HAVE WE FORGOTTEN EXCELLENCE?

Forty years ago Tom Peters, a renowned management consultant, writer and speaker, co-authored a book called “In Search of Excellence.” It caused something of a stir as Peters assumed the pioneer role of excellence-discoverer.

The book suggested that excellent businesses had specific attributes: 

…”flat anti-hierarchical structures; innovation and entrepreneurship; small numbers of corporate and middle management; staff reward systems based on contribution rather than position or length of service; brain power rather than muscle”. 

It sold 4 million copies and was described as the best management book of all time. Sadly 40 years on we seem to have learnt nothing. We haven’t forgotten excellence we just never seem to have known precisely what it is or how to get it.

John Neil, the CEO of Unipart, the multinational logistics, supply chain, manufacturing and consultancy company, once said to me

“the trouble with British Industry is it doesn’t know what good is.”

Forget excellence, he seemed to suggest, being good would be a marked improvement.

Instead of excellence we learnt about being the “lowest cost producer”, of moving production to wherever to get goods made cheaply and cut labour costs. MBAs talked about “exits”(not physical ways out but monetary ways out) or, to be blunt, selling businesses for as much money as possible to regardless of whom they are. That’s why the most excellent of restaurants – the Wolseley Group – majority owned in Thailand by Minor Hotels having put it into administration have ousted that King of Customer Service. Jeremy King, its founder. 

No, I’m not xenophobic but it’s wasteful to build an excellent business and then sell it to corporations (mainly overseas) whose interests are purely about money, burnishing their image or whose cultural values are so strongly at variance with their acquisition. That’s why in-shoring has become a new vogue  (it means bringing production back home), that’s why Waterstones (currently Russian owned but left well alone by him) run by the excellent James Daunt of Daunt Books, does so well. Under the previous management, I was told they talked about skus (stock keeping units) not books, and it drove staff in the stores crazy.

When so many companies in the UK are parcelled off to foreign business or private equity, firms whose raison d’être is lots of money, it’s unsurprising that the focus has shifted from rock solid, immutable values about product excellence and customer service.

One place where this hasn’t happened in Richer Sounds. Founded in 1978 the business was 100% owned by Julian Richer, the founder and managing director of the company, who in 2019 sold 60% of its shares to an employee ownership trust. It’s feted for its customer service and standards of management.

Seeking to become just another big ‘cheese’ is also relatively absent in the food business where founders are obsessed with quality. The TV chef James Martin is particularly appealing in his appetite for excellence and singles out the French:

“What I love about Lyon is they don’t care what people think about what they do or if they even like it, they know, they just know themselves that it’s brilliant”

On a TV programme he wandered around “Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse - Lyon Indoor Food  Market” talking to camera, ecstatic about the supreme excellence of the food there.

The French care jealously about Comté cheese and the right Cassoulet recipe. The Italians are similarly fussy about Spaghetti Carbonara.

Their ROI is in heaven. Their being excellent matters more than being rich.

How ironic that Julian Richer in denial of his name, like so many chefs, could be much richer but instead leads an excellent UK business. 

LOOK FORWARDS, LOOK UP AND LOOK OUT

It’s not unusual to spend this strange time between Christmas and New Year reflecting and resolving to do better. It’s been variously called Chrimbo Limbo, Food Week and, more darkly, the Void. I think it’s a time to reset our world and lift ourselves up.

We need to have things to look forward to. Diaries last year found themselves emptied of appointments and events. HOGO (the hassle of going out) took over. We need to plan for exciting things to do in 2022.

We need to look up not down and we need to learn more…to look up stuff…refresh our tired brains.

But finally look out. We are probably going to be Covid cursed for a while yet. This can’t make us become germophobic hermits. We need to be energetic not supine. But we also need to watch out and avoid infection especially those who like me, and many great wines, are somewhat aged. Avoid the fearless and foolish and parties (even political parties? Yes, obviously those.) 

But do not be frightened. Covid is not the Back Death, but it will surely keep on reappearing with new variants. We must cope because we have lives to live. So, let’s live them.

Some thoughts looking forward.

There’s never been a better time to concentrate, meaning to stop diluting our energies and talent. Let’s reduce that sauce that makes whatever we do special. Having a diverse portfolio of brands or activities is exhausting so start to get rid of the less rewarding ones. For my part the first month of my year is going to be devoted to tidying up and stopping unnecessary activity. This is not a time to diversify; it’s a time to focus. It’s a time to do less better.

Mindfulness remains in vogue. When done or taught well it’s proved to be enormously beneficial but applied lazily to daily life it seems distracting and more like mindlessness. Increasingly I find the need to simplify. If we had less on our minds and were able to relax better, we might be happier and we’d be more useful.

When did you last laugh, really laugh? 

