What's this About?

Most of us will remember taking part in IQ tests at some stage in our education, or even just for fun. One of the common questions was based on analysing trends by anticipating the next in a series. A trivial example would be 2, 4, 6, 8, ? (although having an IQ in double digits would be sufficient in this case).

A more difficult sequence, and one I have been wrestling with this morning, is 'Vietnamese Pot-Belied Pig, JFK Assasination in 1964, … um?'

Finding an answer clearly requires some lateral thinking and creativity but, in truth, there could be any number of logically-valid suggestions. So, with the acknowledged risk of straying too close to metadata (data about data) I'm going to offer content here that references the thought process itself.

Photon Project Management has a culture of encouraging the lateral thinking and creativity that I'm trying to use right now. One piece of evidence is the existence of this blog post, the likes of which will not be found on the website of any other Solar PV Installer.

I once worked in a household-name food-manufacturing company that did not encourage its factory workers to use their initiative at all. A memorable quote from the HR Manager at the time is 'we expect them to leave their brains on a hook in the locker-room when they clock-in for their shift'.

I remember being appalled, and not just by the rather unpleasantly graphic image that springs to mind when hearing those words. Why would a company ever want to discourage challenges about 'the way we do things around here'?

That's one of the aspects of Photon Project Management that makes us a great company to work with. Creativity and problem-solving is encouraged, because actually no two PV installations are identical, and not every challenge is predictable from even the most thorough pre-installation survey.

We are fortunate to have natural problem-solvers within our teams. The evidence I see every day further suggests creativity is often accompanied by a sense of humour that injects spontaneous laugh-out-loud moments in the office, reinforcing the camaraderie that I've mentioned in previous posts.

We try not to limit creativity. Would anyone care to email us with potential subjects for the fourth post in this now three-post series?