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Square Peg, or Round Hole. Which are you?

Adam Cowper-Smith • Oct 13, 2020

I'm a Square Peg, are you?

I have made a short video and the bottom of this post is the transcript of what I say, it is also in the subtitles of the video.

Throughout my life people have told me I’m a square peg in round hole in a derogatory way to degrade me and undermine my confidence. It is generally done by people who have felt uncomfortable about what I do and how I do it, sometimes I suppose they have even felt threatened by me, which is quite simply daft but there it is. 

I am not the most confident of people, I have a lot of confidence in what I know, my experience, my skills and the application of them. I know I am very competent in what I do but I lack confidence in myself, not my abilities. The best way to see that for yourself is to talk to me, video call me, or when we can meet me in person. Then you will hear and see the passion I have for my subject, the benefit and/or value that I can bring to an organisation.

I have learnt to be proud of being different, of having the expertise that I have. It has been hard but I now have a career doing it and on my terms, which is another layer to add to my confidence because now, if I need to I can walk away without worrying if being the square peg that I am, I won’t fit in.
Square showing the percentage of a square taken by a circle.

What is being missed by a circle.


A circle is 78.5% of a square, that means that not far off a quarter and more than a fifth of all that expertise could be lost if I didn’t have it to add value, more than a fifth that anyone I work for, or with can benefit from – for free.

Here’s an example of what I mean by that fifth that contributes to what is outside the circle – basically a potted history of my career.


A potted history.


Prior to becoming a cleaning manager in 1994 I had a fairly chequered career that started with a doomed apprenticeship as a Book Machine Engineer, which fell apart after a year when the company went into liquidation. I then held several jobs (customs clerk, steam/pressure cleaning, barman, reservations clerk), and filled in between them by working on my parents smallholding, where we kept pigs, had house cows, grew organic produce and I ran a mobile Green Grocery round selling some of the produce.

When my parents retired I spent five years as builders hod carrier/labourer, then in 1998 I tried and failed as a door to door salesman. One day I knocked on the person’s door who was to offer me a job and subsequent career in the Cleaning Industry with his cleaning supply company.

In the following five and a half years I sold a range of cleaning equipment, machinery, materials and consumables, while at the same time developing a passionate fascination for what worked, why, how, and why one process or application was better or more productive than another. 

It was this knowledge that enabled me to sell people what they needed, not what I wanted to benefit most from and ultimately lead to long term relationships and very much greater sales, it’s a principle that I still believe in.

In 1994 to further my career, I made the move into cleaning management as an area cleaning manager in Kent and Sussex for two years before taking a role doing a similar role in London for a National Service Provider and all the time I was learning my trade.

In 1998 while with that company, I passed a City & Guilds exam in Cleaning Science with a distinction.

As with a lot of these types of course it included a lot about Building design (air flow through parts of buildings like wash rooms), Cleaning equipment, Cleaning machinery, Cleaning materials, Health & Safety, Employment legislation, General Management (people, budgets, stock management), among other things.

It was fairly extensive and included a lot of basic high-level information, there were about 12 booklets to read, a series of practical cleaning task and a multiple-choice exam of 100 questions covering most of the modules. It was a long time ago and was the foundation qualification, not the final destination but it stood me in good stead and still does. 


Added value.


BUT, but since then I have:

• Taken a lot of internal company courses which have expanded on that City & Guilds qualification, albeit from the company perspective, however each one with its twist adds to my overall knowledge.

• Passed a NEBOSH National General Certificate course, which alone has given me a huge advantage in understanding the application of assessing risks (Risk Assessments, COSHH Assessments, Method Statements/Standard Operating Procedures). In fact to the point where I have challenged some very big organisations to remedy some of their processes and documentation.

• Takes two CIEH training qualifications for delivering training to individuals and groups of people.

• Taken an independent Marketing course, which taught me the difference between marketing and sales, as well as the need to understand your subject and be able to write about it in a way that differentiates me and/or my clients to the reader of bid material so that they have an advantage over their competitors. By the way that has contributed to winning two different and very big Facilities Management organisations multi-million-pound contracts.

100%

Rounding it up


And all that interwoven into over thirty years of managing cleaning and soft service contracts to make up 100% of me and my Soft Service Consultancy/Management skill set.

Now that’s enough about me, what about you?

What skills then do you have to add value, you know those that make the difference, make you different, both inside and outside work?

Unrelated added value.


Oh by the way did I mention that in 1984 I was British Grasstrack Righthand Sidecar Champion passenger and that I’ve run a sub-three hour marathon? The skills, training and knowledge of them and how to set targets add value too, I might tell you about it some time. 

