Bromyard - a sense of place

I have just walked down Bromyard High Street to go to the dentist.

There is a fantastic 'ghost town' feel to Bromyard. A few antique and bric a brac stores line each side of the road but never seem to be open. Posters in the window of pub shield a 'rustic' couple having a late lunch. The chap who was in rough working clothes was picking the final few chips from his plate, standing next to which a half drunk pint of bitter, the foam of the head clinging to the sides of the glass.

Further along the street there is a wine bar, trying to be the centre of Bromyard night life, the posters in the window appear to be trying to say the right thing but a peek through the window and the sight of what appears to be tables and chairs from a country pub stops the attempt dead in its tracks.

Good solid boots and shoes and hardy clothes are order of the day for residents of the town and a sense of being self-reliant. Honest folk living there lives an honest way. There is a real sense of life working at a different speed; I know that there is still early closing one afternoon, something I last saw in Pontypool in the mid 80's but for the life of me I found it difficult to work out if today was the day.

I get the same feeling from Bromyard as I do when I have been on holiday and deeply buried in the French countryside - a sense of place that is miles and miles from glitz shops stuffed with gadgets, 'the city', WAG's, MP's and their expenses...you get the picture.

If anyone wants a sense of rural middle England, Bromyard will give you a true picture - enjoy.

Did I ever get 523 letters in one week?

First day back at work after a week off, well a week and a day actually but let's not split hairs. What did I find.....523 emails waiting for me, and that didn't even count the 200+ already filtered out. So in days of old would I have received so many letters? No I didn't, several things used to happen back in the day. The most notable of which were 1) People either walked across the office or picked up the phone and actually spoke to people 2) For a lot of the time for a lot of things we were ignorant of what was going on.

The most over used tool in an email is the dreaded 'cc' function. Young'uns seem to forget the 'cc' stands for 'Courtsey Copy'. Let me tell you after 523 emails 'courtsey' is running a bit thin.


Would I change things? Probably not, the truth of the matter is that we all have become 24/7/365 information junkies. Cut me off and I would wonder what was going on.

Must close now, running out of battery life on my BlackBerry....

August is a funny month

Particularly if you take your holiday early. There you are rested, relaxed and eager to go at it again with fresh vigour and what happens? Half your colleagues, suppliers and clients are not there, leaving you having to park all those ideas whilst you sort out who was supposed to do what by when and who might be around to do anything at all.

August is a funny month.

The list

A few years ago I was given a book of lists, if you like that kind of thing it was quite interesting, although having being forced out into the open about writing down the names of Eddie Stobbart lorries in earlier times recently by my wife to my children I am a little more circumspect about my appreciation of 'lists'.

In my defense I will say that I refrained from looking at the list of the Top 20 lists of all time, although it was tempting.


Most people have all sorts of lists, shopping lists, birthday present lists, holiday packing lists etc. I have a secret list (ok not any longer). It is not a list of the Top 10 women I would like to engage in deep and meaniful conversation, nor is it my first XI for either England for the Villa, or even the 10 things I should do before I am 50 - mainly as I only have about 6 weeks to go. No this list has professional ramifications. As far and as wide as I have travelled there are place I would dearly live to see and experience that regretablly I have not seen. So despite the bravardo at industry encounters about knowledge of the world the simple fact is that it is dammed near impossible to have visited everywhere - so there is a list, my personal list of places I would like to see and experience.


The list has to remain private as it could be seen to influence several quite selfish attitudes/approaches/decisions. As a professional buyer I am lucky enough to be invited by destinations try to sell their wares. Such invitations are of course measured against 'The List'. The professional assessment and of course integrity is how such invitations measure up against the standard of the ability of being able to sell the destination to clients.


Thus far I am happy invitations accepted have been for the correct professional reasons......but the list remains and the sands of time keep falling.


P

Hobby horses at a gallop

I have this hobby horse that I get on every so often and go for a little trot. It's nice little hobby horse, normally quite friendly and when I ride her I tend to get in the zone and give all my attention to my little hobby horse.

Her name is actually quite long, she is called 'Shorted sighted penny pinching management who let their staff and customers down who will eventually be found out by the market'. But I call her 'Agnes' for short. I give my portable hard drives names as well - there is Doris, Flo and Gwen and of course 'Big Max' who is 1/2 a Terabite in size.

I also have a Polar Bear called Peter who travels with me around the world - but that is another story, let's get back to Agnes and taking for her for a bit of a gallop. When faced with the result of shocking management decisions that result in me suffering an inferior experience I tend to try and go directly to source. So the conversation with front line staff for a fairly low level encounter tends to be along the lines of 'I am going to throw my dollies out the pram...I can do it with you or your boss, which do you prefer' to be fair the better people will try and fall on the corporate sword which is fine but Agnes doesn't like it. For more serious gallops the conversation can have several variations - such as 'What is the name of your boss's boss? What is their position and who do they work for?. Going to Defcon 5 normally means Agnes looking at the corporate web site or Companies House to find a suitable Board Director to launch Agnes at. Over the years Agnes and I have learned to pick job functions that appreciate the wider implications, so PR, Marketing and Sales Directors are good - the trick is to write in a way that reflects the portfolio they hold. Customer Service and Managing Directors don't tend to work so well - they receive a lot of stuff and you tend to get a formulaic response that Agnes doesn't like.

So whilst having a passable holiday at Center Parcs this week, Agnes and I will be going for a bit of a gallop with their management next week when I get back to a PC and find who maybe the best person to launch a broadside at. There is so much here for Agnes to get her teeth into, she is going to enjoy it.


P

When management fail

Two posts in one day is the sign of a few things, access to a smart phone, access to free wireless and above all free time.

I am sat in a bar area, behind me I can the hollow sound made by pin balls when hit, in front of me kids struggle to get cues high enough to reach the pool tables and in mid distance I can hear club music mixed with the zap of a Zombie shoot them up game. The hen parties of the weekend have gone and now we are left with Brits and their kids going through a nightly ritual of wanting to enjoy themselves.

Anyway to the point of this post. Center Parcs, the current holiday home of the family Jackson no doubt spend a reasonable chunk of cash on customer service training for their frontline staff, so why do they then proceed to throw it all away with sloppy mangement and a penny pinching approach that puts overworked staff under pressure and set them up to fail?

On Saturday I attended a show, there were several things wrong with it, a venue with concrete floor that looked a school gym, a poor sound syste and very average food. But the real corker was staff walking through the audience carrying armfuls of newly scrapped plates during the show, instead of investing a few more secondsto go around the outside. When both the restaurant manager and the site duty manager considered this not only company but also industry standard, well....it stopped me in my tracks, I didn't realise I had been expecting so much from my supplier partners.....then again perhaps not and management here are failing their staff and customers.

As a footnote I have emailed the GM, when I get an answer I will let you know, although it has been two working days and no reply.......

Chicago -really my kind of town

Whilst it has been over a week since my from the Windy City - very lax blogging - I still think it worthwhile to note my views of the city.

For once a US city surprised me. The city was clean, neat and in places even manicured with flower beds along some of the roads. The green heart of connecting gardens in front of the lake shore was refreshing, pushing back the urban urgency of the concrete and glass towers of modern America.

The attitude to culture was highlighted by the short tour of an art gallery we was treated to, our host was both knowledgeable, subtle and very keen to show us some of the treasures they hold.

Notwithstanding this was summer and the harsh approaching winter a distant prospect, I have to say that Chicago is my kinda (ok, qualified to US) of town