BEWARE FAT LADIES AND ORANGE JUICE

I’ve been reading Iain Martin’s book called “Making things happen” which is about the collapse of the RBS Banking Group. It’s a bleak read because it interprets what happened with step by step superciliousness.

I’m sure Iain is a very nice man. I think he’s a clever one too. But his huge antipathy towards Fred Goodwin makes the book bloodless. Surely Goodwin was just more interesting and complex than this. In contrast read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs to see how a bully can be described.

“It aint over till the fat lady sings” was a line originated by Ralph Carpenter of the Dallas Morning News in 1976. Carpenter (possibly a Wagner lover thinking of Brunhilde) was writing about an American Football match.

In his book Martin has an elephant in the room in every chapter whom no one seems to notice. It’s that fat lady clearing her throat and opening her sheaf of music. And yikes, she’s about to sing.  I’m a bit surprised that the cast of bankers, regulators and politicians hadn’t been deafened by the sound of preparatory humming she was making.

But in most situations we face in business we seldom encounter such perfect storms that the banks faced in 2008. We just face a demoralising prospect of decline, desperation and demise. Yet the solution is to get in there before the fat lady puts on her glitzy dress and mount a planned and sustained sales drive. Cost cutting alone never does enough. You have to do something systematic about the weakening top line. Fat ladies can’t sing when you’re hitting your sales budget.

And talking a bit more about fat ladies there’s a recent novel piece of demonization. Sugar. In the 1960s Professor John Yudkin wrote a book called “Pure, white and deadly” which put the root cause of fat ladies down to their eating too much sugar. He lost that argument and fat instead became the enemy. But the devil sugar is now back under the microscope.

And I hear that fruit is bad for you, it’s full of sugar - crammed with the wretched stuff, and fruit juice is worse than Capstan Full Strength. As for five a day, forget it.  And chocolate? The “c” word is no longer crack cocaine – it’s Cadbury.

What I love most about human beings is our ability to change our minds and turn heroes into zeros and vice versa. If I were Fred Goodwin I’d launch a confectionery brand – what’s to lose?

Most of all I love our ability to re-group, prove our resilience and face down fat ladies with songs in their hearts and tell them that they will not be required, thank you.

RIGHT SON, YOU'RE NICKED

I am a criminal. I am beset with remorse and shame. Yes, after 45 pointless years of driving I’ve been done for speeding. I am going down and in my troubled dreams the judge is reaching for his black cap.

But I’m offered an alternative. Attendance at a “Speed Awareness Course” plus a small fee for the privilege. Twenty of us attend it, ironically held at Brighton Race Course. When, as we waited, someone noted there weren’t many young people there another grimly suggested the young drove much too fast to be picked up on the cameras we’d fallen foul of, all of us driving at 36mph.

The thesis the course instructors pursued was changing attitudes changed behaviour and the 4 hours or so that followed was at times subtle but mostly a crude and where necessary (in their judgement) a brutal assault on “I’m a good driver and the law is an ass” mentality. Overall it was a powerful experience. Every driver should go on one - every driver. After all when did you last read the Highway Code?

The attendees had their usual cynics – “I’d rather go to prison than do this” – (you wouldn’t, you really wouldn’t). Or the guys who were in denial of science – “it’s all very well telling me how long it takes a professional driver to stop but I know my car and my ability to react”. This person reminded me of a passenger on the London Underground on being told a delay had been caused by “someone being under a train at Arnos Grove” saying “that’s all very well but…”

What happened to most of us was we gradually absorbed the grim reality that we’d taken driving for granted for a blameless and long time, that were probably lucky not to have killed someone before now, that we probably would if we drove at more than 29mph (where there were street lights) and then we’d go to prison for a 5-14 year stretch losing our jobs, wife, family, friends, reputation and hope.

Britain’s the safest country in the world when it comes to road safety but we still kill 1,700 of each other a year. And speed is the major attributable reason for this - driving faster than our ability to stop in time. Quite simply drive at 20 mph and it will take at least 40 feet to stop if someone walks out in front of you…at 30mph that rises to 75 feet. That is fact and none of your “that’s all very well buts.”

But I want to go back to the attitude/behaviour thesis because I think it’s the other way round. If mass-behaviour changes then it’s attitudes that change. Hence recent smoking, alcohol and drug use declines. We need a behavioural tipping point.  And courses like this do just that by cramming us with a new sense of reality; by educating us, shocking us with some facts and shaming us about our ignorance of them. That’s what changes the way we do things like driving.  Because this is something most of us have simply stopped thinking about.

