Friday, February 25, 2011

Resilience - some thoughts

I’m doing a college course at the moment and one of the requirements is that I put together and deliver a five-minute presentation on a subject of my choice. It mustn’t be work related. Five minutes is a scarily short amount of time. When I’m training we usually haven’t even got to where the loos are by five minutes. I tend to be garrulous. Crikey!

So, if not work related, what? There’d be too much setting up required to talk about science fiction, my abiding passion. I’m not sure a knitting demonstration is what the tutor had in mind, and I’m not allowed to talk about climate change. Then I had an epiphany. I’m going to talk about resilience. It is related to work but, although I touch on it in relationship to environmental issues in some courses, it isn’t something that is central to my job and it is something that I’m concerned about in my personal life. Here’s the first draft:


I’m going to talk today about resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from a shock. I think the opposite would be brittleness or fragility. It is a concept that can be applied to all sorts of things, from a material to a civilisation. Hands up those who think our current civilisation is resilient.

You might guess that I don’t. The fragility of our modern British civilisation first impacted on me in the early 70s. I remember it vividly. The family was watching Star Trek and some horrid black blob beast had battened onto Spock’s back when, Bang! The lights went out. This, our first power cut of the miners’ strike, dropped us from the far galaxy spanning future directly into the cold dark scary past.

At the time we lived on a modern housing estate. When it was built a large underground oil storage tank had been provided to serve the heating needs of the whole estate. Oil was pumped through to the central heating boiler of each house. No electricity, no light, no heat. In my grandparents’ home there would have been warmth and some light from the open fire. There’d have been hot water from the geezer and the gas cooker would work for a while until the gas pressure fell. And, coming from the generation that lived through the war, they had a healthy stash of candles.

Our modern and efficient house contained exactly one candle, the advent candle. By the time the lights came back on there was only a stub left… And there was a run on candles the next day in the village. None available, not even for ready money.

I think the experience had a salutary effect on me. That and the extensive reading of disaster SF. It’s not at the forefront of my thoughts all the time but the awareness of fragility squats at the back of my mind. I’m convinced we haven’t learnt from our experiences. Our systems are terrifically efficient and terribly brittle.

What could possibly go wrong? Drought in Russia, floods in Australia, land used to grow biofuels, a growing appetite for grain fed meat in the new middle classes in China and India, speculation in commodities; all leading to escalating food prices. Not immediate enough? We’re all rich enough not to go hungry after all.

We import over 40% of our gas now. Another very cold winter, low gas storage levels, a disruption similar to the one that affected central Europe whilst Russia and the Ukraine squabbled about who was or was not stealing gas. How would we fare? A lot of our electricity is gas powered now too.

Or imagine the same very cold winter, more likely as the climate changes, causing water pipes to freeze and burst. It happened in Northern Ireland this last winter. Weeks with only bottled water.

How about another volcano? A problem with oils supplies? Remember the oil refinery blockade a few years ago? No petrol at the pumps? Very quickly little food in the shops?

Just in Time deliveries are extremely efficient but they are not resilient. We have spent the last several years working to become super-efficient, to trim down to the bare bones. A system without fat is fine if there is no famine. Resilience is all about redundancy though. When the main system fails a secondary system takes the load. If that fails there is another backup. That’s not efficient. Efficiency is fine as long as everything goes to plan and nothing breaks down.

OK. Given my awareness of the dangers have I organised my life so I am safe from these failures? I have candles, I have a newly installed woodburning stove, I have a decent amount of food storage. I feel happy that I could weather a week’s disruption without pain but more than that? Water would be a problem in my urban environment, and a build up of waste. In reality my life can only be resilient in the context of a resilient society and not only do we not have one of those, our society is getting more and more brittle all the time.