The following is the transcript.

Have you ever heard the term "A square peg in a round hole"?

Which are you?

I’m Adam Cowper-Smith and I am most definitely a square peg.

The term is generally used to describe someone that doesn't fit in.

But do you really want to fit in?

Do you want to conform and only do what is expected of you?

Or do you want to add value by knowing more about your subject?

More about what you do and how to do it and have those corner pieces adding value?

The ones that don't fit into that round hole!

My expertise as a Soft Services consultant, previously manager, has been gained over a number of years, managing those services through both self-delivery and outsourcing.

Now as a Soft Services Manager it's most likely that your main focus will be on cleaning.

But then you have other services like Waste Management,

Pest Control, Ground Maintenance and some obscure things, like for example Flag Maintenance and purchase, which is one of the services I've managed.

And you gain a little bit of added value with everything that you do and you bring that to the table.

So, when a potential employer is looking for, a Soft Services Manager and they've got their little model that they're trying to focus on.

What value can you add?

Personally, I can add an awful lot of value.

My expertise particularly with CCS type framework agreements, so Crown Commercial Service agreements and the Public Sector Contracts, as well as a lot of corporate Private Sector Contracts, is that I make sure I understand the contract and the specification and know it thoroughly.

And that's for all the services that I deliver, not just the core services.

Now of course that includes all the other aspects of managing people, and the HR side of things Payroll and every other aspect.

So, as a Soft Services Manager you're not just a specialist in one subject.

You're a specialist in multiple subjects.

More so than a great many other skills.

So next time someone asks you what you are, say with pride.

"I'm a Manager”, I'm a Cleaning Manager, I'm a Soft Services Manager.

I'm a Square Peg, and not a round hole.

Take pride in it.

The humble Brussels Sprout and Sustainability

by Adam Cowper-Smith • 30 Dec, 2022
How retail buying trends impact on our approach to sustainability.

Improving your efficiency when replying to emails in Outlook

by Adam Cowper-Smith • 12 Apr, 2021
How often do you get an email with huge amount of questions in it, that you find difficult to answer because it means copying text and replying to different sections of it and keeping continuity really doesn't work, it's quite difficult? In this video I'm going to show you how you can make it a lot easier for yourself simply by changing the settings in outlook, so that it will actually do a lot of that for you, and all you need to do is refer the reader to their own email to see the answers and your responses. I demonstrate it on my computer in an email that I set up to demonstrate it. It is really easy, when you are in Outlook, just go to file at the top, go to the bottom, click options. When the options box opens up, click on the mail button mail to open the stationary and fonts tab. Tick the box where it says, “Mark my comments with” and enter what you would like to precede your replies with. I generally use my initials and, I like to have a different colour font for when I put the comments in, so tick that box too, and then it's a simple case click OK. Now when you reply when you click on the response, Outlook automatically infills with what you have chosen to precede your answers with. Once it is set up in outlook every single email that you need to reply to it you can just refer the reader to their own email so that your answers are aligned to their questions. In addition if you want to reply to a particular section in the question, all you need to do is place the cursor and press the space bar to respond there And the great thing is that you only need to do this once to save hours of time.

