MAGICAL YES; MAGIC I'M NOT SO SURE

There are words that get into the management lexicon like empowerment, disruption and magic. Magic has migrated from football commentary. It has a connotation of achieving the impossible. The old mantra of the Saatchi Brothers “nothing is impossible” has been reborn.

Now I’m gravely suspicious of magicians and confidence tricksters. I don’t believe the impossible becomes possible by sleight of hand or deception.

But I love stories of the quirky and learning things I didn’t know. The first this week is about powdered alcohol. It’s called Palcohol and is said (ho, ho) to give new meaning to “Dry Martini”. You can spike up food, drink surreptitiously at an alcohol-free event or quickly get blind drunk by snorting it (best used probably when listening to your chairman).

The second I learned on Friday. It’s how to do brilliant research if you’re a pick pocket. Erect a sign which says “Pick pockets operate in this area” and just watch everyone who, as they pass, will furtively touch the pocket in which they keep their wallet letting you know which pocket to pick.

This was at a TEDx conference in London put on by the London Business School. This story was told by Paul Craven who’s a behavioural economist. Paul is also a magician and worked at Goldman Sachs.  Sorry it’s the same thing.

The conference theme was “magic” although most of the speakers only loosely referred to it. One made me laugh when talking about corporate transparency she said that “if we’re going to be naked we’d better look good.” Not magic but funny and true.

My concern about magic in business is that the practice of magic focuses on our gullibility and how easily our senses are led astray. Our eyes are juddering, low resolution cameras creating low grade film. Our short term memories are frail. We are vulnerable to shysters.

So when another speaker spoke enthusiastically in praise of the magic of brands overruling facts she left us wondering if branded snake oil was worth more than unbranded snake oil because of marketing skill or consumer credulity or simply because at least we know it’s always going to be reliable snake oil.

We may be vulnerable but there’s more to it. Human beings enjoy fun, like surprises, like nice presentation, like good news but we are not stupid. We can sniff out a phoney and a magician.
There is one thing that we want and that’s “authenticity”. We like brands and tend to trust them because we know where they come from and we know the owners have skin in the game. Magical (the adjective) is fine but leave magic (the act) for the stage. It doesn’t fit with the new transparent world where Warren Buffett predicting the comeuppance of crooks in finance said: “you only know who’s bathing naked when the tide goes out.”

Let’s hope whoever it is at least they look good because we like nice people and nice presentation.