If you, your family or friends hold retail investments with Co-op Bank (such as bonds and preference shares), then you need to get information about the offer made to customers this week. Here is the announcement made by Co-op Group Chief Executive, Euan Sutherland, on 4 November 2013.
Why does this matter?
If you vote to accept the offer and submit your forms promptly, you will receive a higher reward than those who leave it to the last moment. If you're late, you'll miss the early bird bonus.
My broking firm will sort it for me, so why do I need to worry?
Many broking firms have been slow on the uptake, not organised the paperwork and have given out erroneous information. They need a firm push from customers to spur them into action.***
Mark Taber has a track record of supporting distressed retail investors. In particular he has worked hard for pensioners who rely on income from bonds and preference shares to pay for their care home fees. The Co-op Bank did not include this group in their original discussions. Mark Taber has changed their minds by mounting an effective campaign to publicise the injustices and poor business practices of the bank and lax oversight by the regulators.
Mark has run campaigns to help customers of other banks including the Bank of Ireland. He holds no retail investments in Co-op Bank and has worked voluntarily to achieve an astonishingly positive outcome. His website accepts donations to help him survive whilst working so hard for others.
Stephen Fitzpatrick understands the power of working with integrity, when all around you others are not. It's good for sustainable business. If you treat people fairly, more customers will find you. If you don't, like the Co-op Bank when they first announced the need to bridge the funding gap, customers will leave you.
Jose Antonio Abreu wanted young people from deprived backgrounds to experience what he had enjoyed through musical education. At the start he had 50 (donated) music stands for 100 young musicians.
Only 11 kids turned up to the first rehearsal. "Do I close the programme or multiply these kids?" He accepted the challenge and made a promise to those 11 pioneers that he'd convert this into one of the leading orchestras in the world.
Today art is no longer the monopoly of an elite, but has become a social right.
"In its essence the orchestra and choir are much more than artistic structures: they are examples and schools of social life, because to sing and play together means to coexist intimately toward perfection and excellence, following a strict discipline of organisation and coordination in order to seek the harmonic interdependence of voices and instruments. That's how they build a spirit of solidarity and fraternity, developing self esteem and fostering ethical and aesthetic values related to music in every sense."
300,000 children are involved from lower and middle classes. El Sistema is a programme of social rescue. The impact is felt in 3 areas: the personal, the family and the community spheres.
The child attains a sense of identity and importance in the world and the music ends up overcoming material poverty. Music is the number one prevention against prostitution, violence, bad habits, bad company and everything degrading to the life of a child.
Here's a rehearsal of el Sistema's world class Venezuelan Youth Orchestra conducted by Gustavo Dudamel:
Zen and the art of digital design could be the title of the Steve Jobs story. His focus is on beautiful design, simplicity, integrity and the user experience of technology.
'He will reject something which no one will see as a problem. But because his standards are so high, people sit there and say, “How does Apple do it? How does apple have such incredible products?”'
Apple is often criticised for not licensing some of its innovative technology to other companies, but the refusal stems from the need to stop people tinkering and blemishing the beauty of perfection.
'Steve believed that if you opened the system up people would start to make little changes and those changes would be compromises in the experience and he would not be able to deliver the kind of experience that he wanted.'
John Sculley, former CEO who was kicked out by Apple after 10 years, describes Jobs' methodology and how this drove the company even when he had left to start Next.
'The user experience has to go through the whole end-to-end system, whether it’s desktop publishing or iTunes. It is all part of the end-to-end system. It is also the manufacturing. The supply chain. The marketing. The stores. I remember I was brought in because I had a design background and because I was a marketer. I had product marketing experience. Not because I knew anything about computers.'
The charismatic Jobs was able to work across a huge range from the 'change the world' level down to the detail of designging and building products. He insisted that the core team could never be more than 100 people. Even though Apple now employs thousands of people at its Cupertino HQ, the product development division is still small.
Jobs looked beyond the computer world of USA and Europe and admired Ako Morita of Sony and the way his Japanese factories were laid out.
The hierarchy at Apple puts designers at the top, followed by engineers and both above managers in levels of respect.
'Microsoft hires some of the smartest people in the world. They are known for their incredibly challenging test they put people through to get hired. It’s not an issue of people being smart and talented. It’s that design at Apple is at the highest level of the organization, led by Steve personally. Design at other companies is not there. It is buried down in the bureaucracy somewhere… In bureaucracies many people have the authority to say no, not the authority to say yes. So you end up with products with compromises. This goes back to Steve’s philosophy that the most important decisions are the things you decide NOT to do, not what you decide to do. It’s the minimalist thinking again.'
The user experience includes Apple Stores (a long way from the glass, carpet and chrome fortresses that were Apple Centres in the early days.)
'He brought one of the top retailers in the world on his board to learn about retail (Mickey Drexler from The Gap, who advised Jobs to build a prototype store before launch). Not only did he learn about retail, I’ve never been in a better store than an Apple store. It has the highest revenue per square foot of any store in the world but it’s not just the revenue, it’s the experience.'
The futuristic design ethos is reflected in plans for the new Apple HQ in Cupertino, nicknamed the iSpaceship.
Jobs constantly changed the hardware and removed aspects that customers took for granted. His eye was on the future and the changes to come.
The iPhone brought with it apps and the beginning of an integrated portable internet access through dedicated platforms rather than Web browsers. These work better and fit better into the lives of consumers. They also enable companies to make money more easily on these platforms.
Commentators note that working trends are shifting with the increasing use of Blackberries and own gadgets. Some individuals are tired of using dinosaur technology supplied by their employers and resort to using their own up-to-date equipment. This makes them more productive with interesting consequences for data security.
