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If the title of this blog post sounds like a car commercial, there would be a reason for that. It was taken from a car brochure. I’ve been to have a look at the Toyota Prius to get an idea of what it’s all about. There is a new one coming out in August that promises to be a significant improvement of Toyota’s current model.

This is particularly noteworthy from a performance management perspective:

• Firstly the government’s ambitious targets for CO2 emissions are just that – ambitious. They have signed us up for something that we currently have no way of meeting.
• Secondly, the UK government are incentivising us to get rid of our old gas-guzzling motors to drive something more eco-friendly (£2000 scrappage scheme).
• Thirdly, it seems to be working.

Manufacturers are rising to the challenge. Toyota has a stated aim of “zero emissions”. Like the government, I don’t think they know how they are going to get there yet, but they are making some initial promising steps. Also, it appears that yesterday’s prestige cars are indeed being traded in for more eco-friendly models. I’m sure this is more to do with commerce rather than wanting to save the planet, but linking the two makes absolute sense.

So Toyota’s Prius – a “hybrid” - is a very interesting car. Working partially on battery, and partially on petrol, it takes some first steps into a lower emissions world. It delivers 72 mpg – double the performance of my car, and ahead of the iconic Smart Car (65 mpg for the MHD). It’s also made with the end-game in mind – 85% can be recycled when you have finished driving it. Clever stuff.

What is even more clever is how Toyota have managed to do it again. With the world in recession, car makers are having a terrible, terrible time. Toyota, however, is bucking the trend. Their showroom is busy. They have new cars on order and their staff are glad they don’t work for a competitor.

My information about how Toyota manages their business goes back to Liker’s book “The Toyota Way”. I am sure people must be researching the new developments – anyone know of more recent information?

Saving energy

I gave a speech about saving energy the other evening. I compared wasting energy to wearing fur coats.

When I was young a mink or fox fur coat was considered a status symbol. It sounds ridiculous now – a mink coat would be about as stylish as wearing a string of sausages around your neck. But 20 or more years ago it took some hard hitting tactics to get the rich and stylish to change their ways.

The analogy was designed for effect – no one today would consider such attire. But we do boil more water than we need in our kettles, we do waste petrol, and we do leave lights on unnecessarily. I suggested these are today’s fur coats. Acceptable in their time, but an indulgence the world can no longer tolerate.

Anyone who has taken more than a passing interest in this blog will have seen my baby-step interest in petrol consumption. For all you blokes this will have been kindergarten stuff – you were brought up with mpg and 0-60 conversations. I have to confess to having always thought it the dullest topic on the planet. But that’s because I’m one of the luckiest people on the planet: I can afford to think it dull. I live in a country with a good electricity infrastructure, good roads, a reasonably stable economy and petrol prices that I can afford. No wonder I had no interest in miles per gallon.

But the amount of petrol I use is no longer about what I can afford. It’s about what the planet can sustain. The argument isn’t particularly easy, because it’s likely that I won’t feel the effects of peak oil in my lifetime. Stopping me driving where I want to, when I want to, isn’t sustainable either.

So the answers have to be new ones. And there are signs that answers are starting to come, albeit slowly. I’ve test driven a new car: not one, unfortunately, that I will be buying in the near future, but one that holds out the promise of a cleaner tomorrow. I’ll tell you more next time.

The Great Climate Changing Debate

The end of the world is nigh! We are all going to die. Or fry. Or get 2 degrees warmer. Or something. Anyway, it’s not good, and Something Has To Be Done.

The Great Climate Debate at Reading University had a number of eminent scientists, researchers and thinkers; all sharing their views. The debate was about geo-engineering, or Playing God as it might be more succinctly described. Geo-engineering is all about manipulating the earth’s climate or atmosphere so as to moderate global warming. It doesn’t fix things; it just slows things down or reduces the effect. But it has to be large-scale - geo-engineering is not about tinkering – only grand gestures have any chance of doing good.

Unhelpful flippancy aside, it appears that something does indeed have to be done. Whilst the debate about the climate goes on, there is little doubt that we are pumping unhealthy amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And there is no immediate likelihood of us stopping – we like to light and heat our homes, we like driving wherever and whenever we want to. So we have to look at all options. The question is which ones, and to what degree do we fund them?

Do we paint the roads and buildings white? Well, no. As it turns out we inhabit too small an area of the earth’s surface for that to be useful. What about pumping sea-water into the clouds? Yes – good idea – but it needs money for research and how reversible is it? It is certainly a novel idea to cool down the planet - a bit like giving it a cold shower every now and again.

All of this is based on modelling what we think might happen if we go on as we are at present. Of course there are lots of assumptions in this – not least of which is that we will go on as we are now. This is a big assumption, because we may not. Energy prices might increase to the point where we start switching off lights we don’t need. Or new, cleaner ways of generating electricity might come on stream. I’m thinking of nuclear fusion, of course, which is admittedly still some years away, but so is all this geo-engineering.

What was most impressive about the debate was both the quality of the professional presentations, and the heat of discussion afterwards. Forgive the pun, but people really did feel strongly. There was enormous disagreement about how to move forward, but then I think that’s true of the energy debate overall. But people were certainly engaged in the issues. It was a thought-provoking and very worthwhile evening.

Driving data

It’s been quite a while since I last drove a gas-guzzling car. My little car was chosen for fuel-efficiency and low CO2 emissions. So I thought I would look good when I did my “driving carefully” experiment.

