Making Lean Management work in the wider public sector.
Making real transactional process work where the customers are tenants can be tricky.
In Derbyshire in the UK Private Sector Leasing clients, both Tenants and Landlords,
demanded things actually worked.
Learn how to use Lean and Six Sigma to give customers a better service.
Read the full rather long report below and ask me Questions.
In Abu Dhabi last week so a great opportunity to visit Masdar City one of the world’s most sustainable urban developments. The locals described the weather as “winter” at only 36 degrees and our Report completed we decided to visit first the new Louvre museum . However, after the cab dropped us off we couldn’t find another one to get out again from the yet to open museum, like Masdar City stunningly designed by Normal Foster and partners.
Eventuality saved from sun stroke death we headed for Masdar City, a real oasis of cool and a mix of offices, residential, retail, and public open space due for completion in 2020. Disappointingly the iconic electric-powered driverless Rapid Transit network was temporarily closed, first time in 7 years! Net energy demand reduced by 70 %, water demand by 300 %, and net waste production by 400 %. The design of walls has a cushion of air to limit heat reducing demand for A/C by 55 % and you could really feel a cooler temperature than elsewhere in the City.
Dependent on oil for too long, the Abu Dhabi Government has invested $15 billion dollars in building a sustainable, eco-city in the desert. Either visionary or a folly, and delighted to keep going back until 2025 when its green ambitions can be properly judged. The environment is striking , swirling terracotta walls and vast arabesque patterns. The aim for reliance on solar energy, and other renewable energy sources is so welcome; the UAE is of course also embarking on a nuclear energy programme towards the Saudi border.
We were also there to see first-hand the Government’s Estidama Pearl Rating System. A framework for sustainable design, construction and operation of communities. Unique in the world , specifically tailored to the hot climate and arid environments. We visited developments in Al Ain, right on the Oman border, where the push was to get the life of a house beyond the traditionally disappointing 25 years. The lack of solar, made difficult by desert dust conditions, has always been striking with so much sun available. All new government buildings must achieve a minimum 2 Pearl rating with more thought on maintenance. Also encouraging new younger residents to accept less traditional more environmentally built designs. Features to prevent heat gain, monitor water consumption and more careful use of materials are key.
Back at Masdar City there was a Boris bike-sharing station but it’s 17 km to town, no bike paths , mad driving and still 34 degrees of heat so it was a non eco taxi back to the Air conditioned hotel!
It’s been over a month since I completed the Laugavegur Trek , 55km from Landmannalaugar to Þórsmörk and I have just been sent the official Skyline video of the journey (see below) and watching it took me straight back into the mountains.
I met some great people, all trekking for charities as diverse as Age UK to Whale Conservation, and some in memory of special people.
We camped for 3 nights and whilst it never went dark, it did get cold at night . By the time we got to the hotel in Reykjavík, both me and my tent mate Rob were very pleased to have showers for the first time in 3 days. Thoroughly recommend Iceland and this trek in particular. After the trek I had a couple of extra days in Reykjavík and went to the Blue Lagoon and on a tour of geysers and the very loud Gullfoss waterfall.
By the end of the whole week I had walked over 100 km, and once again I would like to thank all my sponsors. I raised £2,405.30 for Shelter, plus another £452.08 in gift aid.
I recently had the pleasure to be interviewed by the CIH (Chartered Institute of Housing ) about my career and why being a Fellow has been so valuable to me. Here is some of the text below.
Please contact the CIH to find out about the benefits of Membership so join up!
“We caught up with CIH fellow Mark Hillary, CIH/CHS tutor to find out why fellowship has been such an important career move for him.
1. How did you begin your career in housing and why did you apply for fellowship?
I started my career in Local Government at the Greater London Council in 1979, working for Ken Livingstone before getting abolished in 1985. I was lucky enough to get a housing job at LB Tower Hamlets and even luckier to be allowed to do the professional qualification through day release at Hackney College, and qualified in 1988. By doing just about every housing job it was obvious to pursue my continuing professional development and I became a fellow in 1998, which is coming up for my 20th anniversary!”
Mark will be trekking to Iceland to raise funds and draw attention to Shelter’ssocial Housing campaign to end Homelessness between 12th and 16th July 2017.
