James Cooke - Operations Management: The Art & Science of Making Things Happen

The Art & Science of
Making Things Happen

What the business schools dont teach you to
survive and flourish

James TH Cooke

Operations Management

First published in 2012 by

Ecademy Press

48 St Vincent Drive, St Albans, Herts, AL1 5SJ, UK
www.ecademy-press.com

Book layout by Neil Coe.

Printed on acid-free paper from managed forests. This book is printed on demand to fulfill orders, so no copies will be remaindered or pulped.

ISBN 978-1-908746-63-4

The right of James Cooke to be identified as the author of this work has been inserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the Copyright holders written permission to reproduce any part of bhis publication should be addressed to the publishers.

This book is available online and in all good bookstores.

Copyright 2012 James Cooke

Dedicated to my friends and former colleagues of the Metropolitan
Police, London, including many tragically killed in service
1976 - 2009

If youre having to manage and lead in the tough conditions that dominate everywhere today, you need James Cookes guidance. Hes crammed more than three decades of coal-face experience into a book that is destined to become a touchstone for anyone who wants to succeed in business, public service or life in general.

Patrick Mercer OBE
Member of Parliament for Newark

Clear, concise and informative, each chapter comes alive with examples, stories and case studies. You can read it from cover to cover or jump in at any point for pearls of wisdom that will help you take your life and business to the next level of success.

Bev James
Best Selling Author of Do it or Ditch it!
CEO of The Coaching Academy

Essential reading if your personal and professional goal is long term effectiveness and high performance as an Operations Manager.

Andrew Priestley
Business Coach & Ecademy advisor

Leadership and management starts with the self and Cooke has rightly brought this in to context within the needs of the individual, the team and the task. He is more than an ex-police officer. He is a leader, a manager, a coach and businessman. He uses his experiences from his public and private life providing a well-balanced, informative and insightful book that captures the essence of operations management. This is a must have book for any aspiring or current leader.

Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Hill
Professional Leadership Speaker and former Army Officer (severely injured in Afghanistan)

This is a book full of wit, wisdom and professional clout. Its written by a former high ranking police officer who has been in the thick of it and knows what he is talking about. This is not another run of the mill management tome but a sharp and intensely, practical book. It is sprinkled with small learned gems that send out the right message to various audiences such as wearing a uniform cap when exiting a police vehicle at an incident. Some will miss the value of such tiny details of wisdom but they are the nuggets that mark James out as a consummate professional. He also throws in vivid funny scenes such as a drunk woman resisting arrest and leaving James having his keys caught up in her stockings. Every manager who reads this book will be a better manager for it. Switch off the television and get stuck into Operations Management. Its worth it. Highly recommended.

Paul Marsden
Former Shadow Transport Minister and Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury

What you do in life has always seemed to me to be far more important in moving things forward than what you say. All too often, words, no matter how eloquently delivered by politicians, leaders and managers can become just empty rhetoric.

Consequently, bringing ideas and concepts to life, shaping them into something real and tangible to benefit others has been the driving force behind much of my lifes work.

Making things happen and work successfully propels a civilisation forward with purpose and ambition. This is at the heart of operations management, translating ideas and strategies into delivery and action.

There is something deeply admirable about those who do this, and if you are interested in joining their ranks as a highly effective operations manager, then this book is for you.

The demands on a modern operations manager, whether in either the service or manufacturing sector, are intense. If you are to succeed there is no room for compromise in the standards you set and you must have an acute sense of awareness of both yourself and the environment around you.

Without this you will not survive, let alone thrive.

Having followed several post-graduate management courses, I can vouch for their value in providing many of the tools to get the job done. However, practical experience has also highlighted how much remains untaught in the classroom about the prime importance of how to manage others and how to deal with the many hidden agendas that require navigation in the work place. These include knowing how to handle your line manager, dealing with difficult personnel, building self-confidence, working your way around organisational politics and understanding the intricate dynamics of team leadership. Your growing competence in these areas will eventually lead you to become an outstanding manager.

However, the raw brutal realities of some of these factors must be fully appreciated before you can move into the realm of high performance delivery.

In a police career with Scotland Yard that spanned thirty-three years between 1976 and 2009 I faced many challenges as a manager and was involved in some of Britains biggest social history events of contemporary times, such as the Regents Park IRA bombing, the Brixton riots, the miners dispute and the growing trends in gang, gun and drug culture.

Such events have frequently tested my resolve and resilience at times of great stress. In the imperative moment of getting a job done under extreme circumstances, niceties get thrown out of the window. However, these challenges have all given me a unique perspective on the business of operations management.

The learning that comes from such experience is profound and extensive and I hope is conveyed through this book in a way that will help you enter the upper echelons of operations management, whether you are currently new to the role, or already blooded.

If I can spare you some of the pain that I have suffered, then this book will have succeeded. Consequently, this is written not as an academic management text, of which there are already many, but as a very practical guide that offers what I believe is a unique take on the dynamics of fast-moving situations, like those I have witnessed. This combined with the information and insight it offers on the science and art of making things happen, creates what I hope will be an inspirational manual for your success.

In any act of human enterprise, several things happen. There is a need to look forward and plan what needs doing to accomplish the designed aims successfully. This plan has to be effectively communicated to all those directly involved. Finally there is the actual delivery of what you have planned in a way that meets an expected standard.