“This is a huge change,” says Citrix’s Andrew Millard. “As the boundaries between office hours and personal time become less distinct, managers are losing control of how people 'work’, as individuals want to prioritise what they do. It is no surprise therefore that there is so much resistance to 'workshifting’.” With the right kit, however, it’s a trend that should be hard for employers or employees to resist.
Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff discuss the evolution of internet use in a recent Wired article. They draw on Jonathan L. Zittrain's 'The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It.'
CISCO estimates based on CAIDA publications, Andrew Odlyzko
IP and TCP protocols enable a range of communication on the internet. The web with its HTML data is in decline, accounting for less than a quarter of internet traffic. Peer-to-peer, file transfers, email, company VPNs, machine to machine communication of Skype calls, online games, Xbox Live, iTunes, voice-over-IP phones, iChat and Netflix movie streaming are expanding. Many of the newer Net applications are closed, often propietary networks.
'And the shift is only accelerating. Within five years, Morgan Stanley projects, the number of users accessing the Net from mobile devices will surpass the number who access it from PCs. Because the screens are smaller, such mobile traffic tends to be driven by specialty software, mostly apps, designed for a single purpose. For the sake of the optimized experience on mobile devices, users forgo the general-purpose browser. They use the Net, but not the Web. Fast beats flexible.'
I've discussed news media response to the increasing move to digital content. Businesses are challenged by the changes and the increasing difficulty of deriving income from web based content.
'The Internet is the real revolution, as important as electricity; what we do with it is still evolving. As it moved from your desktop to your pocket, the nature of the Net changed. The delirious chaos of the open Web was an adolescent phase subsidized by industrial giants groping their way in a new world. Now they’re doing what industrialists do best — finding choke points. And by the looks of it, we’re loving it.'
'Apple CEO said that PCs are going to be "like trucks" in that they'll still be around and useful for certain work, but only a smaller percentage of the users will need one.'
This view is challenged, but perhaps at the level of semantics:
'Just what is a "personal computer", anyway? Is it defined by the operating system it uses - Windows, MacOS, or Linux? Does a physical keyboard make it a PC? A processor that uses more than some arbitrary amount of power? Is it size? It can't be size - a MacBook Air is a personal computer, and it's about the same size as an iPad. You could easily argue that today's smartphones are personal computers, as they're easily as powerful as the PCs of five or six years ago.'
'The world isn't moving away from the PC, it's just transitioning from the PC being defined as a "personal computer" to "pervasive computing." Computers will fill our lives with specialized capabilities in various form factors, sizes, and locations.' Here's an example from British Airways.
Update:
Steve Jobs has resigned today as CEO and asked to become Chairman of the board, director and Apple employee. Jobs recommends Tim Cook to replace him as CEO.
Apple demands total commitment from staff and a blurring of work/life boundaries, where late night phone calls to discuss a new idea are commonplace. Jobs has health challenges and is unable to maintain that level of intense involvement.
"I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role."
Ironically the biggest tributes to Steve Jobs have come from staff in the field of medicine.
One example is how the iPad enables collaboration between doctor and patient:
"The laptop was a barrier. It was like a screen being put up between the two of us, my eyes were focused on the laptop and not on the patient," Halamka said. "Then the iPad came along and was a game changer because it invites the doctor and the patient to look at this device together. Just think about the way you hold it, it is not something that you have a wall between you and the patient, so I can show the patient their x-rays or lab tests. What I and many other clinicians have experienced is that the iPad invites shared decision making as opposed to patient and doctor alienation."
In my previous post I seemed to suggest that, Giorgi Targamadze, the Opposition leader in the Georgian Parliament stands no chance of winning an election. I also seemed to imply that image is the only thing that matters.
I believe that changes in how we transmit, receive and process information have had a major impact on elections and democracy. Personality is now a bigger component than before in deciding the outcome of a ballot.
In the UK election campaigns have changed. People have little time or inclination to attend election meetings in local church halls (except to question their sitting MP about abuse of expenses). The population has increased and the logistics required to talk to the majority of people face to face are enormous. Politicians rely increasingly on radio, television and the internet to persuade voters. Membership of political parties has fallen and funding has dropped, reducing the resources available to campaign for an election.
People have severals decisions to make: Do I vote for party x or y? Do I bother to vote at all?
What do I vote for? Who do I vote for?
The choice is between various policies and parties (increasingly different individuals).
In the UK politial parties now cluster around the centre ground and there is much less radical difference between policies, but smaller differences in detail. Even the apparent major disagreements seems to converge after a time, such as the question of whether we need to tackle the deficit or not (the deficit deniers have conceded defeat). In the past there were firm allegiances to parties based on class and self identity. Some people continued to vote for the same party as their parents whatever happened, because they could not imagine crossing party and class lines. Margaret Thatcher contributed to a major shift in mindsets by shaping policy to meet the aspirations of working class people who wanted greater opportunity and material rewards.
Mass communication brings new ideas to the population very quickly. Increasingly the party in power seeks to colonise good ideas presented by the Opposition either by incorporating some of the detail in their own work or making a policy announcement that is very similar (even if it is never carried out). Opposition parties are therefore cautious about making too many proposals and providing detail, preferring instead to focus on criticising the government.
