In the Facility and Property Management profession, I see an important ingredient missing from many organizations – good information.
That’s information you can use to make decisions and improvements both with internally delivered services and with your suppliers.
An excellent example of the value of information, even if not directly related, is Wal-Mart. Their retail success is something that even Facility Managers can learn from.
FM is a complex, issues based role. I’ve learned along the way that nobody in the industry knows it all, and the best way to be successful is to leverage the knowledge and great ideas of others, including your staff, colleagues and suppliers.
Recently, I delivered a 3 day workshop on Strategic Facilities Management in Dubai. The location was spectacular, naturally, and the audience was diverse, interesting and most importantly, keenly interested in enhancing their skills and knowedge in the profession, which is quickly emerging in the Middle East.
While the 3 day workshop had many individual modules, the last session was on developing FM skills. This included an example from my past, dating over 15 years ago from a teamwork exercise while working in the Facility Management department of a major company.
It was so compelling about the the value of teamwork, I still had the exercise booklet.
