ONE 'EUREKA' AFTER ANOTHER

We seem to spend our lives alternately being nostalgic about our past or being in love with “life-transforming” inventions like Twitter which, if you were to pay attention to some people, makes the invention of Gutenberg in the 15th century of just marginal account.

I was reflecting on how retro so many things had become with the resurgence of artefacts and things from previous times which we now think are very contemporary. Things like:-

• Bicycles, windmills, satchels, teashops, cup-cakes, baking,  porridge, cocktails, hard back books (making a big resurgence), knitting, community singing, cash, colourful ties (Tie Rack’s ties were not, by the way)

All of these are things that, in some way or other, slow things down rather than speed them up and have the smack of authenticity (and the porridge I’m talking about is the real Scott’s Old Fashioned Porage Oats not  Ready Brek.)

And I was pondering further on the story we keep on hearing about how 21st century technology is transforming our lives in quite unprecedented ways.  But our social media, video games devices, robots, iPods and new plastics (made from pig urine) don’t seem quite as life transforming perhaps as the inventive tsunami of the early 20th century which ran up to the outbreak of the First World War.

Here are just a few of those inventions during those thirteen years:-

• Manned flight, Bakelite,  radio receivers, vacuum cleaners, air conditioners, crayons, cornflakes, windscreen wipers, colour photography, safety razors, cellophane, instant coffee, crossword puzzles, bras, zip fasteners, the isolation of Radium, the model T Ford and the theory of relativity.

We speak in awe of Dyson’s bladeless fans today but they don’t quite match the bra do they?  Indeed I think it might be fair to say that the work inventors did in the early 1900s helped define and change modern civilisation in a way that Xbox and Skype simply don’t come close to.

More importantly, perhaps, it wasn’t until I checked up on what had been actually going on in that period that I realised how extraordinarily fertile it had been.

And then on BBC Radio 4’s on Saturday I heard a further piece that was eye opening. At the beginning of the 20th century the global centre for piano production was in Camden Town where there were over 100 factories. (These disappeared after the First World War because most of the skilled piano craftsmen had been killed in France.)

And how did this inventiveness happen?

In part it was through the sheer exuberance of economic success in the USA, Germany, Russia and Britain and the increase in wealth.  In Europe real wages had risen by nearly 50% between 1870 and 1912. But there was something else. Just as a half century earlier had seen a vivid explosion in artistic achievement in all its forms so this narrow decade and a half saw something really special happening – an epidemic of commercial inventiveness.

But how many “eurekas” died in the mud of the battlefields?

ARE WE TRYING TO CREATE TOO MUCH CHANGE?

Blaise Pascal, the French mathematical genius, said:-
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
And ever since reading that I’ve been sitting in a room quietly, by myself, thinking about the turmoil of change.

Anyone who’s a student of management or a modern day business leader will, almost certainly, be an espouser of making things happen. They’ll be a connoisseur of the global social tsunami. They’ll sniff and love the smell of marketing cordite. These are the “Carpe Diemists.” And as protagonists in this world of change the words of Meat Loaf will ring in their ears:-
“If it ain't real - fake it!
  If it ain't yours - take it!
  If it don't exist - you make it!
  If it ain't broke - break it!”


Robert Kriegel, New York author, has actually written a book called “If it aint broke , break it”. But I’m not sure that either he or Tom Peters the “creative destruction” guru  are right. We have had too much “slash and burn” management, too many generations of MBAs centralising command, too many fakers, thieves and spurious innovators – all those featuring in Meat Loaf’s  song.

But there are some other words in that song too:-
“Give me some words to live by”

Many of the most creative things we’re looking at today are the product of recognising how people work and working with that. Inspiration from humanity not control of humanity.

Example: The traffic experiments of Belgian, Hans Monderman,  in the Dutch town Drachten which involved the removal of street furniture, traffic lights, warning signs and even road markings….accidents down, drivers more focused.

Example: The experiment in Hogewey in Holland in which a gated village was created for dementia  patients which is a microcosm of the real world – a bit like Truman – wherein carers act roles and everyone living (often) in their own harmless fantasy, seems very happy.

Example: In a children’s home vandalism was reduced by repairing the vandalised home not punishing the child. In New York graffiti was reduced by painting over it leaving graffiti artists frustrated by having nothing to show for their efforts. So they stopped doing it.

We don’t want certain things to change.

Chocolate, our favourite piece of music, Sunday lunch, a joke that we always find funny or the arrival of Spring (again). Over half a century of the arrival of Spring and it’s always a surprise.

Sometimes that apparent same-as can be a revelation.

So the words to live by are to find the time to sit quietly and think….because rushing around isn’t always the answer and reality is nearly always better than faking it.

NEW WAYS OF WORKING IN 2011

If we learnt nothing else in 2010 it was that anything is possible and that no one is bomb proof any longer – isn’t that true Mr. Geoghagan?