The voting public are presented with sound bites, MPs speaking 'on message' with a series of catch phrases designed to appeal to broad swathes of the population in marginal constituencies. This translates to tabloid style headlines rather than lengthy, reasoned discourse. It becomes increasingly difficult to determine exactly what each party and person proposes to do if they gain power. In the past the Party Manifesto was a document shaped at the annual party conference and a pledge for action at the election. It resembled an architect's model of a proposed building scheme. It now seems to be a draft submission equivalent to a few rough sketches made on the back of an envelope.
Politicians are very aware of public reaction to each appearance, speech and policy announcement. Online polls such as YouGov deliver fast feedback which shapes future decisions. Popular blogs are ferocious in holding MPs to account and surfacing embarrassing stories.
Some politicians try to set up staged encounters with members of the public to help them seem more in touch and appreciative of local efforts. Unfortunately this often backfires as human beings want to raise topics that affect them directly. Gordon Brown handled this encounter badly, but made the mistake of criticising the woman, not realising his microphone was still live:
Visual media tend to focus on personalities rather than parties. Politicians look to the USA for ways of appealing to voters and opted to stage a tv debate between the 3 main political leaders. The ability of individuals to seem convincing, to appear to have integrity and to speak directly to people (ie face the camera) and touch on issues of concern to the public made a difference in that election. Nick Clegg was more media savvy in dealing with tv and the proportion of votes for the Liberal Democrats rose. We now have a coalition government. TV debate and media appearances tend to favour Extravert Intuitors (in MBTI terms), who are more at ease talking to a group of people and communicating in broad terms. Gordon Brown, as an Introvert Sensor, is more comfortable talking one to one and dealing with detail. He is not effective speaking spontaneously, but needs time to formulate his thoughts. This doesn't play well with his audience.
Voters consider whether the individual seems to have the right attitude to the main issues of concern. The public assess the competence of each individual to lead the country, tackle tough economic problems and communicate with people at all levels. Voters wonder how far they can trust this person to carry out his/her promises.
Tony Blair was famous for delivering different speeches and ideas to different audiences (sometimes on the same day) and was accused of blowing in the wind rather than holding to a particular position and set of policies. Commentators also say that his speeches were based on a series of Powerpoint slides with 3 points per slide, which was all he could memorise. His heads of Strategy and Implementation would seed new vocabulary that signalled key changes in direction.
Unfortunately for politicians, they may change their stance and claim to have held this view since the beginning, but the internet provides evidence of hypocrisy (in this case Gordon Brown encouraged 'light touch regulation' for the City of London).
Georgian Opposition leader, Giorgi Targamadze, also seems to focus more on detail in his speeches and his audience may not see the wood for the trees in what he says. Voters may also wonder if he, as a former tv anchor, has the capacity to deal with harsh economic reality and the knock-on effect of the collapse of the important Russian market. He works hard to appeal to village women by linking his party to the Georgian Orthodox church. Some people in the city may have reservations about the consequences of linking politics and religion so firmly, particularly in view of some of the Patriarch's pronouncements that overtly attack the effects of government policy on homosexuality. This trend might not help Georgia's application to join the EU.
One characteristic of a democratic country is that there is a credible opposition to the government. In the UK we are in a curious position. 2 of the 3 political parties are in coalition government. The 3rd has difficulty presenting policies or politicians untainted by association with the previous government. They are also running out of money to function, as big party donors desert them. Once again the BBC has stepped in to provide lively debate and challenge the coalition government's policies.
Georgia lacked credible opposition to President Saakashvili until recently. Street demonstrations and encampments can only act as support. True opposition has to engage with the political process. Georgia has rising unemployment (17% in 2009), inflation rate of 14% and needs concerted effort to tackle economic problems. The Georgian economy is bolstered by remittances from Georgians working abroad.
His new party was blessed by the Patriarch of Georgia, which would be the equivalent of a new Irish political party being blessed by the Pope 5 years ago (before the abuse scandal). This was a clever move, as Saakashvili was often portrayed by critics as the Antichrist in the early years of his Presidency.
Targamadze is a former television journalist who famously announced to viewers that the station was being taken over by force, when riot police closed them down.
He spoke about anti-democratic features of the Georgian government including corruption, lack of strong independent media, biased judicial system, electoral irregularities and suppression of dissent. British members of the audience were well aware of parallels in Britain from MPs' expenses fiddles (exposed by an American journalist), Murdoch's influence on serving Prime Ministers and pressure on the BBC to support the government or lose funding, the current wave of super injunctions granted to the wealthy to suppress information and details of any subsequent court action taken, electoral fraud in some constituencies and famous uses and abuses of the Prevention of Terrorism Act to suppress anti government protest.
He gave an example of someone being imprisoned for stealing a paper worth very little money as an appalling indictment of the judicial system. In the UK, when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, a woman was arrested for standing outside 10 Downing Street reciting the names of soldiers killed in Iraq and an elderly man was bundled out of the Labour Party Conference and arrested for heckling the Prime Minister.
Targamadze was clever enough to avoid blaming President Saakashvili for the conflict with Russia and loss of territories by explaining that any politician would have found it difficult to tolerate Russian provocation over Georgian airspace and on Georgian soil in recent years. He did criticise all 3 presidents of Georgia for their relations with Russia and poor handling of diplomacy (without clear specific details of what he might have done differently in their place.)
Targamadze made some interesting points about priorities in tackling the political and economic problems of Georgia, particularly by investing more heavily in agriculture rather than focussing solely on financial services.
It's possible that Targamadze will gain power in Georgia when Saakashvili steps down in 2013. At the moment it seems unlikely. We live in a media driven world where perception and image are more important than facts. Style is more important than substance in gaining support and influence in politics. Targamadze may have been a tele journalist, but he has not mastered the art of focussed communication.
