I’ve just caught up with my Sky+ recordings of Channel 4’s Big Chef Takes on Little Chef, where Heston Blumenthal worked on a revamp of the Little Chef restaurants (I know it finished weeks ago, but I’ve been busy, OK).
The project finished successfully with the flagship Popham restaurant being rolled out nationwide, but the classic, and avoidable, failure was in communication. It became an example of how not to introduce change into a business.
These two aren’t natural bedfellows: Heston’s not a chef, he’s more of a food scientist, and Little Chef isn’t known for its quality of late. What did the two sides want out of the project? What was their motivation? What was the bigger picture for both?
The management rhetoric flowed from LC’s managing director, Ian Pegler, “I want blue sky thinking,” “show us the wow factor…” All of course are completely subjective and make it very easy to dismiss results as falling short. I appreciate he didn’t want to stifle Heston’s creativity, but he seemed desperate to avoid clarity at all costs – no aims, no objectives. This put them at loggerheads several times with Heston very nearly withdrawing.
I think they could’ve made life easier for all involved by targeting ‘Mondeo man.’ He (to continue the sexist noun) travels the country from meeting to meeting and despises the overpriced junk in Motorway stops. He spends £6 on coffee and a croissant rather than eat the drivel they serve in the café.
When Mr and Mrs Mondeo are too shattered to cook, where does the family go to eat? Harvester, Taybarns, McDonalds? Possibly. Little chef? Certainly not.
That’s where I’d have calibrated our positioning and targeting efforts from the beginning: business travellers for breakfast and lunch, families for dinner (remembering that breakfast is the cash cow for this chain).
They should’ve spent more time talking to each other, not the cameras. They operate at polar opposites of the food industry: one in a pub where dinner costs £250 per head, the other behind the desk of 400 Little Chefs. Change like this demands both parties really understand all view points of the project.
Photo credit: Wolfiewolf
I love making lists. Of course it’s nothing compared to the palpable pleasure of completion by crossing tasks off. But if you want to get multiple and complex lists out of their silos, you’re looking at making a mind map.
You can botch these together in Word, Powerpoint or even Excel if you’re determined enough, but I’ve found a couple of better solutions:
Mindomo – this is a web-based platform that serves ads to pay for its free basic accounts. It’s surprisingly fast, very easy to use and comes with enough features to create a professional looking map. Dragging topics around and rearranging is very easy. You can format in 12 fonts, add some symbols alongside your text box and even upload your own images.
It’s an impressive package – lightweight and intuitive. The only thing I feel it’s calling out for is the ability to save as a PDF. Remember it’s in the cloud so backing up becomes a screen print.
Mindmap Pro – software available for PC or Mac from the Concept Draw team. This feels like a well-built piece of software but it can be a bit unintuitive e.g. holding CTRL and scrolling your mouse ball won’t zoom in/out. It’s also not as easy as Mindomo to place a topic and its subtopics exactly where you’d like.
That said, it looks slick, is very robust and has some nice extras regarding brainstorming and task scheduling (although no Outlook or iCal sync up).
Conclusion – if you need a one-off visual map for a meeting next week then Mindomo is perfect for you. However, if you want to work offline on several maps that you want to own yourself then you could do far worse than spending £140 on Mindmap.
Extra – I’ve also been told about mindmeister.com. It’s another web-based system that looks on a par to Mindomo, although I’ve not tried it for real. My fear with these web-based systems is if their business model fails and they unplug it one evening, you might well see your precious maps obliterated….
The recent reports of Tesco’s profit show they’ve been outstanding while others have cried ‘recession’. A 53rd week changes the picture somewhat, but lets round off profits at £3 billion. Bravo.
They’re launching a banking arm soon and it’s going to shake the big boys out of plenty of high street business, but what’s next? How about earning customer favour by taking green initiatives to their core business model?
I’m not talking about binning normal light bulbs for more energy efficient ones – arguably making the process counterproductive. Really go green, not create some spammy marketing half-truth, but a bona fide real deal. Court green ideas, embrace things that upset the status quo.
Here’s some examples:
1. Source the best designed solar panel that can be mass produced and put on top of Tesco’s buildings, helping them decouple from the national grid.
2. Offer a £1 million prize to the designing of a system that channels the energy of millions of shoppers pushing millions of trolleys around the stores. Possibly via some sort of dynamo/KERS system that downloads stored energy when in the trolley park (selling the surplus back to the national grid).
3. Train some of this year’s 600,000 school leavers (what percentage are to become unemployed?) to help manufacture the above, becoming the employer of conscience.
4. Find ways of better catching and using the rain water on site from roofs and car parks.
5. Recycle on a new scale altogether helping communities, suppliers, and possibly governments, better understand and practice this haphazard essential.
6. Lead the march on fair trade goods.
7. Employ a better infrastructure to source more local produce.
Note: I’m sure numbers 1, 2 and 4 have already been invented in Japan or by boffins at M.I.T.
The capital expenditure here would be scary but there is a future upside for both a marketing and fiscal tidal wave. Showing the world what an innovative, responsible, thoughtful corporation looks like could arguably see shareholder value fall, but that’s short sighted. Consumers will thank – and reward – Tesco dearly. What could that bring to their share price?
This doesn’t happen overnight, but Tesco could become the world’s poster boy for green retailing – in the same way Zappos is for customer service. Of course this isn’t easy and that’s why it would give them a massive competitive advantage. Or do you think others will beat them to it?
Photo credit: Mark Hillary
At first, ‘How did we do?’ sounds like a question designed around self-improvement, right? Wrong. It’s usually a worthless platitude on par with a client/supplier asking, ‘How are you?’ They don’t care that you had toothache or a head cold last month and that your fridge packed up last night.
The overriding majority of people who’ll ask ‘How did I do?’ or ‘What do you think of my new widget’ already have a strong opinion before they ask, and are unlikely to be open enough to have you or others change it. The course has been set, the training is done, people have been hired, the script is written, the ads are booked, the product is in play – don’t make me change all that.
Next time you’re asked, ask them what they do with the feedback? If the project manager was outstanding does he/she get that fed into their appraisal system? Perhaps they qualify for a bonus? If the sales training was a dire waste of time, will the course be changed? Bottom line: will the feedback be actionable or are we just making polite platitudes?
If I’m fortunate enough to receive your feedback I’ll want your unfaltering honest opinions, not some lame schmoozing which equates to a lie. And ‘good’ or ‘nice’ do me no favours either because they don’t help me change and improve what I’m doing – they cry for more of the same (which doesn’t take me forward).
I’ll take the whole truth please. How about you and your team?
Photo credit: Gaetan Lee
