Sterling Performance

When you are about to step into the unknown, it’s a good thing to plan ahead.

Polar explorer Jim McNeill is a great advocate of thorough planning. He walks across the wastes of the Arctic for a living, running the Ice Warrior project – an initiative to monitor climatic change in the ice and the plants and animals it supports.

McNeill is accompanied on these expeditions by volunteers who pay £12,000 each to trek through the ice wastes at minus 40°C, sometimes marvelling at the Polar landscape and just as often trudging through blinding snow, dragging 300lb sleds behind them. They will also be on the look-out for Polar bears, whose numbers are part of their job to monitor. 

McNeill will use this project as the springboard to reach the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility — the point furthest away from any landmasses in the Arctic Ocean. It’s never been done before. The trip will cover 750miles, travelling at between three and 20 miles a day, depending on the conditions and the terrain.

Speaking at the Charlotte St Hotel in London this week, McNeill explained that he is a compulsive planner and this is not such a bad thing in an environment where anything can happen. (more…)

Who is going to pay for Britain’s decade of sport? There may be national pride in hosting so many tournaments but they rely on sponsorship and that means unprecedented demands on companies for their cash and goodwill. Are marketing budgets big enough to pay for it all?

England won the bid to hold the rugby union world cup in 2015 because its promises to attract sponsorship exceeding the rival nations’, but it will be competing for corporate backing with a host of other events. 

Before the first ball is kicked at Twickenham, Britain will hold the Ryder Cup golf tournament in Wales next year, the Olympics in 2012, the rugby league world cup the following year and the Commonwealth Games in 2014. Whether or not the football world cup comes to England in 2018, the country is hosting the cricket world cup the following year.  (more…)

Throughout history, there has been a pretty simple contract between the generations. Parents invest in their children, and they keep working until they die. The Baby Boomers have changed all that. The Boomers now expect their children to look after them while they enjoy thirty years of knitting or playing golf in genteel retirement.

This is a very good arrangement for the Boomers, not quite so good for Generation Y, who may increasingly be asking Y me?

Generation-Y-me has got seriously unlucky. Here are six of the worst for starters:

1. Pensions: the Boomers are happily feathering their nests, and living longer. 80 years ago, retirement lasted for five years. Medical advances are making it an expensive 30 year burden. Pensions legislation means that pensioners get first call on the company’s resources, screwing the current workforce, thank you very much. Meanwhile Generation-Y-me can kiss goodbye to final salary pensions: they are being left to fend for themselves with defined contribution schemes.
2. Fiscal policy: government debt is now the worst in history, even worse than after World War II. It is even worse than published, once you allow for the obligations of PFI and public sector pensions which the government keeps off balance sheet. The government has not just sold the family silver, it has mortgaged the house as well. Generation-Y-me has been left to pick up the tab.
3. Inflation: this gave Boomers a huge one-off gain as property prices soared while the value of their mortgages was eroded by inflation through the 70s and 80s. In the low inflation world Generation-Y-me is faced with huge property costs and not much in the way of good saving or investment (anyone want a good interest rate from an Icelandic bank, AIG or Northern Rock?)
4. Carbon: the Boomers happily used fossil fuels for their cars, flights and holiday jaunts. Fossil fuels are going, global warming is coming and Generation-Y-me can clean up the mess. Thanks.
5. Political power: the Boomers are a huge generation. Do you really think they are going to vote for lower pensions, medical care or less free transport? Or will they let Generation-Y-me rack up debts at university (free for the boomers) and ask Generation-Y-me to produce the taxes to support Boomers’ retirements. So much for parents investing in their children.
6. Globalisation has hit Generation Y-me hard: offshoring takes away many jobs. Immigration increases competition for jobs (lower wages) and for housing (higher prices). The smarter Y-me types will use globalisation to go where it suits them best, leaving the Boomers to fend for themselves. If that happens, the Boomers can rediscover the joys of stacking shelves at the supermarket. Many of us would prefer that to the horrors of golf for thirty years.

