WHY is it in this 21st Century we have advanced to the stage where we never have enough time! It is the same at Enigin as elsewhere - busy, busy, busy.

I think Enigin should branch into the “time-saving” business alongside the energy-saving industry, there must be a symbiosis there somewhere.

Despite time saving methodology and appliances we seem to have less time then ever before, hence the increase in stress related illnesses over recent years. It truly is a mad, mad world.

One thing I am certain of is this is not the time to have your time wasted, and yet a lot of people seem intent on doing just that. It isn’t even just the time but the interruption, lost production, frustration and distraction.

Often those time wasters do not do it consciously or out of malice - they just can’t manage their time or have taken a well earned break and forget that everyone else is stretched for time as well.

The excellent BNET web site had an interesting article about time wasters, written by Steve Tobak, and here are his 7 Classic Time-Waster Types and some tips for dealing with them:

1. Self-Important, perpetually late to meetings executive. I’ve seen companies where this is almost an epidemic and others where they started making offenders pay everyone else a buck for being late. How egotistical can you get? Really.
2. The stonewalling executive recruiter. You do all the interviews, jump through all the hoops, then nothing. Or just enough info to keep you waiting … and waiting … and waiting.
3. The verbose boss. I had a CEO who must have been a magician in a former life because he could magically transform a 30 minute meeting into 2 hours of listening to him relive his one and only claim to fame, over and over.
4. The constantly whiny employee. There’s one in every group but, sometimes, it’s contagious and can spread to others. They’re always stressing and complaining about some drama of their own making.
5. The “while I’ve got you here” - “one more thing” - “something I’ve been meaning to ask you” guy. An endless string of ideas, theories, and questions with one thing in common: they’re all dumb, obvious, useless, and take forever to explain.
6. The “never cut to the chase” person. She strings you along by leaving endless messages for you to call, along with some rubbish about the weather or something, but never really cuts to the chase.
7. And … the absolute worst, classic time-waster: construction contractors. They’re either slammed and can’t get back to you; or they call in the evening and, instead of telling you when they can come, just keep leaving their phone number; or you make an appointment and they no-show.

And, as promised, here are my three indispensable tips for dealing with this sort of lunacy:

• Don’t try to change them; you can’t. Don’t even bother telling them what they’re doing; they won’t get it. But they will waste even more of your time with endless excuses for why their chronic nonsense somehow makes sense.
• You know, we all do dumb things from time to time, but … The problem is when it becomes chronic. You know the expression, “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me?” That’s become my rules with time-wasters.
• Learn to let it go. Frankly, your neediness may trump their self-importance. If people keep doing this stuff to you and you can never seem to find a way to make it stop, then you may actually be the one with the problem. There are professionals who can help with that sort of thing, you know? Find a good one.

Everybody’s got time-wasters they love to hate. What’s yours?

I found an interesting article on the excellent bnet website about how business leaders make mistakes when trying to accelerate strategy.

Bnet stated that research indicates that business leaders are right to be dissatisfied by the slowness ofstrategy implementation: studies show that, on average, organisations abandon 50 to 70 percent of strategies because they fail to take hold or fail to achieve the desired results in the time expected.

But why this high failure rate - often it is a case of the business leader being at fault. This is what bnet reported:

The surprising truth is that you achieve strategic speed by focusing on people. Many executives recoil from dealing with people issues because they equate them with slowing down, with having to wade through a morass of human emotions, questions, quirks, and complaints.

But skilful mobilisation of people is actually a key differentiator between slower and faster organisations.

The big mistake is to pursue speed mainly by manipulating processes, systems, and technologies. Focusing on efficiency alone does not create speed.

Trap 1: Overattention to Pace When pressed to accelerate execution, a leader’s first inclination is often one of three things:

To do everything faster (and exhort others to do the same)

To stoke the boiler by throwing more resources (money, people, or technology) at tasks and problems; or
To cut corners by eliminating steps in a process, pieces of a project, or people in the loop.

Trap 2: Overattention to Process At any university, you’ll see paved walkways connecting the campus buildings to one another. You’ll also see well-trodden footpaths cutting across the lawns — especially from the dormitories to the dining halls. These paths tell a story that one could call ‘people trump process.’  . People will cut across the lawn if it suits them.

In business, it’s common for leaders to focus on process and pay less attention to what motivates people.

Process-focused efforts to increase speed don’t go far enough. Without equal or greater attention to people factors, leaders’ efforts to improve processes and technologies are at best insufficient, at worst detrimental.

As the biologist Lewis Thomas once said, “If you want a bee to make honey, you do not issue protocols on solar navigation or carbohydrate chemistry; you put him together with other bees.”

Trap 3: Measuring Speed There’s one more mistake leaders make, and it may be the most fundamental one: they measure speed as if it were nothing more than a race. They think, ‘how fast can we get from A to B?’