OK, now I've got to see if I can say all that in five minutes and make it interesting.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Moving

ECUS has been comfortably ensconced in Endcliffe Holt as long as I’ve been there. It’s a lovely old building owned by the University of Sheffield and leased to us. Someone told me that it used to be the Master Cutler’s house. It must have been very grand in it’s time. Not so much now. It’s looking very tired and most of the land that must once have surrounded it has had student accommodation built on it, leaving a small amount of green where we have built a pond to attract wildlife. It could be made really lovely again but a huge amount of money would have to be spent on it.

We’re all torn about this move. When we go I won’t miss the poor insulation leading to nasty chills in the winter, the antiquated heating system leading to nasty chills in the winter or the freezing loos and kitchen. I will bid a happy farewell to the nasty chills. I will, though, miss the beautiful high ceilings (in the summer), the ability to push up the sash windows to the top and welcome in the honeyed scent of the enormous Buddleia (in the summer), the magnificent views over the valley to my house, the tremendous old trees surrounding the place and the fabulous birds you can see flitting around the place; owls, nuthatches, long tailed tits etc. I will also miss being able to walk to work in 20 minutes. And the rich diversity of charity shops, and eateries, and the York, in Broomhill.

The new place is, I understand, pretty much under the M1 at Meadowhall. There are many good things to say about it. It will be much easier for our training delegates to get to, being just off the M1 but also within 5 minutes walk of the Meadowhall interchange where there are buses, trains and the Supertram. It’s well insulated, we will be open plan so our little enclaves will open up to a wider social interaction and it backs on to the Transpennine Trail with Concord Park on the far side of the railway line. It’s amazing how much green there is around this formerly industrial area. I looked it up on Walkit.com which says it’s 7.4 miles, door to door and would take me 1 hour 59 minutes to walk if I walked fast. I’m undecided about how best to get there. If I go by public transport it is two buses or a bus and a tram or a bus and a train. And quite a lot of time. I’m thinking it might be worth investigating biking to work. It would mean using the roads (scary) to get into town but following cycle routes and along canal paths going out the other side. And then, of course, there is always car share. I feel a green travel plan coming on.

In the meantime we are bidding a lingering farewell to the old place. Lingering not because we hate to break away, although that too, but because the company providing the cabling to the new building have utterly failed to get it done by the deadline set in the contract. We had an evening saying farewell to Broomhill last week and there’s probably going to be another one this Friday. We could keep this up for weeks. Our nice desks and filing cabinets have gone over to the new place so we are using old and broken desks and living out of cardboard boxes. It’s amazing how much Stuff we’ve all accumulated too. I’ve been here four years and have had to dispose of huge amounts of paper. I must learn to put it out for recycling in a timely manner instead of hoarding it.

We’ve had a lot of fun at the old place. The barbeques were awesome. The car park Tetris was interesting. But who will rescue the baby foxes that fall into the cellar from now on? Who will feed grubs to the resident robin? And will I ever walk through Endcliffe Park again? Ah well. One era draws to a close and another one opens, ripe with possibility and excitement! I’m quite looking forward to it.

Friday, February 11, 2011

News from the manufacturing sector

Alison recently attended an event run by the Manufacturing Advisory Service in Yorkshire which contained an update on the government's thoughts on supporting this sector.

- The government have decided to support high growth manufacturing businesses (i.e. +20% growth for more than 3 years!) – this only represents about 6% of all manufacturing companies or 1500 across the UK. They will identify and support them through a Business Coaching for Growth Support Service. MAS will remain but at a lower level, probably at a regional level but the jury is still out on how the service will work. Business Link will no longer be supported

- One CEO of a manufacturing company is sitting on the board of the new Sheffield City Region local enterprise partnership (LEP) which covers Sheffield, Chesterfield, Barnsley, Rotherham, Doncaster, Bassetlaw & North East Derbyshire. These are NOT replacements for regional development agencies (RDAs like Yorkshire Forward) and no-one is quite sure how they will work or what their remit will end up being. The good news is, they are totally industry-driven to give support to business in the region from other businesses in the region. No more quangos or middle-men. There is only approximately £10m funding available for the next three years for each LEP and the first round of bids obviously shows massive over-subscribing. But each LEP is free to pick what will best fit the region. Key aims for our LEP: advanced manufacturing, employer-led skills and support, finance (i.e. access to finance for SMEs) and a digital hub.