At first it wasn’t difficult to get into the mind-set of thinking ahead, braking less and driving more slowly, and for the most part I did OK. Trouble was, there were a few times when I was late for an appointment and I reverted to my old ways. Also, most of my journeys were relatively short - 10 miles or so – and on roads with roundabouts and traffic lights, which I’m sure contributed to the less than brilliant result.

So – what was the outcome? I filled the car a week or so ago and have driven 304 miles. When I filled up a couple of days ago I put 38.3 litres into the tank.

So on 38 litres of petrol, or 8.36 gallons, I have got about 36 miles per gallon out of the car – hardly a star performance.

Some cars let you see your average miles per gallon as you are driving, and that must be useful. I don’t have that gadget on my car. However I will try and monitor my petrol consumption over the next few tanks to see if I can improve on 36 mpg.

This calculation wasn't particularly intuitive. Looking up how many litres in a gallon wasn’t difficult, but it took some proactive thought. Even the new (in so many senses of the word) Toyota Prius, boasts its fuel consumption as 72 mpg, although they know all their customers will be filling up in litres. If we are going to buy fuel in litres, shouldn’t we measure its performance in litres?

Ondine

Water has an undeniably calming effect; some of my earliest and best memories are by the water. Paddling in the sea, picnicking by a fast river; favourite places returned to again and again as a youngster. On a hot summer’s day the imagination is set free and a child’s mind runs away with all the possibilities that water holds.

It was a child-like water nymph that swam into my consciousness on Friday evening. In a cold and damp London, miles away from the sea, I was swept into Ondine’s watery world. An audience, that had long ago forgotten innocent play, was surprised and captivated with this smiling, swimming nymph who was impossible to catch and impossible to ignore. She stole the hero’s heart and together we disappeared above and below the water to witness the tragedies that only water nymphs can know.

The Royal Ballet’s Roberta Marquez danced like a nymph falling in love for the first and last time. Ballet has the ability to tear at the heart-strings without a word: letting us feel the joy of love, and the agony of betrayal. She danced with lightness and mischievousness, opposite a hero that couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Like the choppy waters of the sea, the corps de ballet was fast and furious demonstrating a precision in their dancing that was just breathtaking. The Lord of the Mediterranean, the jealous Berta, and the Divertissements were all danced so well by a company that can hold its own on any of the world’s stages.

Ondine was a ballet I had not seen before, or seen so long ago that I had forgotten it. But Friday evening’s performance will be remembered for a long time as something exceptional. I know I always say that, because it is difficult not to enjoy one of the world’s great ballet companies, but maybe the sun, the moon and the stars all lined up on Friday evening to make it something special.

I want to believe that what I saw on Friday had nothing to do with anything as mundane as performance management. Logically I know that isn’t true. The hours of practice, the high standards set by the company, and the management that goes into each and every show must be like the management of any other business. I don’t go to the ballet nearly as often as I would like, but on the occasions I do go I have never seen a ragged performance. Which makes me think their performance management is anything but an afterthought. It is an integral way of how the Royal Ballet does business.

A shocking thought.

Little by little

I met up with a good friend last night. She has been having a rough time recently, so we went for a run to raise our spirits. Afterwards we sat and admired her beautiful garden in the evening sunshine. As we chatted it occurred to both of us that it is the little things that make all the difference; the seemingly small things we do every day that have such a big impact on our lives and our work.

Not going for a run, not doing the things we should do, day after day, ends up being a bigger problem than they were on any one particular day.

Performance management is based on exactly that principle. By deciding where you want to get to, and the actions that are needed to get you there, bit by bit you work towards the goal. It works just the same whether you are a giant corporation, or an individual.

Because it was me, and because performance management works so well, and because it was such a beautiful day, we decided a chart was needed to log walks and runs. The chart would keep things on track and keep the feel good factor flowing. Of course we felt great after the run so were tempted to make it a daily goal, but we are realists so for now it’s a weekly goal. Come rain or shine. Hail or snow.

So if you see two particularly gorgeous women running (OK – jogging) round the Oxfordshire countryside, look out for a performance management chart full of positive marks. Little by little, achieving goals, and getting to a better place.

The 5 P's of perfomrance management

We are all familiar with 5 P’s of marketing: People, Place, Product, Price, and Promotion. A useful checklist, but a blank canvass on which you can paint almost anything.

These urgent and recessionary times call for a tougher approach. Here are my five P’s of Performance Management (aka Getting Things Done):

• Plan: pay attention to what’s important, and set quantifiable performance standards.
• Practice: a plan is useless until it is implemented.
• Praise: yourself or others when your get the right results. People make the difference and need to understand what constitutes a job well done.
• Persistence: with thorough preparation and planning you can afford to persevere until you reap the rewards. Poor preparation and planning always sows doubt and uncertainty, and a tendency to bolt before your horse crosses the finish line.
• Patience: have none of it. Refine, polish, and generally improve your approach until it produces the goods. Patience is overrated and completely different to persistence.

As Thomas Edison apparently pointed out:

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits".

Or as Napolean Hill is credited with saying:

"Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable
combination for success."

A more succinct version of my less patient offering.

I came across super-tough advice for business leaders in an old management article. Punch-ups (competition isn’t pretty), Poaching (wisely), Protect (your position), cultivate Paranoia, Pride (in the business) and Pulverise (not dissimilar to my Persistence idea). I wonder if the author was an ex-boxer?