Running at night, in the woods, wearing a head-torch

This evening I thought I’d try running off-road wearing a head-torch. My experience was a little mixed …

I bought my Petzl Tikka a few years ago when I went travelling for a few months a couple of years ago. It was an invaluable bit of kit as you have both hands free when trying to get things done when there’s no lighting available. This evening I was going to give it a more significant challenge:

I had high hopes for running with a torch strapped to my head but found the results to be variable. The torch wasn’t uncomfortable to wear on my head and it certainly didn’t move around as a I ran. It was useful to see a little better when I was in a particularly dark area; but wearing the torch reinforced my view of how much ambient light is already out there. I live on the border between a town and the countryside, so there are lots of street lights making the cloudy sky orange. This helps to illuminate the otherwise dark fields and woods. And when the moon is  visible on a clear night, vision is even better. Wearing the head-torch actually reduced the effect of the ambient light – I presume that’s because my eyes had adjusted and reduced my light sensitivity.

The illumination from the head-torch cast shadows just below my eyes, which was a little distracting – not a deal-breaker but another torch with a wider angle mirror / reflector might be an improvement. The torch can be adjusted up and down (pitch) so you can control whether you want to illuminate the ground just in-front of you or further away – this is a useful feature, which I used a few times.

I fully intended to complete the entire run with the torch on, but given the available ambient light, even when quite a distance from buildings and roads, I found I could see better without the torch when in the open. The torch was most useful in denser woodland, when the ambient light couldn’t get through the trees.

Would I run with a head-torch again? I’m not sure – it would be interesting to try some others that might be better – mine is a few years old now.

I’d certainly be interested in comments from others who have run with head torches.

What has happened to polite, professional behaviour?

Over the past year or so I have observed that peoples’ behaviour at work seems to have declined. This isn’t a comment on a specific person or company – more a general observation from my privileged position, where I spend time with a large number of different people in a range of organisations.

Examples include:

• Turning up to meetings late
• Not turning up to meetings at all, and not sending an apology
• Agreeing to complete a task and then not doing it
• Not replying to emails & voicemails

I’m going to sound like a grumpy old man – and maybe that’s because this behaviour is making me grumpy! But I really don’t remember people behaving like this in the past. I’ve been working for 16 years and throughout this time, apart from the odd hiccup, I found that people generally didn’t display any of the behaviours I listed above. Maybe I had just been lucky until recently?

There are probably a number of reasons that might explain the changes I’ve noticed. One could be downturn in the economy resulting in people feeling under more pressure to get things done, which diverts their attention from the common courtesies. Another reason could be the proliferation of devices like mobile phones and tablets; they might be conditioning us to always expect interruptions, so we are no longer able focus on anything for a reasonable amount of time.

But is my observation correct, or are my senses just heightened more recently?
And how should one deal with people who aren’t behaving in a manner that you feel is appropriate?

What can we do about this? I think we could all lead by example. If we behave in the way we would like others to maybe the situation would improve. I hope so.

Random Hacks of Kindness – Oxford – December 3rd-4th 2011

Over the weekend of December 3rd & 4th 2011 a team from IBM, Oxfam and White October organised on of the many Random Hacks of Kindness hackathons that were running around the world.

This event brought together 34 subject matter experts and technologists from across the UK to work on a number of charitable and not-for-profit projects.

Hosted by White October, an Oxford web design agency, the hackers gathered early on Saturday morning for breakfast before listening to the six problem statements. Each problem owner described the context of their challenge and what they would like to achieve. Over coffee the hackers and problem owners discussed their projects in more detail and by lunch time had formed into teams and had already started work!

Saturday afternoon was spent defining user interfaces and wrangling data, with code being written in a range of languages including Python, JavaScript and Django. In addition to hacking for humanity, the teams had a commitment to using only open source technologies to build their solutions. This means that the cost of development and support for each project is only peoples’ time. It also allows others to easily enhance what has been produced so far.

After a dinner of pizza washed down with beer and cider the hackers really got into the swing of things. Some of the hackers had homes to go to and by midnight there was a hard-core who had decided to hack through the night. The results were impressive as by the next morning they had made a huge amount of progress.

Slightly later on Sunday morning the hackers reconvened for a show-and-tell. They demonstrated what had been achieved so far and explained their plans for the rest of the day. The rest of Sunday was spent integration the various components of the solutions so that by the end of the day all of the projects were able to present some working software.

