thoughts from Dubai...

We're in Dubai this week.

 I share with you a few thoughts based on a humble parking bay space...

Here is a parking space at Emirates Airlines HQ. It's for the Chairman and Chief of the group; who isn't in.

Now it could be he got helicoptered onto the roof or more likely driven to work in a Lexus for an early meeting, but there is nothing in the environment outside or inside the building to say that such is the case. The environment outside the building however suggests that he isn't about. Given that most people will pass this bay on their way into the main entrance, this has huge implications.

Like many organisations that are large and growing, there is ambition to connect the outside messages and brand to the inside culture and communication.  Folk talk about stitching together and aligning and joining up the parts etc.

For me, programmes like this live or die on the investment given to all employees. If you invest in your employees, they will, unconsciously and often spontaneously arrive at new thinking, creative insight and behaviour that not only benefits all those around them, but also translates to the wider populations of customers and consumers alike. fact.

If culture is 'how we are around here", then that is lead by those at the top. All this is obvious and straightforward; and often forgotten.

Having parking bays, corner offices, separate lifts and so on creates a different set of behaviours within those who make use of them and those who do not. At the hidden level, this undermines any culture change programmes or at the very least creates a set of road blocks in making them happen successfully.

There was once a conscious decision - maybe even a series of long meetings with PowerPoint and flip charts! - to discuss the layout, size and position of the Chairman's car parking space. Eventually, some poor noddy in 40 degree heat had to lay the slabs of stone and cement set a sign that says 'Big Top Dog goes here'. As soon as the concrete set around that sign, so too was the message "you're not as important as this person", along with "in fact, we'll put special attention to this type of person and not you, so you'll have to work out how important you are in the scheme of things".

The trouble with this type of message is that it's hard for a.n.other member of staff to work out his or her place in the fabric of the building. It's clear where the head honcho goes, but what about me? Where is my investment and how will I be recognised for it?

All sitting at an unconscious level, these fears will drive behaviour and action.

Your internal comms can spray and pray as much messaging as they like, but as long as there is a parking space for the boss outside, words land on deaf ears.

Better it would be - I believe, that everyone fought over the same parking spaces. That way I know that amongst all the cars in the staff plot, there might be the boss's. Indeed, it might be the one I've just parked next to.  At the same human level he and I are the same. We went to work along the same road and saw the same world as I did and now we're in the same building facing the same challenges - together as equals.

I get that the leaders need to run a business and they have different pressures, but no pressure is any less or more important that anyone else.

By having an empty space, whether the guy is in the building or not, there will always be those who think they are working alone, without support and in a done to fashion. The trouble with our imagination is what ever is perceived to be true - becomes so in the power of the mind.

A little thing makes a big difference.

Just my opinion. I might be wrong...

Platitude plus points...

A golden rule of marketing one of my ex-bosses taught me was avoid platitudes and clichés in your advertising.  With a warming smile I saw this add currently hanging at Twickenham station.

"we mean business" is a classic platitude and the visual does nothing for the product benefits either.

But it still got me thinking about the positives.

Clichés and platitudes become so as they are used so often right? and....?

Granted I have grown a little tired of seeing images on proposals and documents featuring light bulbs, handshakes and my favourite; plant shoots growing out of cupped hands of soil. But aren't these images used often as they capture the exact metaphor you want to use?  What's the issue? For some this kind of creative is exactly the safe and steady paid of hands (see what I did there) some business need.
I remember being briefed to create 'something new and different' and on returning the feedback was 'oh, but not that new and different'.  Had I opted for a "we mean business" approach, perhaps the outcome would be different.

That's the magic of a creative brief. No idea is any less imaginative to the client than the next submission from the agency.  We'd go along way if we stopped over giving and tweaked just a little of the edges (bugger, done it again!).

Happy analogies and as I was coached once "think about your pitch as the opportunity to create mediocrity and succeed in style."

Advice for Heads of L+D and those with 'culture change' in their title...

I’m observing a trend in L+D and culture change programmes (and particularly in those who manage and make decisions around them) a staggering assumption that if something is ‘delivered’ then it is ‘learned’.

Let’s just take a few examples – as real as I can make them to suggest that this is wrong. Keep in mind, as was famously said once, that intelligence is to hold in one’s head two opposing sides of one argument simultaneously.

It says on the side of cigarette packets that THEY KILL YOU. People still smoke.

It says 30 on road signs.  We all speed. All of us.

I’m told to be healthy I should eat 5 portions of furit/veg a day  – you haven’t done that either have you...

