CAP COD — I love my trips to America.  It’s probably any change of scenery that makes you think twice.  But here you learn so much in a short amount of time.  Today I am learning sales from the shopping networks and even the carved wood signs in this faux-modest summer haven.

“Free Air” a grage down [...]]]>

CAP COD — I love my trips to America.  It’s probably any change of scenery that makes you think twice.  But here you learn so much in a short amount of time.  Today I am learning sales from the shopping networks and even the carved wood signs in this faux-modest summer haven.

“Free Air” a grage down the street trumpets on a hanging engraved sign.

“No transfats” it says on the side of a tin of iced tea mix.

Well, that’s good.  I think maybe Able and How should take a lesson from this.  What do you think?  “No animals harmed in our consulting.”  We could put that on our website.

My shampoo here — a brand that probably says the same thing in England — has “effused with sea mineral essence” on the side.  As a way of making me feel better.

I do, of course.

Today I was told off as I cycled down the local roads (the ones that didn’t have prominent signs saying “PRIVATE ROAD” that is.)  I was told off for not saying hello to someone as I walked by.

We don’t do that in Montreal.  Or in London, for that matter.

Maybe we should.

/df

PICCADILLY — My dad used to say that sometimes you had to wait for a few parishioners to die before you could make changes to the church.

It was typical of his kind of wry sense of the ridiculous.  But that doesn’t make it any less true.  It is a great truism that people have to [...]]]>

PICCADILLY — My dad used to say that sometimes you had to wait for a few parishioners to die before you could make changes to the church.

It was typical of his kind of wry sense of the ridiculous.  But that doesn’t make it any less true.  It is a great truism that people have to be able to adapt, or no progress can be made.

Looking today at the speculated new list of England players for World Cup 2014 (did you think we wouldn’t start talking about it yet?!), they’re almost all new.  As they should be.

I remember the shock when The Dreaded Sven brought in a whole new generation and shipped out the old.  But, bless him, it worked.

And then you have work situations:

• The newly merged company boss who wants to know why they can’t just use his old company’s ways

• The head of department who wants to turn her team upside down, but doesn’t want to upset anyone

• The process of replacing the unhappy employee that looks for the same kind of person for the same kind of job

• The business that can’t serve it’s clients and wants a contractor to do it at no loss of revenue

• The organisation that cannot change so they have brought in consultants, and won’t let them change anything

It’s perhaps symptomatic of the way people are.  We know the medicine, we just regularly ‘forget’ to take it.

/df

OXFORD STREET — At my local Starbucks everyone this morning was ending their sentences with “…for you.”  I think if I worked there I’d start doing it too.  It’s a cross over from a number of European languages that add the possessive to sentences for emphasis.

We don’t really do it English so much.

Except we do [...]]]>

OXFORD STREET — At my local Starbucks everyone this morning was ending their sentences with “…for you.”  I think if I worked there I’d start doing it too.  It’s a cross over from a number of European languages that add the possessive to sentences for emphasis.

We don’t really do it English so much.

Except we do now.

And why not?

We were cheering for Mexico in my house last night.  My kids are 1/4 Mexican.  And word from the other side of the ocean is that my mother-in-law was shouting at the TV and my macho brother-in-law was crying.

But we’ve actually spent far more time in France.  Cheering for the winners is maybe the fun bit.

There’s a story in the paper today about how the UK is suffering the creeping influence of Latin America.  Apparently there’s an Brazilian ice cream shop in Newcastle.

My British business partner has just gone on holiday in his native Italy.  With his Indian wife.

What have we become!

Pluralistic.  Open-minded.  And a damn sight more interesting.  Is the answer.

In my native Canada we’re still pretending that arguments about French and English matter.  In the UK we’re pretending that Class is an issue.  It’s not.  Ask the England football team.

Let’s more on. 

Is that okay, for you?

/df

HOME — I used to have a Klingon cookbook.  No, it was Lt. Uhura’s Cookbook.  But there was Klingon it it.  That was in university.  More than 20 years ago.

I never cooked anything from it.

Are you kidding?

But I moved it from dorm to dorm and house to house.  I thought its simple existence was funny [...]]]>

HOME — I used to have a Klingon cookbook.  No, it was Lt. Uhura’s Cookbook.  But there was Klingon it it.  That was in university.  More than 20 years ago.

I never cooked anything from it.

Are you kidding?

But I moved it from dorm to dorm and house to house.  I thought its simple existence was funny enough.  (Yes, not everyone shared my sense of humour then either.)

However, my daughter has just brought the world of Fan Fiction to my attention.  It seems that Star Trek was even a pivotal modern outburst of it.  Followed by Star Wars… And today people like Stephenie Meyer and JK Rowling, for the Twilight and Harry Potter series, even actively encourage it, saying they read it.

It’s a really interesting phenomenon.  And not one without it’s legal and copyright implications.

So my question today is: Why don’t brands do it more?

People write Star Trek cookbooks because they are obsessed with the show.  And one assumes they buy other people’s Star Trek cookbooks.  But what about great brands and companies? 

Imagine some of the great BP fiction that could come out of the Deepwater Horizon situations?!

