Do you want to know how to be a good leader?  Would you like to brush up on your staff management skills?  Could you do with some tips on project management and wise use of resources?
 
Well, you could learn from your boss, or go on training courses, or like I did, hone your skills on an MBA.  But you can save yourself a lot of time (and money) by spending just a couple of hours, maybe with a notebook but preferably with a bottle of beer or glass of wine, sitting down and watching Peter Collinson’s 1969 film The Italian Job.
 
Renowned for such classic quotes as: “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” The Italian Job follows a company of ne’er-do-wells assembled by loveable rogue Charlie Croker, played unforgettably by Michael Caine.
 
We can attribute his “doors off” outburst to an occasional use of robust and unambiguous staff feedback methodology, which let’s face it sometimes fits the moment perfectly.  However, Croker also shows us a broader landscape of leadership and management technique.
 
Let us wander down the well-trodden path signposted “How To Lead And Manage Your People” and see how Charlie Croker does it.

If you don’t have money your idea is not likely to get off the ground, no matter how great it is.  Croker’s brainwave was to break back into the prison from which he had recently been released in order to disturb the evening toilet routine of London crime boss Mr Bridger (Noel Coward).  Appearing in his lavatory cubicle, Croker enthused about a gold heist that would be good for the country’s “balance of payments” with Europe (this was before the UK joined the Common Market).

Being a committed crime lord and having had his routine disturbed, Mr Bridger arranged for Croker to be given “a good going over” by his henchmen on the outside.  After he’d made his point he agreed to provide money to Croker for the job, in return for a handsome share of the loot.
 
Croker cleverly allowed Bridger, his venture capitalist if you will, to engage in the project on Bridger's own terms (Croker got beaten up) and appeal to Bridger’s values – no risk whatsoever, maximum payback and rubbing the foreigners’ noses in it for Queen and country.
 
Croker could now get people, premises and an array of equipment including explosives and several Mini Coopers.  Watch and learn, people.  Watch and learn.

Any organisation is only as good as the people in it.  Look at fast-food restaurants.  Croker needed to put together a crack team of do-ers on whom he could rely to stick it out and finish the job to a satisfactory conclusion.  A group of individuals of questionable character who are in it for the money and the glory.  In a word – people.  And in this case, a bunch of good, honest criminals.

Croker convened a meet-and-greet, “breaking the ice” session for the gang.  He didn’t arrange for bottled mineral waters and finger food, but he could have if he wanted to.  He had the backing.  That ice-breaker was brief and to the point: Croker went around the table and named each person and their role, thoughtfully preventing any of them the embarrassment of having to speak in front of the group.

He “wrapped-up” the meeting with, “It’s a very difficult job and the only way to get through it is we all work together as a team. And that means you do everything I say.”

Like 99% of people, the members of Croker’s gang were primarily motivated by money.  There are not many among us who would continue going to the same job every morning after winning £50 million in the National Lottery.  Even highly paid people continue to work, because they want more money (and their debts are higher).
 
People also like to have something interesting to do, something meaningful, setting challenges and overcoming them.  This is a lesser motivation than money, but it is one of the leading ones in the chasing pack.  There, then, are the two key draws – money and a challenge.
 
Croker’s plan was: “Four million dollars through a traffic jam.”

In 1969 $4 million was the equivalent of around $27 million now, or £21 million.  And who doesn’t want to show a traffic jam who’s boss?

Every person should be in the team for a good reason, not because they are mates.  We’re not picking football teams on a drizzly, wind-swept school playing field.  We are choosing people because they have skills that will help the common goal (ok not goal, purpose).
 
Charlie Croker needed people who were good drivers, explosives experts, a technical wizard and general “muscle” able to help the project move along at pace without letting obstacles get in the way (for very long).  Not everybody would have bonded socially but each tolerated the other, respected their skills and let them get on with it.

Each member of Croker’s gang knew what every other member was doing, when they were supposed to do it and why.  Croker knew that it would be no good for each person to work on their own without knowledge of the others’ parts.  What if the plan changed?  What if something went wrong?  What if they lost people?  Croker needed openness and flexibility.  He identified and used individuals’ skills but kept them team-oriented.

I think it’s Google HQ where employees have slides, ball pits, pool tables, taps running with diet coke, personal hairdressers and automated racks for spare black turtle-neck jumpers.  Or it might be Apple.  Whatever the case, getting the right workplace “vibe” for your “co-workers” is important.  Therefore it comes as no surprise that Charlie Croker made sure there was variety in the workplace, which even included an element of overseas travel.
 
Gang members were given the best environment in which to flourish: the technical expert was given a harem of plus-sized assistants, as was his wont, project-planning software was bang up-to-date for its time (a blackboard and chalk) and driver-mechanics were tooled up with top kit and caboodle such as spotlights for the Coopers (quartz iodide) and paint for the bus (blue).

Croker’s workplace may not have had the bowling alleys and bean bags of our modern digital media companies’ “creative spaces”, but I know which lot I would choose to ambush an armed convoy of gold bullion and police cars.

“Shouldn’t we synchronise our watches?”
“Nuts to your watches. You just be at the piazza at a quarter-to.”

You know what it’s like, you’ve planned it to a T and you all set off to see it through, then the mob appears and smashes up your Aston and your E-Type.  You’ve got some of your people elsewhere in a lorry, a coach and a minibus, sticking to the plan and you are stranded without a motor on a leaky mountain road.  What do you do?