It’s told in schools and addressed in magazines, t.v., the web and almost everywhere apart from an Ann Summers shop (there’s an idea) to have safe sex – the UK has year on year an ever increasing percentage of underage pregnancy and rising STD’s in young people.

Got the hang of it? You’ve probably thought of a few real examples yourself.

These are examples of broadcasting messages. It’s evidence of ‘delivered = known’ thinking; something that has kept internal comms people busy at the photocopier for years.

BUT what is broadcast isn’t learned.

Learning doesn't follow stimulus response. It's not a linear process.

L+D and culture change is sometimes seen as something that is ‘done to’ people ‘in business’ by ‘managers'. But Adult Learning doesn’t work like that.

If you wish to encourage a particular kind of behaviour over another (the root of culture change) then, it’s necessary to discover and highlight the cues that lead to the behaviour in question. It’s incumbent for L+D and Culture folk to arrange situations in the design of their programmes (and wider context at work) so that the desired behaviour occurs when those cues are present. Even better if the undesired behaviour doesn’t occur along with supporting feedback when those cues are present too.

At school this is all under the skilful use of reward and punishment. Something that ‘teaching’ professionals should do well and consciously. business would do a lot to learn from this.

In summary: In the context of the professional environment, an adult doesn’t learn what he was taught on a workshop, training or from a manual. He learns only what that workshop, lecture or manual got him to do.

Bond. Lotus. Build it and they will come.

The new Bond film came out the other week – I’m yet to see it so don’t spoil the surprise.

Being a Bond fan, I flicked through some of the Bond coffee table books I have lying around the house to get in the mood. I'm also a Lotus fan and I spotted the genius story of Don McLaughlan the head of PR at Lotus who had heard Eon productions were in pre-production of the new Bond Film the Spy Who Loved me.  Don realised that every car company would give its back teeth to have its product become a hero gadget laden car in the world's largest move franchise.

He also knew that such an opportunity came with a real problem in how to get the film maker’s attention.

It’s a well documented tale that don invested £18k in driving a pre production vehicle to Pinewood, taping up the lotus badges and leaving it outside the main office until the Producers and Director all started to take notice of it. Don (apparently) nonchalantly stepped passed and casually unlocked the car and drove away. Whether some of this story is lost in poetic hearsay and pub banter is up for debate, but the car was driven to Pinewood and the gamble paid off.

The rest is history and Bond drove one of the most temperamental sports cars of all time.

The story finds itself here as it’s a great example of how many problems come with inherited rules around they could be solved. When breaking a few of the assumptions, creative opportunities thus appear. In this instance, it wasn’t a case of how to get the Lotus car to the movie people, but asking how could the movie people come to the Lotus car...

genius.

One step closer to the motor cycle ash tray...

In 1850, we held a Great Exhibition.  Historians go on that it was a big deal. Far from it.  Nothing showed the rest of the world how badly we misunderstood design than a greenhouse in Hyde Park full of shit. Social designers laughed at our purposely made decoration and from that point on the adage of 'form follows function' became a core aspect of good design lectures.

It would appear 150ish years later, we break the rules at last!

Saw this jacket in a shop this week.  Reflective Camouflage.  I’m trying to work out what part gets compromised.

Is it the reflective part and in wearing the jacket on a dark night along a stretch of highway, you’re feeling safe in the knowledge that the surface reflects the headlights of an oncoming truck OR is it the camouflage which, had it not been for it’s easy-to-spot qualities, this jacket would be standard issue for all Navy Seals...

Black ring necked, ipad holding, latte drinking south banker designer types take note: a good idea, it appears, need not obey the rule form to follow funtion.  This jacket is just over £700.00.  If you want one, follow the link:  http://www.tessuti.co.uk/brands/q-z/stone-island/stone-island-reflective-camouflage-jacket-blue?gclid=CNXPqqGEn7MCFcrItAodKHkARw 

have a good weekend - it gets dark soon.

STOP using Apple as an example of innovation - BORING!!!!!!!

Can we STOP using Apple, Steve Jobs or Google as examples of great business and leaders and think of something more original please.

I have lost count of the number of times those companies and that individual has been cited in presentations.

I am SO BORED.

It’s now got to the point that if unfortunately someone is presenting to me and one of the two subjects I’ve just mentioned come up, I tend to just drift off and think about something else.

Especially when people quote SJ or his philosophy – like they met at a dinner party once...

If I were interviewing folk for a job and asked them to give examples of creative companies or innovative products and they mentioned Apple or an ipod, I wouldn’t give them a job. I’d show them the door.

Citing Apple shows:

Lack of imagination and research on your part. Has there been nothing in the last few decades that isn’t as astonishing, clever, brutal, brilliant, or elegant as that company?