Okay, maybe that’s not the best example.

But what about other, more day-to-day examples?

I think it’s a heck of an idea.

I think I’ll talk to some clients about it this week.

/df

If you listened to the average mumblings of commentators, employees are fed up and… work is horrible and… and…

But maybe that’s not true. Maybe work is more interesting than it was. Maybe people are more [...]]]>

GREEN PARK — The papers today say that we’ve hit a 23 year low for employee sick-days. That’s no small achievement.

If you listened to the average mumblings of commentators, employees are fed up and… work is horrible and… and…

But maybe that’s not true. Maybe work is more interesting than it was. Maybe people are more engaged. Maybe employers are better at responding to people’s needs.

This summer (in the northern hemisphere) may be a good test. There’s a lot to distract you in most good summers:
• school plays
• tennis majors
• big horse meets
• golf championships
• summer music festivals

And then the chance employees might want to play or perform at any of these. Yes, this is a big holiday season, but maybe there’s even more reason to stay away this summer, with the World Cup, and a frankly pretty rubbish two years of economic nightmare to sleep off.

So what can you do about it?

Good question. And that’s one of the motivating factors for the World Cup guidance that we’re about to publish this week. But there’s more to it than that as well.

It’s called treating people like grown-ups.

There could be some of those rare moments of national experience.  People will want to be a part of it.

You may need to find a way of making sure that you’re not the only place that won’t participate.  Because engaging employees in your business is a slow and painstaking process.  Disengaging them can be done much faster.

/df

BROMPTON ROAD — The story won’t go away.  Although coverage might have lightened today.  The 13 different Chinese 18-24 year-olds who have tried to kill themselves this year are not going unnoticed.  Most of them died.  But the world outside Shenzhen in southern China has paid attention.

Shortly after the media had packed up and left [...]]]>

BROMPTON ROAD — The story won’t go away.  Although coverage might have lightened today.  The 13 different Chinese 18-24 year-olds who have tried to kill themselves this year are not going unnoticed.  Most of them died.  But the world outside Shenzhen in southern China has paid attention.

Shortly after the media had packed up and left the Foxconn manufacturing site yesterday, two more employees attempted suicide.  One succeeded.  The CEO had to turn his plane around and go back.

There are 400,000 people in and around this Foxconn site.  Which makes it a city in itself.  With all kinds of people and a diversity of backgrounds.  So whether the actions of these employees be very private pain or a larger, global cry for help, the timing with today’s mad scenes on Regent Street and around the world with the launching of Apple’s latest must-have toy cannot be denied.

And yet Foxconn – like any other industrial enterprise — need not be in this situation.  There are a few simple things that can be done to relieve this kind of pressure.  Here are a few:

1. Create a better sense of community
As learned in the dehumanizing “council estates” of Britain, simply locating people close to each other doesn’t create community. Community organisations with shared responsibility and choice do.

2. Give people a sense of choice (decision participation)
Helplessness comes with a lack of involvement in the decisions that guide your life.  Those decisions don’t need to be big ones, but they do need to be freely made.  Where I live, who I live with, could be two.

3. Watching the most vulnerable
Every successful society looks out for it’s most vulnerable members.  It is a test of humanity.  And it is made harder when those people are hard to identify.  But no one intentionally makes bad decisions when alternatives and other views are freely available.

4. Think about how you run the business
We call it organisational culture, but call it whatever you want.  Businesses are not naturally benign or benevolent forces in people’s lives.  In fact, capitalism (yes, you can even say that in China these days) is just the opposite.  Businesses are not built for people, they are built for profit and for shareholders.  It takes strength of character and management to change that.

5. Show courage to act in the longer term
Foxconn has announced today that salaries will be increased.  A short-term and maybe initially successful reaction.  (I can hear my friends in PR high-fiving each other.) But the real solution to this issue and the others cropping up in rapidly industrialising areas is more complicated.  It will take longer.  It will involve more change and internal communication.  And more attention.

You can do it.

I know you can.

/df

CHELSEA — Foxconn is a Taiwanese company you have probably never heard of.  And yet they have 800,000 employees.  They employ 2,000 singers, dancers and gym trainers to entertain them. They put 6,000 pigs to the knife every day to feed their 400,000 employees on one site.  That site covers 1.2 square miles.

Because so many [...]]]>

CHELSEA — Foxconn is a Taiwanese company you have probably never heard of.  And yet they have 800,000 employees.  They employ 2,000 singers, dancers and gym trainers to entertain them. They put 6,000 pigs to the knife every day to feed their 400,000 employees on one site.  That site covers 1.2 square miles.

Because so many people — between 9 and 11 this year — have taken their own lives at this Shenzhen site in southern China, the company has installed new 3-meter fences around the dormitories where employees sleep.  The fences are meant to stop people climbing onto buildings to kill themselves.

They’re not having the desired effect.  The alleged 10 to 12 hour shifts and military-style discipline probably don’t help either.

Young people in China are undoubtedly attracted to the work.  And what is 800,000 people in a country where estimates are more 90 urban areas have populations of more that 1 million people?