- Skills – SEMTA is the Learning Skills Council for manufacturing. There was interesting information on skills gap (at skills level 2 + 3) – primarily lies in the 25-40 age range (i.e. the managers of the future). This is a big problem that needs sorting.

- The Leadership Solar System (by Bill McGrawley) – 4 planets, which I thought fed nicely into ECUS' Environmental Management vision and values. This states that you need the four qualities below to lead.

1. High morality

2. Optimal product portfolio

3. Unleash people

4. Understand strategic landscape.

In addition you need prudence, the ability to listen, decisiveness, honesty, communication, no greed, don’t exploit, diversity (skills) and a measured response to challenges.


Friday, February 4, 2011

Having visions

I haven’t written about what we’re doing at ECUS recently and there’s plenty going on, but more of that in a later posting.

First I want to talk about Environmental Management and what we’re doing. As you may recall the team is four strong now. There’s our Glorious Leader, Alison, who is a great boss. What makes a great boss? For me it is someone who listens to my wild ideas and suggests that they’re worth a look and asks if I can make them work – go flesh them out. Then there’s Catherine, our legal obsessive – every environmental department should have one. We rely on her to make sense of the legalese as ever more regulations are issued. She has taken our newest consultant under her wing as Amanda expands her auditing experience. Finally, I am spending a lot of time at the moment developing and presenting a range of training courses.

One of the most exciting, though, is the one I’m delivering next Friday, training our potential new trainers. Catherine is so knowledgeable that we think she should start passing that on to our clients. Amanda will be taking on some of the waste courses; ideal with her background in the Environment Agency. We’re also training some of the Ecologists who occasionally need to present to clients. Being able to present training in an interesting and interactive way is a real skill and much of it comes from experience and a thorough knowledge of your subject but a lot of the skill can be passed on. We are considering making the course available to those of our clients who are interested.

Our team is looking at how to provide the best service we can. We have been considering this for a long time and a week or so ago we had an ‘away day’ where we looked at our strategy moving into 2011. I’ve suffered through a ‘Visions & Values’ exercise in the past where I felt that the visions were already decided on and the actual embedded values were not necessarily what the company professed. That consultation seemed like a box to be ticked. Not so this time. We spent the morning with Siobhan facilitating our debate about what exactly our aspirations for the department are and the afternoon getting down to the nitty-gritty – ‘given what we want to do how do we start?’ At the end of the day we had a working strategy.

The vision that emerged from our day away was:

Unlimited thinking, unlimited potential, fulfilled through work

Given that we are all working in the environmental field because we want to make a difference the mission that emerged is:

· Improving the environment through encouraging, convincing and challenging our clients

· Changing the world for the better through knowledge and influence

· Helping to integrate the environment and sustainability into our clients’ core business

· Selling solutions not services - working with clients in order for them to achieve self-realised business improvements.

We have an action plan, suitably SMART, with responsibilities and deadlines allocated. I’ll let you know how we progress.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

FYI - to public transport or not


I wrote a few days ago about using public transport as part of my professional life. To help people make the decision within my company about whether to use public transport or not, I have put together a flowchart. This, obviously, works for us. As they say, Your Mileage May Vary.
Double click on the image for a clearer view.



Wednesday, February 2, 2011

An atlas of pollution.

There is a fascinating datablog from the Guardian showing who is producing what carbon and whether the emissions are increasing or decreasing. The UK is the 10th largest emitter which is rather interesting, especially given our huge contribution to the historic build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The close up picture is here. The worst information is that even the global economic slow down has not reversed the increase in carbon emissions.