WE'RE NO LONGER GOLDEN

Last week I spotted a piece in the Washington Post, a worldwide poll which indicated a growing disenchantment with democracy as an effective form of government. The negative response was more pronounced amongst millennials than any other age cohort.  There was also a rising  preference for strong leadership instead of elections. It was slight in the UK, pronounced in Germany and strong in Spain, South Africa and Russia.

This is surprising given a conversation I’d been having a few days earlier about how in my youth in the 1960s  there’d been a global rebellion against the establishment. From the music revolution in the UK to the Paris riots to Woodstock to the Washington anti- Vietnam War protests in Washington to the more extreme Baader-Meinhof terrorists in Germany. Millennials were seemingly all into free love, flower power and revolution.

The words of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” linger in my mind recalling that  world which was finding its voice and swinging leftwards:

“We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden” 

We believed we were golden as the old order crumbled. 

(All shades of red above and getting redder as authoritarianism strengthens.)

Like it or not we’ve recently been swinging towards totalitarianism

Trump is not an aberration. He’s a sign of the times and of things to come. There are reactions of course like BLM and environmental activists like Greta Thunberg but they are ultimately being drowned out. People are frightened and when that happens they veer right. They’re frightened that things seem out of control. 

The second conversation was with someone who’s lived and worked in China for 20 years. He described a country where Covid is now over (no more face masks) and where the economy is booming.  The rules to contain the pandemic were and are still rigorous. Anyone – Chinese or foreign -  entering the country or returning to the country is quarantined for two weeks, isolated in a hotel room near the airport…quite a nice hotel but, nonetheless, a prison. In China no one breaks out of their bio-secure bubble; everyone obeys the guidelines and the law. One shudders to imagine how the Chinese authorities would have treated those rugby players, the  Barbarians’ twelve, who evaded their security guards to have dinner together at an Italian Restaurant on Thursday night breaking the Covid code of conduct to which they’d agreed. 

It’s behaviour like that that inspires so many people to say they want a more strict enforcement of rules and a more widespread lockdown.

China is a country without compromise when it comes to law enforcement and although the liberal in me shrinks it’s seemed to work. Interestingly within China there seems to be a widespread acknowledgement that they’d “been eating the US lunch for years” and that the election of Donald Trump was of a US President that China deserved.

But look at China today and you see the second biggest global economy emerging relatively unscathed from the pandemic that’s wrecked the rest of the global economy.

(Jan. 2019 – Aug. 2020)

China unlike most other nations has a long term strategy to achieve stability and growth. They seem intent on avoiding unnecessary trouble. When I asked about Hong Kong my friend looked puzzled – “well that’s all over now. China is in charge. Stability is the winner once again.”

How curious to regard China as a role model. We don’t want to know about what happens to those who step out of line. So much has happened that we want to ignore like Tiananmen Square massacre in the past, like the repression of the Uighurs now. But  the fact that China has 61 self-made women billionaires  (2/3 of all those in the world) and that they have a new generation of aspiring, linguistically adept and smart young people is rather impressive.

Many are wondering if “benevolent” dictatorship works. “Benevolent”? Just let me think about that.

 

DON'T STOP THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW

A recent TV programme about Fleetwood Mac was a story of extraordinary, timeless brilliance. A high point for me was John McVie, the bass guitarist who, like so many of his generation, had been addicted to booze and other substances. When asked what he made of the song ‘Don't stop thinking about tomorrow’, allegedly a sermon written for him when at his lowest ebb, he said:

‘I never looked at the words … my only concern ever was to maintain the rhythm.’

This song was the theme music at the Clinton Inauguration Ball in 1993. 

“Don't stop thinking about tomorrow
Don't stop, it'll soon be here 
It’ll be better than before
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone”

Good advice to all of us as we move into 2020. The past two decades have been full of ill humour and rancour, short termism and being in thrall to high tech stocks.

A few things on my mind right now are all about tomorrow:-

What sort of world do we want?
What sort of work do we want to do?
In what sort of ways do we what to communicate to each other?
What will success look like?

Who are ‘we’?

The most striking thing about the yesterday that’s gone has been our failure to listen to each other. In this ‘woke’ world if we don’t like what another says we go ‘la, la, la’, cover our ears and refuse to hear unpalatable views. By 2030 those who are currently millennials will represent around 40% of the UK population and two thirds of the electorate and will be defining our world. They will be the key we.

