Neville holds various people in high esteem and models himself on certain aspects, beliefs and engineering attitudes of those people. Here he lists some of them and tells us why.
Perhaps the most influential was Sir John Harvey-Jones in his TV series. He did what many people at the time wanted to do themselves - go and talk to bosses, make them more accountable. Many things he said in themselves Neville did not agree with - for example, telling Morgan Cars to 'mechanise' to speed up production would have lost it's primary product niche - hand-built cars. The magical thing with Sir John was all about making senior bosses account for themselves to someone in front of a camera - good TV. The thing that inspired Neville was the concept of spreading expertise across more than one customer and doing it free if the business really needed help. This inspired Neville in later years and he has modelled his career around this ambition. Not to mention 'humour' - Neville and Sir John have that very much in common. If you want a warm cheery workplace during change and new technology projects catch a few of Neville's happy rays! "...he always leaves us with smiles on our faces and chuckle-muscle aching a bit." quoted from one client to another.
As with most men Neville holds his father accountable for at least some of his thinking. Take for example being brought up believing you had the most wonderful childhood then age nine your home (an arable farm) is sold for development. Your Dad explains "It is the right time to get out of farming, the price offered is for building land, you can have more holidays and I can retire" no arguments there. Then the reality you move to a house on a street five miles from your friends, the holidays are just two weeks in the school holidays and your Dad spends most of his time worrying about investments and being bored at home at 48yrs old! What you learn is long-term planning is key to any strategy and being wealthy does not get you good friends nor does it make you happy. (...yes he did get a job and is a very fit 86 year old still tending his veg patch and managing his investments)
Alec Coutts well you will not know the name, but an eleven year old with a passion for knowledge and electronics knocked on Alec's door and asked if he would teach him how to repair televisions. Alec was one of our new neighbours and worked for IBM Havant in 1971. Along with the resistor colour codes and not to hit electronics when it does not work, Alec taught Neville 'all he knew'. He even got a good grounding in large scale manufacturing and work-place ethics with visits to the IBM plant at Havant!
Alec was the first to introduce Neville to other engineering disciplines and together they rebuilt his Jaguar XJ12; mixing mechanical and electrical disciplines. Having said all that the biggest lesson for Neville was the value of learning - up until that point his teachers at school wrote comments like "Neville has a lot of potential if he would only apply himself".
Mother - well she has to be included and what did she teach her son? Lots and lots of things, but one thing stands out above the rest. The most outstanding thing that came from his mum was work-ethic. To this day her words ring out "If a job is worth doing it is worth doing properly" - powerful stuff.
George Stephenson - well not all heroes are living when they inspire you and Neville's penguin book 'Stephenson's Rocket' was an incredible step towards his engineering themed life. From idea to reality the story of the project is classic inventor's dream. The race is between inventors. The aim to be the fastest (quickest over 20 laps). The challenge is powering a wheeled set of carriages carrying a set number of people running on rails. All this at the start of the industrial revolution in 1829.
Stephenson broke the power process down into engineering components and then taking each in turn he came up with ways to make it better or how one component could make another more efficient. This is classic Business Consulting approach today. For example he took the hot waste steam escaping from the pistons and pressure valves and put it at the base of the smoke stack to 'Turbo-charge' the exhaust process. This made the whole engine more efficient. Would you have thought of that without taking his methodical approach to improving efficiency?
It had the effect of moving efficiency to the next level and he was then able to improve the design of the firebox and heat exchangers to work best with his turbo-charged exhaust. This is another key skill for a business analyst - recognising that when you improve the efficiency in one place it has an impact on the whole solution that may make another part less efficient. Neville knows to model the whole solution and ensure all impacts are proven before changes are made permanent.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel - another dead person wielding an almighty influence on Neville! You can't do justice to what he did with words and the best attempt is probably the one on this kids web-site. Brunel put the 'can' in response to 'can't' and ensured "can't be done" is a rare response from an engineer. Neville was told "you'll never go to University" by one of his careers advisors when he was selecting subjects at fourteen. He was told "you can't take O'Levels - CSEs for you". After getting six O'Levels and being over qualified for his apprenticeship he was told "You are too late to get into College" by the placement officer. He spoke to course tutors at Southampton College and got his place and being top in his class in nearly all subjects went on to University!
