I WANT IT HOT

If I were to get home from a work, from one of those exhausting meetings with colleagues in a wine bar at 10pm to find the chef (my wife) had shut down the kitchen and said “no hot food” I’d be quite cross. I’d express myself colourfully. I might even swing my arms around. Mind I’d never hit her - wouldn’t dare - not that brave - crikey….the very thought…..

That’s the trouble with self-opinionated egocentics like Jeremy Clarkson, Kevin Pietersen, Piers Morgan and me. We need our hot food.

But relax.

This isn’t yet another article about “Top Gear” and St Jeremy of Ferrari.

I wanted instead to reflect on difference between people who do their homework and those who don’t and on the amateurism that some aspire to. I’ve actually heard people say things like “I want to be fresh - I don’t want to over prepare”. That’s about as absurd as saying you don’t want to cook the food so it’s piping hot (as anyone getting in after a hard day’s work should expect it to be) but want to serve it fresh…and semi raw.

The best people I work with all allow a lot of preparation and rehearsal time for presentations or even the simplest of speeches.

Even those blessed with nerveless competence need to have their presentation nailed down.
There’s no room for hoping it’ll be all right in the night.  Besides it’s ill-mannered not to prepare your presentational banquet fastidiously. This is the opportunity to be a Master Chef or be sent home early in gastronomic disgrace.

Three things determine the star from a wally:-

• A great story - one that hangs together which has a point and a memorable theme
• One that is served hot - which has bits of contemporary garnish and relevance
• One that is delivered with charm and confidence

 All of this deserves a lot of time - Leon Kreitzman, one of the finest speakers and storytellers I’ve ever seen, reckoned on a half hour presentation needing 5 hours hard work and practice - assuming it’s on a subject you really know about.

Recently I had to do a complex reading in church - I reckon I practised it at least twelve times before I had it cracked.

So the message is prepare, rehearse, assume nothing and don’t be so unprofessional as to hope you can stroll up on stage and busk it. To be sure, the more that you do it the better you get so never risk that ghastly feeling that you aren’t quite ready yet.

You haven’t got the time?

Set your alarm an hour or so early for a week….rehearse then.

I regard sleep as sacred but it’s a sin to be snoozing if instead you could be honing your performance.
Which is why JC was so cross. Because whilst ever the pro himself his production team were not and let the chef go home.

Bottom Gear guys.

WE'VE GOT TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

This is not just about cricket I promise. It’s about management and marketing.

There were two things I came across this week following the Kevin Pietersen debacle. The first was from my wife who having a very sharp sense of the zeitgeist said:

“It’s ridiculous they’ve fired him. He’s our top scorer and he’s cute.”

The second was in an article by Simon Barnes lamenting the folly of his departure. He quotes from an English swimming coach:

“He faced his swimmers and asked “who here wants to be mediocre?” It seems to me had the same question been addressed to the England cricket team they would have been holding up their hands.”

So to a non-cricket fan it’s talent, sex appeal and charisma that counts. And to a highly intelligent pundit the standards have deliberately been lowered to read “England lose harmoniously”.

Let’s lament the following disruptive influences – Ian Botham, Shane Warne, Fred Trueman, Ian Poulter, Nick Faldo, John McEnroe, Steve Jobs, Vincent Van Gogh and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The world would have been better, would it not, without these show-off virtuosos?

I used to work with a talented advertising man called Richard French. He believed the role of management was to manage the unmanageable. I realise now he meant me as well as others. Interesting that Pietersen, who ranks as a self-preening, adolescent genius – but maybe the best batsman to have played for England since Hutton – has divided the ranks so clearly between journeymen and stars. Of course he was a pain and a challenge. The sort of challenge Mike Brearley, the England Captain, faced with Botham in 1981.

If calm, reasonable, group-think HR ran the world none of the mavericks above would have been allowed near a cricket pitch, golf course, tennis court or boardroom. Because talent when it reaches the level of a Jeff Bezos (head of Amazon) or a Steve Jobs (late head of Apple), spills over into outrageous behaviour. Indeed one questions whether a Lloyd George, JF Kennedy or Bill Clinton would have been allowed anywhere near high office in the 21st century.

More to the point why do we all let people with such genius get backed into an isolated corner of disapproval from which disgrace or dismissal seems the best solution? The two jobs of management are to manage these unreasonable people with oodles of talent, not to be scared of them.

And to inspire winning performances whilst marketing is there to delight audiences with spectacular achievements.

I don’t think either course was necessarily best served this week.

In fact I think we settled for bronze.


 

MANAGEMENT IS NO LONGER JUST A BUSINESS TERM

We are all bombarded by constant lumps of management jargon and – going forward (ow!)  I can’t see the toothpaste being pushed back in the tube… (ow!!!!!) And yet management at work seems to have got worse whilst it’s been non-existent in most daily lives. People get fatter, grumpier, less content with their lives and less competent at changing this. 

But I think things may be changing and this is my plan to help that change.

I want to talk about three things:-  managing talent; managing time; managing expectations. 

Kevin Pietersen, the test cricketer.

Would this kerfuffle be going on if he’d been a footballer or a golfer? After all, many of them behave much worse than he’s done. Would Shane Warne has been allowed to carry on playing for England had he been English? KP’s probably the best batsman to play for us since Len Hutton. The job (as I discovered managing genius talent in advertising) is to manage the unmanageable, calmly get the best out of them through charm, cunning, alcohol and inspiration. And relax. This must be done if you want to avoid being mediocre. Read the biography of Steve Jobs to understand  ‘A’  talent.

Now school’s back for Autumn…. An even better anthem.

Time. It’s September. Back to school. New curricula. New form. New challenges.

Time. There isn’t enough of it. So simplify. Do fewer things well. Focus on less.

Time. We need to spend less of it working. More than 55 hours a week for 45 weeks a year and it’s almost certain that the extra hours are not just counterproductive but are likely to be damaging.

Expectations. The legacy of the Olympics is summarised brilliantly by India Knight:  

“Britain has discovered its smiley face. Don’t let it slip away”. I’m increasingly convinced that politicians do more harm than good and are to be ignored. The “Big Society” is a concept which proves the adage “be careful what you wish for “because post Olympics I feel I’m in a big smiley society in which the bumbling and whingeing Miliband, Clegg and Cameron are out-of-touch”– why is it the real bumbler, Boris, is the only one who seems real?

Manage your talent, time and expectations and perceptions and you’ll be better and feel better.

Back to school then. But remember one thing. Life is not neat. Things seldom work out quite how you expected. But you can manage if you keep things simple. That’s what management is all about after all.

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