Saakashvili answers questions with concise answers, avoiding repetition and including varied tone and emphasis. He can make an impact during a short radio interview, as he showed on BBC radio during the conflict with Russia. He was filmed over many hours at work for a fly-on-the-wall documentary 'Something about Georgia' and came across very well (much better than Gordon Brown chatting to a potential voter).
Targamadze often sounds as if he is reading a prepared news script or election manifesto and does not connect easily with his audience.
One member of the audience commented that only tough people do well in politics and Targamadze seems too nice. Tony Blair was once described as Bambi, because he seemed boyish, fresh faced and smiled all the time.
That soon changed.
Targamadze may also learn how to manage his image to better advantage.
George Orwell presented a regime that sought to control the population and render people passive through censorship, Doublethink and Newspeak in his 1948 dystopian novel 'Nineteen eighty four'. Control was coordinated by the Ministry of Truth. All nuances were removed from the language and simple dichotomies reduced ideas to a child-like black and white representation.
“By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."
Totalitarian regimes of the past have seized control of media outlets and imposed rigorous censorship of news and culture.
Modern, powerful political leaders, such as Berlusconi and Chavez, have exerted control by owning much of the country's media or running their own prime time tv show.
Berlusconi is alleged to have colonised the national psyche by creating a wall-to-wall media promotion of no values or 'nothing matters.' Juvenal described this in Satire X as 'bread and circuses', entertaining, appeasing and distracting the masses to retain their support and compliance.
Chavez hosts a tv show that sometimes runs to 8 hours. Critics say he governs by tv, announcing the hiring and firing of staff first on the show. We're used to UK politicians making policy announcements to the press before presenting them to Parliament, so this seems to be a growing international trend. Chavez presents his fireside chat to give the impression that he is talking directly to his supporters and drawing them in to his confidence. The cult of personality and regular use of tv is reminiscent of George Orwell's Big Brother.
Last week the UK higher education union UCU blocked an attempt to introduce a new definition of anti-semitism amongst college and university staff. This definition has been adopted by some student unions in the UK. It seeks to conflate criticism of Israeli government policy and Zionism with prejudice against Jews and the Jewish faith.
The definition also seeks to prevent people from drawing parallels between what Israel is doing to Arab Israelis, Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza with Hitler and the Third Reich or Apartheid South Africa (even if the reports quote Israeli self descriptions). Presumably the definition might lead to films such as 'The Promise' by Peter Kosminsky being banned.
George Orwell might point to the process of Newspeak that has reduced Semitic peoples from including a range of languages and cultures across the Middle East to now solely representing Jews. A similar process has led to America representing one third of the continent of the Americas ie the USA, omitting Canada and Central and South America.
He might also point to a trend in history to identify the holocaust solely with the death of Jews, forgetting the Communists, trade unionists, gypsies, homosexuals and others killed in the Death Camps of WW2. Curiously holocaust survivors and many who lived through WW2 are critical of Israeli policy (including the actress Miriam Karlin, who died on 3 June).
There are many inconvenient issues in Israeli policy that supporters might seek to hide and suppress. Nuclear weapons and the kidnap of whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu is one. Israel claims to have no nuclear weapons and presses the West to take military action against Iran for beginning to work on a nuclear facility. Another issue is Israel's claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East while appearing to support collapsing dictatorships around them during the Arab Spring. Egypt is one public example. Less well known is the allegation that Israel was funding Libyan mercenaries from Chad and that Saif Gadhafi asked Israel for support against recent insurgents.
Coldplay are releasing a new song to raise money to support Palestinian projects:
Sue Blackwell, Mike Cushman and colleagues have worked hard to block the new definition. This blog post points out how hypocrital the drive for re-definition has become:
'At a time when the fascist English Defence League demonstrates alongside Zionists in support of Israel and every far right party of significance in Europe, apart from the Hungarian Jobbik Party, supports Israel and Zionism, it is clear that whatever else its purpose, the EUMC definition isn't about anti-Semitism but defending Israel.'
The South African Advertising Standards Authority has issued an interesting ruling. It has thrown out a complaint against an advert that named Israel as an Apartheid state.
Mintzberg is not a fan of Chief Executives being parachuted into run an organisation in an entirely different sector.
Jim Collins is disdainful of the cult of personality around leadership and had devoted his career to research into teamwork until his students talked him round.
I've been thinking about how organisations can make substantial improvements and ensure that they survive the daily inertia that drags people back to old habits and patterns.
Robust systems and effective teamwork are part of the process to embed improvements in the organisation, rather than relying on brilliant individuals. However, high quality change seems to rely on visionary leadership to ignite it and keep it burning.
What maintains the quality after the leader has gone?
Last night Manchester United faced Barcelona in the European cup final.
Both managers have good track records but Alex Ferguson has an astonishing record of success with his team. Much as Josep Guardiola deserves respect for his work, I think there is one man who has left his footprints firmly in the sand of Barcelona FC.
The Dutchman, Johan Cruyff, made a deep impression on Guardiola as a 13 year old player when Cruyff encouraged the youth team manager to move him into a midfield position to become the pivot for the whole team. It worked and this system was used in Barcelona to great effect thereafter.
Cruyff brought some of the extraordinary skills developed by Ajax, including team position flexibility (Total Football), developing equal ability with right and left foot and an exceptional youth development programme.
Cruyff left the job before Barcelona really made its mark internationally, but is still revered at the club.
He is still around and his son, Jordi, has made a name for himself in Spanish football, so the Cruyff family are not regarded as football 'tourists' just passing through to make a quick buck.