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?

WHY UNDERDOGS START AS FAVOURITES

In the middle of the punishingly deep pile of books I got for Christmas is Malcolm Gladwell’s latest offering “David and Goliath – underdogs, misfits and the art of battling giants”. Ever since his first book “Tipping Point” I’ve enjoyed his ironic, inquisitive style and his ability to spot the counter-intuitive. His best insight to date was of the company which spent more time and money than anyone else recruiting the best talent from the MBAs in the USA.

That company (outright victor in the war for talent) was Enron.

This book first of all describes why David, armed with the pre BCE equivalent of a .44 Magnum (his lethal sling) was the guy to bet on when faced by an overweight clown armed with sword and spear. (Even I would take on Mike Tyson if I had a gun and he didn’t.) His point is that size is not everything.  Yet all the accepted wisdom is power comes from scale. Not if you’re Indiana Jones of course…

Ask little Aldi –grocer of the year for the second year running with sales up 31.5% year on year with car parks resembling that of a posh funeral, as they themselves ironically observe, as they count the tills being filled by their middle class conquests. They and Waitrose are close contenders for the best outfit.  Their trick? Price… yes but quality too. They keep on outscoring the others for taste and quality – sixteen gold medals from the Grocer Magazine - but they’re not so good on what David Cameron, allegedly, called “green crap.” They are on the verge of doing a David on the Goliaths –Tesco/Aldi. They also have the best advertising – check it out.

It must be hateful to fight the Vietnamese and Taleban when all you have are costly tanks and stuff with your soldiers away from home when your opponents have improvised explosive devices and motor bikes so they can get home for tea.  The key words are improvisation and home.

One of his other points is the law of diminishing returns. He cites alcohol. Most doctors will tell you a glass or two of claret a day is good for you. Friends of mine have taken this advice to heart and, just to be on the safe side, have doubled the dose - to nil beneficial effect.  But carry on to a bottle or so a day and the effects are detrimental. More of the same is not a recipe for success. Balance is the key.

Back to scale.  The thought that bigger organisations are ipso facto better is what’s troubled me for ages. Our inbuilt instinct for M&As and “buy-and-build” are plain daft as anyone sitting on an ailing out of town superstore will admit. This inbuilt instinct allied to the desire consultants have to apply old business models to new situations. (Well it worked for RBS ….QED.)

That’s something fast-on-his-feet David didn’t do.

GOD BLESS US, EVERYONE

As another Christmas creaks into sight it strikes me as strange how little it changes. As I watched ‘A Christmas Carol’ on TV with Patrick Stewart as Scrooge (“beam me up Santa”) Victorian Christmas was depicted with all those same familiar urges I felt when I was small and Britain was poor – the smell of tangerines, of hot mincemeat, the sound of laughter and of singing carols like In Dulci Jubilo in which, momentarily, we all rather self-consciously utter Latin.

Those same familiar urges come back every year. Mulled wine urges. Roast potato urges. Calvados and port urges. Cracker urges…
Q. Why does Santa have three gardens?
A.  So he can ho, ho, ho.
Q. What sort of bike does Santa ride?
A. A Holly Davidson.

Nostalgia, as they say, isn’t what it used to be, except when it comes to Christmas.

Because we now live in radically changed times where life is played to new rules.  Things we no longer do or frown upon generally vary from capital punishment to fox hunting to smoking to applauding having stiff upper lips. And not so long ago many of those were normal.

We were taught to be masters and mistresses of fair play. Tribal loyalty outlawed whistleblowing. We didn’t “sneak”, complain or talk about “it” – which makes the emerging horrors of Caldecott School (gateway to Eton), a poignant example of the scale of change not least in the police’s willingness to become historians as well as custodians of the law. (It also raises a question as to the powers of observation of the seemingly intelligent Mr Clegg, a Joint Head Boy there, who was apparently completely unaware of what was going on.)

There is no such thing as “water under the bridge” any more… stones are no longer best left unturned.

Years ago I was talking to a senior academic about the huge sums paid to the college by a benefactor who was subsequently discovered to be a crook and suggesting we ought (perhaps) to return the money to his victims.