Brilliant! You can find Mark’s Just Giving page here:
Why? Well Mark has a complex of reasons. Like Shelter, he knows a lot about social housing. Clifton was the biggest housing development in Europe when it was built in the 1950’s. There had been a housing crisis after the second world war and 100 acres of land had been found (including farmland and a village, called Glapton) to build, and build and build by the ‘corporation’ (now the city council) a suburb which became Clifton.
There’s a debate in parliament, you can access it here about housing: strategic and right to buy. Mark’s July trek to Iceland is about a universally affordable housing ladder.
It’s the right time to be thinking about how things can change, the right time to do something to build the homes all governments have failed to build.
Mark looks back at the great work done in Clifton, connecting housing to community development. The dedicated and important neighbourhood teams, the Clifton and Wilford area committee projects that he worked on. The Skatepark:
or build a War memorial, designed by funeral Directors and stonemasons AW LYMN
He was inspired in the emirates by their idea of a Ministry for Happiness…but I think ideas to and fro across the world…and instead of thinking that the emirates are better than us, perhaps the emirates have just resourced ideas we had for housing and community better than we have.
Also social housing has become too political and too much about making judgements about things that have no connection with having a roof over your head and a feasible way of earning a living throughout your life.
We know how to build the idea of neighbourhood development, economic, social and cultural development we just don’t do it. And when we don’t do it we turn people into refuse. We find disposing of people easier than re-using and re-purposing them. Our infrastructure for everything isn’t really fit for purpose…..
Mark says;
“It felt ironic to me that in my very last year at Nottingham City Council they had trained me in Lean Six Sigma” Lean Six Sigma is about valuing organisational resources and creating great structures to work in. He became a practitioner just before he was made redundant. Lean Six Sigma, though, has been criticised for applying an engineering mindset to environments that engineering can’t really see. A bit like an algorithm that goes on spinning even as people are spun off its wheel…..
Made redundant in 2010, at the age of 54, Mark experienced the sense that, in a recession no one was going to employ him.
Claiming JSA (Job Seeker’s Allowance) as someone with long experience of councils and bureaucracy trained bureaucrat, he did not find the experience quite a dreadful as Daniel Blake.
Above film still by Joss Barrett in the Guardian from “I, Daniel Blake” Ken Loach’s latest comment on the welfare state in the 21st century.
Mark took the idea of Job Seeker’s Allowance to mean an opportunity to gain time and skills to find another job.
It was bemusing to him though, that the system had nothing personal to say about his personal situation. After six months of JSA it stops….. stopped but the system continued to tell him that if he didn’t go on training he (meaning his benefit) would be sanctioned…he would be sanctioned…ulp!
Mark wasn’t redundant, the system was redundant to his need for a bespoke job matching service….
He found work, eventually, interesting and stretching. Miles away from home on a temporary contract. After a year of living away he was ready to start his own business.
He says You have to stand back and think about what you can actually do?
What are your skills? The first is to go beyond that life changing category that you are “redundant “ to make yourself useful again.
The great thing about being self employed is that your principles and values can be the drivers. Mark’s were the value of people, public value and service.
He needed to start small. He’d been an NVQ Assessor for years so the first step was to update taking a first level first level teaching course, bringing his own take to George Bernard Shaw’s: ‘(s)he who can does, s(h)e who can’t teaches‘
In Mark’s case the sting of not being able to continue doing the thing he loved meant like Michelle Obama (when they go low, we go high) and so he did go higher…so he began to teach Housing.
As a one man band he had to set business rules;
1) Never turn down work, (networking, opportunity)
2) Never go to bed with an invoice outstanding, (respect what you’ve done, respect them to respect that)
3) Always sound like you believe in what you are saying! (when you’re working for yourself you’re the expert, 24 hours a day…get learning!)
Marks now teaches Social Housing and offers consultancy to organisations struggling with process flow and understanding “value” to public sector customers. He’s also asked, through his Six Sigma work, to go to the UAE to help well resourced projects integrate their ambitions for the future.
Mark sings the praises of their idea for a Minister for Happiness in Dubai,
From L to R Ohood Al Roumi, the Minister of State for Happiness Al Mazrui, the Minister of State for Youth, centre again Ohood Al Roumi, the Minister of State for Happiness and Jamila Salim Al Muhairi, newly-appointed Minister of State for Education of the United Arab Emirates.
Mark’s delighted that their notion of customer service goes beyond answering the phone after six rings….