This weekend was an excellent example of people who had never met before coming together to use their skills to make the world a better place.

The six problems were:

• Visualising Programme Data – telling stories of humanitarian work around the world. The prototype is running at: rhok-iati.herokuapp.com
• Tropical Flood Prediction – Bringing together in an easily accessible form records of past floods and the weather that preceded the flood so that others can design and trial flood forecast models.
• BluePrint CERT – customising the Sahana platform for emergency response in cities.
• NGO Clarity – assessing the quality of NGO organisational data extracted from public/governmental open data websites.
• Real World Likes – applying the online “Like” function to the real world to improve the effectiveness of campaigns
• Fairtrade Finder – to improve consumers’ access to Fair Trade products and promote their use

The event organisers were:

• Stewart Marshall @sjm7919
• Wystan Palm @wystanp
• Kevin Carmody @skinofstars
• Danny Williams @willidh

It’s important to again thank our hosts: White October, without whom we would not not have been able to run the event; and our sponsors:

• White October – http://www.whiteoctober.co.uk/
• Incuna – http://incuna.com/
• Practical Participation – http://www.practicalparticipation.co.uk/
• Guardian Open Platform – http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform
• One Ltd – http://oneltd.co.uk/

Banana & Chilli Milkshake

Those of you who know me will already be aware that one of my favourite foods is the banana. In the summer when my bananas ripen too quickly I either make banana cake or banana milkshake. Both taste great and save wasting fruit that is too ripe to eat (for my palette at least)

I read Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter last year and it opened my eyes to experimenting a little more with food. Eight months later and I bring you the Banana & Chilli Milkshake:

Ingredients:

• 2 Ripe Bananas
• 2 Scoops of Vanilla Ice Cream
• 1 Splash of Milk
• 1 Chilli

Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into a glass and enjoy a lovely banana milkshake with an unexpected kick.

 

A simple way to improve traffic flow on motorways

This week I have spent far too many hours on the western stretch of the M25. This is a really busy section as the M40, M4 and M3 all intersect here. The traffic has been pretty bad – on Thursday the M25 was closed due to an accident. During the week I had the opportunity to observe the other drivers habits and behaviours.

I saw 100s of drivers who were driving in the middle lanes when lane 1 (nearside) was empty. The impact was that traffic backed up behind them as everyone now had to overtake in lane 3 or 4 (or 5 or 6 depending on which section we were travelling on). This behaviour is extremely common when travelling clockwise between Junction 16 (M40) and Junction 19 (A41).

I’m sure that these “middle lane hoggers” are not malicious – they aren’t disobeying the highway code on purpose. They are just taking the easy option and driving up the middle of the carriageway, without a care in the world.

So the purpose of this brief blog entry is simple: to ask everyone to Keep Left Unless Overtaking. I am sure that traffic would flow far better on our motorways if people followed this advice.

 

(I found a website dedicated to this cause – unfortunately it doesn’t appear to be in a good state of repair: middlelanemorons.com)

What gives you the right to leave your rubbish in the park?

I live near a park that is mostly open fields. There’s a playground that is used throughout the year, and you’re almost always guaranteed to see someone walking a dog. Apart from all the dogs there are lots of other animals in the fields, particularly birds and foxes.

This morning I woke up early so decided to head out for a run. It’s a lovely sunny day and I enjoy running at this time as it’s usually very peaceful. Thirty seconds into my run I reached a group of teenagers who had camped in the fields overnight. They were all in the process of waking up, many still in their sleeping bags. The park isn’t an official camp-site but I’m not particularly fussed where people camp as long as they don’t disturb their surroundings.

My run was only going to be 40 minutes so I expected they’d still be around when I returned. They weren’t, but it was obvious that they had left in a hurry. The area was covered in litter as well as a camp fire still smouldering. As I reached home I thought of calling the council and asking them to send someone to clear up the mess. But then I realised that this was unlikely to be attended to quickly and the mess was really annoying me. So I grabbed a bin-bag and returned to the unofficial camp-site. Fifteen minutes later I had collected up most of the rubbish. Apart from the empty food bags, cans, bottles and cups, I also collected a tent, including poles and pegs, a shoe and a sock. Everything fit in my wheelie bin and apart from the remnants of the camp-fire the area looked much better.