Millennials are, in the main, the kindest and fairest generation we’ve seen. They haven’t  been imbued in red-blooded capitalism as we were. They don’t regard property ladders, car ownership and materialism as very much to do with them. They travel more, have less interest in ‘stuff’ and more interest in espousing worthwhile causes and in fixing iniquities. But don’t be fooled. Millennials want to create great, thriving businesses too.

Unless we listen to them (and they to us) we shall get in a mess. Me? I’m in listening mode, hopeful that things will be better than before and that the voices of sceptics and doomsayers will be quelled.

What sort of world do we want?

The emerging generation wants to build a circular economy, eliminate waste and stop global warming. Any manufacturer or a marketer should realise the entry-ticket to avoid being cold shouldered by your consumers is to have positive values about sustainability.

So environment is the number one issue.

The ability of young people from all parts of the world to talk to each other, develop common themes on this and hear what the other is saying – Russians, Chinese, Brazilians, Germans, French,  Americans, Africans – is fundamental and the glory for us is the primary language of communication will be English.

At the same time there’s an increasingly strong sense of home and a need to get home whenever you can. To our local communities which are buzzy, have self-sufficiency and their own character. Expect to see a continued revival in local pubs (it’s already happening.) But these pubs need to become proper communal hubs not just boozers. Centres that are repurposed to bring people together – we all know places this.

If we’ve learnt nothing else from the Brexit Struggle it should have been the passionate sense of Englishness many feel (and Scottishness – increasingly that - Irishness and Welshness). This is in our DNA – awkward, home-loving and resourceful. This is not a nationalist ultra-right feeling but a warm ‘my town/my home/my team’ feeling.

The compass points north now. Watch the increasing importance and effectiveness of City Mayors (Manchester and Birmingham stand out) and the trend to devolving power to the regions.

In the next decade the centralisation of the past two decades will, I believe, be reversed and local communities will thrive. We’ll see the disappearance of big and unwieldy out-of-town shopping and an erosion of retail chains. Online shopping will plateau and local high streets will be fashioned to appeal as destinations to wander through like the North Laine and South Lanes in Brighton, the Shambles in Chester and the Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells.

Independent specialist shops will become the thing. This trend will change our lives because big is not always beautiful and the economies of scale are often questionable.

What sort of work do we want to do?

In a recent survey 70% of millennials said they wanted to start their own business;  women are doing the same as their family grows up and if you’re 50 and voluntary redundancy is available you may do the same. There is a ‘Start-Up Revolution’ starting in the UK.

The British are not easy employees. The styles of management and leadership taught by business schools already look out of date and are likely to be counterproductive. It’s not just that the millennials and others want independence so much as their having an aversion to being told what to do. They will keep the reiterated ‘why?’  of young children. ‘Because I said so’ or ‘because it’s company policy’ won’t work in the future with such free spirits. As employees they have that British awkwardness and rebelliousness. Recently I was told about a Global CEO visiting R&D teams in the UK and USA. He said :

“We have a problem and we have to find a solution to this problem in six months”

The UK team said:  “Hmm! Unrealistic. Bad brief. Can’t be done”
The USA Team said: “Great brief. Super challenge. We’re on it.”

Six months later the UK reluctantly presented three viable and extraordinary solutions. The US Team had nothing but warm words “great work in progress.” We deliver, albeit  often with rather ill grace.

Two recently coined acronyms in the Times last Saturday SSDD and ADOH = "Same Stuff Different Day” and “Another Day of Hell" which describe how many feel about work. Yet it needn’t be like that.

There are increasing opportunities to create new businesses which have superb, responsive customer service. Not everything should be high tech.  Bigger opportunities for many are in creating new drinks, foods, clothes, recycling and lifestyle regimens – from dieting to exercising to self-improvement to services for busy confused people. Whatever else, people want to be a bit creative not just anonymous elements in a repetitive process.

Money will no longer be a prime motivator. Research shows more people want to leave a legacy and make a difference rather than simply be rich. If being rich is to be like Philip Green and Alan Sugar, forget it. Neither are appealing role models for 2020.

What sort of ways do we want to communicate with each other?

Has social media been the biggest tool for advancement in the 21st century?

It’s made the cost of entry into a new business low. It’s brought people together. It’s (theoretically) made us more efficient. It’s helped create friendship groups and been a tool for raising money for good causes.

It’s also a huge waste of time.

Increasingly young people come off Facebook, Instagram and Twitter because social media’s taking more from their lives than giving to their lives. 

