Ugly potatoes and brilliant creatures

14 Sep

ugly potato

Business theory is frothing to the brim with strategic models on how to do things. These models have been thought through by the illuminati of business schools the world over. From Harvard to the McDonalds Hamburger University there’s lots of best practice to take on board and execute (sounds like a film about Blackbeard.)

But how about this. How many businesses just happened. Somebody did something and voila – there’s a business. Let’s call them ugly potatoes. They’re organic after all.

And then it gets bigger because there is a demand. More offices, people, equipment … visits to the bank.

Then come the managers who become directors of strategic areas like finance, marketing, R&D. They want and need to impose some kind of order on the ugly potato.

Meanwhile the founder/s and original people (the brilliant creatures) are caught in the middle. They know they need order and strategy but sometimes it hurts. Order can kill creativity.

I’ve seen it a few times. The painful journey from ugly organic to smoothly strategic.

How is this managed?

I love ideas but I also love order. I like breaking out but I also respect process.

Like my kid … I tell him to play his PS3 but also do his study. Balance it out. Yeah right!! Well I try.

Lots of businesses travel from ugly to smooth. From garden markets to supermarket shelves. From crusty and dusty to smooth and waxen.

Be mindful of the brilliant creatures and the ugly potatoes.

Organic food tastes better.

Somerset Maugham, the tiger and Raffles Hotel

7 Sep

maugham

Creativity seems to be a buzz word these days as is happiness. For us white bread types both can seem like butterflies in a strong breeze – now you see them and now you don’t. Try to capture them and they’re gone.

Now take W Somerset Maugham for instance. He was creative undoubtedly. Still considered one of the great short story writers ever. If you haven’t done so, read some of his ‘south seas’ stories like ‘Rain’ for instance featuring the morally questionable Sadie Thomson and monsoons that drove people crazy. Often set in exotic places like Pago Pago and Apia when the copra trade and rubber plantations were booming – the islands full of boozy ex pats and over zealous missionaries with sin on their minds.

I was lucky enough to stay at Raffles Hotel in Singapore before they modernised it. There was a suite there named after Maugham and one called the Conrad suite. They both stayed there regularly. There was a snooker table in a colonial space where it was rumoured that the last tiger in Singapore was shot. “Jolly good show. Got him right between the eyes!” Definitely not correct these days.

So Maugham, Raffles, tigers … and creativity of course.

You can set up a room with toys and games tables for creative thought. Or you can’t. How do you capture creativity? 

More importantly … how do you monetize it?

Publishing is a business like the movies or games. You don’t get published if you don’t have a market.

There has always been creativity in business. They just didn’t use the term so much.

 

 

 

Tags: , ,

Working with Gen wotever

30 Aug

dobell

Quite recently I have had the privilege of working with a team of Gen Y’s. I think that’s their gen name (as opposed to genome) anyway. Their a bit older than Charles Lloyd Jones in this William Dobell portrait. They’re younger than me anyway. 

We have been working on a huge and creative project – something I couldn’t do on my own. These gens have been working with me and I have been managing them and their output. 

And yes … it’s true, they do work differently. They are definitely not your old time bank clerk types. They have different clocks and they can drift off but never too far.

What I have enjoyed is telling them stuff. It’s creative and we do a lot of writing. I tell them about The Confederacy of Dunces and the Catcher in the Rye. About original writers who also wrote and thought about freedom and how it dwells in the mind a lot of the time.

I give them tasks and I check up on them with a ‘how’s it going?’ lame style of management. I don’t get too concerned when they wander off and they do from time to time but I do keep track on deadlines.

We get along fine and they are producing – and more often than not, they surprise me with their work.

So I say Gen wotever. Show people respect and listen to them. When you delegate tell stories and have a laugh. 

Oh yeah … and say thanks.

Often. 

Tags: , , , ,

I dare you to watch this video

9 Aug

Have you got a coupla minutes?

My kid is 12 and he loves his technology. I don’t mean that he just likes it a lot … he loves it. I like technology too. I’m using it now. But I also love books. I am auto didactic. No not that. I have always read a lot. As a kid I just tore up history books (those illustrated ones) and began reading classics via the Classic Comics Illustrated range which introduced me to Turgenev and Victor Hugo. I knew about myths and legends from Norse to Roman and later on I discovered my mother’s books. It took me a week to get over the first time I opened The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and Henry Miller … well he was amazing for a kid who watched the Beverly Hillbillies.