This mindset puts pace and process at the forefront of their concerns and causes them to overlook an essential component of strategic speed: value.

Therefore, we’d like to offer a new way to size up speed: Time to Value and Value over Time

The [most successful change] leaders…measure strategic speed not in terms of races won, but in terms of two broader metrics: reduced time to value and increased value over time.

• Time to value is the time it takes for people or initiatives to climb above the line or point at which they start contributing net value to the system rather than being a net hindrance.

• Value over time is the value created as they stay above the line. Long time to value, little value over time is the worst-case scenario. Short time to value, substantial value over time is the best.

This is interesting stuff, even more so for us here at Enigin as we look to help companies apply energy efficiency and saving strategies in away that allows completion 99% of the time and involves the people, the staff in such away as they “buy in” to the strategy, which is simple and often self-managing.

Challenges and an individuals attitude towards success can vary, for some it is career, money, kudos etc, etc. For others, it is the simplest things that present the more interesting and rewarding outcome. For me, like all of humanity, I have many challenges that I am trying to overcome, some sub-consciously and on an every day basis. These challenges are fought without prior thought or planning, a certain automation kicks in every morning when I wake and the day’s attempts to succeed will begin.

Life as at Enigin or for the Enigin Distributors is no different.  For me, employeed at Enigin as a Business Manager, my day is full of challenges.  I am tasked reffering to the Enigin Directors poential Distribuors who I feel would be best suited to succeed.  Not everyone who contacts Enigin

A large portion of their business comes from what the industry calls the MUSH market — municipal and state governments, universities, schools and hospitals. These institutions receive US federal stimulus dollars to spend on energy efficiency.
It appears from the report that the MUSH market will remain strong for quite some time. The report recognised around $35 billion worth of potential business is still available for US ESCOs to find from MUSH institutes. The US federal building market, which accounted for 15% of ESCO business in 2008, also continues to offer promise. The US Department of Energy invested $440 million in federal efficiency projects in 2009 and $498 million in 2010. And this is set to continue and improve opportunities for energy saving and efficiency in the US.

State clean energy policies set by the US Government aid the boom in ESCO activity. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, for example, have made energy efficiency a ‘first fuel,’ meaning utility companies must secure all cost-effective energy savings before buying or building electric power. In addition, 18 US states have created energy efficiency standards which must be met and they require that utility companies achieve annual energy savings targets.

Enigin Distributors globally are already enjoying success in helping many businesses and particularly public sector organisations, municipal and state governments, universities, schools and hospitals to save money through energy saving and efficiencies.

Work is work - no matter what you do work will be regarded in a negative light at some stage.

You may love you occupation and slave hard away at it, spending far more time than you need to fulfill your responsibilities or tasks.

It maybe practically a vocation, a hobby for which you are fortunate enough to be paid - but at some stage you will bemoan that you ‘have’ to do it, and then work is work!

Nothing can take that away but if it is a vocation, a hobby or in the best scenario something worthwhile it provides that extra edge to your working life, reducing the hopelessness felt by many an employee.

Working at and with Enigin is certainly an occupation that brings satisfaction due to its worthwhile nature.

Although Enigin are a business and need to make sales to be able to succeed and survive it is pleasing to be involved in a business whose moto is ‘profit through integrity’ and whose goal is to help business protect their profits by retaining them instead of sending ever larger amount to utility companies, through saving energy.

Plus the environmental aspect is satisfying - with the world seemingly suffering from environmental upset, whether climate change of such things as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, energy efficiency ill help our environment and future,

When I interview someone who is delighted because they are saving $1400 a month after making one small investment in Enigin products it is delightful and fulfilling - yes its work but so much more than that!

It’s about time we all answered the call - what call? The call to action on energy saving and efficiency.

Now you may say you are doing your bit, but is it sustained?

That is the problem for most, and I include myself in this. We get the utility bill in. at home or at work, and our eyes come out on sticks when we look at the amount we are having to pay. We immediately go round turning off lights, heaters, air-con and anything else that guzzles the power.

A few days later we drop back into our old habits and become wasteful again. So how do we change the way we behave regarding power use - long term?

We need to be able to see what we are using, continually not just monthly or quarterly.

Smart Meters are often pointed to as the answer - and they will be better but they generally do not show you what you are using now, they display what you used up to a day previously, again it is retrospective, we have used the power and now we can see what we used.

In most modern cars you not only see your speed and can calculate what fuel you are using you have a computer that will show you precisely what your consumption is at that time through miles or kilometers per gallon or liter.

Yet with electricity we do not have the same system - we do not know what we have used until we have used it and owe the money for it.

That is why at Enigin we have developed the Eniscope - a real-time energy montior that shows you precisely how much energy you are using now, this very moment. Not only your kilowatts usages but it can measure over 100 power parameters, vital for businesses, and give you accurate readings now of what your are using now.

