No more lift door bumps

We've all been there: someone dashes for the closing lift doors; a passenger jabs at the vaguely and ambiguously signed buttons, hits the wrong one -- as its a guessing game -- and the doors close on the person who wants to get in.

No one's fault except the adherence to a very poorly designed standard.

The ambiguity is created by a dominant centre line for each operation. It shows ambiguously the sought state of the doors (line indicating closed stiles) and the current state (line indicating the closed stiles). The only differentiator is the small and triangle 'arrow heads' that are positioned to show the direction of door movement. However, this meaning takes some working out, particularly for people with visual or vision impairment, and have just had their view of the symbols dominated by the strong 'closed' stile vertical lines.

The bad design

 

 

Good alternatives

Better

Best

All the alternatives are instantly and obviously differentiated and are clearly mimetic of the desired state to be achieved by pressing the relevant button.

The new manager!

Management is not a profession, it is not an academic discipline. It is at root a craft.

Many people drift into management with little or no guidance or real support. Firms do themselves a disservice by this. A new manager may one day be a great manager; give them the best start so real talent is not discarded by poor early experiences.

What is needed is not academic study, although that can help with the technicalities of the role, but as a craft, or a practice, it is best served by a combination of mentoring by senior staff and coaching in a group of people in a similar position.

This coaching setting thrives on the classic approach to adult education:discussion, reflection and guiding input. Where it touches on technical matters, it serves to introduce them conceptually and identify their applicability.

 Here's how the program goes.

1. The firm and its world

• The function of the firm, a model of the firm's activity,
• Why firms do projects, a model of the project
• The life-blood of business and its language: accounting and analysis
  
• Budgeting

2. Framing management

• The range of the manager's work, relationships and functions
• Based on work by Prof. Henry Mintzberg of McGill University

3. Modelling the manager!

• Introduction to a model for thinking about, doing and evaluating management
• Application of the model to the role

4. Getting action

• Structured approaches to identifying, planning and taking action
• Introduction to several planning and inquiry methodologies

5. Communicating

• Communication context
• Patterns of communication
• Communication effectiveness

6. Your own productivity

• Your own workflow
• Managing your activity
• Keeping track of obligations
• Meetings
  

7. Conducting the team

• Team dynamics
• Model of team action
• Working with teams

8. Operations

• The scope of operations management
• Production formats
• Manager's operations
• Statistical Process Control
• Lean and Critical Chain approaches.
  

9. Projects

• The nature of successful projects
• Projects in the business
• Project approaches
• Risk in projects: structured, probabilistic and qualitative
  

10. Decisions and change

• Making decisions effectively
• Decisions and the model of the firm
• Probabilistic and natural decision making
  
• Challenges in change

What could have been #2

Running back through my list of projects that never were, is Eveleigh North Rail Yard in Sydney, Australia (see also Kangaroo Point Resort and Marina).

This image is as in 2024. In the last years of the Carr government of NSW, I was project director for the rail yard redevelopment. The site is in the yellow perimeter below.

Eveleigh North Rail Yard Development Precinct

The site is about 12 hectares. The left hand end is a few small buildings and waste land. The middle is disused (or now underused) train stabling sheds. Maybe historical curiosities, but not worth keeping to obstruct major beneficial development: after all, life is not a spectator sport. We need to build for the future, not enshrine the aged technologies of the past as though society was stationary.

The far right hand 1/3 is some heritage buildings, which were to be rightfully retained and reused, some old 'non-heritage' buildings and a bunch of waste land and junk.

The development concept is below. Total estimated cost at the time was between $300m and $500m.It could have gone higher but we had some aviation restrictions along with the plan for a city heliport. The development would have been a fabulous counterpart to the Eveleigh South rail yard development which you can see in the photo below the development site.

Eveleigh North Rail Yard Re-development Concept

Grading scheme

I've recently run into a discussion with an accommodation provider on the gradings used in the review form provided by an Internet booking service.

A guest is invited to complete a few questions about aspects of the property: its condition, comfort, kitchen facilities, cleanliness, heating/cooling equipment, bathroom facilities and 'value for money'.

Such lists need to be calibrated so all parties are clear.

I use this set of criteria:

5 - exceeds expectations OR exceptional

4 - meets expectations OR completely satisfactory

3 - does not quite meet expectations OR largely satisfactory

2 - largely fails to meet expectations OR unsatisfactory

1 - does not meet expectations at all OR unacceptable

So, an operator would seek to have mostly 4s, with some 5s from guests who found the property to be superlative in that aspect. If there are too many 5s, over time this might indicate you can increase prices if you are operating at or near capacity.