What Charlie Croker did is find a bicycle and carry on towards the rendezvous point.  On his way he used the bicycle to cut the local power by throwing it into an electricity substation.  This wasn’t part of the plan but it made him feel better and sometimes as a leader you’ve got to motivate yourself, you know.
 
Adapt. Adapt. Adapt. The three As.

From time to time a cloud forms over the team or the project.  Motivation wanes and productivity follows it towards the door.  Take a break, change the scenery and re-energise your team by letting them rest and reminding them what it’s all about.
 
Or if you’re Charlie Croker, shout at them and tell them to shut up and get on with it.

This is where we could probably recommend a different approach to that taken by Croker and his team, following their success.  It is not for no reason that nearly all after-parties, post-win celebrations, shindigs, call them what you like, are held on firm ground, not in moving vehicles, and after any risks of plummeting down a mountainside have been confirmed by the health and safety manager as fully mitigated.
 
Did Croker make a mistake in placing all his trust in the professional capabilities of the coach driver?  Should he have foreseen the distraction the group of revellers would have on the driver?  In hindsight, yes.  But it is more common than you might think – focusing on the big things, the seemingly insurmountable problems, and assuming the little things will be taken care of.
 
Charlie Croker successfully planned and executed an extremely difficult and dangerous smash-and-grab gold heist on a heavily-protected convoy in the middle of a large, congested city hundreds of miles away in a foreign country.   Shortly afterwards they all got stuck on a mountain, simply because the driver was distracted just as they went around a tight bend in the road.
 
We’re only human, despite all the skill and planning we might command.  Let Charlie Croker’s experience be a lesson to us all so we can avoid the cliff-hanger ending.
 
“Hang on, lads.  I’ve got a great idea.  Er…”

Local authorities look into increasingly obscure nooks and crannies for spare pennies these days.  With all of them having to shoulder millions of pounds of cuts in central funding the council employee of the month is always going to be the one who digs furthest down the back of the sofa.


Waste not want not
Waste management is traditionally up there among the services with the highest budget demands, but it is not necessarily all that easy to make savings.  Statutory duties on waste collection and disposal authorities mean there is not a lot they can stop doing and there is almost no area where they can recoup costs from the user.

But - have you been down to your local household waste recycling centre recently? Much of what goes on there is still the basics - providing big bins for local residents to tip their rubbish (no surprise that they are still called the tip by most people, why use eight syllables when one will do).  What else is happening there, however, is a little more interesting.
What the place is basically trying to do is minimise the amount of general waste that has to be disposed of, usually in a landfill site.  Because of the environment, you say?  Well yes partly, but mostly because disposing of waste is so ridiculously expensive.  It costs each disposal authority millions every year.

So what do they do to reduce the waste?  Well, they take out whatever they can that can be sent elsewhere.  Green waste (your hedge cuttings, branches and dead pot plants that you thought were perennials but copped it on the patio over winter) - this goes to massive composting facilities, gets bagged up and sold.  Timber (the good stuff that your granddad would have made something with) - this goes to yards for re-use.  Rubbishy wood and chipboard (I think we all know now that flat pack furniture likes to move house even less frequently than us) - this is chopped up into bedding that your gerbil will snooze happily on.  Paper, card, glass, metal - we all know these can be recycled, it's been going on since before most of us were born.

Where there's muck there's brass

Taking out materials that can be recycled or re-processed is a bit of a win-win for the local authority: not only does it reduce the tonnage of waste that gets dropped into an expensive hole in the ground but also much of the material attracts payment from the companies set up to do something with it.  Overall the costs of running the sites outweigh the income, but it helps.

Does it help enough, though?  Based on recent decisions in municipal waste departments the answer is no.  Still they want costs taken out.  Still they want to find new sources of income.  As authorities get more desperate for savings they arguably get more, um, "loose" with their interpretation of the rules that have regulated them for years.  "Do we have to provide this for free?" they ask.

When it comes to the rubbish you created from your latest DIY project the answer is, well, perhaps not.  Despite for years accepting that DIY waste is just the same as any other waste created by a resident in their house - i.e. "household waste" - they have changed their mind, on the basis that it often looks like stuff produced by a builder (and builders, like all other trades, have to pay for the disposal of their waste).  Why is that suddenly the case?  Has the law changed?

No it hasn't.  In fact I would argue that the law has become clearer in recent years about DIY waste being household waste and that a householder, wait for it, cannot be charged for its disposal.

DIY waste and the legal toolbox

If only it were simple.  The Environmental Protection Act 1990 defines household waste as waste from domestic property which is used wholly for the purposes of living accommodation (section 75).  Do we need to go on?

OK, the Controlled Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2012 give waste collection and disposal authorities more detail about what is household, industrial and commercial waste and if they can or cannot charge for their collection or disposal.  It depends on what the waste is and it depends on where the waste has come from and it is a short but very detailed piece of legislation.  It has a long list of types of household waste, none of which can be charged for disposal if it is from a domestic household (charities and residential homes may be charged under some circumstances).

If that isn't clear, even WRAP (the Waste and Resources Action Programme) gives government guidance on DIY waste, stating, "DIY waste is classed as household waste if it results from work a householder would normally carry out."  It goes on to say, "Local authorities understand that such waste can be generated by householders, and they therefore need to dispose it."

Yet several councils have introduced charging for DIY waste, including Devon, Bedford, Leicestershire, Northumberland and North Yorkshire.

Do they know something we don't about DIY waste, or have they papered the rule book to the wall and glossed over it?
Maybe I'm missing something....