Coronavirus and Brexit (CoronaBrexit) combine to reduce staffing resource

by Adam Cowper-Smith • 09 Apr, 2021
Some people who a year ago were termed as keyworkers are now being slowly rebranded as unskilled labour The very people, the cleaners who have been relied on to keep the country going during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, are being slowly but surely degraded to unskilled labour. The thing is that a lot of these keyworkers have been displaced from their previous occupations and have taken cleaning jobs because they needed an income when furloughed schemes expired, job losses and redundancies occurred. At the same time large swathes of labour that while in the EU took advantage of the freedom of movement legislation to work in the UK, subsequently returned to their countries of origin as the pandemic took hold, their incomes were threatened and Brexit drew close. The question is now, what will happen when these same key workers resume their former careers or stay in their countries of origin, where opportunities for them have improved to the point where there's no need for them to come to the UK? Logic says that there will be a shortage of people willing to fill those vacancies left by the current keyworking workforce. These people are often referred to as unskilled workers, however as has come to be accepted when it suits political agendas, these cleaners or should I say cleaning operatives have and always do provide an extremely necessary and valuable service. This by the way really gets me going, most of these unskilled workers are actually highly skilled cleaning operatives and depending on the task that they're employed to perform, they are trained to correctly clean anything from the desk in your office, right through to the artifact right at the top of the building you work in. Or the glass that you stare out of while pondering a problem at work. Implementing the correct technique for cleaning is what sets them apart from the stigmatic stereotypical image of Mr/Mrs Mopp that permeates the industry. How will the shortage of available people to perform these tasks be fulfilled? Recruiting the right people to undertake cleaning services is, and has been an ongoing very time consuming and costly problem for the industry The reduced labour pool is set to become an even more challenging problem to overcome. What then can be done to overcome this shortfall? Where previously people were needed to push a vacuum cleaner around, use a scrubber drying machine to polish floors, now robotized machinery is being brought into the marketplace that can actually do a lot of that work while the the operatives that are there are performing other more intricate duties. On top of that historic methods of cleaning, for example wiping large areas as desks down with cloths, productivity can be considerably improved, simply by introduction of more innovative techniques. So, instead of using a cloth use a microfiber mop designed specifically for cleaning smaller surfaces from desks through to walls, mirrors, glazing, doors. Anything that's got a flat surface that needs cleaning regularly, can be cleaned and all this without necessarily the use of chemicals, because the technology is there now to remove the need for the vast majority of chemicals Now you might think that, that's a bit of a concern considering the pandemic that we've just gone through but actually mechanical cleaning, so cleaning with a cloth or a mop removes in most cases up to 99 percent of dirt and pathogens from the surface. If it's done properly, the disinfectants and detergents remove the remaining up to one thousandth of a percent. Mow I'm not saying that, that's not an important amount but when you consider that the vast majority of surfaces in a working environment, in offices and those sort of complexes aren't actually touched by people, you don't need to disinfect them. So, it can be that machinery can replace some of the workforce, the use of different types of equipment and materials can improve the productivity and that is going to be the way forward for the industry. It's going to take time it's going to take expertise and it's going to take people like me (Adam Cowper-Smith) that know the equipment and the industry sufficiently well to be able to source what's needed to improve the productivity of workforces, so that services can be delivered without the interruption of shortage of labour force.

A Soft Services Contract mobilised as the country went into lockdown

by Adam Cowper-Smith • 09 Apr, 2021
As any manager knows mobilization day is fraught with uncertainty. I was working with Engie on the HMCTS contract and we were transferring 1200 people into the operation for cleaning alone and on day one you never know how many people are going to turn up. We had done as much as we could to establish how many were going to be available and made provision for additional staff should there be a shortfall. Fortunately the eight weeks that we'd spent working on it prior to mobilization had paid dividends because we had very little fallout The only real fallout was from the management of one of the companies that we were transferring staff over from and that was was expected because of their operational model, so we knew in advance that we were going to get some fallout but not quite as much as we did However, over the proceding weeks we managed to recruit people, or put people into positions that had transferred over and developed them so that they were able to take over the roles of regional managers and area managers. And in amongst that we had had to cope with covid the lockdown and a whole range of services that we'd had to put in place on top of the contract which actually meant recruiting people into the operation just to provide services for those which were outsourced, otherwise we just simply wouldn't have been able to cope with it. But between us we managed that and we got the whole thing sorted out. It was a fantastic achievement by everyone and I'm pleased to say that when I left it in August, everything all the services. So, cleaning waste management and ground maintenance which were the things I'd been involved with, were all working successfully. It was fantastic and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

Newly created animated logo

by Adam Cowper-Smith • 09 Apr, 2021
Two years after a year as a Soft Services Consultant and Interim Manager I decided it was time to brand my business. I got in touch with Ken Lloyd, a friend of mine to ask him to design a logo for me. It had to show my green aspirations for sustainable while at the same time looking stylish and professional and he did a great job. More recently I have taken to creating video content and wanted an animated version to add some activity to it and having checked it was OK with Ken, I asked my daughter Bethany Cowper-Smith to animate the logo. This is a short story about how the Soft Service Solutions animated logo came about.

What do you think Sustainability is?

by Adam Cowper-Smith • 09 Apr, 2021
Sustainability what does it mean to you? Is sustainability to you something as simple as recycling waste? In which case that's the third level of the hierarchy. The first is reduce, the second is reuse, and third is recycling, fourth is disposal. So is that sustainability to you, or is it ethical sourcing of cleaning solutions that come from natural sources that are as effective as the petrochemical industry? Or is it s omething else? Is it how you recruit your staff their background? Sustainability incorporates so many different things when you look into it. It's not just a case of waste management, the cleaning solutions that you use, whether you use bleach or not or petrochemicals or other sources of materials. It incorporates things like the staff base that you have, how you treat your staff, what you do for them, the environment that they work in, the safety of how they work and a wide variety of other things. Sustainability incorporates huge huge amount of things. How blinkered is your thinking do you just think of it as recycling, as so many people do?