Maureen Lipman, Ricky Gervais, Billy Connolly and others have been recently lamenting the death of comedy. What utter tosh. However restrictive the greater social awareness we may seem to have through BLM, Women’s Rights, LBGT and what is called the woke philosophy, comedy will always thrive but will generally steer clear of some of the less funny areas. Beware comedians who think rape, cruelty or racism is funny. But also avoid puritans. Life’s too short. Interestingly the OED defines the original meaning of “woke” thus: -

“well-informed, up-to-date”

Yes, that made me think too. It’s since been appropriated by puritan youth to describe their attachment to various causes.

On a day-to-day basis I’ve come to realise that almost every initiative has unintended consequences. Working from home has obvious benefits, less time wasted on commuting, safer in avoiding human contact and a greater focus on the tasks that need doing. But it also subtracts social intercourse from our daily lives. We are losing the abrasive benefits of discourse. Those ghastly meetings around a table which we now mostly avoid (but a meeting on Zoom is not the same thing at all) orientated us even as we resisted groupthink. They allowed us to absorb what all our colleagues felt as well as thought. Zoom and Teams are  pretty much without feeling.

If we do nothing else this year, we all need to talk more, listen better, meet more,  become sociable and less remote. Friendships and communal interaction suffered in 2020 and 2021. We need to bring hugs and laughter back into our lives. And one other thing. We need to be positive. Just start everyday saying “this is going to be a good one”. Make lists of things to do and do them. Nothing will make you feel better than actually getting things done.

The world around us is becoming more dangerous, more polarised, more bad tempered and less predictable. Now is not the time to be a soothsayer; all the analysts and futurologists are floundering. However, we do need to understand the tensions which will shape our world.

We need clever people, diplomats, great managers, calm minds, and long-term thinkers. Issues that will impact on us are going to be technological advances especially in Artificial Intelligence, the rich/poor divide, the growing number of old people who are staying alert and are getting more involved, pollution and climate change and the stress of declining national importance (tough for the USA, UK, and EU all of whom are losing share in this changing world.)

What an adventure we face. One like this:-

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming – WOW – What a Ride!” (Hunter S. Thompson)

Don’t be angry, don’t be frightened but do think and do stay involved. Maybe I’ve been wrong about social media which I’ve sometimes dismissed rather lightly because more of us can have our say and share our thoughts than ever before. Let’s just be thoughtful, good natured and courteous when we do so. That’s going to become the new “woke” way of doing things.

In 2022 I’m going to reclaim that word because it’s time we all woke up.

DO I REALLY CARE ANY MORE?

Well, actually I do but not so much recently. So long as we had the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, terrible infection and mortality figures from Covid and a rampant tweeting Donald Trump we had plenty to worry about and get angry about.

Suddenly Brexit is done, vaccinations are happening and, good heavens, at an alarmingly impressive rate of knots, and in a well organised way, and the Donald is silent and has gone. 

The sun is out and much of the world has snow. It’s chilly as winters should be. The critical issues that have been keeping us awake are resolved or resolving. There ‘s light at the end of all the clichés.

But things are getting worse. Because the little things like breakdowns in IT, a collapse in the Royal Mail meaning a friend called to say his Christmas card from us had only just arrived, a missed item in a supermarket delivery, oversleeping or an irritating paper cut have suddenly become issues.

With lockdown our world has shrunk. Events outside until now kept us aware of where we stood…maybe angry, enraged or alarmed but as part of a greater whole. Now we’ve become more inconsequential and vulnerable. I don’t get angry now; I just get irritated and (word of the week) peevish. Little things prey on my mind.

I tried apathy. But I do care. I don’t want to be alone. John Donne said:

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…” 

 But Brexit has seen to that, Scottish Independence may go further and lockdown, social distancing, masks and isolation have extinguished togetherness further. Goodbye untrammelled travel across Europe, goodbye hugs, smiles and kisses. It’s grumpy time for many.

Lunch is a thing of the past, I’ve forgotten how. I was thinking about Odin’s my favourite restaurant (long since ruined and then closed by barbarian owners) where conversation spilt like wine across the table. Real Masters of the Universe food and wine. Real original thinking. Or was it more ordinary…a fantasy I’m remembering?

Talking of fantasy I see some pundit economists are predicting a third quarter 2021 through 2022 boom in the global economy. Well, I wish. But an awful lot of retraining will have to happen as unemployment figures soar in hospitality, finance, retail, automotive and travel. That lot accounts for 8 ½ million jobs in the UK alone.

The Marylebone High Street I recall in 1960’s was full of gaps, lots of charity shops in prime sites, drear and uninviting. Until now this envy of the retail world was pretty ghastly back then. So, for sure, recovery and boom may well occur but not for some time, I fear, for most of us. The acid test will be whether the start-up revolution about which I’ve enthused really takes off but if it does (and  I wish fervently it does) it will take a while to bed down.

I am neither a pessimist nor an apathetic. I still feel part of this game of life and that I can make perhaps a small difference. And I do have a solution. Given the issue that will drive the economy is not money alone but human energy, enterprise and resolution. So, when we can, I’d ship as many young people as possible to the Democratic United States of America, to New York and say “get a taste of this for upbeat, chutzpah and energy and bring that back here”.  Show how much the Americans care. It’s infectious but in a good way.