However there are important lessons to be learned from industrial research in other countries.  There are also some basic ideas of how to manage people, that companies like this, in the new industrial heartland can take action on.

The Hawthorne Lighting Factory experiments in Chicago almost 100 years ago might give Foxcomm some ideas.  Research by MIT at what was then the biggest factory in the world pointed to how productivity increased with a little autonomy.

As I have been writing this the story has taken on a greater significance.  The company has been touring journalists around its plants.  The Chief Executive explains the 1.5 million square meters of netting that is being put around dormitories to catch falling people this way: “Although this is a stupid measure, at least in the future if another tragedy happens it may save a life.

Some of my former colleagues might say this is all a bad PR story.  Considering the shear numbers of people involved, the suicide rates at Foxcomm are not far off the Chinese national average.  (That average is roughly the same as Canada, the USA, Germany and Australia, before you get too sniffy.)  But companies, like militaries in combat zones, cannot claim the the people under their influence are simply reflecting the average of the population.  There is a duty of care that runs in both directions at work.

Foxcomm and it’s concerned partners need to start to review that and find a way out.

It can be done.

/df

HOME — I’ve had a bit of an epiphany.  Again.  I realised that there may be another defining national characteristic that I hadn’t really understood.

I used to think that the national flag of the United Kingdom ought to be this: Instead of this: But maybe the one at the top of this post is even better?

In the [...]]]>

HOME — I’ve had a bit of an epiphany.  Again.  I realised that there may be another defining national characteristic that I hadn’t really understood.

I used to think that the national flag of the United Kingdom ought to be this:

Instead of this:

But maybe the one at the top of this post is even better?

In the paper today a columnist refers to it as “the inviability of the individual”, which I think is a posh way of saying “I’m always right.”

And you see it a lot on the streets.  Motorists heaping abuse on each other over the most minuscule of sins.  There will be shouting, and gesticulating, and a swift move from any discussion of the issue to name calling and odd hand gestures.

Whatever the offence, one thing is always 100% clear: I was right, and you… well you’re just a &€#@?*!!, aren’t you?

So far, not so different.  You can see arguments on streets across Europe, Africa and other worlds.  What separates Britain is the fact that the one who is most aggrieved will be absolutely certain to be at a safe distance, with a clear getaway planned.

Nothing wrong with that.

It worked for Sir Francis Drake.  And we know what happened to that Spanish armoire thing, don’t we.

Who are you looking at anyway!  Huh?

/df

TCR — My mother’s maiden name was Young. And her sister’s called Carol. So, I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but I feel quite proprietary about Carl Jung.

Jung and Freud are also set to be the subject of a saucy film about their relationship with a Russian emigree. It will be out next [...]]]>

TCR — My mother’s maiden name was Young. And her sister’s called Carol. So, I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but I feel quite proprietary about Carl Jung.

Jung and Freud are also set to be the subject of a saucy film about their relationship with a Russian emigree. It will be out next spring and star Keira Knightley. So I’m sure we’ll all feel a but different about Carl and Sigmund soon.

Today though the subject is Carl Jung, leadership and communication.  Jung’s view on human behaviour, motivations and character types has been fully adopted into our world view.  Western societies (at least) just assume his views to be true. 

Which is remarkable when you consider how mad they were at the time.  And even how controversial Jung and Freud’s lives were seen to be even after they had died.  If you talk to business leaders about MBTI (as I don’t really like to do) or about the transition curve, performance management, reward, promotions, and the like they’ll often spout something about enlightened self-interest or leading with the need which all owe some debt of gratitude to my errant Swiss relative.

What radical ideas on business are we creating today that will be a commonly held belief by the time my grandchildren are retiring?

It’s worth thinking about.

/df

HOME — The sign behind the track today at the Shanghai Formula 1 race said “Made WITH China”. (You can see it in this BBC report at about 3:42 and 3:53, but it was clear all day.)

Along with the logos for Santander, Lenovo’s ThinkPad, DHL, Shell, Allianz and others, the message coming out of China’s [...]]]>  

HOME — The sign behind the track today at the Shanghai Formula 1 race said “Made WITH China”. (You can see it in this BBC report at about 3:42 and 3:53, but it was clear all day.)

Along with the logos for Santander, Lenovo’s ThinkPad, DHL, Shell, Allianz and others, the message coming out of China’s industrial capital today was clear: You have to work with us.

No doubt.  It’s in English.  It’s one of the highest profile China events with a business audience.  Where is used to say [in] on all the toys I had as a child, it now has the word [with] squeezed in.

The Chinese dailies make the point here and here.

The trick then comes in understanding and cooperating with China.  Stories like this one, printed in the Australian paper The Age this week do not help. 

I had the pleasure of being in a major FTSE boardroom recently while the China operation tried to explain the situation in that country.  It took a lot of words, pauses and a great deal of openness of spirit and mind for the westernised executives to get it.  They wanted to.  And eventually I think they did.

But more can and should be done by Chinese businesses to help.  There is more communication, operations and change management that Chinese industry and government can do.

The ads are a start, but only a small step in a much longer journey.

/df