Laziness. No-one’s going to disagree with your point of view as you’ve plenty of advocates to support your observations and opinion. In fact some witty journalist has done all the hard work for you, all you need do is take a screen shot and a quote and away you go.

Lack of creative thinking. If innovation is all about technical stuff – fine, there’s more to life than battery powered handhelds... if innovation is about commercial profit, think laterally people! Consider the utter genius who put ‘rinse and repeat’ on the side of a shampoo bottle and doubled sales over night without changing product, packaging, production line or distribution channels. How about the guy who took the second strike strip off the Bryant and May matchbox and reduced the cost of box production and thus increased profitability. that ain't neat?

A very limited ability to synthesise material. Say you work in plastics manufacture, pharmaceutical or logistics. You’ve a tough job right? You’ve enough on your plate to manage. Then your boss (or a latte drinking consultant in jeans – like me) turns up and says “we need to think a bit more like google around here. I’ve got some stories...” please!

Don’t try and be any other business but your own.

Do it brilliantly and love what you do and THAT will be the thing that your customers and clients love about you.

Disagree and think I’m talking bunk – good for you. Join the masses who talk a good game and focus on definitions and descriptions.

Meanwhile the team and I will continue to have ideas with our clients.

That’s what we do and there’s no pictures or posters of Steve Jobs on our wall when we do it.

Kylie Minogue and the genius of lost time.

There is a rumour/urban myth within the music industry (and I’ve checked on this with the folk I know in said circles) that Kylie Minogue’s  first UK hit “I should be so lucky” was written very fast – we’re talking somewhere between 10 to 30mins...

The story goes that Stock, Aitken + Waterman, had completely forgotten about Kylie’s first visit to the UK and on arrival at their studio, she sat in their foyer whilst they quickly dug out the keyboards and the sampling machine and threw together the song. Kylie admits herself that coming from the world of t.v., she treated the lyrics like a script and sang into the mike as directed. The song was recorded in a few takes and off she flew from Heathrow at the end of the day. It happened that fast.

I love the story. I know you’ll have a few anecdotes yourself.

Learning here is this: Having little time IS NOT an issue when it comes to solving problems; it can sometimes be a blessing.

When time is tight your brain doesn’t move any faster. It’s always moving fast.  Normally however you’ve got time to consciously judge stuff. When time is tight, there is no room for conscious processing; that’ll waste what moments you do have. It’s time to relax and allow your subconscious processing to surface. All the time it’s moving super fast and making decisions without your awareness. It knows EXACTLY what’s’ going on. It’s the greatest resource you have so the trick is to allow it to show you...

Let’s look at Kylie’s song. Stock, Aitken + Waterman had written songs by the dozen. They had a strong back catalogue of successes and thousands of hours between them crafting lyrics and melodies. The collective and individual power of their mind when it came to ‘writing a song’ was without question. Whether you like their style isn’t the issue here. They could write and had got something that worked for them just as well as Lennon and McCartney – it was just on this occasion they cut out the crap and nailed a song in 20mins.

Time is always going to pass. So it’s up to you on how you feel about it.

“Not having enough time” is a judgement. It programmes your brain into thinking about what it can’t do. And guess what -  you can’t do it!

Try “we’ve got this amount of time and let’s make the best of it”. It’s a simple shift in perspective but it’s worth keeping in mind. A shorter amount of time gets your subconscious surfacing and as a result you:

·         Cut out the crap – you’ll go for what matters. They’ll be lots of that 80/20 rule kicking in but you’ll also experience genius moments of insight and idea creation as your subconscious brings forth the wonderment of your mind in seconds rather than hours.

·         You’ll make decisions better – see above

·         You’ll experiment better and try things out for the first time. Let’s face it, if there isn’t enough time for the ‘normal’ way of doing things, then a new approach will have more of a chance. For example – ever thought about NOT typing up a proposal and simply binding your notes together along with all the roughs? Alec Issigonis designed the mini on a napkin –what’s good enough for him...

·         You’ll have way more fun. If you want to kill a project, do it slowly!

Don’t however GIVE YOURSELF less time. An engineered false deadline isn’t the same energetically as having a real deadline. I’ve seen lots of bad advice being given framed as ‘create a sense of urgency’ to get the best out of people.  Seriously, don’t do that.

I write this with a few important pitches to prepare for the next few weeks. Only I haven’t that luxury of time as I’m committed to other projects. Thus my weekend and evenings are the only time I have – so I take all of my own advice.

I also remind myself to have fun with it.

So you do the same when the ‘time’ issue comes up again.

Sorry it was a long blog.

I hadn’t time for a shorter one.