I am not anti technology because I think it’s the greatest tool of creativity and self expression since that hungarian Bic invented the biro but I’m afraid that it’s got some limitations too.

My kid showed me this video and I think it sums things up quite well and has repercussions for us all business-wise or not:

 

 

 

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Less speed more haste

29 Jul

ferrari

 

When I left school and joined the family business, I was very lucky to have been shown the ropes (mentored these days) by my mother who had herself left school at 15. We ran a very successful fashion business. Even though mum wasn’t tertiary educated and she’d never been trained in management or retail or anything really she was an amazing teacher.

One day I was doing something and she said to me ‘less speed, more haste.’ 

These words ring true today especially in the manic world of the internet where there is often a slight tinge of panic in the air. 

Yes we have to respond fast. But what about strategy?

There’s always time to think.

Think about strategies which lead to plans.

I work fast. I love it but I also like to use my mind and be innovative.

Innovation is key these days …

How can we do this well?

How can we do this better than the competition?

Less speed more haste!

Think about it. 

Ferrari’s are fast but they need to have a driver.

it’s a mad mad mad world of metrics

12 Jul

harold lloyd

We all know about metrics. The back end of the internet. The analytics. The tracking mechanisms of sites. 

They come in all shapes too. Line graphs. Dials. Segments. Bar charts. 

And they are great and necessary. How else do we know ‘how we’re doing!’

This is about productivity and we all have to be productive don’t we? Work, work, work …

There’s no time in an asynchronous world to stop and think. 

Why would you do that? There’s stuff to do. People are restless and they want it NOW.

I’ve spent time in organisations where metrics are key drivers, and that is fine. But when dials and graphs are key drivers, then strategy can go out the window if there is weak and lazy leadership.

Strategy is of the utmost importance. It’s the beginning of innovations. It’s the way to do things differently and better.

The fast knee-jerk get this done now attitude is a band aid solution.

Metrics can freak poor managers/leaders out because these measures make them or their area look bad, so they rush to fix something and it sets an unrealistic pace where mistakes are made and people break down or worse – feel like galley slaves, rowing to the beat of a drum.

I’m all for measurements and monitoring because I like change. 

But don’t let it freak you out. Sit down and think about things. Come up with new ways of doing things.

Calm down

Avoiding Captain Queeg

5 Jul

The Caine Mutiny (1954) Directed by Edward Dmytryk Shown: Humphrey Bogart

The Caine Mutiny is a 1954 Oscar nominated movie starring Humphrey Bogart as an erratic US Navy disciplinarian posted to the U.S. Navy destroyer minesweeper, the USS Caine.

The crew is undisciplined but perform their duties well.

Bogart plays the role magnificently, depicting Queeg as a ball-bearing rolling paranoid sociopath with little self knowledge. He makes authoritarian decisions that have negative impacts on the vessel, crew and missions.

My past few blogs have been about putting up with bad leadership and management – focusing on the team and just plain ‘getting over it and on with it.’

Bad boss personality a fact

But this week an article was published around a Norwegian business school research project identifying that people with narcissistic personality disorder often assume leadership positions through their strength of personality, self confidence and willingness to make tough decisions. In fact these types are destructive and “don’t think twice about using others to achieve their own goals.”

It’s fair to say that not all human beings are high minded. People can act badly and unconscionably and hurt others in the blink of an eye. It’s a fact. There are also great people who lead and inspire. Who are open to innovation and creativity and work well with others.

Should you suffer under the stewardship of a Captain Queeg and hope that things will get better?

No.

Speak up. Move on and find a place where you can flourish and create.

Like cornered animals they will fight and manipulate with amazing ferocity.

Life’s too short.

Tags: , , ,

resilience and taking it on the chin

14 Jun

Image

This is the Alcántara Bridge in Spain, built by the Roam Emperor Trajan between 104 and 106 AD. That’s almost 2200 years ago. It’s not modern engineering but it’s lasted. It’s prevailed. Can you imagine the hordes of people and animals and vehicles that have crossed it. The fights and battles. The life and death it has seen in that time.

