Jim Thomas - My Week - 

Nottingham Evening Post

Saturday: The weekend starts as with any other day, very early! My first view of the day is the normal routine of my 3 year old daughter Molly, piling in to our bedroom at 6am! The only question is what ‘outfit’ she would have on this time! This morning it was a nightie, supported by Barbie high heeled shoes and her kids shopping trolley! This approach tends to have the effect of getting oneself ‘up to speed’ for the day pretty quickly. The morning then ensues, and passes uneventfully for myself and my wife Elan, with a trip to the local supermarket, where we manage to hand over cash equivalent to that of a small country’s GDP! After going home, I then jump back into my car and drive to West Bridgford to meet up with a couple of personal friends, where we spend the afternoon watching Nottingham Forest take on Milwall. After a ‘not ideal’ 90 minutes and a score line we’d rather forget, we battle with the traffic and I head on home.

Sunday: The day begins in a similar fashion to the previous one, except that there is a rather loud ‘talking bus’ involved this time. Sunday is then much lazier, with another trip to West Bridgford to drop off a few birthday cards to friends, and a slow walk along the river bank to blow away the cobwebs. We then return home for some dinner, and spend the rest of the day as quality ‘family’ time.


Monday: This is an ‘office’ day and I walk in to our office in Burton Joyce at 8:30am. These days tend to be a mixture of e mails, phone conversations and getting our creative juices flowing, which is the ‘backbone’ of the solution based approach we take to our clients needs. All our assignments are managed collectively by myself and my wife (and fellow Director of the business) and our team of 5 consultants. Our core purpose is essentially about creating, and implementing positive and developmental change within our clients businesses. Monday, is therefore about mainly working on 2 such projects for current clients, one on Revenue Management, and the other on a Mental Toughness course for senior managers. When I finally switch off the brain and the PC, it was about 6pm, so I go home and round the day off with a good meal, and a hug from my daughter.

Tuesday: I meet up with 2 of our consultants, Nick and Steve in Nottingham, where we have a business meeting, and a ‘catch up’ on current projects and client prospects. We had put a quotation together for a large business in the food sector for both a basic selling skills programme, and an advanced, high level negotiation programme for Account Managers. Although both these programmes are highly important in their own right, there are some significant step changes from one to the other, and the former when compared to the latter, is the training course equivalent of taking your ‘push-bike’ out of the garden shed, while the guy next door fires up his top of the range ‘Jag’ on the driveway! We spend most of the day in conversation and sense checking various projects, whilst drinking too much coffee and our own bodyweight in biscuits, before heading home. As I drive home, it feels like I’ll be awake until next Monday given the caffeine I had consumed! This though has been another good day.

Wednesday: I set off for Coventry dropping my daughter at her nursery on the way. I was on my way to the midlands offices for Coca Cola Enterprises, who were my previous employers for the 12 years before I was instrumental in creating People Development Works Ltd. I spend the day in a project team meeting with 9 of CCE’s Senior Managers. The day is long but rewarding, and I drive home at the end of the day, to take my turn in the kitchen as ‘chef’ for the evening.

Thursday: The mode for today is one of training course facilitation, one of my favourite parts of the job. I head up to the North Notts. area, where I am due to facilitate a business development course to an audience of Accountants! Not an immediate and natural fit you might say? This area is certainly quite different from many courses that I have worked on with marketing led commercial Businesses, but the professional services landscape is changing as everything else does. After completing the course, I drive back to the office and use the time to catch up some phone calls from the car (hands free, of course!). That evening, we host a friend of ours for dinner, and have some good food, wine and conversation.

Friday: Today is going to be a ‘bitty’ day, with lots of variation. A very positive meeting with the Notts. Chamber of Commerce business training team in the morning, is followed by a meeting with our Accountant ‘at the office’, which loosely translates to ‘me meeting him at the Wheatsheaf (only a short walk from his and our offices!) for a sandwich’, and an opportunity to catch up on a variety of topics, very few of them to do with business! Anyway, we discuss what we needed to, I pay the bill (and I’m supposed to be a negotiator!) and we go our separate ways. The business week is finished off with a couple of hours back at the office, catching up on admin, phone calls and paperwork, and then off home. All in all, it has been a good day, to conclude a rewarding, interesting and challenging week. info@peopledevelopmentworks.com

Jim Thomas is Managing Director of People Development Works Ltd.

Reproduced with permission from the Nottingham Evening Post