I suspect we might see a revival in good writing paper. Could the letter have a renaissance? Not “snail mail”, as it was described by geeks, so much as “great mail”.  A crossover product which reintroduces handwriting is the Moleskine Smart Paper Tablet and Pen Set which allows you to share doodles and notes by e-mail but without the character-reducing format of ordinary type; just in your own characterful hand.

I believe social media has peaked. Face-to-Face is more rewarding than Facebook. The issue that tech has is explosive growth followed by a downside of fast decline where user migration becomes pandemic.  Witness My Space. Witness Fortnite.

What will success look like and when?

Success is going to look different that’s for sure.

For ages the Treasury has been lamenting our appalling productivity in the UK. Yet does it really matter? Are we measuring the right things? Are targets and KPIs in the NHS or other public services appropriate?

Increasingly the World Happiness Index is seen as more important. If we are valued and enjoy what we do we’ll be more productive. Britain comes 15th out of 156 countries in their 2019 league table. Finland comes top.

15th isn’t bad; it’s ahead of Germany, France, Japan and the USA. Britain is good at putting itself down.  But it has plenty to be proud of like the best Universities, our record in the creative industries, in the financial sector, a non-stop inventive success story, having the world’s number one city, producing the world’s leading film and theatre actors, writers and technicians. And lots more.

We have success now. We have the talent to do more.

What real success in the future will be is in feeling more united (more Team GB),  in lifting living standards (for everyone), in being a magnet for global talent and in creating a race of creators and optimists.

2020. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow….there’s plenty to look forward to.

“It’ll be better than before
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone”

THE MILLENIAL MYTH DEFUSED

When Simon Sineck talked about the millennials in 2017 he derided their sense of entitlement and said what they really wanted at work were “beanbags and free food”. It was very funny. The trouble is Simon casually set the so called “snowflake generation” on a pillar of ridicule.

It troubled me at the time. Today I think it was pernicious and just plain wrong. The millennial generation that I see has a number of admirable qualities. When Rachel Bell, my co-author, chaired a group of CEOs a while back she asked them what was on their mind and the difficulty of managing millennials  was mentioned with comments like “I can’t stand them, who do they think they are?” She told these so-called leaders they were “wrong” because if they couldn’t manage millennial talent what sort of leaders were they?

In our experience most millennials are energetic, smart, fair, collaborative, generous in friendship, thoughtful and highly skilled. They may have grown up faster than we’d like, tyrannised by the stress of an exam culture. They may be sometimes be rebellious (unlike us of course in the mid-1960s and ‘70s). Interestingly millennials are drinking much less than we did. Here’s what an NHS report of 2018 concluded:

“A study …of 10,000 young people in the UK found that … 16- to 24-year-olds who say they never drink alcohol rose from 18% in 2005 to 29% in 2015. …young people who did drink alcohol were drinking less nowadays and binge drinking rates were falling.”

But millennials are not natural employees. They resist old fashioned concepts of starting at the bottom and slowly working their way up. We may find this unreasonable arguing it did us no harm (although looking at the products of  more repressive past regimes in, for instance, contemporary politicians I’m not sure this is a persuasive point of view.)

Instead however they are ideally preparing themselves to be creators of new businesses. They are the “Start-Up-Generation” which is why 70% of them say they want to create their own businesses rather than become a “wage slave”.

Vicki Harrocks, of Edge Hill University, teaches performance arts at Formby High School and says she spots the spirit of enterprise and latent entrepreneurialism in the year six pupils who are deemed most naughty and disruptive by her peers. She says they’re the ones who are quicker on the uptake, share ideas, talk in class, get restless and are never happier than when on their feet “showing off” (or, as we in business, call it “presenting ideas”).

These are our future. As they learn real business skills playing Fortnite, FIFA 19 and Restaurant Tycoon and create huge and powerful networks of diverse talents (not the antiquated “old boys’ network”) we’re looking at great team players, people who have real values and who want to create enjoyable workplaces.

They may be hard for us to manage but that’s a reflection on our own limitations rather than theirs. It’s time to give them their head. They will not let us down.

These are the millennial militants and they are winners.

“Start-ups Pivots and Pop Ups” by Richard Hall and Rachel Bell is published on October 3rd by Kogan Page. The antidote to doubt and gloom.

HOLD UP THAT GLASS AND THINK...

The new optimists

Yes they do exist (fortunately). They represent over half the population. They are people who have to cope and increasingly are running our economy and those who believe the world is theirs and believe they’re invincible.