Steve Jobs is renowned for his storytelling and ability to weave the myths of Apple in a compelling way. That may be one reason that he has been able to inculcate values and lead large scale change at Apple so well.
Cruyff is famous for 'Cruyffisms' one line utterances that can seem obscure or confusing. He comments directly on leadership and taking responsibility for creating a vision:
'It's better to lose with your own vision than someone else's'
Marc Koska invented something to make an impact on the rapid spread of HIV and AIDS through re-used syringes:
'My motivation was half humanitarian and half wanting to see whether I could do it. I never set my sights on a Ferrari and I never wanted to be Joan of Arc; it was somewhere between the two.'
He read an article in 1984 about the problem and spent 27 years trying to invent and bring to market a device that could change the growing loss of life in the developing world. Marc devised a single use syringe.
Here's a man with A levels, who spent part of his time as a beach bum and then took casual jobs to keep himself going. The process was tough and there's little margin in selling syringes, so it was difficult to market the product initially.
'I think our product has won out because we didn’t set out to design the best syringe in the world – I designed it to be adequate and very easy to manufacture.'
Marc decided on 3 design pillars for the new syringe:
1 Make it on existing machines (with the same plastic)
2 Sell it for the same low price
3 Ensure it's used in the same way as existing syringes
His TED lecture includes examples of children recycling and selling old syringes or playing with syrings with traces of blood in them:
Who inspires Marc to keep going?
'I could have given up a number of times. I was offered quite a lot of money for the project before we even sold any, and I said "no" because it was likely to be killed at that point. The only person is the one that you look at in the mirror.'
This story highlights 2 distinct issuesin developing innovations.
1 How to devise, manufacture and sell something the market needs and can use at a price consumers are willing to pay
2 How to ensure that the product or service is adopted, so that it becomes ubiquitous
Marc is aware that safe syringes will only be used when consumers demand them as standard. This is difficult in developing countries, where patients may not challenge doctors, who have high status. He noticed that his syringes were being used in one part of a Ugandan hospital, but conventional syringes were re-used in another part.
In 2008 'After the gruelling five-day media blitz in the country in November, Mr Koska said he was able to return for a meeting with Indian health minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss in December and leave with the guarantee autodisable syringes would be used in all public hospitals and clinics starting in April this year.'
There is no let up. The fight for basic healthcare in developing countries is tough and takes great persistence.
"When the minister said 'yes' I went outside and cried for five minutes."
Jim Collins uses this term in crediting Peter Drucker's influence on some of the most famous innovative companies such as Hewlett Packard, an organisation built on values.
Drucker did not follow the tendency to make a Procrustean Bed from theory, fitting the data to what had been proposed in abstract. He began with empirical data based on the observation of people and organisations in practice and then reflected on the role of organisations in the evolution of society at this stage of human history.
One distinction Collins makes is between the tendency to answer questions of increasing irrelevance with increasing precision and Drucker's courageous drive to ask questions of increasing significance and find answers with increasing empirical rigour.
Collins takes the view that the overriding question is 'How do we make society more productive and more humane?'
If you build great, well-managed companies and destroy human beings in the process, this would be a failure.
Collins discloses how his team of young, sceptical students challenged his ideas and pushed him into research on Level 5 leadership.
Collins challenges received notions of underprivilege used to explain poor success in society, citing examples of level 5 leadership enabling people to triumph over adversity.
In scenario thinking he uses the metaphor of climbing a mountain to describe our present state in a world of ferocious change. We are climbing at 20,000 feet in a storm and far from base camp. Collins believes we will return to prosperity, but not stability. The storm may pass, but there's no return to base camp. Developing countries have long experience on the side of the mountain and are better skilled than we are in dealing with this environment.
One of the challenges for rising generations is in dealing with change and restriction over time, without expecting rapid development or a speedy return to better conditions.
He quotes Admiral Stockdale's account of time spent in a Prisoner of war camp in Vietnam and his claim never to have been an optimist during that time:
'When you're imprisoned by great calamity, great difficulty and great uncertainty, you must never confuse the need for unwavering faith that you will find a way to prevail in the end and the discipline to confront the most brutal facts we actually face.'
An article by Elizabeth Day caught my eye as it describes a practical example of innovationadapted to local culture and conditions, empowering people with lowest status and resources.
Dr Abhay Bang and his wife, Rani, have worked for 26 years training local volunteers in Gadchiroli, a deprived district of Maharashtra, India. The idea was to treat simple health problems at home. The volunteers are called arogyadoots or Health Messengers.
Results are impressive: newborn death rate has fallen from 121 to 30 per 1,000 live births. In 1988 the death rate among children who developed pneumonia was 13%, now it has fallen to 0.8%.
The mission of their charity, Search (Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health) was to listen to the people and find outwhat kind of healthcare they wanted.
'"We are very MUCH part of the community," says Dr Bang, ...."I really can't say where the line of separation is between them and me. It is research with the people, not on the people."
Cultural differences derailed efforts by NGOs to impose western models of healthcare on rural India:
'"The villagers said they were scared to go to hospital," he says. "When we asked why, they told us something fascinating. They said: 'Your doctors and nurses drape themselves in white clothes. We wrap dead bodies in white shawls. How can you save lives if you are dressed like a dead person?' They said: 'When they admit a patient, we can only visit between 3pm and 6pm and we don't have wristwatches. We don't have anywhere to stay in town, so we go back to the village. The patient doesn't want to stay on their own."'
