Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-12-11 - 9:29 a.m.

I woke up thinking my cold was closer and set about making a CD of the Gilbert/IC mixes from last night together with earlier music we had made together. I had an unexpected bit of difficulty with one make of CD which the software wouldn�t recognise (this time) as blank audio. I switched brand and managed to burn 35 minutes of music � about 8 or 9 tracks including 3 from last night. Then I drove to work by an experimental and profoundly useless route � except that it took me past the Peugeot plant at Ryton which I hadn�t seen before � and it gave me a chance to listen to the CD.

No e-mails for me � something I didn�t like. But a colleague came into my office and gave me his scoring of a �leadership� pilot I am working on. I am using a list of different behaviour patterns at work which maps onto the four Jungian personality dimensions � indeed it comes from a standard work on the subject and is intended to illustrate how the dimensions manifest themselves in the workplace. I am asking people to score the different attributes between 0 and 5 according to whether they think effective leaders in the automotive industry tend/needs to behave like that. Anyway I now have two complete sets of scorings and I spent some time looking at what pattern might be emerging. Its clear that its very hard to be a leader if you are an introvert � but apart from that it seems that leaders need to be very balanced � say between personal values and impersonal analysis, or current facts and future possibilities and able to make decisions but not too precipitately.

Stefan showed me the first results from the follow up interviews we are doing from the Summit � I have got interviewers to offer another set of 20 putative leadership attributes and ask the interviewees to select the three which they would most like to see more of amongst their team. I quite liked the ones that this first interviewee picked � and his narrative examples of good and bad leadership were first rate. The bad example was a case where a design team weren�t producing a viable design � the leader locked himself up in his office and did the design all by himself � this an interesting trade/off between process and result. You might say the person did well to keep the project on track � but that isn�t the point. He alienated the team and that was a longer term and more important negative. The aim of keeping the project on track is very analytical/judgemental which is classic project manager behaviour. The fact that this is a case of bad leadership shows how personal values and future possibility enter into the requirement. Locking yourself in the room rather than talking to the team is very introvert (and very DTI).

Keith Jordan rang up � he is on the steering group of something run by the CBI called Fit for the Future � and said that the L issue had reared its head there and that he had offered my name as a contact for someone who has just started a research project. I mentioned to him that my foray into this area is actually to try and establish an independent definition which is industry-specific rather than simply falls under the prevailing paradigm. There are two angles to this � I am not sure about the paradigm and I could bottle on forever about this. Secondly, the headline from the Automotive Summit is the priority that the Chief Execs are giving to leadership and I want to maintain our results and the subsequent investigations as intellectual capital which is unique to this organisation and more especially to me. That�s just a simple survival strategy.

Laurence mailed to say how much he enjoyed our discussions last week and Paul Bell rang from Wolverhampton. He said it was even colder in Frankfurt where Cathie is. We agreed to meet for supper tomorrow evening in Leamington. Maybe the Fit for the Future outbreak is an opportunity for Laurence.

Graham (my boss) asked me for a one page guide to the different initiatives of the Learning and Skills Council � and as I trawled through my files I came across an item I had missed about the NHS University � the outline development plan for this has just been published so I pulled a copy of the Executive Summary off the net which took ages to download and ordered a full copy to come by post. This channel delivered a copy of the Cabinet Office National Skills Development Strategy from the Sector Skills Development Agency � yet another benefit from going to that conference in Manchester even though I managed to dent the boot of my almost new car on the trip � oh yes and I did get those three interesting CDs for �10 and see a T34 in the new Imperial War Museum. Undoubtedly money well spent. (I am wondering if I can set up a trip next March to Detroit � this time I�ll take my flute.)

Richard who is doing the legwork on the Academy dropped in � I showed him the map of the global quality standard in automotive (TS 16949) to our products and suggested that one way of getting to an Automotive Academy curriculum was to derive the underlying skills from the products. Talking of TS 16949 Kevin has just come back from his holiday in Florida � I had mailed him asking for the project proposal we have put to DTI to support the promulgation of the standard. We had an interesting chat about how the Florida coast is all becoming developed. He said that he was struck by the contrast between the Florida weather and what was happening in the North East. I said that February in NYC was fine by me.

Nick Brown rang from Luxemburg where he has gone to relax with his partner � he had already given me a steer on James forthcoming history interview. He wondered if I could suggest an automotive name to give his college�s annual �City� interview. I floated a possibility which he quite liked and I left an enquiry on Tracy Vegro�s answerphone to see whether it would fly.

I started my mystery shopper exercise on the National Vocational Qualification Level in Three in Procurement � ringing up the numbers which OCR had given me. Once I got into it it was good fun � seeing which organisations had the smoothest front end and which managed to get a meeting with me even though I was insistent that I would probably go to a competitive process on the procurement. One of the most interesting bits was the response which I got when I asked if Learning and Skills Council money was available to help us through the process � thereby hangs a tail which I will keep twisting.

Anyway after all of that I felt quite knackered � not my usual state at the end of a day�s paid employment. I suppose there is something to be said for working on issues that interest you for money rather than recreation.

An interesting e-mail came in about a summary articles on the use of anti-retrovirals in less developed countries. Must remember to post that on www.kwase-kwaza.org tomorrow.

I have been wondering whether it is feasible to marry BBC500 trio with the current BBC500 premiere. Indeed I had a go at a first draft � including some extra flute � somewhere between Ascension and Anthem for the Sun maybe.

I really sympathise with Andrew�s comments about relying on the railways to get to work � boy am I glad that I don�t have to do that any more.

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