It only took me fifteen minutes. What made them think it was OK to leave all their rubbish? It wouldn’t have taken them long to gather it all up – there was a dozen of them. And there are bins in the park they could have deposited their rubbish in.

And is there really a kid walking around this morning with only one shoe and sock?

Having tidied up the rubbish and vented in this blog I now feel somewhat better.

Time to get ready for work!

npower – customer service part 3

So the engineer came today. I was out in the morning and had a couple of missed calls from withheld numbers. So I called npower to see if it was them; it wasn’t but they said that the engineer should be with me at 2.30.

The appointment was for the afternoon, and the engineer turned up at 2.30 after calling 10 minutes before. He appeared to do a thorough service, more than the safety check that British Gas used to do. This included cleaning the bottom of the heat exchanger and adjusting the flame height, which he said was quite low.

I was interested to see that the engineer had a Motorola smart-phone and an iPad, so there was no way he could be out of touch or not have the information he needed.

npower – customer service part 2

I received a call this evening from a customer service manager at npower. He explained to me that the reason why the engineer was cancelled was because he was fixing a leak at the previous customer. Turns out he had been there since 13:00 and naturally couldn’t leave that customer until the leak had been fixed. I agreed – of course that had to be sorted first.

Here were his responses to my complaints:

Failure #1: I never received a call back to confirm the time

It turns out that the call centre agents don’t have access to the engineers diaries. This information is only available to the planners. I explained that this information would be useful to him and his colleagues. He grudgingly agreed.

Failure #2: I never received a call from the engineer

The engineer doesn’t get told what his next call is until he marks the current one as complete. Really? What’s the point of that? Do npower really not trust the engineers with this information? It turns out that the call centre knew that the engineer was stuck repairing the leak and it looked like it would be a long job. I suggested that they should have called me earlier to give me the option to reschedule or risk him completing the repair with enough time to visit my house. The manager accepted that this might have been a good idea.

I also explained that British Gas advertise that they allow you to go out and they’ll call you when they’re on the way – not 5 minutes around the corner; but with enough time to get home. Why couldn’t npower do this?

Failure #3: It’s not that hard to track engineers’ progress.

It turns out that this information is tracked – however call centre agents I spoke to didn’t think this information would be useful for me. I explained that when I called in the morning if I had been told that it wouldn’t be until the afternoon that the engineer would call then I’d be able to go out and not be stuck at home. Again, he grudgingly accepted that this might be a good thing (for me – not for them).

Failure #4: When you’re talking to a customer, they are the person you focus on – not other people

We didn’t discuss this

Failure #5: Did the manager call back? Did they heck!

Yes – three hours later.

I have an appointment for next week. I’m sure the engineer will turn up on time and perform the boiler service to a very high standard. I’m not so confident that anything will change within npower. I really felt that the manager was just trying to placate me, despite me explaining that I was trying to be constructive.

npower – customer service doesn’t have to be so hard!

I had a really frustrating day today. Lovely weather outside and I had to wait at home for npower. I recently move to npower hometeam as the price was much lower than my long-standing British Gas Homecare. I already had my electricity and gas with npower and never had a problem with them so it seemed like a good idea. Naturally I did my research before moving, and there weren’t any glaring customer service complaints.

I booked the appointment weeks ago so first thing in the morning I thought I’d better call and check that the engineer was still coming. I called at around 08:30 and the lady in the call centre told me that she didn’t know when he was coming but I was definitely in the diary. She said that she’d get someone to call me back with the estimated time.

Failure #1: I never received a call back to confirm the time

At around 14:30 I was getting a little concerned so I thought I’d call again. I was reassured this time that he was definitely coming.

By 16:15 I was even more concerned, so I called again. I was told that the engineer was definitely coming, that his name was John Carter, and he would call me  just before he turns up. It might be after 5pm but only a few minutes.

Failure #2: I never received a call from the engineer

At 17:19 I received a call from npower to tell me that the engineer wan’t coming. I explained that I had been told three times today that the engineer was coming and asked what was going on. I was told that the call centre doesn’t have access to status information for the engineers.

Failure #3: It’s not that hard to track engineers’ progress.

