CJBryan's blog

This has been a week of extensive breakfast networking. Most days I haven't had to eat again until at least the next networking breakfast. I have met several interesting people and one day I also gave my talk on Analysis Frameworks and why you might want one. Two sessions were with 4networking and one was with Alton for Business. The 4Networking sessions have a semi-formal structure that includes a short presentation, everybody giving a 40 second overview of their business. I would say this is the "elevator pitch" but I truly despise that term.

How do you stay positive? When everything in life seems to conspire to kick you in the knackers, what do you do to stay upbeat?

I try to regard occasionally misery as a bit of a self indulgent treat. I wallow in it, then I get up and get on with the other stuff. It's a bit like eating chocolate, enough is fine but too much makes you sick.

Tomatoes. Picture this; Ripe, deep red, juicy, rich, full of flavour. As you bite into them, they yield gently, and fill your mouth with a slight tang. I had vague memories of tomatoes like these, and I was getting tired of the slightly green, crisp, hothouse grown Dutch bullets that the supermarkets pass off. As I cycled to the gym one afternoon I noticed that several of the houses near me had greenhouses, complete with old men with pipes and dozens of gorgeous succulent tomatoes.

I never considered myself a runner, or any sort of sportsman for that matter. It wasn't until I was within spitting distance of 40, at the end of my MBA and with years of hotel living hanging around my middle that I started to take running as a pastime seriously. Yes, I played squash and I cycled to a few jobs, I even swam some lunchtimes but running was something that quickly hurt, but had the allure of being easy to do anywhere. When I worked in Dallas, I had laughed at the people that power-walked around the building and jogging never quite did it for me.

One of the commonest complaints I hear from middle managers is about the way meetings are run. Meetings perform two main tasks to inform and to decide things. The agenda for a meeting not only tells the attendees what to expect, it also tells them what they need to know or bring with them for the meeting. A good agenda means that managers arrived adequately prepared, are not wrong footed by unexpected requests and are able to provide appropriate input.

When I first cut my teeth in IT back in the 80’s, IBM processors were water cooled, took up sports hall sized rooms and had panels of flashing lights like in Billion Dollar Brain. I was working on a development project in Derby as a contract programmer, using PL/I and IMS/DB. The project had a project team which consisted of a team leader, a couple of analysts, a handful of contract programmers, which included me and a guy who I recall was the test engineer and documentation writer.

Groups are the basic work units of organisations be they project teams, executive boards or production teams. Increasingly we turn to groups to bring together different views, produce quality products and coordinate complex work. Yet our experience with groups often leaves us feeling disappointed or frustrated.

What’s the difference, what’s it all about and why would you use it?

I had a very interesting conversation about facilitation today, Richard said, “Facilitation is a much abused term, even estate agents call themselves facilitators these days, while a few years back everyone was a consultant, now those that aren’t facilitators are coaches”.