A few 3s from time to time would be acceptable as people's tastes vary. If critical criteria get a 3 follow up and offer an inducement for a future booking as a gesture to make up for the disappointment. Perhaps a night at a 75% rate.

Once would expect almost no 2s. The operator should follow up guests who made 2 scores to obtain the detail, and perhaps offer an inducement to re-book, depending on the reason and if it gives helpful  information.

Any 1s should also be followed up, with no inducement offered as they are probably very unhappy.

In any follow up avoid recriminations or justifications. The customer is giving you valuable feedback which properly used can produce business benefits for the operator.

Questions to run your project by.

From Mike Clayton:

1 What is getting in the way of each member of your team from doing their very best work?

2 Which elements of your project are not as well controlled as they could be?

3 What are you not thinking about that could have a material [effect] on the future of your project?

4 What is the question you are not asking? [This is the unspoken or avoided question you wish would not keep bubbling into your consciousness as you drift off to sleep]

Then Mike takes us on a trip of 'Solving Problems in the Grey area of Projects' care of 'Managing in the Gray', by Joseph Badaracco

Now, I'm not normally concerned with 'problem solving'. I prefer to think of options we have, their consequences against objectives and capabilities we can apply to them. Nevertheless, Badaracco has an interesting take on the question at hand:

1 What are the net net consequences?  What are the likely consequences of the choices before you?

2 What are my core obligations? Respect good governance and keep to your commitments.

3 What will work in the world as it is? Practicalities and realpolitik!

4 Who are we? Our values and ethical framework; our principles.

5  What can I live with? Your real bottom line based on your principles, but also what is the 'take home' you must achieve.

On architecture and its training

Browsing in the local library I came across Francis Ching's Architecture (3e).

I think Ching started publishing very helpful books on the craft and practice of architecture when I was near the end of my degree.

I borrowed the book: I wanted to see his approach.

In a word: wonderful.

I reflect on the fumbling attempts in my course by most faculty to 'teach' architecture on the 'throw into the pool' method of fatal immersion. I guess, if you have no analysis of architecture, no theory of it, and no structured concept, that's all that's left. Let's all founder together. No wonder the course was 6 years to arrive at a degree!

Ching shows in deft and confident strokes of the pen, of words on a page, what architecture is, what it is about, how it is structured, and provides a vast repertoire of approaches to thinking about it.

I think of the years wasted! This degree could be taught in 4 years, with an optional 2 years for a cognate masters in it or a related discipline. We'd all be much richer for it. If a school can't achieve that, they need to move into the burger-flipping business.

His book is a manual that could be the core basis for the first two years of architectural education and exercise. Instead of a first year pretending we were in a Bauhaus art class, we could have been studying the formal disciplines of architecture, thinking about buildings in their multiple social and technical dimensions, and learning a systematic approach.

Oh, and that reminds me. In second year we had a subject 'Systems Analysis'. I looked forward to this subject as something that might teach us something about systems. Our lecturer even had an MBA from Harvard...so he must've been smart.

But no. He gave us a half-baked introduction to programming in Basic on teletypes hanging off an ICL mainframe. Collectively we learnt nothing! Certainly nothing about 'systems' or their 'analysis'.

Yet at the same time as he was waddling though an evidently pointless Harvard MBA, he could have nipped over to MIT and worked on true systems analysis with the systems engineers there; the school Jay Forrester had done so much for. Now, that would have been a great way to frame architecture...we might even have come across a proper theory of architecture, as architecture, not as foppish drawing board decorating.

Project Breakdowns

Most of us are familiar with the basic project planning analysis: the Work Breakdown Structure, the document that shows the taxonomy of subdivision of the basic specialist product of the project into component work packages. It is used both to assign responsibility, in larger projects, and to check with the sponsor and users that all the required work appears to be included.

But, for a fulsome approach to project management a number of other breakdowns are essential.

Function Breakdown Structure

This analyses the functions that are required of the product into a logical hierarchy to ensure that all the headline functions will be acknowledged in operational functions.

This is then used as the basis for preparing performance requirements and acceptance standards for work packages and feeds into the design specification and performance parameters.

Risk Breakdown Structure

Same for risk. to ensure risks are understood in the most useful operational detail to enable proper analysis of hazards and effects.

Element Breakdown Structure

This breaks the product into its element hierarchy. This is a check on the FBS, but also provides a 'dimension' for keying project deliverables, specifications, inputs to elements of the final product.