Square Peg, or Round Hole. Which are you?

by Adam Cowper-Smith • 13 Oct, 2020
I have made a short video and the bottom of this post is the transcript of what I say, it is also in the subtitles of the video. Throughout my life people have told me I’m a square peg in round hole in a derogatory way to degrade me and undermine my confidence. It is generally done by people who have felt uncomfortable about what I do and how I do it, sometimes I suppose they have even felt threatened by me, which is quite simply daft but there it is. I am not the most confident of people, I have a lot of confidence in what I know, my experience, my skills and the application of them. I know I am very competent in what I do but I lack confidence in myself, not my abilities. The best way to see that for yourself is to talk to me, video call me, or when we can meet me in person. Then you will hear and see the passion I have for my subject, the benefit and/or value that I can bring to an organisation. I have learnt to be proud of being different, of having the expertise that I have. It has been hard but I now have a career doing it and on my terms, which is another layer to add to my confidence because now, if I need to I can walk away without worrying if being the square peg that I am, I won’t fit in.

Recording video outside in windy conditions

by Adam Cowper-Smith • 07 Oct, 2020
Over the past few weeks we have had a few storms with strong winds that have made recording video on a phone a bit of a challenge. In the following short video I share some of the things I have tried to overcome the problem with wind noise. I chose the middle of a field where the wind was quite strong and intentionally held or placed the microphones into the wind. Surprisingly a couple of the things I used didn't fare as well as they do when not exposed directly to the full force of the wind.

Cleaner or Cleaning Operative

by Adam Cowper-Smith • 03 Sept, 2020
For me there’s no question even if it is harder to say, it’s “Cleaning Operative”. The very fact of calling cleaning staff “Cleaning Operatives/Supervisors/Managers” immediately recognises their status and shows respect for what they are and what they do. Surely a cleaner is the material, equipment or machine used by a Cleaning Operative to clean whatever it is that they are cleaning? How then do you support this recognition without sounding condescending or patronising? The British Institute of Cleaning Science (BICS) has spent years; decades raising the profile of the cleaning industry and trying to get the recognition for cleaning staff that they deserve, in particular what Cleaning Operatives are referred to as. I have to admit that 17 years ago when one of my colleagues at Lancaster Office Cleaning Company Ltd announced that “All Cleaners are going to be referred to as Cleaning Operatives”, I was somewhat dubious. But when several years later I attended the BICS Annual Awards and Stan Atkins announced his pride that Cleaning Operative had become the recognised title for operative cleaning staff that it really sank in. I had been referring to my staff as Cleaning Operatives but generally deferred to ‘Cleaners’ when discussing them with clients and colleagues but since then I decided to call them what they are to recognise the importance of what they do – Cleaning Operatives. I recently saw a video on LinkedIn from a company ‘thanking’ cleaning staff for their hard work during the Coronavirus (CoVid-19) pandemic. It was well intentioned and started out well but even the very people who should know better - established senior managers and directors thanked cleaners and not Cleaning Operatives. Both as an employee and more latterly as a Soft Services Consultant I have worked with organisations on public sector Crown Commercial Services (CCS) contracts where both parties belittle the cleaning staff by insisting on calling them Cleaners. A lot has been said by parliamentary representatives including the Prime Minister recognising the valuable work that cleaning staff do and have done during the CoVid-19 pandemic. However, still they continue to call Cleaning Operatives, cleaners and in doing so they dilute the validity of their message by calling up the mental image that it portrays of people with mops, buckets and vacuum cleaners and not the professional, smartly presented, highly trained, skilled Cleaning Operatives that they are. Is it really too much to ask that we in the facilities and cleaning industries also show Cleaning Operatives the respect they earn every day as they perform their jobs, after all we want them to respect us?

Passion for technological and productive advantage over staff reduction

by Adam Cowper-Smith • 15 Jul, 2020
Passion takes many forms. I've mentioned my passion outside work but in work my real passion is the people I work with and how their working lives can be made more pleasant and easier for them to do their jobs while increasing their productivity. In an industry where in the region of 80 percent of turnover is the cost of labour it is often seen as the only way to reduce costs. But, years of cost reduction have eroded the labour force to such an extent that further cuts will substantially affect productivity, efficiency and ultimately the very thing that you are trying to protect profitability. So in a climate where demands for output are forever increasing, what can you do to reverse the trend and retain that all important turnover. Here I talk a little about my passion for improving profitability, productivity and retaining your very important staff time and numbers.
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