Dr Bang ran People's Health Assemblies to consult people on their most pressing issues in healthcare and heard about the high rate of death amongst newborn babies. Local women were then trained in low tech ways of managing neonatal care and went where they were needed using portable health packs. The Health Messengers passed on their knowledge and whole communities became empowered - from consultation, codetermination to control.
He also constructed a hospital that resembled a local village so that patients could stay with their relatives. This shifted a sense of ownership to the local community.
The innovations were driven by local demands (market pull) and the increasing availability of portable tools intended for outreach care (technology push).
Dr Bang was motivated to help by the story of a young woman who arrived too late for doctors to save her baby. She related the practical challenges she faced in coping with isolation, a drunken husband and travelling to the hospital. Rather than feel overwhelmed and give up because of the enormous size of the problem, Dr Bang reflected from a systems thinking perspective:
"But then I looked at the whole situation and asked myself: 'Do I really need to solve all the problems, all the links in the chain of this cause of death?' I started to think: 'Where is the weakest link I can attack?' and that was access to healthcare." He falls silent for a moment. "It was practical compassion, not a flash of genius."
Dr Bang and his wife also campaigned successfully for a ban on alchohol in Gadchiroli district to reduce some of the problems contributing to low income, fractured families and poor health.
That's the gloomy view of some forecasters in the UK. We hear daily reports of job cuts and business bankruptcies.
I find it interesting to listen to other voices, beyond the mass media and Opposition party politicians.
One City Trader has been saying for some time that business debt is being closely managed and that figures for the economy are all improving. A BBC radio 4 programme gathered together senior business people who seemed to agree with this view.
All of the business leaders said that they'd avoided cutting staff. They agreed on some simple rules for success: Look after your cost base and re-structure in the good times, but don't cut in a recession if you can avoid it. You'll need good people to take advantage of opportunities as the economy starts to recover. It's more expensive if you cut and then rehire.
Part of the discussion centred on the rapid progress of Germany out of recession and considered how their manufacturing base has done so well.
Collaborative approach to business between management and labour unions was one of the factors mentioned, along with medium sized businesses that focus on a single niche product. The overriding factor seemed to be the rapid move into global selling. This was contrasted with the British norm: first establish a firm market in the UK and then consider expanding overseas.
Transnational organisations are commonplace. Many top brands have a global presence.
How do they cope with the variety of custom and practice in all of the different countries in which they operate?
Some American companies have had a tendency to attempt the Genghis Khan model of expansion. By this I mean that they tended to believe that Truth, Justice and the American Way are best and easily transplanted to every country of the world.
I've worked with American companies that started to stray from that model when the CEO was recruited from another English speaking country and not the United States. A relaxation of viewpoint gradually led to a dawning realisation that indigenous leaders might do better running the business in each country.
What followed was a tussle between aspects of the business that needed to be consistent across the world and those that could be adapted to fit the customs and culture of the local environment. Some found that management information systems could be homogenised and that some product development, brand management, marketing and sales needed to be adapted to the local market.
Why set yourself up for a fight that you will surely lose? Think about what you need to unify and run an efficient business and where boundaries can be relaxed for greater effectiveness.
This is one of my favourite examples of innovation in altruism led by Dr Sugata Mitra. I heard Hole-in-the-wall discussed on Radio 4 in the UK and a senior manager of Microsoft insisting that the only way to spread education to rural areas of India was to build schools and recruit more teachers.
I prefer to defer to local knowledge of IT specialists and educationalists in India.
Dr Mitra concludes with 4 points:
- Remoteness affects the quality of education
- Education technology should be introduced into remote areas first
- Values are acquired: doctrine & dogma are imposed
- Learning is a self-organising system
He proposes that education should develop its own technology specs to tackle remoteness, values and violence.
Pinchot's 10 commandments for intrapreneurs stirs mixed feelings in people. Firstly we may read the same words but understand them very differently. Individual style may play a part in how much we're preapred to risk. National culture may also have an effect on how we respond. Gender can also have an impact.
THE INTRAPRENEUR’S TEN COMMANDMENTS
1 Come to work each day willing to be fired.
2 Circumvent any orders aimed at stopping your dream.
3 Do any job needed to make your project work, regardless of
your job description.
4 Find people to help you.
5 Follow your intuition about the people you choose, and work
only with the best.
6 Work underground as long as you can – publicity triggers the
corporate immune system.
7 Never bet on a race unless you are running in it.
8 Remember it is easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
9 Be true to your goals, but be realistic about the ways to achieve
them.
10 Honour your sponsors.
Part of my work is as a psychotherapist and counsellor. In domestic violence cases some women may believe that they must be totally honest with a partner, even if that person lies through their teeth and is abusive. Commandment 6 may be anathema to these clients, as they don't wish to copy the behaviour that they criticise in their partner. Part of my role is to enable people to shift from absolute to relative values in certain circumstances. If children may lose their mother because absolute honesty triggers a partner to kill, then perhaps withholding information temporarily may be the lesser of 2 evils.
Similarly someone who finds it difficult to control aggression may wish to remove this behaviour completely. I argue that, if a crazed axe murderer climbed through the window one night, it may be very useful to have high level aggression in combatting an attack on the partner and children.
Here are some questions that may help think this through:
How do I make sense of this commandment?
How do I adapt it to fit my situation and personal style?
How long can I sustain this behaviour?
If it conflicts with my personal values, how might it fulfill a higher value for me?
Steve Jobs has an interesting attitude to the customer. He listens, but doesn't run after them. Lack of imagination may limit what they want. If he can suggest something they haven't thought of yet, they might go for it.