I was told that the appointment would be rescheduled, and when would I like it. I asked to speak to a manager. I was told that there wasn’t one available but they would get one to call me back. When I asked if there was one in the room, I was told that there was but she was busy. I said it was OK and that I would wait for her to become free; I’d waited all day for the engineer so what’s a few more minutes. The agent told me that I couldn’t do that and they’d have to terminate the call – their processes wouldn’t let them. And I had to think about the other people he had to talk to – the other npower customers who needed help.

Failure #4: When you’re talking to a customer, they are the person you focus on – not other people

So we settled on a new date and I was promised a call back

Failure #5: Did the manager call back? Did they heck!

So how could this have gone better? I know that things sometimes don’t go to plan and appointments have to be rescheduled, but there is a right way and a wrong way to handle these things. Here are some ideas

• If you promise a call back, even if it’s not you doing the call back, make sure it’s done by confirming with the appropriate person. Don’t just chuck it on a queue. This is a combination of a personal approach that can be augmented with a simple workflow system: add a “call back” request to a queue and every so often check to see if it’s been completed
• Today all engineers appear to carry laptops and mobile phones with them. How about creating a real-time tracking system? Each time they complete a call they just need to update the status of the entry in their diary from their laptop, or send a text message to an automated system. The call centre personnel would be able to see the progress, and a subset of the information could even be exposed to the customers. It’s already been implemented for parcel tracking and I’m sure that some similar organisations can do this already.
• Learn from organisations like First Direct. I hear they’re really good. The person you deal with can help you with everything you need, and they have all the information they need at their fingertips. This is a combination of attitude, training, processes, trust, empowerment and tools.

The importance of rapport, listening, flip-charts, and having something useful to say

Yesterday was my first meeting with a new client. Coincidentally one of the people worked for a former client of mine, where we built an excellent relationship. This provided a great opportunity to get down to work rather than having to build rapport from scratch. What’s nice about rapport and credibility is that it can be passed on – because I had the trust of person A, it appeared to automatically be passed on to person B.  No doubt this was because persons A and B trusted each other. So I guess I had trust and rapport by association! Rapport is absolutely critical to gaining real insight into peoples’ challenges; without rapport a relationship can only be superficial, which means that exploring the issues can rarely be anything but superficial. You can see the symptoms but not necessarily the causes. Working in a very technical environment I find that people often delve straight into the technical detail. This works OK until a difference of opinion appears. Without rapport it can be a lot harder to resolve this disagreement. This must all seem quite obvious and self-evident. But that does make me wonder  why people still skim over building relationships given how important we all know them to be?

As this was a first meeting there was lots of listening for me to do. This isn’t just about sitting there, ears open and mouth closed. It’s certainly very important to be listening and not talking, but you have to ask questions too, to help everyone in the room explore the background and current situation. One of my favourite books about this topic is Time to Think. I recommended it to a friend who has a lot of knowledge and experience in coaching. She found it all quite obvious; however when I first read it several years ago, I found it made some fundamental differences to how I listen. As my coaching friend found nothing new I see this as a good thing – it reinforced what she already saw as being good practice.

If all I had done is listen then the meeting could have been seen as a success. I would have gained a good insight into a new client as well as building a relationship with a new person and strengthening another. But I like to make a little more progress than that. So where I felt appropriate I volunteered some of my own ideas and experience from working with other organisations with similar challenges. This involved showing a few diagrams that I happened to have on my laptop. But it also involved drawing diagrams on a flip-chart. The humble flip-chart is one of my favourite tools to enable listening and thinking. It enabled me to illustrate some of my ideas, such as organisational structures and process frameworks. But what is also did was enable everyone else in the room to do the same. Once I started drawing then the others joined in. No longer were we having a conversation; we were working together to explore issues and propose solutions.

Success Invoice – Friday 5th November 2010

What difference do I want to make?	Listen! Give my clients time to talk through their issues and think about them in a safe environment. Provide my insight and ideas on how to help my clients address their issues.
Successes today	Built a relationship with a new client Proposed some tangible next steps for us to collaborate on
Value I’m adding	Knowledge of the money saving opportunities of server consolidation. Ideas about how Enterprise Architecture could help my client gain some control over their IT infrastructure and define a technology strategy.
Key contribution today	Whilst I provided lots of ideas, I think my key contribution was listening, clarifying and challenging. People don’t often have an opportunity to think out-loud in a safe environment, which inhibits clarity of thought and deep analysis of issues.
Who is benefiting from what I’m doing?	My clients