Courses in innovation, Project Management and Supply Chain

The SME Knowledge Transfer Network at the University of Bradford School of Management, is running a series of open courses on demand. Details here.
Assuming that there is sufficient interest I shall be running events on 23rd February and 23rd March covering Innovation and NPD, Project Management and/or Supply Chain Management. These will be held at Heaton Mount in Bradford - booking through the SME KTN.

A slow down in the Public Sector

When the changes to the public sector were announced, my first thoughts (as a consultant to the sector) were that we would either see a reduction in the number of public sector contracts being put up for tender, or a "splurge" as publically funded bodies spent money while they had it, followed by a reduction. As we move into 2011, it looks like the first of those is pretty much what happened. If you look at the sites were public sector tenders are advertised, the number of opportunities being listed seems significantly lower than this time in previous years. I anticipate that it will be even lower after March 2011, when the new financial year starts.

The two big projects that will of course continue to have requirements are the London 2012 Olympics, and the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. However both of those are now pretty close, and anyone wanting to be involved has a narrowing window of opportunity.

A further change that is coming is that the regional Business Link operators are being closed in November 2011 (rather than March 2012 as many expected). From April 2011 we should expect that regional support services will be running down, ahead of the establishment of a limited national service from November 2011. As a consultant this is mixed news - the Business Link organisations have occasionally introduced me to clients, but in some ways we were in competition. In future businesses looking for support will have to look to the private sector, which means more opportunities for PAWA and similar companies. I would strongly suggest any business looking for support takes advantage of the Business Link now while it is still there in your region - any free or funded support they can offer you is unlikely to be available after this year (or even before that).

Season's Wishes

PAWA consulting is closing down the the Christmas and New Year break. Best wishes to all our customers, associates and other readers.

Let us hope that 2011 is the year for a stronger economy after two difficult years.

all the best

Project Management Course

At fairly short notice, I am running a Project Management course for the University of Bradford School of Management SME Knowledge Network on Thursday 9th/Friday 10th December 2011.
This is a 2 day modular course targetted at SME and micro-businesses. The first day is an introduction to Project Management, and the second day goes into more detail of some of the tools and techniques and the problems that arise - dealing with variances, team managment, completion dates etc.

If you are interested, drop me a line and I shall get someone to sort out the details.

Tensions in UK Public Sector Procurement

I recently ran a day long seminar on Category Management for 23 public sector buyers from a wide range of organisations (on behalf of BIPSolutions).

It was an opportunity to take the temperature of public sector buyers – but naturally we should not assume it is totally representative.

First, I have noticed a couple of quite predictable trends in public sector commissioning following the Comprehensive Spending Review by the coalition government. Firstly the overall level of tenders being advertised seems to be lower than previous years – reflecting an anticipated drop in public sector spending. Secondly, some authorities appear to be spending budget in this financial year, with the clear expectation that there is no point in keeping it for next year - and that there will be no money to spend next year. An example is a council who are looking to arrange 18 one day training courses between January and March 2011 – clearly spending money while they still have it.

My delegates reported extensive pressure on budgets and costs. In some cases this accounted for their presence on the seminar – their authorities were looking to reduce spend by introducing category management. However they were also looking to reduce headcount in procurement, which is very contrary to the approach needed for good category management – rather than fewer people you tend need at least the same number of higher skilled staff (probably more). Given that one authority was looking to introduce category management with only 3 procurement people, they will be lucky to get the sort of improved quality and reduced costs that can be achieved.

There was a lively debate about the priorities for public sector commissioning – one view point was that we are going to be focussed only on lowest price. Another viewpoint was that with authority budgets under pressure there was unlikely to be money available for local economic development, inclusion and sustainability projects and these are potentially going to be pushed down to suppliers in the form of the “Economically Advantageous” element of tenders.

All of this highlighted the continuing tension in public procurement between meeting the EU required objectives of open and fair competition, whilst ensuring Value for Money. Category Management whilst capable of achieving good VFM, may be seen as restricting (managing) competition and therefore clashing with the open and fair agenda. And meanwhile it is likely that procurement will be trying to do more with less (or to be more precise fewer). The case for investment in procurement is understood by the Buyers, but there was a general feeling that it was not an argument that at the moment was going to cut ice. However there was a general feeling that their organisations had good and strong management – which is reassuring in a time of great change and turbulence.

Unusual Key Performance Metrics

The writer Terry Pratchett has a word – Substition. It is the opposite of superstition. Superstition is things that everyone thinks work, but in reality don’t – like crossing your fingers for luck. Substition is things that no one thinks work, but in reality do.

I’ve just been reading Moneyball by Michael Lewis, which to me is about substation. He writes about a baseball team, the Oakland A’s, who in the early part of this century were successful on a very modest budget because they had developed metrics for measuring the worth of a player that were different to everyone else’s. Rather than focussing on the outputs, they were focussing on the process. Players who did the right things at affordable prices, rather than the stars. Rather than RBIs (runs batted in) they evaluated players on their ability to get to first base (i.e. not get out). I suppose in football terms it is like picking players who have a good record of winning corners or drawing fouls rather than scoring goals – the goals will come from the corners if you get enough of them. In cricket maybe it would be bowlers who bowl very few no balls in 20-20 rather than take a lot of wickets.

Terry Pratchett also coined the word “narrativium” for the fact that sometimes the world seems to be driven by a good story rather than anything else. People love a good story, and in business and in sport, we are sometimes guilty of wanting to believe the story rather than the facts. Indeed in Moneyball there are times when the “good story” element dominates over the business lessons.

I’ve read a couple of Michael Lewis’s books – Liars Poker, the New New Thing – and he is always extremely readable although you should always remember that he is writing as a journalist rather than an academic. His books make you see the world in a slightly different way, and make you think about what else you might be missing.

In this case it has made me think a couple of things about business in general. Firstly, I wonder whether there might be novel metrics in business that we could use that would better track business success rather than the traditional ones of turnover, return on assets. Rather than customer satisfaction, perhaps ease of doing business? I don’t know. If anyone has any ideas, I would be most interested. The key point from Moneyball is that these should be measurable so that they can be proven, rather than just a “gut feel”. My first thought is that there is a huge (and sometimes contradictory) set of knowledge held by Business Schools and Academia, that most small businesses just don’t know about. How do we get it out there to where it can be used?

The other thought was to wonder about the superstitions and substitions of business. What are they? What are the things that work, though no one thinks they are important, and what are the things that everyone does but don’t actually work? Again, any thoughts and ideas gratefully received.

OECD Trade and Innovation: Chemicals Sector

The OECD has just published a report on the linkage between Trade and Innovation in the Chemical Sector. You can read it here. I was one of the contributors to this study, along with Dr. Harry Ziman of PHS consulting.

I hope you find it interesting.