(Pic: mtr0212 cc2.0)

Big Tobacco takes a bashing in these recruitment spoofs. But in a climate where layoffs still persist, would people still be picky about the industry? (And where does this leave tanning salon employees?)

Who’d have guessed it? Turns out that speculation, not supply and demand, was behind last year’s oil price spikes.

Taste, the final frontier: Star Trek unveils its cologne, Red Shirt.

Who’s up for taking on ITV? Europe’s Apple boss, Pascal Cagni? HMV’s Simon Fox? One thing’s for sure, it won’t be former Johnston Press chairman Roger Parry — or any other person who’s not been asked, for that matter…

BA scraps meals on its short-haul flights. One less reason to choose it over budget flyers, then.

Brazen Careerist has a great post on what Generation Z (born from the mid-1990s onwards) will be like at work. It’s so interesting it’s worth a full read, but here’s a summary:

1. Gen Z won’t be team players. The argument is that the tendency to certain traits is cyclical and skips a generation, so the team-centric Gen Y employees will be followed by individualists.
2. Gen Z will be more self-directed than Gen Y. Parents, apparently, are less inclined to enrol their children in all sorts of improving classes and are allowing Gen Z’ers more unstructured time.
3. Gen Z will be even faster at processing information. According to neuroscientist Dr Gary Small, who has written about the ‘iBrain‘, technology’s kick-started the evolution of the human mind that is ‘creating new neural pathways and altering brain activity at a biochemical level.’
4. Gen Z will be smarter. Experimentation with neuro-enhancers such as ADHD medicine could also contribute to their capacity to learn — although Brazen’s quick to point out that continued use will do damage. She quotes a much-quoted British Medical Association view that “universal access to enhancing interventions would bring up the baseline level of cognitive ability, which generally seems to be a good thing.” Brazen predicts that Gen Y, not wanting to be left behind, will “be getting on the Adderall bandwagon to stay competitive the way Baby Boomers today get on Facebook.”

Comments following the post largely suggest it’s spot on among parents of Gen Z’ers. It raises a lot of questions, too. Here are a few.

The team-work question. What drives team work? Is Gen Y really “so team oriented that they often feel that nothing is getting accomplished at work unless there has been a team meeting about it”? Is it possible that organisational culture (first in schools, then at work) is the reason we are more, or less, team-driven? (In which case, our ability to work remotely bears out the argument that Gen Z will have to be more self-directed and individualist.) Belbin’s study of team roles include ‘types’ that are more and less people-centric and suggest the tendency to teamwork is personal rather than generational.

The clever question. If Gen Z is to be smarter, workplace hierarchies — already going the way of the Dodo — will not hold up. But does more homework equate to more education, and does this translate into a smarter generation? Is the human mind altering as significantly as suggested, or do we just learn different things in a different way? How does this square with Malcolm Gladwell’s demystification of ‘genius’ in favour of hard work, or Geoff Colvin’s arguments about talent vs. ‘deliberate practice‘? If people are getting smarter, why is there talk of wider access to neuro-enhancers to bring up baseline?

The big question. How different is one generation from another? Does human — and workplace — behaviour alter fundamentally from one age to the next? Arguably, our behaviour is shaped by work and by the people surrounding us in that environment and not the other way around.

(Image: lulugal0870, CC2.0)

Some startling findings from Hackett Group: “[Our] study found that only 22 percent of companies say they can forecast mid-term (2-3 months out) operating cash flow to within 5 percent accuracy.

Previous Hackett research also showed that only one in three companies can forecast earnings to within 5 percent accuracy, and less than half can make the same claim about sales forecasting.”

True, Hackett is a consultancy that specialises in advice on finance functions - so it has an interest in painting a bleak picture. But even if their results are only half true, it’s bad. Very bad, in fact, since cash flow failures are perhaps the major cause of companies going unexpectedly bust.

Part of the problem is that any forecast is going to be, to some extent, guesswork. But while sales managers might be forgiven an unduly optimistic outlook, the finance guys in your business really ought to be a bit better at their own prognostications.

But the status and visibility of accountants in business is also a factor. In the US, the importance of the bean-counter seems to have been widely accepted. According to “Forbes” magazine, accountancy is one of the professions actually doing well in the recession. Over here? More of a mixed bag, I think.

One the plus side, the accountancy institutes continue to plug away at the “value-adding business partner” side of the role - and all power to them. The finance director is increasingly seen as a co-pilot for the chief executive (especially in larger companies).

And the fact that finance, risk and accounting - the finance function’s pet subjects - are all high on the business agenda means there are few senior managers these days who choose not to listen closely to what finance has to say.

But how are you doing on that front? If you’re an entrepreneur, have you recruited a senior accountant to help keep the business on the straight and narrow? Have you gone for a strong all-rounder rather than a cheap-as-chips calculator monkey?

If you’re a manager, do you seek counsel from the number-crunchers? And if you do, is it more than just checking your sums or ticking decision-making boxes? The answer to all those questions should be “yes”.

Of course, those options might not be open to you. Despite the growing numbers of accountants in the UK, the fact is we need more (well, more of the really clever ones, anyway). According to a recent survey of businesses by KPMG, “Difficulty in finding and retaining skilled finance professions is the biggest barrier to change (55 per cent) within the finance function.”

So… I guess we need to invest in training and remunerating the spreadsheet jockeys. My old history professor - who warned in 1990 that growth in the profession was spiralling out of control and would leave every man, woman and child in the UK bean-counting by 2050 - would be turning in his grave.

(If you’re interested in how the big companies do it, McKinsey recently issued a study on finance function change.)

(Pic: carnaval 08 cc2.0)

The devil makes work for idle hands, so the saying goes — and it’s no less true in the workplace. In certain instances, employees would rather do anything than the tasks they’ve been given. Managers often look upon staff misbehaviour as proof of their very existence — someone needs to crack the whip.

But it’s possible — likely — that  misbehaviour is actually a symptom of bad management. Here are three classic employee crimes and the possible management failings they could represent.

1. Time wasting at work. This can be the result of not setting employees clear goals. Often staff are given tasks that don’t have a direct link to the end goal and so they don’t act on their own initiative. If you set a salesperson lead-generation targets, once those targets are met, that salesperson may feel justified in slacking off, even though none of those leads converted to an actual sale.
2. Pulling sickies. Employees may try to swing the lead if they don’t think managers are paying enough attention to how many sick days they take. It’s important to log employees’ sick days. Twice, I’ve had employees who made this assumption to their cost: one called in on a Monday morning with food poisoning too many times in the same month. Another called in sick after I left him the previous evening drinking with the entourage of Shaun Ryder, of the 1990s band Happy Mondays. Both of these employees found work elsewhere soon after.
3. Moaning about pay. No one thinks they are paid enough, but vocalising their concerns is not good for office morale. Communicating with staff about what the company is trying to achieve and their individual role helping the company to succeed will go some way in explaining why they earn what they do. Leave them with the feeling there is an opportunity to increase their pay if they deserve it.

The underlying cause of all these employee crimes is management that is taking too much on themselves, not delegating responsibilities and not reviewing employees performance — all common management mistakes.

Here are some essentials for managers to address these problems: (more…)

Americans are quite simply better at business networking than Britons — and just about any other nationality, actually. So it should come as no surprise that they’re streets ahead of the UK when it comes to using Web 2.0 for business connections.

In the US, business networking site LinkedIn seems to be massively popular. Creating a visible and extensive network shows you’re well connected. People use it to seek out potential new partners or research job applicants. A smart profile page is a must. And many businesses are targeting their LinkedIn profiles at customers and recruits as a due diligence and advertising tool.

Here in the UK? Not so much. When I took up consulting, I figured it couldn’t hurt to brush up my LinkedIn profile. I invited anyone in my contacts book who was also on LinkedIn to join my network. In the invitation, I asked how much they used the site. Typical comments included:

“I have never used it — in the last month I have had a friend and a colleague invite me to join them but that is the first I have heard of it.” In other words, this mid-market finance director is an accidental member.

“My husband says he checks it more frequently and is amazed by his growing network — I don’t think he’s working hard enough… So the short answer is that I don’t find it remotely useful, although I enjoy getting the odd invitation out of the blue — from you (good) and from assorted PRs who I can’t remember (not so good). I can’t quite bring myself to press the ‘I don’t know xyz’ button as it seems rather brutal.” This magazine editor is being terribly British about her network — but rather dislikes the whole notion.

“I only use Linkedin occasionally to keep in touch with certain colleagues that have left [previous employer] and to find out where they are currently based.” So this senior executive with a body working to deliver London 2012 basically uses it as a less titillating Friends Reunited.

That’s not to say everyone who replied was negative about business networking online. But during this recession, a sure-fire way of finding out that someone I know has been made redundant is that I receive an invitation to join their LinkedIn network.

In other words: we Brits rather reluctantly think it’s something we should be doing when our situation is dire - but not if we can possibly help it. The Yanks, meanwhile, are getting down to business. (Although, to be fair, redundancies have helped boost US LinkedIn activity, too.)

This keenness for networking in the US has long been the case, of course. My late father, who in today’s parlance would be called a “human resources consultant”, used to do a presentation (on acetates, natch) about networking that began with a map of the world. An arrow ran from the west coast of the US  to Japan. The arrow grew in thickness on its journey east, starting as a point in California and ending with a massive wedge in Japan.

“This illustrates, for different cultures, how long you have to know someone before they’ll do business with you,” he’d explain. “In San Diego, you walk in off the street and you’re down to brass tacks immediately. By New York, you need a coffee to feel comfortable with a new associate. In London, it’s probably half-way through the main course at lunch before you talk turkey. And in Japan, you need three or four dinners before people are willing to do business.”I think those cultural lessons have translated directly to Web 2.0.

So if anyone had experiences of social and business networking communities online in Asia — drop me a line. Via LinkedIn, perhaps!

(Photo: antwerpenR, CC2.0)

For most managers, there is little that can be achieved solely with the resources at their direct control. You must be able to influence others to get anything worthwhile achieved, and that influence is based on strong and trusted relationships.

Throughout my corporate career I shunned relationship building –- particularly with people I didn’t immediately like. I viewed it as unnecessary and political.

I believed that gaining support for my proposals should be based on the quality of my work and not whether I knew my boss’s boss well enough.

I was wrong.

As a consultant I now understand that appreciating others’ agenda, being of help to them and identifying opportunities to help you both achieve your aims is the way to get things done.

Here are 7 lessons I have learned over the past couple of years: (more…)

The US reaction to the Enron collapse was the stifling Sarbanes Oxley legislation. Britain does things differently, preferring the soft law of best-practice guidelines, but we do it more often. It is just six years since the Higgs code was imposed on UK companies but already it is being reviewed for a third time. 

The code designed to stop a British Enron proved no more effective than the US legislation in preventing a banking crisis so the UK is making its soft law harder.

The Financial Reporting Council, guardian of Britain’s governance codes, has its own agenda for telling chairmen how to run their boards and telling boards how to control their chairmen, but as warned on this blog when Sir David Walker produced his review on banks’ governance, there is now a movement to make all companies subscribe to the bank rules. 

Even though Walker produced his interim review only in July 2009 and will not finalise it until the autumn, FRC is now wondering whether to impose it on all listed companies or just a sub-group such as the FTSE 100 or 350. 

The FRC’s report on its Review of the Effectiveness of the Combined Code, published at the end of July, lifts the sections of Walker Review it thinks could be suitable for non-financial companies. That includes defining the roles of non-executives, senior independent directors and the chairman. It spells out their time commitment (two-thirds of the chairman’s week and 30 or more days for non-execs). It also advocates the annual re-election of committee chairmen, training and development for non-execs and the creation of risk committees producing their own annual reports. (more…)