Customer pull is clearly important to Apple and Steve Jobs has thought about different types of customer, since he and Steve Wozniak first put together Apple 1 and 2 (the first for fellow computer geeks who could assemble their own hardware, the second for those who wanted the product, but needed the box, screen and keyboard to make it work.)
Technology push is not allowed to dominate Apple's output. Designers could add unlimited functionality to products, but these won't sell unless the price is affordable. Technology is no good floating around with a mass of disconnected ideas. There must be a gravitational force that pulls it together in the form of saleable products.
Jobs is well aware of unarticulated and potential customer needs, so that he doesn't fall into the trap of looking for a quick assessment of articulated and identified needs. Latent needs may be awakened through careful engagement with customers.
'You have to merge these points of view, and you have to do it in an interactive way over a period of time -- which doesn't mean a week. It takes a long time to pull out ofcustomers what they really want, and it takes a long time to pull out of technology what it can really give.'
Steve Jobs has little interest in describing himself as Superman, the charismatic leader. The team is essential to the process. Ideas may come from anyone and the team helps weed out the rubbish and refine those that are worth pursuing. Sharing ideas helps develop them and this gives the company leverage.
'Let's say that -- for the same amount of money it takes to build the most powerful computer in the world -- you could make 1,000 computers with one-thousandth the power and put them in the hands of 1,000 creative people. You'll get more out of doing that than out of having one person use the most powerful computer in the world. Because people are inherently creative. They will use tools in ways the toolmakers never thought possible. And once a person figures out how to do something with that tool, he or she can share it with the other 999.'
Jobs defines his role as Head Janitor and he clearly steps in to take up the slack when senior colleagues leave. He has fostered a company culture that promotes excellence, but hasn't achieved it by training courses and company handbooks. He focussed on the aesthetics of the product, but also the components and how the factory was laid out.
'I mean, beyond the functional benefits, the aesthetic communicates something about how they think of themselves, their sense of discipline in engineering, how they run their company, stuff like that......(Steve Wozniak and I) We thought, why don't we take the extra few days or weeks and do it right? We had a fundamental belief that doing it right the first time was going to be easier than having to go back and fix it. And I cannot say strongly enough that the repercussions of that attitude are staggering. I've seen them again and again throughout my business life. They're just staggering.'
Steve Jobs describes the culture of excellence or right first time as something that is inherently motivating for people, rather than imposed and policed:
'In my experience, people get far more excited about doing something as well as it can be done than about doing something adequately. If they are working in an environment where excellence is expected, then they will do excellent work without anything but self-motivation. I'm talking about an environment in which excellence is noticed and respected and is in the culture. If you have that, you don't have to tell people to do excellent work. They understand it from their surroundings. You may have to coach them at first, but then you just get out of their way, and they'll surprise you time and time again.'
Jobs recognises the importance of selecting the right people to run parts of the business. He describes how he transmitted his notion of attention to detail and components that symbolise a wholistic process. This enabled staff to move beyond the idea of silos and islands of production to thinking about production as an organic system that must be managed as a whole.
'People in our factory asked me, "Why is it so important to paint these machines the same color? We don't understand it." For one thing, we want the place to look nice because we bring customers through. They're going to make a decision on using NeXT products, and they ought to know that we have a very high-quality manufacturing operation. But the real reason is that we don't want people to think of the factory as separate islands of automation. We want people thinking of the whole. Suppose we have a bottleneck at one robot. In reality, you can probably rebalance the line and solve the problem -- provided you think of it as a whole. It took people six months to understand this, but now it's in their bones. We spend a lot of time going over these concepts and why they are important -- not just in the abstract, but right down to the everyday tangible point of view. That's what building a company culture is all about.'
Jobs extends this philosophy to every area of the business and puts energy into the process as well as the product. This extends to manufacturing, automation, sales and marketing, as well as information systems.
'So, to build a great company, you need more than a great product. You have to pay attention to all the different areas and be as aggressive with them as with your product. Otherwise, you'll spend half your time fixing things that break. And that's typical of high-growth companies. Half the management time is spent making repairs -- stock-option plans, marketing strategies, information systems, whatever.'
He started young and had some success, but inexperience caught up with him. On reflection he recognised the need for an Ambidextrous Organisation and has since mastered the balance between revolutionay and evolutionary change.
Apple had a monopoly on the graphical user interface for almost 10 years. Steve Jobs acknowledges that success preceded failure in a similar pattern to many successful companies. Focus shifted to managing the company and away from innovative product development that led to success. Gradually the monopoly was lost and disruptive innovation from other sources changed the face of computing and the business model.
'But after that, the product people aren't the ones that drive the company forward anymore. It's the marketing guys or the ones who expand the business into Latin America or whatever. Because what's the point of focusing on making the product even better when the only company you can take business from is yourself?'
Jobs was kicked out of Apple and went off to develop NeXt computers and Pixar animations. When he returned as CEO, the company began to return to its innovative roots.
'The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about. Process makes you more efficient.
But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.
And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.'
Has Steve Jobs achieved level 5 leadership? Few would describe him as humble and self effacing, though he is able to stand back and reflect on patterns rather than personalities in the rise and fall of his companies. One test, that is much discussed in the media, is succession planning and whether Apple can continue to thrive as Jobs withdraws from active leadership.
The launch of iPad 2 indicates a shift in identity, as they bring other members of the team to the fore in the promotional video.
Dance fans ask me 'what has this post to do with tango?'
Some UK tango teachers have taught both men and women to dance the steps. Some of these women are shocked to find they are heavily criticised in the dance clubs of Buenos Aires, when visiting Argentina to experience tango in its place. Why? 'Let the man lead. If you lead, the man becomes weak. Your job is to respond deftly to all his signals. He controls the dance. A good leader can turn any woman into a fine tango dancer.'
