ANY CHANGE?

On the anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down 30 years ago, let’s reflect on how radically our world has changed. In 1989 we still smoked wherever we wanted certainly in restaurants – just imagine. The Dow Jones averaged 2,510 whilst on Friday night, November 8th 2019 it closed at 27,681 – a mighty change.

But it’s not this big-money story that matters so much as the small one. A spokesman of HSBC recently said the cashless society was imminent, that ATM machines were history. I snorted and crossly asked my radio, now used to being shouted at in the morning, especially when Martha Kearney is interviewing someone, “what about people who are old and poor?”

What about people like me?

But over the past month something bizarre has happened. I find I’ve stopped giving money to homeless. Earlier in the year I was handing out around £10 a week in cash to familiar faces to whom a friendly “hallo” with lots of eye contact was probably worth more than the couple of £1 coins I gave them. But since the end of September I’ve had no coins in my pocket. Everything had been paid for in a contactless transaction with my card. 

Just imagine. Change like a shadowy, crepe-soled thug has sidled up and mugged me. I am a cashless Hall. Trouser pockets previously heavy with coins are now sleek and neat.

And change has happened to “vaping” and “fracking”.  We’ve learnt vaping can seriously damage you with  ‘flavourants’ like diacetyl being lethal. And now after a succession of micro-seismic ‘events’ from energy firm Cuadrilla’s fracking trials there was a recent quake close to Blackpool of 2.9, shaking houses. For the election season even the Conservatives are saying it’s over for fracking (although they privately think it’s a fracking shame.)

Just a few days ago a friend said I’d changed his mood by describing a school that had inspired me….”it was a distillation of the spirit of learning” I said. I’ve had a similar experience with our medical practice with its team of bright, healthy-looking doctors and nurses. Our world has not changed for the worse – it’s changed dramatically for the better but you need to look hard enough and celebrate the good things.

A remarkable shift in society’s attitude is towards wealth. Bill Clinton talking about what mattered in the US Presidential election of 1992 said “the economy stupid”. And it was. And he won.

Now, however, across our society wealth matters less to people than happiness. In the “work: life balance” story, life is winning. In my recent book the people I interviewed who’d started up their own businesses had not done it just to get rich. It was to create a better business, one with values, a sustainable future and something that they enjoyed.

Any change? We are changing more radically than many have imagined. When asked what matters in an election now, many people will say trust, purpose and a better world. That’s not so stupid is it?

“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. And definitely not a scam.

THIS BROKEN AND UNHAPPY WORLD

Was I dreaming or did I hear these words in a recent sermon at church? Depressingly the church tends to focus on bad news rather than on the exciting and triumphant.

The media has had an increasingly doom-ridden attitude towards our educational system. People tell me we are short-changing our children and that we are to blame.

Baloney.

This week we went to see a new school. It’s new,  in a building which opened for business this September.  No. Change that to “opened for the joy of learning”. We were blown away by the stimulating atmosphere.

I thought back to my school which I actually enjoyed. Dame Alice Owens. Founded in 1613 , in the Angel, Islington. Now relocated to Hertfordshire country side as a “partially selective” comprehensive it’s the second most successful comprehensive in GCSEs in the UK. My memory is of a slightly Victorian place where anger and scholarship were in control. It was not a place of much laughter.

In this school there’s a lot of laughter and smiling. I remembered my schooldays (“if I see a boy smiling I shall stamp on him.”)  Classroom after classroom here were crammed with infographics and stimuli. It even made me want to go back to  school and learn again. This place just made learning seem fun.

In a history classroom there was a slogan on the wall allegedly from Marilyn Monroe

“Well behaved women rarely make history”.

So here was a sense of humour and even a sense of mischief. Yet the discipline in the place is surprisingly tough. The sense of right and wrong and detention is very clear.

The acid test was that I wanted to be here learning especially things I had in my youth avoided,  like geography , physics and music.

I was struck by these infographics I kept on seeing and the stress on timelines, context and facts. Me, I love facts which are the GPS of learning, helping you get to the right place to appreciate the good things like Mozart’s genius.

As a recent author of a book on start-ups I was also surprised and pleased to find  brilliant wall charts on “What is an Entrepreneur?” in one of the corridors, So not just academic but with one foot firmly in the real world.

In the end there was a relaxed atmosphere pervasive with the thrill of learning that none of the naysayers about the teaching profession would normally  have conceded possible.

I imagine there are many schools in the UK like this, designed to create delight and astonishment in the power of bringing out the best in young people. Our world is not broken and unhappy – there are many places doing inspiring work and it’s our job as apostles of optimism to find them and celebrate them.

Anyone coming here is lucky. Excited teachers, good food, excellent facilities but most importantly we think their pupils’ potential will be realised in such an environment.  And that’s what matters.

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

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.

WE ARE NOT ALL DOOMED

I’ve had a lot of depressing e-mails from friends living abroad telling me how miserable I should be and how much more miserable I’m going to be; that a no-deal Brexit will be an economic catastrophe; that we’re all shitting ourselves, or should be.

And those who aren’t are deluding themselves, fiddling as Rome burns.
Although I was an ardent ‘remainer’, as a democrat, I recognise we lost the argument.
- I believe in international co-operation.
- I love Europe and feel very happy there.
- But I prize human spirit, enterprise and resilience above political ideology.

In the end I believe we’ll make the best of the script which, nonetheless, had it been in my power I shouldn’t have written. We need to retain our sense of humour and especially our sense of irony. The “we’re all doomed” school of thinking has no useful role to play.

We need to work on creating a new different and, possibly in the long run, better world. Here are a few things that may be different:

The Union may not survive. A pity. A blow to our vanity but if Scotland wants to leave so be it.
The farming industry may thrive, focusing on the home market. In Sussex we already have a fruit and veg entrepreneur selling delicious fresh vegetables from his range of antique horseboxes, all grown in Sussex farms. The exchange rate will make a lot of European food unaffordable.

We’ll miss trips to Europe, for the time being, particularly, in our case, Italy. But we’ll get to see more of England, Scotland and Wales, instead.

Last week we went to Rathfinny a wine estate outside Alfriston, ½ hour east of Brighton. They have 350,000 vines and are planning to have over 800,000. It’s the biggest solus-owned vineyard in Europe and, certainly, the most modern in equipment and technology. Their restaurant, overlooking their vineyards in Cradle Valley, was sensational in both value and Michelin-quality. With phenomena like this things look up.

Our sport may cheer us up too. Some brilliant footballers, golfers, cricketers, netball, rugby and hockey players. And perhaps great Bayreuth singers like Catherine Foster, the English mezzo soprano who can’t get a role in Britain, might be more welcome now.

Big institutions like banks, global corporates and supermarkets may struggle – their lives are likely to become much more complicated. My heart bleeds for them.

How bad will it be? It seems quite a lot of people are hoping it will be terrible and get even worse, much worse on the basis that this will demonstrate, in a kind of ideological masochism, the folly of leaving the EU.

Brexit may be regrettable, it may even be tricky but I refuse to believe it’s the end of our world. Enterprising entrepreneurs will do well. They always do.  We’ve got to believe not grieve, be happy and stop listening to politicians and macro-economists showing us the potential downsides. Let’s enjoy the sunshine and keep out of the rain.

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