- Women – I’m blown away by the confidence and resilience of the women I’ve been talking to who are starting new businesses. They are in general better prepared, more thoughtful and more realistic than their male counterparts. Men still control the money and are often averse to releasing funds to women. Perhaps the rise in NatWest of both Alison Rose and Katie Murray to top jobs in a company recognised as one of 52 firms in the 2017 Bloomberg Financial Services Gender-Equality Index (BFGEI) will make a breakthrough difference.

Alison Rose. Tipped to be the next RBS CEO

- Millennials – Simon Sinek gave one of the most popular and entertaining talks on “Millennials”. He stereotyped the snowflake generation as being over-entitled and needy. “They want a job with purpose, they want to make a difference, they want free food and beanbags”…LAUGHTER. But that isn’t the generation I’ve been talking to. My millennials are smarter, kinder, more collaborative and more enterprising than we were. Up to 70% of graduates want to start their own business not to make loads of money but because it seems so much more relevant than working for a big corporation and building a career. When the new 18 – 35 year olds are in charge of our world I’ll feel a lot more confident and optimistic about our future.
     
“Thriving on chaos”

This extraordinary book by Tom Peters was written in 1991 and has in parts the freshness of insight that is relevant today. He gives good advice:

“Leaders trust their guts. "Intuition" is one of those good words that has gotten a bad rap. For some reason, intuition has become a "soft" notion. Garbage! Intuition is the new physics. It's an Einsteinian, seven-sense, practical way to make tough decisions. Bottom line, …. the crazier the times are, the more important it is for leaders to develop and to trust their intuition.” 

He also said “If you aren’t confused you aren’t paying attention.” 

Well I’m pretty confused but after a quarrelsome year I think virtually everything is looking up. Just hold your nerve and focus on what you can do to improve your world and the world around you.

Happy New Year. Have fun. Thrive on chaos and enjoy surfing the uncertainty of 2019.

Richard will continue to publish his observations usually on a Monday morning

THE OLD NEED REINVENTING...LIKE CATS

Tom Goodwin is an Executive Vice President and head of Innovation at Zenith Media. Here’s what he said last week on Linkedin:

“Living in New York and working in advertising I rarely see people over the age of fifty.  I'm never exposed to, let alone have the pleasure of working alongside them. This is one of the worst things about working in marketing right now.  As an industry we're obsessed with youth, we're endlessly trying to get "upwardly mobile Millennials" or "hard to reach youthful influencers" or some nonsensical and largely broke crowd who can't afford the premium SUV we have on offer. Meanwhile we've not looked around the BA First Lounge or the Hyatt Hotel lobby, or the Emirates Business class cabin to see that all the people with money and influence are actually rather old. And wise.

Occasionally, on the rare events where I get to listen to some of the wonderful old folk of advertising, it quickly makes me realize how much we as an industry suffer from a lack of wisdom. We have incredible levels of vision, an abundance of precociousness, brilliant creativity, but as an industry we pretty much have no wisdom at all.”

Personally being one of those “wonderful old folk of advertising” I found myself in profound agreement with Tom who is still in his 30s.

In Japan where the concept of mentoring has always been taken more seriously, “senpai” is someone of a higher age, or senior and “kōhai” is a protégé or junior. Wisdom there is a prized commodity whereas here it’s all over when you hit 50 or 60.  Yet watching Liz Truss our Justice Secretary, a gangling 42 year old and clearly out of her depth, I lamented the lost wisdom of predecessors like Ken Clarke and  Jack Straw, Poor, young Liz. There was no justice in putting her in that job without the gravitas and wisdom to clothe her naked inexperience.

Cats like the aged have a problem too. They kill allegedly 55 million birds a year in the UK.  Their DNA is shockingly obvious. They are predators and pretty selfish creatures.  But the most successful pets in the world numerically.

Their relaunch comes in a new design. The more sedate pussy. Welcome to the “sausage cat” - apparently it’s a fashion wow (or miaow) in America coming your way soon - slowly.

Cats and the aged are not much alike but like cats we aged need to become more visible. We need to review how we’re perceived and relaunch ourselves if our “wisdom” and thoughtfulness is to be treated more seriously. Too many of us are grumpy, petulant lamenters of lost youth - critics of the young rather than enthusiastic spectators and coaches of a youth potentially better than we ever were. We need to get out of BA First lounges and start working again to show how useful we can be and how we can complement the skills of today’s dynamic leaders.

TOMORROW - an additional blog from Richard.