Project Engineer Project Management

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A couple of months ago I attended the opening of UWA’s new Business School. One of events held that day was a presentation/interview with Trevor Eastwood, the former CEO of Wesfarmers (which is a massive conglomerate corporation that owns companies like Bunnings and Coles to name a couple). It was interesting to hear from a CEO level some of the management practices that had been used to run such a massive company.

Tips from Trevor:

• Get someone better than you to do your job.
• Translate goals so that they are meaningful to every decision making level in the organisation.
• Use the Argenti System – it is a great delivery tool.
• Don’t track performance annually, you need to do it continually/monthly. You have to know if/when different areas of the business are doing good or falling off the perch.
• Honesty and integrity in business is essential.
• When making acquisitions the discounted cash flow method was used to assess the purchase price. You need to know how you are going to add value because if you don’t change anything it discounts your value (since you paid a premium to acquire the business).

Keeping the above in mind, Wesfarmers recently purchased the Coles supermarket stores. Woolworths, as the stock market will tell, has been outperforming Coles for a while now. In fact, I’ve been watching their share price throughout the whole Global Financial Crisis phase. It has been consistently hovering around the mid-$20 mark. In comparison, Wesfarmers stock has gone up in value by about $10 since Feb 2009. A big part of this has been them finally managing to turn Coles around, minimise their debt and move forward with its growth strategy.

The video below shows current Wesfarmers CEO Michael Chaney briefly describes how Argenti was used successfully over 25 years at Wesfarmers.

Download the PDF publications onthe Argenti System from Harvard:

SWOT Analysis I: Looking Outside for Threats and Opportunities

SWOT Analysis II: Looking Inside for Strengths and Weaknesses

I got poached by an old boss a few weeks ago. He rang me up and offered me a job which seemed almost perfect. The location, the work, the career development (in other fields), a massive project, working with a team I’ve largely worked with before. I even went for an interview with a director of the company they were working for. All went well and the job was basically mine if I wanted it.

It all hinged on their offer to me. I’ve made a name for myself with the place I was working and had accumulated a decent amount towards my Long Service Leave. Given our pay hadn’t been reviewed for a while due to the “GFC”, I also expected a bit of an incentive to “jump ship”.

What they offered me was almost an insult, but it made my decision easier. They couldn’t even match what I had gotten before doing a similar job on site, let alone an incentive to move.

This time, the grass was greener where I was.

At this stage I’m not prepared to work my butt off to establish myself with a different company for a pay cut, even if it is a job that would look awesome on the CV… am I wrong?

People get assigned management positions through a number of different ways, including:

• They do their current non-management tasks/role very well
• They “walk the walk” & “talk the talk” (ie dress in suits and can interweave buzz words in conversation)
• They have been with the company or in their field for a long period of time

Notice that none of the above is a reliable indicator of how a person will perform as a manager (even if they look the part).

A lot of companies still use this “sink or swim” method of Management Training. I’ve also noticed that management training is often given to people who have been managers for a couple of years and less often to potential managers.

Some people get pushed into management and end up asking for their old job back. Management is not for everyone and you’ll be doing your company and your manager a favour by telling them you don’t want to be a manager up front (especially if you have decided this already or if you just don’t have the passion).

Other people want to get into management and get overlooked because they may not have certain leadership skills that area required in such a position. Then again, there are people who get into management and think they are doing a good job even when it is clear to everyone that they are not… this is why we have performance reviews…

Read The First-Time Manager by Loren Belker & Gary Topchik <- everyone should own this book

Follow me @marcofratelli on twitter & hubpages.

Drove out to site this morning, as I will be doing every morning for the next month to despatch concrete units… Ah bugger it, this blog is going to be in point form tonight. CBF.

• Arrived.
• Got a call saying the crane driver slept in.
• Trucks started arriving and had to wait until another crane arrived (~1 hour).
• Yard became a truck carpark.
• Crane came.
• Loaded some units.
• Truck drivers had to return to depot to pick up other trailers.
• Sat there with 2 riggers and a crane, waiting for about 2 hours.
• Other trailers came.
• Loaded more units.
• I sent crane and riggers home.
• Another trailer arrives. WTF? But I just sent the crane off…
• Misunderstanding of arrangements for the day (this time my fault)
• Drive back to work for a performance meeting (ok).
• Feel crap for the rest of the day.
• CBF tweeting, can barely BF blogging.
• Going to watch an episode of MacGyver or maybe an episode of Coupling now.

I don’t mind people stuffing up sometimes, everyone does it and I’m usually very lenient unless we’re waiting around for hours on end while paying for labour and/or machinery. Despite the events of today, I don’t have any dramas with either company. But what’s worse is when you stuff up yourself. I hate stuffing someone else around because I don’t like to be stuffed around. I rang up that company and apologised, but still felt like shit for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow is a new day.

More work screw ups (these ones not mine).