The Eniscope can analyse energy use in a whole building, a department, an office or an indivdual piece of equipment - in other words down to a granular level.

With the Eniscopes range of displays means that staff and the public can see what energy is being used now, that can change behaviour not just for the short term but permanently.

This is very good for the public and private sector but would Eniscope help at home?

It most certainly would but it is a little pricey for the domestic market and most of the parameters would do little for the homeowner - but residential groups are showing an interest in monitoring groups of residences, either apartments or houses.

Yes the call is there for us to act, but we need the equipment to make sure we act in a beneficial way and not just for the short term.

Enigin are there to help the business and public organisations but at home we need to apply the same practices, even if we do not know what we are using at any one time. Let’s all start becoming energy efficient and save money.

IT has been awhile since we posted here - hospital visits and operations delayed the original author from keeping up with this blog - but the good news is Ben Freeman is a lot better and is working as hard as ever, like a new start.

So a new start is here with me, Steve Hill, now writing this blog and as we begin to enjoy spring at last and looking forward to summer.

The weather in South West England, where Enigin are based, has been strange this year.

A cold, cold winter - with the area suffering from loads of snow, a rare event but two years in a row must show climate change is real.

Then in early April we were getting summer temperatures for 10 days, fantastic, sun, sea and sand all plentiful in Cornwall (Enigin’s home county) - but suddenly the following three weeks saw a return to winter! A slight exaggeration but it felt like it with some nights the temperature barely above freezing.

Now we are getting into the latter half of May and suddenly summers here again, with tempratures expected to hit 27 degrees celsius in some areas! Get the barbie out, the shorts and the swimming togs.

This is a beautiful area of the UK to live when the weather is so good - gorgeous countryside, wonderful coastline and sea air.

It makes the quality of life here very high and life is slower than being in the middle of London or New York - a lot slower. Now some people think that can affect the way business works, but no work is the same everywhere, constant pressure and deadlines.

I worked and lived in the Shetland Islands for four years, the most northerly island of the UK and a fourteen hour sea journey north form Aberdeen. Life there was very slow, we seemed to have 28 hours in a day, but when it came to work I could have been anywhere.

The beauty of Shetland and the West Country was that once work was done you don’t have a tedious and long commute but can soon be enjoying the area, particularly in this great weather - may spring continue like this in to a blazing summer.

Thankfully, the weather has passed it’s worst and the frost, snow and treturous conditions of this morning and early afternoon have passed.

With that in mind I will depart Enigin HQ now while the going is good, home to my wife and three girls.

Well, for those people with a plan of action who know only too well what it is that they will be fighting for during 2010…well done, keep doing what it is that you do.  For the rest of us trying to succeed in a harsh world, I thought the following top ten tips would help…..at least a little!! I have always had some form of plan, even if it wasn’t that successful.  Long before I was employed at Enigin I recognised the value of planning for success and I appreciate that it is not easy.

But, as I say all the time here at Enigin PLC, “Actions speak a lot louder than words”.

1. Foucs on your tasks. Put all your energy into what you do.
2. Believe in yourself. If you don’t, who will.
3. Be tenacious.
4. Trust your instincts.
5. Maintain your momentum and keep  moving forward.
6. Paint a mental picture of yourself succeeding.
7. Be passionate about what you do.
8. Live on the edge. Do not become complacent.
9. Be in charge of you.
10. Never ever give up.

Above all else, do not procrastinate!!!

Cheer up Ben! When it thaws, you’ll probably get your garden flooded, maybe even your house too! You can try claiming on that insurance that you pay for every month!!! How good is that!!!

Now before you get your collective backs up, I’m all in favour of the festivities of Christmas, but what’s with the fascination with snow.   I am at present looking out at a wintery Cornwall safe from within the warm confines of Enigin HQ and I for one am dreading the prospect of snow.  The forecasters have predicted that there will be a fifty, fifty chance of snow this Christmas!  But where others get all romantic about the fluffy stuff, I get real and start worrying about getting stuck nearly 40 mile from home, with nothin more than a patheic car heater to warm my cockles!  As much as I love working at Enigin, I sure as hell do not relish the prospect of getting stuck here with three little daughters and a wife to get home to (no disrespect to my colleagues!!!)

You see, I have been here before, I have been duped by the unrealistic fantasy dwellers who convince themselves and others that snow is a good thing.  Although what in the world is remotely good about something that is as destructive as snow I can’t quite think!!  I have been stuck in the middle of a weather condition that the UK can’t deal with and ultimatley, it took me seven hours to drive (for drive, read skid and slide) 14 miles, watching other motorists collide with hedges and each other.  It’s OK if you are totally self sufficient and live in ‘la-la land’ but I don’t live in the clouds, have to get in my car to do almost anything of convenience and value my property and life to much to get excited about a weather condition that is designed purely to break you to your knees.

Rant over, I’ll get back to work.  Enigin do not pay me to moan about snow!