Or “why you should be worried by 47%” 47% is the proportion of staff an average UK water and sewerage company will need to replace or significantly retrain 2020-2030 according to EK Skills Workforce Planning Model which is accurate to ±5%. And it is happening now. Mega Trends Mega trends are large-scale, long-term forces that […]
How to be a really bad manager
And then learn how to do it properly….. This blog is based on a post I wrote for the 2023 Q4 Edition of the institute of water Magazine I loved being a scientist from the time I first weighed a stone in and out of water in primary school. Picking maths, chemistry, and physics at […]
Cheap is good, free can be better
Libre Draw: A Good Alternative to Microsoft Visio for Most People Many years ago I read that for any product or service, you can have any two of Cheap, Fast and Good. This sits nicely alongside another saying “buy cheap, buy twice”, something I learned the hard way when racing powerful superbikes round my local […]
Lessons From The Racetrack – Keeping Up vs Getting Ahead
In previous posts I spoke about how my hobby of racing powerful superbikes around various UK racetracks helped me grow and develop professionally. In this post I’m revisiting the key theme of how the principles of racing successfully can be applied to your professional development. From the beginning When racing , we the riders would […]
Steady Eddy and Edwina: The Hidden power behind your business
This post is based on an article I wrote for the 2022 Q4 edition of the Institute of Water magazine Who makes your business really perform, day in and day out, just simply making the right things happen at the right time in the right way? Your Rising Stars? Or perhaps your graduate trainees? Or […]
From Dropout to Director and Beyond
This post is based on an article I wrote for the 2022 Q3 edition of the Institute of Water magazine My story I was inspired to write this article by the quote, attributed by some to Jane Austen: “It’s never too late to be what you could have been”. This might seem strange given that […]
My Raspberry Pi – The gift that keeps giving
Back in September 2018 I introduced a post about a recently purchased Raspberry Pi 3 (RP3) with the phrase: “Reading the post you will see why I value a device that cost less than thirty pounds, that at various points caused me to pull my hair out, but yet I wouldn’t want to be without“. […]
Water: How Should we value it?
A clue: It’s more than just counting the money This post is based on an article I wrote for the Q3 edition of the Institute of Water magazine The ideal There is increasing awareness that clean drinking water and good sanitation has a far greater value than the simple economic returns it offers to water […]
Title: Are your people technical enough?
This post is based on an article I wrote for the 2021 Q1 edition of the Institute of Water magazine When I was doing my A levels, Chemistry, Physics and Pure Maths, I had to know and be able to answer questions about electronic orbitals configurations and the order they were filled in, the equations […]
Building the great future that you want
It’s the gift that keeps giving Organisations need high-performing employees and high performing employees want satisfying jobs. In this piece I will discuss how what I learned from racing superbikes can help both get what they want. My early career with Anglian Water was not great, my youthful self-confidence running into organisational inertia and coming […]