Helping transport professionals fast track their success
When you hear the words strategic thinking what comes to mind?Do you shudder and say to yourself — not for me? Or do you glaze over and just want to get on with the job at hand? Plan your work, work your plan I’ve observed that many professionals only plan their work one day at a time. They get … Read more
Our cities are shaped by where people live, work, learn, shop and play and how they travel around. As transport users, we want connected trips. Transport connectivity is key to enabling the best use of resources, with an emphasis on sustainability. Reducing the overall socio-economic cost of transport infrastructure and services is key to achieving … Read more
Professor Bent Flyvbjerg in his research identified two main causes of misinformation in policy and management: strategic misrepresentation (or lying!) and optimism bias (appraisal optimism). Strategic misrepresentation is the planned, systematic distortion or misstatement of fact in response to incentives in the budget process. Optimism bias is the demonstrated systematic tendency for people to be … Read more
A big challenge for technical professionals is how to get decisions such as approval to their proposals. Along the path from technical detailed analysis and design to a strategic proposal, technical professionals can be challenged with the ‘strategic’ bit in selling the ‘story’ why the proposal is value for money and should be approved. Firstly, … Read more
With the exponential growth in information, professionals face a knowledge half-life dilemma. I love the line in Men in Black where Tommy Lee Jone’s character says: 1,500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you … Read more
Are you concerned about where your career is heading? Maybe you are unhappy in your job or feel your skill and expertise are not being full use. In reality you are in control. You can control how to progress your career. Technical professionals who are prepared, have enormous opportunities in the next decade. This is because … Read more
Professional identity involves at least partially answering the question ‘who am I?’ For a professional it is how you perceive yourself in relation to your profession and your membership of that profession. Identity is created through beliefs and attitudes, values, motives and experiences through which you define yourself, in your professional life. It is associated … Read more
The first known recording of this observation was a written fragment from Ancient Greek Poet Archilochus around 680 BC: The fox knows many things; the hedgehog one big thing. “The Hedgehog and The Fox” was also the title of an essay by philosopher Isaiah Berlin in the 1950’s. And Jim Collin’s in his book Good … Read more
How to protect your future career Let’s talk about where professional’s careers are heading and what you can do to be more successful. What do you think the world will be like in ten years’ time? If you cast your mind back ten years, you couldn’t have imagined the developments that have occurred in that time. There … Read more
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. Mark Twain (1835-1910) You cannot manage time. Time stops for no-one. And you can’t store time. You can control how you use your time, what you do first, what you do second and so on. However, we all procrastinate. A key to high performance is overcoming procrastination … Read more