The bridge has resilience built into it. That’s why it’s still here. It has strong foundations.

People at work work together. Sometimes they’re called teams. Teams support each other if they’re functioning. It’s a necessary element in all teams including sporting and in families. That’s nice isn’t it?

But guess what. S%$t happens (I censored that for you!)

But it does, even in the most highly functioning teams because people are people and we have moods, emotions, short comings. We’re not all nice all the time.

I heard about a man who was known as a man of god. That was his life. Doing good things for people who others shunned. He was also a boss. I heard that every morning he would walk into his offices and lose his block. He would systematically fire people and then an hour or so later re-hire them (or something like that.) This was devastating to his team of kind hearts and do gooders. But they stayed with him. Why?

Because they allowed him his childish behaviour because they recognised that he was angry and stressed. It wasn’t them.

It’s hard dealing with difficult people. But when you do and the sky doesn’t fall, then you build your understanding and resilience so the next time the boss loses it they know what to do. It’s called emotional intelligence.

Great teams have this resilience and it allows them to build trust and understanding one block of stone at a time.

Tags: , ,

Raymond Chandler, his hat, and the mechanics of writing

11 May

Image

I admire Raymond Chandler and I love his hat. It’s straw unlike his writing.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, Chandler was probably the godfather of the hard boiled private eye. That may sound like a Bedouin dish but it’s a description of a certain literary genre.  The pulp school of crime fiction. Chandler was an interesting character himself. Raised partly in the barren mid west of Nebraska and partly in an English public school, his metaphysical trajectory included stints as an accountant for an oil company and an alcoholic. The alcohol produced blackouts, he forgot to go to work and he lost his comfortable job which left him holding his hat. It was the tail end of the depression and Chandler lived at that time in Los Angeles. It was a lawless, corrupt place with bruising you couldn’t see.

Chandler had been dabbling in poetry since he was a schoolboy. He now had an opportunity. He decided to become a writer.

At that time, there was a magazine called The Black Mask. A pulp offering launched in 1850 by journalist H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan as a money maker to prop up a more literary offering, The Smart Set, “a magazine of cleverness”, was an American magazine of literature and culture.

Chandler was an intelligent man who approached his pulp writing with a scientific mien. Like Ernest Hemingway he laboured over unfussing his writing. It was all about the mechanics.

Chandler’s most famous invention was Philip Marlowe, the world weary gumshoe … sorry I had to say that. His novella’s – The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely are classics of the genre.

He wrote sentences like this

‘It was a good crowd for a Tuesday but nobody was dancing.”

Here’s to Raymond Chandler.

Do you think there’s some merit in cutting out the flap doodle.

On the internet no one reads anymore.

Remember Raymond when your writing.

Everybody loves Raymond.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

It’s what happens after that really matters

19 Apr

Image

Things can go wrong. Like they said in the army SNAFU. Situational normal all f*&^%$#@ up! Leaders, managers, teams and individuals make plans, follow programs, address well thought out strategies and then … 

My family had a successful retail business that operated for almost 80 years. It was established during the peak of the Great Depression and it grew. It traversed WW11 and Vietnam. There were fights between siblings and a whole heap of problems both personal and professional. 

Not everyday was a good one > but the wheels kept on turning somehow. 

RESILIENCE

Recently, in a workplace, I was involved in a great effort. The place was electric. There was lots to do in my team. And each day brought lots more. It wasn’t business as usual at all and tempers flared more than the pants I used to wear. 

My last post (I’ve heard that somewhere before!) was about artichokes and the art of managing. Watching individuals unfold like the leaves till you see the heart.

During this testing period an amazing thing happened. Amid the stress, long hours and emotions the team spirit kicked in.

Esprit de Corps.

The team supported each other. There was as much laughter as there were tears (and there were some.)

It was a small thing maybe but also amazing to see a group of people act like a well oiled machine. We got through the situation and the results were excellent.

The team had more in the emotional bank account to draw upon later.

That’s when teams work really well. Before, during and after a crisis.

That’s what makes life great.

When you see that happening.

Tags: , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →