This is not your father’s Mail strike

I am sitting in a hotel in Birmingham, watching the live press conference where the CWU is announcing that the planned UK postal strike will go ahead from tomorrow (Thursday, 22 October 2009). There is the typical bluster of Unions to Employers rhetoric, and I have little interest in the details of the strike.

The point I want to make here is that the parties involved – specifically the unions – have failed to understand that the world has changed. I was speaking to someone earlier this week who lived through the postal strikes in the early 1970s. He was at boarding school, and the postal strikes effectively cut them off from the world. There were very few private couriers then, and they were hugely expensive (he remembers the first class stamp cost 4p, and a courier would charge over 40p!). Postal strikes in the 1970s could cripple the country and devastate the economy.

Today, strikes will do little more give the economy a kick in the shins and a slight bruising. But, the ageing dinosaur that is Royal Mail has not been trusted for some time now.

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His finest hour

One year ago, Gordon Brown was being hailed by many as the saviour of the world’s banking system. On October 14 2008 Hank Paulson, the US Treasury secretary of the time, announced a rescue plan for America’s stricken banks. Germany, Italy, France and Spain had just done the same. All the initiatives had something in common: they looked very similar to the move announced a week earlier by the British prime minister, says George Parker of the Financial Mail.

It intrigues me that this is one of the political PR gaffs of the decade. On the face of it Gordon Brown may have saved the world for the brink of a financial catastrophe. Time will tell… Yet he has been unable to capitalise on this and be seen as a leader who acted decisively. Part of the problem is in Mr Brown’s behaviour. Finance is his natural habitat and it is even argued that, at the time of the crisis, he was more interested in settling long-term questions of financial reform than the nitty-gritty of winning a general election.

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Is the economy in for a V, a U or a W? HSBC Chief thinks it’s a W

There is a lot of talk about recovery from the recession, greenshoots and even a new bull market. So I’ve been talking to a few heads of business about how business is going. There are a few outstanding results. A Pharma company that we work with is ahead of target for the second year and experiencing double digit growth. Even some of the specialist FS companies and banks that we work for are doing well. But I’m also finding an increasing number of businesses that are telling me that August and September have been their worst trading months ever. It’s almost as if a year on from the credit crisis, the wave that washed over the financial world has receded and many businesses and consumers are viewing the destruction around them and it’s not a pretty sight. During an interview with The Financial Times The Michael Geoghegan, head of Britain’s biggest bank warned we could soon be heading into a second recession and he fears the upturn will be short lived. He believes that the economy could follow a W-shaped trajectory, with the rebound going into reverse and growth retreating back into the red. Our research suggest that he is right, unfortunately we will not be going back to the normal before the credit crunch. There is now a new normal and bold, creative leadership is required.

A Talent Exodus ahead? Surviving the upturn

I am becoming increasingly concerned for my top corporate clients. As we rumble past the bottom of the business cycle and begin the long upwards climb towards recovery, many companies are starting to congratulate themselves. “Well done, we survived a Great Recession”. But I fear their celebrations may be premature.

Of course, the recovery will be slow, and that’s a factor to be considered when doing projections and budgets for the year ahead. But my fear is about their people. Readers of this blog will probably be in agreement with one of our key beliefs at TomorrowToday: people are central to both the long-term success of an organisation as well as its competitive advantage.

If that is true, then companies will be in significant trouble if they lose (or get rid of) their people. And that’s the problem I see brewing. Companies have had some tough years recently, and have asked a lot of their people. And, in return, they haven’t really been treating them well. Some leaders have even said this out loud: it’s great that the job market has turned in the employer’s favour again, and our people have nowhere to go… we can treat them how we like now. OK, maybe that’s a touch overstated, but I know of many companies where that sentiment is true.

And it isn’t going to last. Sometime soon the head hunters are going to start up again, and the phones are going to start ringing. And when they do, I fear that many corporates are going to see a talent exodus. They haven’t done anything these past few years to show loyalty, or go “above and beyond” for their staff, so now they’ll reap the whirlwind.

If you’re a company that has done some good things for your staff, now would be a good time to remind them of that fact! And start your “employee engagement and retention” programmes in earnest!

It’s gratifying that I was recently sent some really good research from Deloitte that takes my gut feel fear and puts some solid research behind it. You might enjoy (or be scared by) reading these reports:

• Where Did Our Employees Go? Examining the rise in voluntary turn over during economic recoveries
• Heading Off a Resume Tsunami: Act Now to Avoid a Future Retention Problem or Worry About It If and When It Hits?
• Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy: Part 1
• Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy: Part 2
• Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy: Part 3
• Threading the Talent Needle: What global executives are saying about people and work

Proof we had a Billboard

At the beginning of September I wrote of the billboard we got through a barter with INM Outdoor. Edward’s comment made me smile as he asked what we were doing with ‘old technology’ being a company that explores an emerging world of possibilities? Other than the fact that we swapped some of our time, for some of their space, there wasn’t really another reason for doing it.

We did all wonder what would come of our 2 weeks of space? We made sure the call center was open 24 hours a day and bought triple our normal bandwidth to deal with the large volume of e-mail, web and blog hits we were expecting. Of course none of that happened. Other than a supplier’s wife mailing me to say she’d seen it, I’m not sure we had any response. Doesn’t mean that there wasn’t anything useful about it? Just means we didn’t get to hear about it.

Anyway our 2 weeks are up on Peter Place, and I’ve been meaning to post a pic as proof that we did have one.

Check out the security we had on it : ) Electric and metal fence. Can’t be too careful with our well designed billboard.

Oh and that’s me, to prove I at least saw it.

Conferences of the future – more online / more connecting

New and ever improving telecommunication technologies have improved how we communicate. From the first telegrams to virtual reality holographic conference rooms, we’ve come a long way. The key now is not so much the technology (we have the technical ability to put a 3-d representation of a person live on stage anywhere in the world, after all). Of course, we still need better, faster and cheaper broadband to be more evenly spread around the world, but that will happen – sooner rather than later. It’s now more about our acceptance of these technologies, and the user friendliness of their application.

It won’t be too long before a significant number of our conferences go fully digital. That is, the speakers and delegates will all hook up to the Internet, and participate digitally. This will take many forms, the best of which will include video walls and full interactivity.

There are many reasons to go this route, including: making it easier for people to work from home, reducing commuting time, office space, the need for conference rooms (which often stand empty for long periods of time – especially the big auditoriums), reducing the number of flights around the world and the amount spent on corporate conferencing. So, save money, reduce pollution, save time… why would we not do it?

Of course, what we lose is the time between sessions. Conferences are a lot more than just information transfer meetings. Lots of networking happens, and relationship development. It’s often the time between formal sessions that is most important. We can’t change this, and virtual conferences will not replace this aspect.

However, this means that those people who put conferences together need to know exactly WHY they need to get people together physically. There are good reasons to do this – but these need to find their way into the design of the conferences themselves. This is a challenge for the next few years for this industry.

Lessons from the Titanic

“Today the balance of advantage may be shifting…Governments have been rescuing companies they consider too big to fail… The recession is squeezing out smaller and less well-connected firms” says the The Economist in their leading article this week, titled “Big is Back”, The article argues that back in the 1990’s, with the advent of the internet, big companies were under attack by smaller nimbler companies and argues that now big companies are back in the driving seat. To support this notion, the article notes that between 1974 and 1998, GDP produced by big industrial companies fell by half between from 36% to 17%. This statistic is misleading as it has less to do with big companies becoming less dominant during this period and reflects more the shift away from an industrial driven world towards the rise of the knowledge companies such as banks and IT companies. During the same period the GDP contribution from knowledge based companies increased dramatically and today the knowledge sector now contributes 75% and 79% of GDP in the UK and USA respectively.

At the moment though there is a fascination with the BIG and a massive fear of their failure. This is not surprising. Big companies provide large amounts of tax revenues, employ large numbers of people and in many instances are the source of huge national pride. So the motivations and politics behind keeping flailing big companies afloat are huge. Governments are pumping billions into propping up big companies, their investment in them now is so huge that they can’t afford for big companies to fail. The question at hand now though, is this fuelling a virtuous or a vicious cycle. How much longer can this course of action be sustained and at what price will western governments continue to protect big companies? Western governments appear to be behaving more like the captain of the Titanic before it struck an iceberg – stoking the engine to get more power out of it and racing across across an ocean they know is littered with obstacles. There is now a danger of artificially maintaining companies that have become ineffective and inefficient in the new world of work. Let’s not forget that if big is back, a notion the article seems to support as a good development, then why is it that the economies that are rebounding fastest such as China and South Korea are those dominated by small companies?

Rather than continuing to bail out big and potentially ineffective companies, governments need to be removing the burdens and barriers which prevent entrepreneurs from starting businesses and turning small companies into big effective ones. It is on this last point that I do agree with the Economist

Seeing the world through your customer’s eyes – your key to growing your business

I regularly write articles for magazines and journals. Some of these really strike a chord, and just “work”. Here is a recent article that has been getting a lot of comment, and has been helpful to business leaders trying to cope with the economic downturn. See the original article at The Entrepreneur magazine SA, or download a PDF copy of it here.

Seeing the world through your customer’s eyes – your key to growing your business
By Dr Graeme Codrington
Entrepreneur Magazine, July 2009

In turbulent times such as these, only those companies that can prove they have real value to offer will survive. Yet, in tough times, most companies tend to focus more on their internal systems and processes than on what their customers are looking for. Seeing the world through your customer’s eyes is essential for success, especially during a downturn.

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Why Generation X has the right kind of leaders for today

I recently discovered an author and generational expert, Tammy Erickson. Her book, “Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work” (Buy it at Amazon or Kalahari) is really good, and she has a new one coming out at the end of this year. She does a lot more with generations than a lot of the pop psychologists who have picked up on the “Gen Y” trend recently.

She recently wrote a thought provoking article for the Harvard Business Review blog on why she believes Generation X has just the kind of leaders that the world needs today. Read her original article here, or my extract (and slight adaptation of it) below:

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The future of the global economy – see the encouraging trends

The New York Times website recently carried an amazing interactive graph showing the last 40 years of economic indicators from the OECD countries. It’s fascinating reading…. er, watching. The key point they’re trying to make is that industrial production usually picks up after a recovery begins, whereas indicators like the stock market and consumer confidence normally pick up before a recovery becomes obvious.

And, if that trend has been well established over 40 years, it’s good news for us right now. The indicators that normally precede the economic data are all turning up in a big way.

But check out the way in which this graph illustrates this. It’s available here.

CEO’s views on leadership in Tough times

Here are some quotes from the CEO’s of leading companies illustrating their views of leadership during the recession:

Keep faith with the future
If you don’t invest in the future and don’t plan for the future, there won’t be one.— George Buckley, chairman, president, and CEO of 3M

Confront reality
Always question whether the “halo effect” of a business or business situation is blinding you to what lies on the horizon.—Herbert Henkel, chairman and CEO of Ingersoll Rand

Build and protect the culture
Stay focused on culture, people, and values: it’s the area most likely to get compromised in this environment.—Eric Foss, chairman and CEO of Pepsi Bottling Group

At board meetings, put strategy center stage
The board has been heavily involved in strategy formulation with me, and we have a better strategy because of it. — Bill Nuti, chairman and CEO of NCR

Be transparent with employees
The only way to address uncertainty is to communicate and communicate. And when you think you’ve just about got to everybody, then communicate some more.—Terry Lundgren, chairman, president, and CEO of Macy’s

Be transparent with investors
Our policy is: “If in doubt, communicate.” We always want to conduct our business with integrity and forthrightness.—Ron Sugar, chairman and CEO of Northrop Grumman

How to motivate talented people in tough times – a story from Time Warner

Harvard Business Press is releasing a well timed book called Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down by Sylvia A. Hewlett in October 2009. I’ve been able to gain access to an excerpt from the book which provides and example of what Time Warner is doing to keep staff motivated. It’s a great example of what companies can do during the recession to keep their talented staff motivated. Best of all it’s simple, costs little and is getting good results. You can read the excerpt below and look out for the book when it is published in October

Time Warner has embraced a high-level, high-touch, low-cost program as part of an overall effort to help raise morale and engage employees. The media company’s Chairman and CEO Jeffrey L. Bewkes hosts Skip-Level Lunches with small groups of employees from across Time Warner’s corporate offices in New York City. Approximately every four weeks, Bewkes sits down with ten to twelve individuals for a two-hour lunch, talks candidly about his plans for the organization, answers questions, and listens to employees’ thoughts and perspectives. Human resources and department heads choose the lunch guests. They select employees who do not report directly to the CEO and usually have little or no access to him. Although the guest list is always diverse—ranging from senior vice presidents to administrative assistants—attendees are typically high performers and high-potential employees. They are also seen as “connectors” and “influencers” — well-respected employees who are likely to share their lunch experience and the CEO’s perspective with colleagues.

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A changing global landscape

The RBS Economic Unit in conjunction with The Economist have just completed a report on ‘Exploring the Changing Global Landscape for UK Companies.’ This is an independent report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, providing you with insight into the latest trends and opportunities in global trade. It makes interesting reading given the current economic climate. You can download the complete report here or read the headline results below:

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Jim Collins on why companies fail

Jim Collins, author of the best sellers “Good to Great” (buy at Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net) and “Built to Last” (buy at Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net) has now turned his attentions to failed companies (he does have a lot to choose from right now). Anyway, his new book is “How The Mighty Fall” (buy at Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net).

Here is a review from The Economist:

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Keeping Employees Motivated During a Recession

I’m a big fan of BNET it’s a great source for business ideas and thought leaders and I’d encourage you to use them as a resource. But I came across this videocast on their site today which was so far off the mark that I had to comment.

In the video Sumi Des interview Caty Everett, Vice President of Alliance Coaching, on how to get more from dissengaged workers. She’s right – two thirds of workers are dissengaged, it’s a huge problem costing the USA about $350 billion and the UK £30 billion per year in lost productivity. Now Caty puts forward that improving engagement is as “basic as having one-on-ones…asking people what motivates them and what they enjoy about their job” so good so far but as Sumi puts it what if “your hands are tied and you can’t give them what they are looking for?” Caty responds by saying she believes that it’s enough to have “Started a dialogue” and that you need to manage expectations…say things like “I hear you, but not sure we can focus on that now… got my feelers out for you… you don’t have to give them an immediate solution”

Oh come on! As Bruno (aka Ali G / Sacha Baron Cohen) would say this is soooo yesterday’s approach to management. Today’s employees have heard this all before – coaching and 1-on-1’s – the “we’ve heard you now so get on with your job” no longer cuts it, especially not with Gen X and Gen Y workers, who seek instant gratification in their work now.

Coaching and 1-on-1s are important don’t get me wrong but if you want to get your employees more engaged and get more from less, then you need to be creating a deep rich culture that connects with people’s value systems, it’s about creating a tribe culture through regular, informal, company meetings and celebrating mistakes and not just success. It’s about building fun and even a little zaniness into the workplace. if you want to get more from less you need to be tapping into people’s value systems…Zappos is a company that appears to get this right. The Zappos management team got their workers to come up with their own company values and they didn’t come up with lame ones like trust, integrity and honesty, which lets be frank are values that everyone expects. They came up with this list and it forms the bed rock of their “tribe culture”.:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10 Be Humble

New workers are even bribed with cash to leave Zappos if they feel they can’t live these values. And the results:

- over $1 billion in sales within 8 years… not bad for a online shoe retailer!

Check out some of the activities they get up to in the Zappos as they live these values.

If you want to get more from less and improve engagement with your workers then you need to connect with people on a more personal level and to treat your staff like adults and partners who you need to get you through the recession and not like kids who you sit down with have a one-on-one and say “we hear you but can’t do much about it because our hands are tied”

Take a feather out of Zappos’s cap and create a tribe culture. What they are doing is fun, inexpensive oh and by the way Zappos customers love them!

The war for talent is still on – and it’s going to get worse

At TomorrowToday, we are predicting that the recession is only exacerbating the long term trend of companies needing to battle for the talented and appropriately skilled employees they need in order to be successful. We are particularly concerned of a talent exodus as soon as the recession begins to end – your best employees who are sticking it out now, surviving your bad recession-time employee engagement policies, are likely to up and off when the head hunters start calling.

But there is a talent shortage even now, in the midst of recession.

Are you ready to keep fighting the battle for top talent?

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The 100 Euro Note

Received this via e-mail today. Would anyone care to comment…..?

“It is the month of August, on the shores of the Black Sea. It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. It is tough times, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town.

He enters the only hotel, lays a 100 Euro note on the reception counter, and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one.

The hotel proprietor takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the butcher.

The Butcher takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the pig grower.

The pig grower takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the supplier of his feed and fuel.

The supplier of feed and fuel takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the town’s prostitute that in these hard times, gave her “services”
on credit.

The hooker runs to the hotel, and pays off her debt with the 100 Euro note to the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there.

The hotel proprietor then lays the 100 Euro note back on the counter so that the rich tourist will not suspect anything.

At that moment, the rich tourist comes down after inspecting the rooms, and takes his 100 Euro note, after saying that he did not like any of the rooms, and leaves town.

No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now without debt, and looks to the future with a lot of optimism.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is doing business today and the main reason thatthe rest of the world is now ‘messed’ up!”

The Myth of the Rational Buyer

What if what we understood about marketing wasn’t true? This is how the article from Fast Company, The Myth of the Rational Buyer: How too much thinking can hurt your brand, begins.

The author Mark Dziersk suggests that companies spend 95% of their time fussing over the 5% that the consumer thinks about when it comes to purchasing behaviour.

And as he points out, the average hypermarket in the US, carries more than 167 000 sku’s (units), compared to 40 000 in that late 1950’s. That’s a lot of product to choose from. And we’re missing what goes into consumer behaviour, then we’d better start doing things differently.

Read the full article here.

Three things to do during the recession

I had a meeting yesterday with Sharon Kersten, career banker, twitcher extraordinaire (see her blog on birding) and business guru. I always enjoy catching up with Sharon as I know that I will leave with new ideas and yesterday I got a gem. She has identified 3 things that companies need to be doing now:

1. plan and implement actions that prepare you for the upturn
2. focus on building corporate muscle – focus on your strengths and “train/workout” to become stronger and fitter
3. make your competitors hurt – the pie may have shrunk but now is a great time to implement strategies that grow your market share, especially as competitors hanker down.

Three straight-forward strategies to implement, start small but aim big…be corporate courageous, make a difference

cheers Dean

Forbes says recession will be over next month

The research team at Forbes.com reckon that the signs are good that we will have a sharp V shaped downturn, and that we’re now at the bottom. Read their justification for this bold view at their website, or below.

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ZAPPOS – delivering the WOW factor through service

Tony Hsieh, the 35 year old boss of Zappos.com, an online shoe retailer, has an ambitious goal. He aims to offer world beating customer service, no matter what industry Zappos expands into, be it shoes, hotels or airlines. So far Tony Hsieh is doing incredibly well. As other retailer suffer during the recession, Zappos just rang up a $1 billion sales.

Started in 1999, Zappos places great emphasis on company culture and core values. The company publishes a “Culture Book” annually that is made up of contributions from employees describing what the company culture means to them. The core value is to “deliver ‘wow’ through service.” These are the ten core values that Zappos employees live by:

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Green shoots of hope

Times are tough, and it’s easy to feel down when thinking about business at the moment. I know that in hard times there are opportunities. I know that it’s not what happens to you, it’s what you do about it (this lesson from my friend, W Mitchell). But there is a recession on, and it makes business tough. Especially for small businesses.

So, it was an expected and delightful tonic last week to attend a networking event near my home in SW London. The group is the Business Network International, which apparently has thousands of members around the world. The members are grouped in small “chapters” of anything up to 40 members. They commit to meet once a week, and to generating leads for each other and to supporting each other in their businesses.

I was skeptical, but I was blown away. The group I attended was vibrant, generating hundreds of thousands of pounds of business for the members annually, and was a total shot in the arm for me last week. There may not yet be green shoots of recovery, but if there are groups like BNI around, there certainly are green shoots of hope! It won’t work for everyone, but I’d highly recommend small and medium sized businesses – or anyone who has small or medium sized business clients – check out the BNI in your local area.

The website for my region in London is http://www.bni-lnw.com – I think you can from there to all other regions around the world.

(And, no, just in case you needed to ask, I am not being paid in anyway to say this . I genuinely was blown away).

Convincing Consumers to Spend Again

I got this excellent article from Booz and Hamilton’s ezine, “Strategy + Business”. It’s worth subscribing to.

To get consumers spending again, you need to get their attention. This means innovative marketing techniques – and everyone has to do this for the next few years. But how do you differentiate yourself from others who are doing the same?

Read the original here, or see an extended extract below.
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10 rules for effective strategic planning PLUS one more

Strategic planning is becoming the corporate buzzword again. Over the past ten years companies have been obssessed with short-termism and strategic planning was largely ignored for tactical activities based around improving sales and cutting costs for the next quarter or year at most. Many critics of strategic planning suggested that the ideas of Michael Porter and other business gurus, who developed theories/models on strategic planning and strategic analysis in the 80’s and 90’s, were now obsolete. Companies dropped strategic planning in favour of short term returns. With the current economic downturn companies are clambering to rethink their 5 and even 10 year plans.

Last year we worked with The Scout Association to develop their ten year strategic plan and assist them in obtaining buy-in. They have a rolling 10 year plan that they revisit every year. We began working with them on their strategy a month before the global financial crash and I recall thinking how amazing it was that the Scouts had a ten year plan taking them to 2018, when most corporates didin’t even know what their plan was 12 months down the line.

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The Budget 09 – what we really want is not what we really need

Alistair Darling will announce the UK budget today. What most people are looking for is stability, discipline, precision and control. Together with reliability and efficiency, these are precisely the traits that Max Weber, the renowned German sociologist, listed as the pinnacle of social organisation and the basis of excellence business structure and strategy.

It might seem strange to be referencing someone who has been dead for nearly a century on the day of arguably one of the most important budget speeches in the last hundred years. But both Weber and Darling illustrate why many companies are battling to deal with the recession and generate appropriate strategies right now.

The approach of most companies is based on a management style that is largely unchanged since “scientific management” was first developed by Frederick Taylor a century ago. At the zenith of the industrial age, the goal of management was to reduce waste, increase efficiency and develop the systems that have seen productivity rise year on year in industrialised economies almost unabated for a hundred years. One can hardly argue with this success. But is this the way forward?
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Incorrect Thinking in the Financial Crisis

The current economic crisis has seen a deluge of woolly thinking. At TomorrowToday we work hard to bring clarity in the midst of such defective views of the world. Here are just a few of the nonsenses being perpetrated on logic and reason:

There are many statements about consumers being “impacted by the credit crunch”. I have read this phrase in particular with reference to houses and cars.

House prices are currently in decline in most parts of the world – and most journalists (probably fuelled by estate agent press releases) perpetuate the nonsense that this is “bad news”. It’s about as much bad news as petrol, food or beer prices falling, isn’t it? There are a number of reasons why this could be a nonsense statement. For some people, their house is still worth more than what they bought it for (and more than they have borrowed in mortgage to pay for it). So, they are mourning the “loss” of an estate agent’s valuation, rather than any actual monetary loss. For others who overstretched themselves to buy their house, they are now in a “negative equity”. But unless they have to sell their house in the next few months, this should have no real impact on them. The only people for whom this crisis is, in fact, a crisis are those who have multiple properties in the “buy to let” market, and now have empty properties with no rental income but mortgages due.

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Wisdom from Katherine the Great

Katherine Garrett-Cox sounds like superwoman.  She is one of London’s highest profile fund managers, earning about £1 million a year when she was at Morley Fund Management.  She is currently CEO of the FTSE 100 company, Alliance Trust.  She is 40 years old and has 4 children under the age of 8.  The media in the UK have dubbed her ‘Katherine the Great’ because she seems to have it all. 

I have been researching some of the common traits of high achieving women in the UK and I came across this YouTube clip of a presentation Katherine gave at the World Economic Forum in January.

She believes that ‘people who feel valued, motivated and engaged perform better.’ The clip is 5 minutes long and the topic is ‘How do we get the most out of the people that work in our organizations?’  I liked the emotive pictures in the background and it’s refreshing that she didn’t use any bullet points! 

You can’t sit this one out

Originally posted at TomorrowToday UK’s article library, and distributed in their March ezine

As the recession deepens, with customers dwindling and staff morale dropping, strong leadership is required. Too many companies, and the individuals in them, are falling into a trap of trying to keep their heads down and hoping the downturn ends soon. They’re trying to get away with doing what they’ve always done – but on a tight budget. They’re desperately hoping that wave after wave of cost cutting measures, while making no operational mistakes, will be enough.

But, this is no time for low cost business as usual. Equally, though, it’s not a time for panic or self-destructive short-term strategies. The world truly has gone mad, and sanity and reason seem to have fled. If companies want to survive this recession, and take advantage of the few opportunities it might provide, they have to be level headed and have a clear “downturn strategy” while focusing on a few key areas that can give them competitive advantage in rapidly shifting markets. This requires a new mindset with clear thinking and single-minded execution.

There seems to be too little of that going around at the moment. But the solutions are actually surprisingly simple.

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Say sorry and move on

The big political hot potato in the UK right now is trying to get Gordon Brown to say he was wrong, and that he is sorry for the mess the UK is in. Some people say it should just be left alone, and we should get on with it. I was starting to think that, too. Until I read Martin Jacques’ insightful piece in the latest New Statesman. You can read it here, or below.

I think there are some important lessons to be learned for leaders in all organisations, especially leaders who are now presiding over struggling or failing companies. Some analysis of the past can really help to set a great path for the future. It’s worth thinking about, at least.

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Leading through the Storm: Four Things Leaders need to do

The year was 1929, it was towards the end of the third quarter and everything seemed fine. The promise of economic prosperity beckoned and optimism was at an all time high, especially in the United States. The steady building wave of optimism had led to an orgy of speculation and the belief that the beast that is economic crisis had been caged and mastered once and for all. The proliferated through numerous books and articles on the wisdom of the science of business management was offered as the Master of the beast.” We are apparently finished and done with economic cycles as we have known them” said the president of the New York Stock Exchange in September of that year.

By October everything had changed as an economic tsunami swept through Wall Street and on into the infant global economy. Wisdom is an easy thing with hindsight.

Warren Buffet once said, “When the tide of economic growth goes out, you will see who has been swimming naked”. As we now know the tide has irrevocably gone out and as we can see, many have been caught naked. Such is the nature of tides, they go out but they also ‘come in’. That is part of the reality of economic life cycles which we would be foolish to deny, ignore or think we have mastered. For beyond economic cycles, life itself offers rhythms and cycles that best we seek to understand and befriend.

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