I started working for Asda in 1994 and learnt a tremendous amount in my time there. The Resourcing & Development team was a privilege to work with and one that embraced the "Gung Ho!" principles as per Ken Blanchard & the "Projectisation" way of working as per Tom Peters.

Starting with Gung Ho! this project was led in Asda by Philip Horn.My personality profile & Philips could not be more different but my doink from Philip was the power of creativity in projects to really make a difference.

With regard to projectisation Karen Powell was the first to embrace it and make it come alive in practice. She really understood non-hierarchical leadership and took on the Quantum Leap project leader role and delivered. She also had the ability to keep things simple - the second stage of building technology into Quantum Leap quite simply became QuantumLeap.com - doink!!

No site would be complete without a mention of Dorothy Matthew. She gets a mention here for genuine reasons & not just because she made an entry in my Guest Book and pleaded with me to include her!!! I worked with Dorothy at Asda and she always brought a smile to my face. Dorothy always played "Winner Tapes" and helped other people to do the same in her own unique style. The main doink I got from Dorothy was not to take business too seriously and to get stressed about the wrong things. A favourite saying of hers is "The health of the nation is not at stake if we don't do.......". Obviously, we wanted to continually improve but getting things in proportion and perspective is also vital. I also need to recognise Dorothy for giving me the team event process called "Compass" which features in the "Teambuilding Event Process" section.

Another doink from a colleague links into the above and it was one I got from Iain Scott and it was "Don't let the perfect get in the way of the good". Sometimes businesses strive for perfection in driving things out to their own people. This is fine but not if it means endless delays. Sometiimes it is better to deliver the good quickly rather than not delivering at all due to the search for perfection. This saying helps to get things into context and one I often find myself using.

Along the same lines of a saying that puts things into perspective is another doink that I got from Cheryl Pate. Cheryl's saying is "You can't take the sugar out of the tea". This is great for dealing with the current situation and not getting too hang up with what's gone wrong & allocating blame. Whilst review and learning from it is important the ""You can't take the sugar out of the tea" attitude is to deal with what you have got and sort it out.

Talking of recruitment makes me think of Vivienne Hayday. When I first met Vivienne she was a true HR generalist. We worked closely together in training but, passionate as Vivienne was about training, she never lost sight of how important recruitment is. She made me doink that it didn't matter how good your training & development programmes are they are of no value if you do not recruit effectively. Recruitment will never be my first love but Vivienne has changed my thinking on how important it is.

Bruce Boughton was the first ex-colleague to find this website and reflecting on this reminded us how Bruce was ahead in his understanding of technology. Whilst we were all on cc-mail - Bruce understood e-mail. He made me doink that technology can really help but needs to be explored - it's not easy but it will get easier.

My doink from Sue Luford was with regard to teamwork. Many groups of people believe they are a team when they are not - they are a group. True teams really do produce more than the sum of the parts.  Sue was one of these but when she experienced true teamwork she was honest enough to admit it. My doink from Sue was that unless you have "touched & felt" true teamwork you cannot really understand it.