You’ll recall Mike is the now ex CEO of HSBC.

2011 is going to be a year of churn – more new business models, more job changes, more focus on execution and more innovation. Because if you stand still the global tsunami will get you.

A few obvious things:

-    the I-Pad and Kindle are changing our lives and where and how we can work and think. We can, as Daryll Scott of Noggin put it, think and do at the same time. We can spend more time out meeting and talking and less behind that PC – the dinosaur of the 20th century.

-    And here’s what Stephen Bailey of the Design Museum thinks of commuting:- “commuting will one day be looked on as we now look on surgical bleeding by leeches.” But not in 2011 sadly.

-    Like Air Traffic Controllers who work intensely and then rest we’ll learn to intensify the way we think and work with shorter harder, less agenda-filled meetings and then relax. The world of “bleisure” (no obvious separation between work, rest and play) will be the norm for all people at the top of businesses or running their own. Play is going to be the key if we want to remain not just sane but effective.

-    We’ll all learn to get rid of all our e-mails everyday. Read the advice from Fast Company http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/scobleizer-reengineer-inbox.html - don’t be tyrannised by the 200+ most of us get every day.

-    Jack Welch ex CEO and Chairman of GE likened business to ice hockey – fast, violent and very unpredictable. There is a strong body now from people like Margaret Heffernan that “nice is the new mean”. It’s still dangerous out there but this is a real and thoughtful team game and by being “nice” we’ll hopefully get the best out of our colleagues.

-    The concept of “Senpai” and “Kohai” from Japan – roughly speaking “experienced mentor” and “protégé” but where the protégé is often the CEO figure, full of vigour, energy and indomitable spirit counselled in the discreet background by a senior, dispassionate dispenser of thinking, caution and inspiration, the Senpai.

Whatever else, 2011 can be exciting and rewarding if we all embrace change and do everything we do harder – work, play, laugh and think.

Because our most powerful weapon is our brain.

And it’s time to make more of it.

The Many Tragedies in Haiti

I am hesitant to write something that I know will upset many people but here goes because I think this is really important.

If you give money to Haiti by all means do it to salve your conscience but not to do any real good because -

• It isn’t needed (the USA has already put in more than $100 million and as much as it will take thereafter)
• It won’t get to the people anyway – it never does – the Tsunami money (for instance) is still unused for the purposes intended although it’s helping the Indonesian economy
• Money gets somehow…lost… in these situations …the Haitians themselves have a neat way of putting it “when a Haitian Minister skims 15% of aid money it’s called corruption, but when an aid agency takes 50% it’s called overheads”.
• The NGOs are on a vanity show trying to prove how important they are (Andy Kershaw of the Independent savaged Oxfam for emptily conducting “assessments” as people died)
• But the clincher is that the USA has put more troops into Haiti than we have in Afghanistan –20,000 it’s said - to maintain security. They fear a bloodbath could follow the turmoil with gang warfare.
• So whatever we think has no weight or influence when compared to the US control of airport, aid, money, food, in fact - control of everything.
• To understand the gangs in Port au Prince you don’t really need a lesson in this Caribbean island’s economic demolition by the Duvaliers (Papa Doc and Baby Doc and their Tonton Macoute militia.) and the hangover, after their removal.
• Last and worst of all, the media. Sleek, well fed, sanctimonious and there in great and well organised numbers filming human misery commenting smugly and tersely and moving on. And you know I doubt if we can really trust what they say – 24 hour News Coverage and truth are not great allies.
  

I know little enough of Haiti – I haven’t been there although I hurt for all the suffering. But I have watched liberal and Christian money being hopefully used as though it were water being hosed over people dying of thirst. Except the money being given will predictably sit in some bank account until it’s too late to do much good or it’s irrelevant.

I have been frustrated and angry that money is seen as the answer.

It never is, alone.

And if it takes a catastrophe to awaken the Christian or the philanthropist in us, it’s a sad old world.

Haiti really needed help a month ago, a year ago, a decade ago.

Now it needs some really intelligent planning with the people in Haiti who matter – not the elite but most probably the mothers….the people who really know what is needed and, from what I read, the Mayor of Haiti’s second city, Cap Haiten, Michel St. Croix, who said: “this is a moment like never before for Haiti to start again”.

Most of all we hope the Americans so clearly running this show will execute the recovery in Port-au-Prince better than usual (or at least than Katrina). And that more of the brains of the world rather than the wallets of the world will be used to help plan the best solution possible.

As Lord Rutherford, the physicist originally said “we have no money so we shall have to think”…or as he might say, were he alive now, ”we have all this money. What on earth shall we do with it?”

Carry on thinking….and taking the advice of Haitian mothers and Michel St. Croix who sounds smart and honest.