He see them genuinely wanting to invest in themselves, building a more cohesive society and desperately wanting to be a top 10 Nation. This is genuinely exciting for Mark who sees us with so much fantastic potential in NHS, social Housing, Equalities Act 2010 but that we don’t value it, don’t talk about it which prevents us unlocking value.
I think that’s because we have forgotten how to be the inclusive and regenerating society that we’ve always been.
Mark has recently discovered the stimulation and benefits of co working when you have your own business. He goes to Minor Oak co-working space set up in September last year by the amazing Architect engineer Dee Miller in Sneinton.
Working just one day a week with other likeminded people across a range of industries adds to your skills but also drives the key to small business growth; networking.
One thing that strikes me about Mark is his sense of duty and social obligation. It’s fantastic. It was working in his back bedroom that made him realise that he wanted to do something about homelessness. When you’re made redundant you learn about what makes you tick and you network not just for yourself but on the things that are important to you.
Mark and I are old enough to remember when the film “Cathy Come Home” about homelessness made by Ken Loach in 1966. He’s doing the Iceland Trek in the year after Daniel Blake to keep the momentum going. I think it’s the mature and dignified way (no mad mudder thing, no wild Paris cycling), a trek to Iceland is both good thing that will enable him to connect with housing enthusiasts, campaigners and experts and get the chance to think creatively with others about housing in the UK.
Mark says: “The recent Housing White Paper, unless there’s a real engagement with it makes it clear that the Government are trekking through an even more barren thinking landscape than I will be taking on just a few degrees south of the Arctic Circle in the summer. We’ve got to change that thinking. If we’re going to plan for future development we’ve got to get it right.”
Mark is clear that we are world class in so many thingst: “We also have world class early intervention and partnership working with the Vulnerable Persons Panel and the softer side of the Police”.
I feel that I’ve met someone working towards the day he can choose the projects he wants to do. Until then, it’s step by step: great training for this Shelter charity trek across Iceland.
England couldn’t beat Iceland last year at football but I think Mark will conquer Iceland…..
The problems are not just about rough sleepers. There are probably only about 5,000 people suffering in this way and a committed Government could do something about it. The issues run much deeper, with 124,000 children homeless last winter and over 74,000 households in temporary accommodation. Deeper again are the issues of the hidden homeless: people sleeping on sofas or living in hostels.
It’s easy to judge some of the circumstances that cause this, but what can really get personally frightening is that the many people who spend over 50% of their income on rent are also at risk of homelessness. Many people are only a bit of bad luck away from losing their home; just one big bill or a life disaster like redundancy or divorce can mean homelessness. Unlike other countries, private leases are short in the UK, with little security that would allow communities to form. Buying a home is the dream of most English people, but it is now becoming impossible for many people, with the Government putting a budget on an Affordable home in London at £450,000. That’s not affordable for most people, even for many with post-secondary education and good jobs.
The Government says it is investing £550 Million, but the problem has to start with supply of really affordable homes. In 2015/16 only 32,110 Affordable Homes were built, including a paltry 6,550 Social Homes. The post-war Labour Government built a million homes – 80% of them were council houses – and more recently, in 1968, over 425,000 affordable homes were constructed. So what was the pressure in the 1960s that persuaded the Government to invest in low-cost bricks and mortar?
What is Shelter?
The answer was the homelessness charity that works to alleviate the distress caused by homelessness and bad housing: SHELTER. They do this by giving advice, information and advocacy to people in housing need and by campaigning for lasting political change to end the housing crisis for good. I am old enough to remember when the film “Cathy Come Home” came out in 1966, and I’d hoped lessons had been learned since then.
I can’t run marathons or ride my bike to Paris, so instead I am trekking miles across Iceland to raise a few thousand pounds to help. I will be driven every step of the way by the recent Housing White Paper, where it is clear that the Government are trekking through an even more barren policy landscape than I will be trekking through just a few degrees south of the Arctic Circle this summer.
I have worked in Social Housing for more than 30 years, and for me Shelter stands out as something worthy of support. OK you can see right through me, I am after your money in this blog post.
Iceland Trek Shelter July 2017
Donating through the link below is simple. Shelter will receive your money quickly and easily and if you are a UK taxpayer, an extra 25% in tax will be added to your gift at no cost to you.
Many thanks for your support, and if you want to join me just follow this link or buy some boots and sign up. If anyone wants me to show my presentation, it only takes about six and a half minutes, let me know and I’ll bring it along.