He sighed:  “My dear Richard. If we gave money back that rascals had given us over the centuries we wouldn’t exist or we’d be bankrupt. Don’t be silly”.

That was then. I’m not so sure now.

Because in today’s world the rules have changed.

The rules relate to doing whatever you can get away with to win and whatever looks good. The Charles Saatchi alleged media campaign to “whiten” the name of Nigella would be a classic example of playing a new game of media sledging.

But Nigella’s a lot prettier than Charles (I supposed I’m being un-PC saying that) and like Christmas she’s big, fun and seems just a bit naughty. I haven’t heard her sing but I bet she’s tuneful…. Eartha Kitt meets Carly Simon.

Like Christmas, icons like Nigella are timeless.

And regardless of whatever allegations, is a whole lot more inspiring than the British preparatory school system.

A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR

My favourite painter is Tintoretto. Others may have finer brushwork. Others may be more inventive, perhaps, but none can match his speed of execution and his ability to take a Bible story and give it life, earthy reality and power. So what did he really make of Christmas and the events leading up to and succeeding it? First the Annunciation, where it all started, with the angel Gabriel, for all the world like a hairy biker astride a Harley Davidson surrounded by uncontrollable cherubs. He’s crashing through and into the wreck of a squat where Mary sits and giving her the shocking news straight: that the divine bun is in the virgin oven.

Second a detail of the Adoration of the Shepherds. In this, the shepherds reaching upwards towards mother and baby and the placid solidity of the animals emitting normal smelly farmyard smells in what was clearly as an abnormal event  – the ability of Tintoretto the storyteller shines out. Unlike so many artists he’s in it for the news angle, for the headline story and it’s this and the immediacy of breaking news that strikes a chord. Tintoretto is king of the hashtag way ahead of his time. Here he is trending Christmas.

And finally in yet another version of the last supper (Tintoretto painted six of them that we know about) where his take on the story varied from “Board Meeting” to “Booze-Up” to, in this one, “Brawl” with Christ as referee  - ”back to your corners boys and come out fighting”.

In 2014 may you all share just a little of that verve for storytelling and seeing new ways of telling an old, old story so as to grab your audience and have them asking for more.

Become that presenter with the appetite to do what ad man Ed McCabe once described as the truth about innovation:

“There’s nothing new under the sun but there’s always a better way.”

Enjoy a happy Christmas, a wonderful New Year and a better way forward.

EXCUSE ME WHILE I DREAM

There are moments when you are so absorbed in something, be it sport or a film or a book, that you lose all sense of time, space and identity. You are, as it were lost in a dream or – to use that lovely old fashioned word – in a reverie.

Losing oneself happened to me at a new play, “Lizzie Siddal” at the Arcola. My goddaughter Emma West plays the lead so, of course, I’m biased and I was likely to be looking at her acting to see her technique, rather like watching a horse doing dressage. Hallo horse. Hallo footwork. But I got lost in the idea of the play, of the intelligent woman being absorbed by the power of Rossetti, only to be ultimately disillusioned as his passionate fire for her became a smouldering ember. As she observes, art in the end is about smudges on paper, just an illusion. Truth is not beauty… not as Keats meant it. Art like acting isn’t real. Emma West does not die. She goes home to a pizza and a glass of Chianti and an episode of "Game of Thrones” – she’s an actress.

The ability to live a part convincingly and to dream along with that performance may seem a far cry from the world of work yet even there I believe in the need to be able to visualise, to see what a scenario might play out like – not logically but emotionally too.

Our experience shows it’s easier to do something so long as people don’t get involved. Jack Welch of General Electric was desperate to eliminate the human interface in customer service. The problem with people he reckoned was they were erratic, subjective and unreliable.  And that’s precisely why we need to have unreasonable people dealing with unreasonable customers. That’s how magic is created. Not by drones serving clones.

Cognosis (a management consultancy) had what Stefan Stern who writes for the FT ironically noted was unusual for their breed. It was an original idea.

And it was this - that a strategy would within a business have a much greater chance of succeeding if the people in the business expected to make it work were excited by it. If in other words other than merely understanding it they got lost in its possibilities. A strategy that was a vision that was potentially and emotionally seen as a real prospect not just some numbers on a spread sheet.

Time, I think, for businessmen to have the odd reverie. Time to dream. Time to imagine.

It’s good to see that even the Scots get it