HOLD UP THAT GLASS AND THINK...

Is the glass half full, half empty, completely empty or broken? As an irredeemable optimist who always looks on the bright side of life I really haven’t known where to look for the first time ever. Uncertainty is a malevolent state of being and right now I’m not even sure there is a glass. We should probably read Voltaire’s ‘Candide’ a brilliant satire on the flaws of optimism where he rousingly refutes Leibniz’s thesis that all is for the best in all possible worlds.

It isn’t and this is not the best of times. However all is not lost. So many good things have happened in 2018 and just focusing on the constipation and squalor of politics is short-sighted. Here’s my take on what 2019 might look like. These are not predictions so much as observations about change. So let’s lift our heads up and feel good.

The smell of war (or is it just fireworks?)

There’s a whiff of cordite in the air. It must have been like this in 1913 when the irritability built up and the lack of certainty made people yearn for something to clear the air. Rupert Brooke in his poem ‘Peace’ put it like this:
“With ….. clear eye, and sharpened power, 
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, 
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary”

“Old and cold and weary” describes how many people feel right now. But there’s an increasing view that what’s been going on is just a political story “told by an idiot full of sound and fury and signifying nothing”.  (Shakespeare, Macbeth)

Grumpiness is in our DNA. In 1641 in Britain a Civil War started which we are beginning to realise never quite finished. When people stop debating and sharing ideas they usually start punching each other. This is when any sense of strategic intent or forward planning disappears. As ex-heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson put it:

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

But this awkward, argumentative country usually gets on with it and plays the cards its been dealt mostly in harmony even if it’s uncomfortable harmony.  What’s going on right now is a firework display not the battle of Ypres.

Only one cheer for democracy

EM Forster wrote a book called “Two Cheers for Democracy" in 1951 – that’s a long time ago but some ideas don’t change. In it he questions the hierarchy of power and says  - “I believe in aristocracy - not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky.” I sense that a democracy that brings us Donald Trump and Brexit may get only one cheer. We accept as an act of faith that democracy is the only good form of government. And here’s the good news - soon there’ll be a 46th President of the USA who will have been “in power” for either 4 or 8 years. Robert Mugabe was President of Zimbabwe for 40 years. That’s why democracy works. Half the world has been democratised and has the ability to oust its leaders. Maybe we’ll look back on this decade as one where the people voted irrationally just to prove they could.

Part 2 will follow around 10am gmt tomorrow...

BE NIMBLE, IMPROVISE AND WIN

We can all make the mistake of getting stuck in the same old groove. But business can’t be treated like Su Doku, a game with straightforward rules.  Yet words best designed to make anyone scream like corporate template and company strategy (usually because there isn’t one) are same old groove words for most people.

If we are going to make well informed, even inspired decisions we have to get outside the groove and consider our situation from a different perspective - what Professor John Kay of the LSE calls “obliquity”. He says obliquity (pursuing our goals indirectly) is necessary because living in a world of uncertainty means the problems we encounter aren’t always clear and we often can’t pinpoint what our real goals are. Things change and people (the behaviour of whom is often hard to predict) change too. Direct approaches are often unimaginative whilst ‘muddling through’ for a bit can sometimes be a much more productive answer.

Stories of improvisation beating the corporate plan abound but I enjoy one Malcolm Gladwell tells. Big corporate Goliath being outwitted and outgunned by the guerrilla tactics of David armed with the 1000BC equivalent of Remington XP-100 (rated the most accurate hand gun in the world). David knew he’d win so long as he improvised out of the reach of lumbering Goliath’s but what’s baffling is that Saul and the other spectators  only foresaw this as a toe to toe duel because that’s how you did things in those days in Israel. They were thinking in “like-we’ve-always-done-it” terms rather than let’s improvise and win terms.

In business, stories of small, loose thinking winners include Nike winning as a Vietcong style upstart founded in 1964 against Adidas founded 1948 – Nike is now twice the size of Adidas, Facebook against My Space (in June 2006 My Space captured 80% of social networking traffic (up from 76% in April). Facebook was second with 7.6%. The ball has been dropped in most markets we are looking at and no one really knows where it is. Better to improvise rather than pretend the ball’s still in sight.

We all tend to overestimate power whether it’s physical like Goliath’s or exploited by people who feel they’re expected to flaunt it. That’s a high risk strategy on their part but some seem to think it worth taking. Chuck Prince ex CEO and Chairman of Citigroup certainly seemed to think so as he made the defining quote of the 2008 crash on the very eve of the credit crunch:-

“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”

 You make decisions that solve problems by taking each on its merits and not being hamstrung by a rigid plan. Strategic plans can make one option blind. Remember Mike Tyson:

“Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth”