LONDON — There’s no sense starting the year off modestly.  No one thinks that 2009 will be a modest year anyway.

A website that I hadn’t previously heard of, called Edge, has asked the simple question “What will change everything?”  And over 100 luminaries have answered.  I haven’t read them all (no sense lying.)  But there are some interesting ones.  Have a read.

BRIAN ENO

“Big institutions, because they operate on longer time-scales and require structures of social trust, don’t cohere. There isn’t time for them. Long term projects are abandoned—their payoffs are too remote. Global projects are abandoned—not enough trust to make them work. Resources that are already scarce will be rapidly exhausted as everybody tries to grab the last precious bits.  Any kind of social or global mobility is seen as a threat and harshly resisted. Freeloaders and brigands and pirates and cheats will take control. Survivalism rules. “

I know this quote sounds ugly and apocalyptic.  But I find it great grist for the mental mill.  What if businesses didn’t know how to maintain social trust?  What if long-term projects were abandoned?

What is the role that business has in up keeping and sustaining society?  What role does it have in ensuring we continue to evolve? 

Not much that it has to consciously or conspicuously maintain or support.  Because there’s no structure or ’super-ego’ there to manage that kind of process.  If business does anything it is as a by-product.  But there’s no denying that business DOES support society and our social evolution.  Books like The Corporations, Tescopoly, No Logo and others — a genre we might call capitalism-horror books — suggest the opposite.

I think it’s worth a longer conversation.  Particularly now that many, many more things that we hold to be true, seem to be up for discussion.

What do you think?

/df

WEST WITTERING — They say the credit crunch feels worse in Britain than elsewhere.  And maybe that’s true.  But the old adage “a recession is when your neighbour loses his job and a depression is when you lose your job” hasn’t happened yet either.

However, the big issues in life remain unchanged, regardless of what the future holds.  How do you find work that you enjoy?  How do you seek and provide comfort for your friends and family?  How do you make the world a better place?

I like the story of the French check-out girl who started a blog and how now written a best-selling book.  Her entire focus is on observing people’s behaviour in daily drudgery.  She tells shocking stories that are funny because they are true.

We are often less than the people we think we are.  We don’t do things that make sense.  We run our businesses in ways that are mysterious.

Next year will be different.

/df

THE KITCHEN — There’s an article on CNN at the moment about football managers, and how tough their jobs are. 

Football is a wonderful game, involving millions of people and billions of dollars, but surely the lives of the managers and their families must be given a greater consideration?

They are trying to stir it up and drive conversation on the website.  (I know how they feel.)  And so far — in 5 days — no one has commented.  (Ditto.)

I think it is because football managers have moved well down the list of managers that the public are worried about.

I used to say that pregnancy was the only condition that you went into the hospital for, relatively sure that you would be out again soon, and with a happy result.  And that’s perhaps a good analogy for the current recession.  We are definately heading into one.  In fact, we are already in one.  But we know it is going to end.  And we’ll be back to normal on the other side.  It’s a sandstorm in which you have to build a tent.

It’s times like these, for managers, employees and football managers, that you realise that putting things into perspective is important.  Life is bigger than this.

/df

CHELSEA — Don’t ask me about underlying influencing factors in the economy.  I’m no economist.  But I do know when I am being sold some old pile of rubbish.  And that’s what the media in the UK is pitching us now.

We seem to have reporters who are used to covering train wrecks covering the economy.  And it shows.  Yesterday’s Independent carefully detailed the extensive job losses in the public and private sector… And told us (ho! ho! ho!) that many, many more businesses were clearly waiting until after thhe holidays to layoff droves more people.

What piffle.

It would appear to be the reflected Jo Moore school of journalism…. If you want to sell papers, create a crisis.

News is today that BBC financial reporter Robert Peston has been working round the clock to keep his business blog up to date.

The readership is large, I am told.

Why?

It must have something to do with the incredible hurdles put in front of businesses when it comes to their communications.  Because who would you rather heard explain the problems in commodity or petrol prices… a guy who won a comedy award for impersonating Margaret Thatcher, or the guy running BHP or BP?

Let’s hear what they say.

/df

HAMMERSMITH — I don’t know why we have been talking about this a lot in the last few weeks, maybe it’s the season.  Maybe people aren’t sure what to do in 2009, so they’re focusing on annual events.  But we have been talking a lot about big business strategy meetings.

Some companies have or will cancel them.  The theory is:

“It’s a cost.  Only managers benefit.  So let’s cut it altogether.” 

We have certainly seen that.

However, others are taking a different approach:

“How can we make it more cost effective and really see the results out of it.”

And that’s where we get excited.  These things don’t have to be complicated.  (If you want smoke and mirrors, then we can’t help.)  But they can be very effective at reduced cost, if you really focus on actions and results.

/df

MAYFAIR — I’m not really a good “guy’s guy”.  I’m not a very good shot.  I can’t drink beer quickly.  And I would rather talk to girls than talk about them.

However, in spite of that I set out last night quite happily for a black-tie dinner at a gentlemen’s club in Mayfair.  I know the host and almost half the guys.  There were Canadians, Americans, English, Scots, but for some reason all the South Africans have already fled town… and the Aussies, as you know, don’t do black tie.

They weren’t even all bankers…  there were lawyers too!  But, unfortunately that didn’t help.  It was like being at a convention for retired superheroes.  All the daring-do was in the past.  And the present wasn’t… well it wasn’t very funny.

I stopped asking people about work after a while.  But the most difficult part was that the one requirement of the evening that everyone had to tell a joke.  And they were horrible, toe-curling, eye-poking, get-up and go to the bathroom, bad.

Because the group was roughly built around a graduating class from business school at Harvard, I can only come to one or two conclusion:

Business is really bad
The recession has sucked the last bit of air from the room
We need more women to run the world.

/df

BISHOPSGATE — I have just had a nice meal with a partner in the consultancy Totem Hill.  They’re one of a few groups that we’ve been talking to about the “professionalisation” of our industry.

What does that mean?  Apart from being worth a lot of points in Scrabble?  Two things:

1. Our clients often don’t know they need us, and if they can figure out that they need the kind of help we provide, they don’t know where to go to get it.

2. Second there are quite a lot of successful businesses in the market with a single, clear solution… that they’ll apply to any illness you think you might have. (We’re not like that.)

I’d like to work to increase understanding of management consulting in communications and change.  And there are a bunch of firms out there I’d be happy to pitch against more often.  Seriously.  If that meant that we were all pitching more often, it would be better for all of us.

/df

PICCADILLY — You ever find yourself short of a few good words?  How about missing one good word?

Bildschirmbräune might just be that word.

It means someone who spends so much time in front of a computer that it appears to give them a strange tan.

It’s German.  And we don’t have enough good German words in current usage in English.

Use it.  You’ll like it.  It’s my present to you.

(Now I just need to figures out how to pronounce it…)

/df

P.S. I like finding new and different blogs.  This one seems to have an excellent back-story: El Blogador.

PART I

SW LONDON — The giant online retailer has been written up in The Sunday Times this weekend for bad labour practices.  A reporter took a job as a casual worker and explains how each level of the chain takes money away from the employee and treats them badly.

Who knows what effect the bad press will have on the retailer on what should be their biggest day of sales ever.  You certainly couldn’t have arranged it at a worse time.

Are they really worse than other businesses?  I suspect not.  They pay more than minimum wage.  They are hiring even in a bad economy.  They create jobs in part of the country where jobs aren’t being created by others.

At the end of the piece the Sunday Times points out that they are not breaking any laws, and Amazon has a rebuttal placed on the Times’ website.

But that’s not the point, is it?

Treating people well, when you are at the bottom end of the labour market is only really an issue if you do something wrong, it seems.

If someone gets hurt, or laws are broken then there are issues.  And that doesn’t seem right.

PART II

People being treated badly at the low end of the economy is worse when you compare the other stories about fund managers disappearing with $50 billion of people’s investments. As Bernard Madoff seems to have done.  That’s more than 20 times Amazon’s profit last year. 

But that story (apart from nice pictures of poor Nicola Horlick) has no human dimension, so it won’t get the press of an Amazon labour practice.  And that’s a shame.  Because people like Amazon are scraping together every cent they can to make their bankers happy.

Wouldn’t it be nice if bankers got excited about business that treat employees really well?

/df

OLD CHURCH STREET — The front of my paper says that Woolworths will be no more in a few weeks.  Lay-offs are being announced in 5-figures already.  And deep down, we all know that the bad news has only just begun.

But we just carry on about our business.  Much the same way that Londoners (myself included) got on the Tube again the day after the July 7, 2005 bombings.

“What else are we meant to do?!”

Well, quite a lot actually.

Here are just some of the things that companies should be doing as the economy falters.

1. Teach some basic economics
There is a reason why our economies haven’t been returned to the Stone Age.  There are underlying facts about each of our businesses that will keep them afloat.  There is integrity to our public finances (government cash) that we can tell people about.

No one is writing about this yet.  When they do, then we will have turned a corner.

Who is going to go buy a new TV when you don’t know if you might have to use it as shelter for your cardboard house under a bridge?

2. Demonstrate honesty, caring and dependability
People are looking to their businesses to give them a sign of what is yet to come and how it might affect them.  If they can’t trust what is coming out of your mouth, then they’ll start looking at what you ‘do’ for signals.

One way or another you are going to ‘communicate’ what you are thinking — and therefore, what you believe to be important.  If people have to learn about the business by watching you rather than listening to you, they are going to resent it.

Why not communicate properly?

You will gain credibility by being honest and that is credit at the proverbial bank for when you need it in the future.

3. Make ‘people promises’
Every big business is inherently set up to ensure that employees are dealt with in a responsible way in the event of a downturn.  In Europe, Canada and Australia there are state requirements.  In the USA the private insurance plans are often very generous.

Tell people what the business will aspire to uphold in the event of calamity.  “We will always treat people with respect and dignity.”

If your lawyers and HR people tell you not to… and they can’t give you an immediate, business altering reason not to… I suggest you fire them on the spot.  (They’ll be treated with dignity and respect.)

4. Communicate a lot
[Human] Nature abhors a vacuum.  If you aren’t commenting on the latest rumour or the newest headline then someone else in your company is.  Who do you think that is?  Is it Trevor in the post-room?  Or the lady who drives the shuttle bus?  That ancient monolith who writes in the Daily Mail?

People will get their opinion from somewhere.  Why wouldn’t you want that to be you?

It doesn’t have to be the CEO.  In fact, it shouldn’t be the CEO.  You should build new channels, if you need to, to get to as many managers as you can with the daily news.  This is how you’ll build your honesty, credibility and dependability. (Did you see what I did there?)

5. Over-manage the bad news
No one ever believes me when I say this, but when we managed a series of lay-offs recently, people actually said ‘thank you’ as they were leaving.

Redundancies, site closures, mergers, sales… are all difficult and emotional things for organisations to have to deal with.  As a result we all walk wide circles around them.  And they become orphans of the corporate communications world.  That is so wrong!

Major organisational change programmes don’t become any less major because you refuse to acknowledge them.  Just the opposite.

Get really stuck in.  Invest the appropriate resources and time.  And ‘own’ the bad news.  It’ll stick to the company anyway.  Why not manage it right.

***

If you have a communication function in your business that is not working flat out right now, then maybe you should have a word with them.  Or, can I?

/df