Viewing around the corner

My place of work is in three years' time going to be a state-of-the-art £300million campus. Today I was shown interior plans of layouts, work areas, office areas, common areas and corridors. Tricky business, as the buzzword is 'futureproof.' What's further education going to be like in three years is tricky enough, but I know you're smart enough to know that's not the question, let alone the tricky part. Three years' time is just when we open - the challenge is to go beyond that - 5 years, 10, 20. We know what we think. Someone once put it to me that the trick to being a great leader is not the ability to look ahead, but is instead having the ability to look round corners. Forecasting the unexpected, and watching out for that truck reversing from the hidden alley. It may knock you over, it may provide you with the searched-for bounty.

And so it was back to base with that thought. Tricky with my iPhone and no mirror or trick shot to shoot round the corner, so this is the view to the corner of my office window. Apposite right enough, as opposite to the left is one of our other buildings. Midtown Manhattan it ain't, nor Tokyo, Rome, Cairo. It's on North Hanover Street, which confuses and alarms slightly when you're first told to attend, acronymically, NHS. It's also a windy, showery, grey day, so the views are limited. On a good day there's hills in the distance and an impressive architectural array in the foreground. And a changing cityscape to boot once we take the keys for the new campus. That's then of course, so meantime we're trying to see what's round the corner.