My OBM Story: Howard Lees

My Graduate Education:
BSc Civil Engineering.

My Current Job Title:
Managing Director of Hollin Consulting Ltd.
Hollin Consulting is the only exclusively ‘OBM’ Consultancy in the UK.

How I Became Interested In OBM:
I was trained in OBM by Bill Hopkins and Bill Redmon whilst working at Bechtel in 1999. I have specialized in coaching and teaching OBM ever since, initially at Bechtel and now running my own consultancy.
The training I received was first class and very comprehensive for a company training scheme in that we were classroom trained & also coached in the field for a period of 12 months. I have continued to study OBM ever since and have attended ABA & OBM in the US in order to be able to take advantage of the BA community (no form of community exists in the UK).

Why I Like OBM:
OBM is the greatest story never told, I am convinced it should be taught in schools to 12 to 15 year olds as part of the general education syllabus. The science is very simple and it takes little effort to teach & use to great benefit in businesses.

What A Typical Day In My Job Looks Like:
My office is in my house so my commute is very short.
I spend about half my time reading writing & administering & the other half coaching clients and sometimes speaking & training. When I say coaching I mean the Socratic kind & not the sports style. A number of my clients are successful business folks whose work environment is busy & stressful where coaching skills are hard to pass on. I have found coaching is made considerably easier by using the transfer of behavioural science knowledge as the catalyst. I coach my clients to pass on the behavioural knowledge to their staff in the same way I do to them.
Behavioural knowledge helps in business if you can deliberately set the environment to be generally positive & when the time is right deliver R- in order to gain a result.

Comments:
Learning OBM changed my life 8 years ago. Consulting in OBM is much more fun than managing a business or project, much more fulfilling than any other job I ever did and has allowed me & my friends to spend our time doing cool things with cool people in cool places.

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