating a learning programme designed to build powerful and productive teams – teams that have a strong sense of trust, are open and honest and hold each other explicitly accountable for their contribution to the team's goals. 

This stage of the project requires the teams to work on focused and relevant challenges that have been devised to give them an opportunity to:

• Practice and develop smooth processes and ways of operating
• Apply and develop key behaviours and challenge the mindset of self and others
• Build and own a process of continuous learning and improvement
• Become a high performing team
• Provide an excellent outcome for a deserving ‘client’  

Part of the criteria for selecting an appropriate challenge is that they must have a tangible output – deliver value to a charity or equivalent, be something you can take pride in, be sustainable over the long term and have an ‘emotional’ content – building a produce garden on a waste ground at the back of the Remploy factory in Aberdeen ticked all these boxes and more.

Remploy was established in April 1945 under the 1944 Disabled Persons (Employment) Act introduced by Ernest Bevin, the Minister for Labour. The first factory opened in 1946 at Bridgend in South Wales, as the factory network grew, employment was provided for disabled people returning from the Second World War. It is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) which exists to help disabled people achieve the independence, personal self confidence and wellbeing that can be achieved through sustainable employment.

Remploy is now one of the UK's leading providers of specialist employment services for disabled people and those experiencing complex barriers to work. Tailored services include development, training, learning and rehabilitation to help individuals prepare for, gain and remain in sustainable work, whilst providing employers – in the private and public sector – with the skilled staff they need to realise commercial benefits.

There are insufficient mainstream employment opportunities for all unemployed disadvantaged and disabled people, so job creation through commercial and social enterprise is critical. Remploy is therefore developing a model to support the creation of jobs for disabled and disadvantaged people through an alternative approach to the Remploy factories.

In order to develop the model Remploy has identified five of its existing sites to trial this new approach. The Social Enterprise model will enable each of the five factories to explore opportunities appropriate for their local economy and community, building on the existing skills and assets of sites and employees. Each of the sites is managed by an individual with a background in social enterprise. They are supported to develop a number of social firms, the nature of which will depend on each of their localities and markets. Expertise to support work experience and trainees is incorporated into each site.

The Aberdeen factory is one of five Remploy sites involved in a pilot project to look at developing some current activity into social enterprises. Ben Mardall has been employed as Social Enterprise Manager to take this forward. The aspiration is to develop a multi-functional building promoting active inclusion to support the integration of disabled and disadvantaged cohorts into the workplace by offering a cross cutting theme which addresses unemployment and provides work opportunities for people furthest from the labour market. Although all the businesses are commercially focused, all profit is spent on the social objectives of the enterprises. Our objective to offer a ‘hand-up’ not a ‘hand-out’.

The Aberdeen site is at the vanguard of that process.

Should you require any further information about Remploy Aberdeen, contact Ben Mardall, Social Enterprise Manager: ben.mardall@remploy.co.uk

Should you wish to learn more about lloydmasters learning programmes see our website or contact the team: info@lloydmasters.com

Assuring the delivery of major projects

Effective project delivery is of prime importance to virtually all our clients. Major projects in one form or another have increasingly become a core business activity for organisations in every sector.

Our clients in construction, transport and energy have long recognised this, but the role of projects is now much more central to the day-to-day working of all kinds of organisation. This is true even in the public sector where government departments now see Programme and Project Management – PPM – as critical to their remit.

Despite rapid growth in the scope and importance of projects, many organisations still struggle to achieve effective project delivery. Our experience points to several reasons for this. In major public sector projects, for example, there is often a mindset of assumed failure from the outset; in the construction sector there is widespread failure to learn from the lessons of previous projects.

In almost every instance we see of non-delivery, the root cause can be traced back to the start of the project. The reasons for project failure seldom materialise from thin air midway through the project; invariably they can be traced back to the way in which the project was set up.

Key causes for project failure which we have identified are:

• A failure to align and engage critical stakeholders. This means that when problems do arise, there is no common understanding of how they should be addressed. Rather, the parties fall back into partisan posturing and blame
• An inability to understand and manage risk – not just commercial risk, but risk relating to safety, relationships, the political context and so on

We have worked extensively with our clients to minimise the risk of non-delivery.

In every instance our interventions are designed to improve the way in which the project is set up for success. Perhaps the single most important part of being set up to succeed lies in not so much in formal plans and programmes but in the way the various parties build sustainable working relationships. It is these relationships which enable collaboration to endure, even when the going gets tough.

There is widespread talk of the difficult economic climate bringing an end to collaboration and partnership in project work. What’s the need, runs the argument, when we can use financial muscle to squeeze improved performance from our supply chain? All the evidence we have seen is that this approach is ultimately self-defeating as it fails to address the main reasons for non-delivery. Unless the parties to any major project are aligned in terms of goals, intent and interest, fundamental fault lines exist which will inevitably be exposed in the delivery phase.

The glamorous and not-so-glamorous life of a consultant

Last month: Shanghai. First visit to China – amazing place. The pace of change is just phenomenal, as is the level of entrepreneurial energy. The investment in infrastructure is eye-opening. It’s an area in which they are not catching up with the West – they are overtaking us and leaving us floundering quite literally in the slow lane.

Dave and I took the bullet train to Hangzhou: 202 kilometres in 40 minutes and a processing efficiency through the stations (security baggage checks and all) which held us up for a maximum of 10 seconds. What a contrast with the dreary security lines at Heathrow!

This week: Arlesey, between Luton and Stevenage. Don’t come here for a holiday. It’s a complete dump. The highlight of my week is a lukewarm beer in the bar of my cheap hotel just outside Luton. I’m so bored that even writing a blog seems exciting.  There’s a reason T’pau didn’t have a hit with 'Arlesey in Your Hand'.

Telepathy and business consulting

Sometimes I get really fed up with the service levels in the UK so when I get excellent service I really take notice.

Last week I got that superb service from a one Michelin star restaurant in a pub! The difference came from the politeness and attentiveness of the staff – not in my face but always there when needed, almost by telepathy. It helped of course that the food was also outstanding.

But what has any of this got to do with business consulting?

Well it goes without saying that fantastic service levels with our clients are an absolute must – but how do we go the extra mile; build a relationship that's 'telepathic'?

• Be in regular contact to find out what is on their mind and important to them in their business – even if it is not something we can help with
• After a project has finished continue the ‘after sales service’
• Be interested in them as a person not just about their business

Over 20 years, lloydmasters have worked with more than 100 clients and developed long-term client relationships that allow both parties to grow. If you would like to learn more about us and how we might work with your business email: info@lloydmasters.com.