The legendary Tete Rusconi was one such tango leader.
In balancing technology push and customer pull is Steve Jobs the tango leader or flexible follower?
Gary Hamel has said that the future is already with us, it's just at the edges. What starts off as fringe, ends up as mainstream.
The Age of Deference is over. Western culture is shifting towards participation, instant celebrity and a sense of entitlement. This seems to be spreading slowly around the globe, through franchised tv programmes.
In the UK, Members of Parliament failed in their attempt to conceal details of expense claims and MPs faced outrage and criticism in the press and in their constituencies for fiddling. Some have been prosecuted in court and gone to prison.
Julian Assange and his team have enabled people around the world to find out what their politicians have been saying behind closed doors as well as individuals who have stashed wealth in Swiss bank accounts out of reach from the tax authorities. He has revealed the extent of civilian casualties in war, which were previously concealed in general terms such as 'collateral damage'. He also disclosed inhuman and degrading practices outlined in the Guantanamo Bay handbook and the instruction to staff to lie to the Red Cross.
What do leaders and organisations do when embarrassing information is made public?
'In this situation, organisations have two choices, says Assange. One is to "engage in plans that the public will support if they are revealed", meaning that they will have nothing to fear from transparency. The other is to "spend additional resources to keep those plans secret". The second, more common, course entails a toll on the economic logic of the organisation, which Assange calls a "secrecy tax". Also, "when an organisation acts in a more clandestine manner", he says, "its own internal efficiency decreases, because information cannot flow quickly through the organisation. This is another form of secrecy tax." For organisations to be efficient, they should be transparent, he insists.'
I'm not sure that governments willingly favour increased transparency. I think it's likely that less communication will be committed to print in future in sensitive areas.
Colin Hutchinson, an inspirational sustainable development consultant, told the story of Norsk Hydro. Environmentalists climbed over the fence of their plant in Norway, took soil samples and publicised the details of their findings after analysis showed substantial heavy metal contamination. The company were aware of the problem, but hadn't publicised it. Instead of increasing security and quashing the story in the media, they developed a comprehensive sustainable development policy and employed environmentalists to train their staff. Colin documented a range of examples of organisations that were criticised for poor practice, but rose to the challenge and developed policies that took them far beyond the initial criticism.
Colin Hutchinson is no longer with us, but his pioneering work lives on.
Every year I am challenged by a few students who believe that development, sustainability and responsibility are irrelevant. They dismiss attempts to address these issues as liberal pap.
Let's look at another angle on this: money.
When I first started as a consultant, I bumped into an employee of a multi national manufacturer of domestic products. Conversation turned to environmental issues. The board had dismissed public clamour for phosphate free detergents as a passing fad. They bitterly regretted the decision when they lost a big chunk of market share in a growing and long term market.
I have done a lot of work with companies on recruitment and selection and some organisations find the focus on equality tedious. I remind them of the pragmatic approach of the chairman of Littlewoods, who walked round some inner city stores and was annoyed to see few black customers, when the streets outside told a different tale. He asked a golf club buddy to supply him with a few good looking black shop assistants and his senior staff worked out an employee development system to ensure that there was equality of opportunity in promotion. Profits rose steadily. Warm and fluffy? No. The Big Cheese of Littlewoods was focussed solely on the bottom line.
The former boss of Iceland, Malcolm Walker, mounted a principled campaign against Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and sent out copies of a research paper to anyone who requested it. He was forced to resign. The government tried to force through liberalisation of GMOs in agriculture. The major supermarkets, led by Tesco, quietly told them to wake up. Customers rejected GMO products resoundingly and GMO contaminated products would affect sales and profits, damaging the UK farming industry. The government retreated. Tree huggers? No. Terry Leahy and his peers were scanning the environment and detecting strong trends on which to base business strategy. 'Listen to the market' is their maxim, or 'listen to your voters' as they told the politicians.
Does a principled stand ever succeed? Yes. Slowly the UK is waking up to the consequences of rising energy prices, peak oil and rising living standards. The government and local authorities are slowly shifting planning regulations so that buildings meet energy efficiency standards. Channel 4 tv's series 'Grand Designs' has introduced viewers to specialists in triple glazing and highly insulated, draught free pre-fabricated houses, such as Huf Haus. A popular entrant to the UK market is Baufritz, which not only produces aesthetically pleasing and well insulated houses, but also ensures their buildings minimise potential carcinogens. Why? The wife of the founder died of cancer and he pledged to do what he could to prevent environmental agents causing or exacerbating illness in others.
Increase benefits, provide courses, send in health and social workers to protect children.... adapt the architecture, install security lights, increase local policing........ introduce drug programmes, send in the police to stop prostitution and drug dealing on the street..... start parenting programmes........
Does it work? How many children from the slums end up in good jobs, with self respect and a fine reputation? I can think of one lawyer who made it, but not many others.
One man in another country came up with an idea that seems counter intuitive: give a child a musical instrument and teach them classical music. It sounds bonkers. This is the result:
The movement is spreading to the UK. There's a project in Scotland and a recent success in Everton:
Politicians have increased the emphasis on distinguishing between beneficial activities, (such as science & engineering subjects for degree study), making an assumption that other activities have no value.
I'm not so sure.
When I say SOLVE, I don't mean that slums disappear. In the case of Venezuela, large numbers of young people and their families now have opportunities, meaning and purpose. There are still gangs, drug problems, criminality and prostitution, but el sistema has made an impact that is visible to the world.