Brunel put the 'grit and determination' into Neville's approach to life and he has been variously described as "Persistent", "A rottweiler" and as "Someone you'd want with you in an emergency". With age he has mellowed, learned to swim and accepted some of his ideas need to wait for the technology to make them viable.
Wright Brothers - so we have moved on from steam and built a transport system - nothing in the sky making headway yet and along come the Wright brothers. Here Neville is in awe of the 'new engineering working environment' these two guys fearlessly broke into so dramatically in 1903. The first use of an engine to propel what was a glider. They virtually went from folding a paper plane to flying over the oceans.
Speech recognition solutions are the closest projects Neville has worked on that break new ground and this area is still not achieving powered flight status in Neville's opinion. Getting machines to recognise our voices just as we communicate with each other is not far off and when it is here it will revolutionise our lives pretty much like powered flight did back then. Imagine a World where talking to machines is the only instruction needed.
...we need to be ready to re-define our laws and culture just as we have done to cope with the aircraft. Power through technology is not used for the good our mankind and our planet by all who have it. Imagine the power the owners, makers and programmers have in a world where voice control is everywhere. Couple it with other identity techniques and 'Big Brother' is no longer a TV show.
Margaret Thatcher - ok so she was wrong to think an economy in isolation can thrive as much as one trading fairly with the rest of the World. What she did well was challenge the idea of them-and-us between white-collar and shop-floor workers in companies. She brought in legislative standards all employers have to meet. Today employers all realise they can't get good work from a worker they do not look after in the work-place as well as pay a fair wage. Employees vote with their feet if the job is not what they want.
Neville stands for making that approach work well. If you are the owner of a business and you share out the profits with the people that helped you get them your business will thrive. Some businesses have taken this to the extreme of sharing all equally and it works brilliantly. Most staff do not want nor expect that level of sharing, but being seen to have an ethos of 'If we do well we all benefit' is better than leaving staff to rely on Unions or theft or gossip and hidden agendas to ensure they feel fairly rewarded and motivated.
Henry Powel my Godfather; a bald, pipe-smoking, deep smooth voiced slow-talking man who always smelled of varnish and honey. He had a passion for wood and made things with it that never failed to impress in my childhood years. He showed me 'symbiosis' - all things he did had more than one purpose and reason for being a part of his life. Bees round his apple trees pollinated and made wax he used on his wood - he made hives for them to stay safe and dry from wood, he ate the apples and planted seeds to grow new trees and so on. All things we do in life have many things going into them and many things come out there is always symbiosis going on if only we care to look for it. Things are better off if they work together - 'Sympatica' is the Italian word for it and it does what no English word does. It says work together and in harmony with what you do in life. Neville's use of technology considers sympatica a core design requirement.
Richard Branson no other businessman today says 'success' and 'entrepreneur' quite like Richard Branson. Red logo with white background embraces sexual innuendo and makes a memorable loud brand statement. Borderline whacky relaxed personal looks and semi-introverted off media-spotlight lifestyle make him a persona of great interest. Who doesn't secretly wish they owned an island?
Unlike Alan Sugar, Richard Branson is quiet about his successes - he builds the business, sells it and moves on to the next creation. Neville realised when he reached thirty that he did not have what it takes to work for one company in one job for a long time. His need is for fresh new challenges to work on, projects to complete, people to impress with his technological solutions. That is where you come in, Richard is a born leader, Neville needs your challenges given to him (Neville was once described as a brilliant second in command).
Winston Churchill well why would you have a second bald man on your list of heroes? Not because of the war nor his great speeches, nor his amazing life! He is here because he was right for the job! Being right for a job is key for business success and we all need to recognise roles we thrive in and roles we want to do are not one and the same thing. Here a great deal of gut-feel comes in and Neville would recommend you read the book 'Blink'. Now some would bring God in at this point, but I'll resist the temptation. Essentially what he is recognising here is the multitude of things we do and are good at without being conscious of any logical thoughts behind the final decision or acquired skill or demeanour. Plus how often we observe the right or desired outcome from a think-tank process with very little individual contribution from each member of the team.
Neville is a glass-half-full person and this attitude is essential to working in a technology world of change and new challenge. Getting the best out of teams using well chosen phrasing and pacing is what Neville does best.
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