It tells about his unorthodox hiring process, about his talent development and his $200k consultant’s bill. But essentially, it’s about his business’s culture.
Culture is surely one of the most intangible aspects of business and as such can be the most frustrating. The culture can all too easily be clockwatching and pilfering in an entrenched oligopoly, but if you’re looking to push scale or improve net profits then you’ll find it almost impossible without the correct culture – whatever that is.
Culture in a company dictates whether you follow a 50,00 word business plan religiously or you hand the bank manager a one page outline of your ideas and put your best foot forward. Fred Goodwin’s culture of ‘win at all costs’ crippled RBS and Dick Fuld’s sent Lehman off the cliff. Culture is what Scorsese and Spielberg embody in their actors before letting them navigate a scene.
Isn’t this all really HR’s job? Well, I’m afraid I see too many organisations with HR departments that seem to treat their jobs in two facets: personnel operations coupled with a fear (and avoidance) of legal procedures. Do you know many HR folk who treat their fellow employees like those at Nick’s Pizza & Pub? I’m sure you know more who would say that it’s not their remit, that line managers and supervisors should push those boundaries, not HR.
In an entrepreneurial business like Nick’s the form filling takes a distant second place to structure, satisfaction, autonomy and development. If your culture’s right then surely the marketing becomes the story of that result?
Akamai’s ‘State of the Internet report’ shows the average UK broadband speed is 3.5 Mbps and just one in 12 surfers are achieving 5 Mbps and above. At present, South Koreans can get speeds of up to 100 Mbps and Korea plans on raising the bar further with a tenfold increase in their ultra broadband to 1 Gbps by 2012 (200 times faster than our ‘fast’ 5 Mbps).
Whitehall’s shoot-for-the-stars plan? Well, their Universal Service Commitment wants every postcode in the UK to get a bare minimum of 2Mbps by 2012 (yep, just 2Mbps). In order to install this they’re talking about a 50p per month tax on landlines (cumulatively that’s around £1billion).
£6 a year to get a fibre optic line everywhere probably sounds like a reasonable deal. But the naysayers point out that the poorest – and least likely to take advantage of it – will be funding the speed and convenience for the wealthier.
It could be argued that if broadband is so important for the future of the UK’s infrastructure then our government should step up and make funding available. But let’s be honest, as our economy’s gone to hell in a hand-basket, the IT slush fund disappeared into RBS long ago. No, those who want to use the infrastructure to become more successful need to take care of things themselves – no body is coming to help (at least not any help worth having).
That’s where I think they’re looking to the wrong group to fund this. There’d be more traction and less voter pushback for a Business Broadband project (that’s my new label for uber-broadband).
UK business should be canvassed to put its hand in its pocket. Granted, now isn’t the best time to ask businesses for a handout, but when is?
Many large businesses operate on leased lines (such as banks) and don’t suffer the same bottleneck problem of demand we do but they too would benefit from faster coverage and the chance of increasing customer interaction.
This is an investment in their future, not a cost. As such, perhaps we could be allowed some accountancy leeway where we could do some fixed asset right down.
Contributing to it could be thought of like a church collection: the plate goes past everyone but only those who wish to partake do so. That said, we’d need the stern, furrowed brow of a priest-like character to make sure we all give fairly and not shirk out of our cumulative responsibility.
That’s where I see some A-list business folk coming in (think Alan Leighton, Alan Sugar, Deborah Meaden etc). These ‘celebs’ could form a steering committee. Their real value would be in persuading CEOs and proprietors to part with cash; they’d push the hard sell by demonstrating an understanding of their difficulties and a vision of the future.
Branches of request:
Peer levy – perhaps by business category e.g. shop keepers donate £500p.a. Perhaps by staff number (e.g. £75 per employee) or by turnover (e.g. £200 per £100k t/over).
Profits – pressure should be levied at those who stand to gain the most. That’s Internet service providers, search engines, telecoms companies and larger multichannel retailers for a start. Get the telecoms guys to dig as deep for this as they did for their 3G licences. Google donated $2 million towards the upkeep of Wikipedia this month because the strength of one affects the other.
Individual – the pot would also take private contributions. If Robbie Williams wants to throw in £100k to get a better Spotify connection it’s ready and willing to accept.
Google launched the Fibre for Communities program this year in the states. Essentially they want to pair up with providers and show the world that super fast broadband can get to the masses. The difference with a partner like Google is they’ll do so much of the heavy lifting. Personally, I’d take my Universal Service Commitment to the shredder and have Mr Mandelson on a plane to California (with his new pot of business money), persuading the Google team that the UK should be the first outside the USA to benefit from their new insight.
Have I got it all wrong here? If not, what would you and your organisation be willing to give over the next three years (if anything)?
The cigarette brand Windsor Blue is modernising their packaging. They’re “now the number one choice for above king size length adult smokers downtrading into the economy priced cigarette sector. The new pack design will build on this success,” says Rachel Smith, brand manager.
Compare this to the comments Seth had for Madecasse chocolate and their packaging of ethical African chocolate.
Both products demand a growth in sales to justify the cost of the design and reprinting. Given that cigarette and chocolate sales have proven buoyant in times of recession, which design gig would you rather boot up Photoshop for?
At first look ethical farming versus death is a no-brainer. Yet perversely, imagine how seriously you’d take the flair of the girl who lifted Windsor’s sales by another 15 points thanks to a redesign.
If a salesman turns up for a meeting in new Porsche 911, he’d better be flogging footy players, not underwear or umbrellas to BHS.
Most salespeople understand the principles of the game: set a tone that’s both professional and in line with your brand and product offering.
That’s why I’m amazed at business people who rock up to meetings in £40k cars and then produce cheap, battered, old laptops from leather briefcases.
If you’re selling top-end tyres, tiaras, towels, till systems or toothpicks, surely it’s unwise to do so with dated equipment?
Salesmen want you to procure something with an intangible benefit associated with brand equity (think perfume for the classic example where a tiny fraction of the cost goes to production). My problem is they often do so while displaying a lack of desire themselves. Yes it’s shallow. And yes, playing the game is a branding exercise.
It’s the equivalent of a builder turning up at your house in a beat up old transit, while he tells you how much quality and added value he brings with his £30k conservatories.
Cheap is perfectly understandable – frugal is fine – but when you’re selling luxury, quality or style, know that you should display some yourself as well (let’s call it ‘acting out’).
Easy win: an £800 MacBook comes over way better than a four year-old Dell some folks would schlep around. (And, no, don’t kid yourself, it’s not JUST about the label.)
You’re having a conversation with a company Big Wig, perhaps an interview, and she asks, “What do you think of this social media phenomenon?”
Well, imagine it’s the 1960s. Horses pull milk floats, colour TV is just around the corner for most households, shillings are in your pocket and the Bay of Pigs has petrified the world. In between watching Steptoe and Son and listening to Elvis or the Beatles, someone asks you, “What do you think about this telephone phenomenon?”
With 20/20 hindsight you could’ve said, “It’s going to be amazing in ways we can’t yet imagine. The infrastructure we and other countries are laying now will be used for revolutions in communications and commerce that sound like science fiction if we talk about them now (think fax and Internet). User take-up will be so overwhelming that the lines will be stretched to breaking point and the ‘phones themselves will become like your watch or wedding ring – always with you. In short, phones will become an integral part of our personal and business lives.
The ‘60s Big Wig would nod sagely, probably with a slight smirk, and take the conversation elsewhere. But the answer to the question if you’re asked tonight at dinner is that, “History will repeat itself here…”
Following their best Christmas to date, the very on-form John Lewis was recently voted Britain’s best shop by Verdict and its 6,000 shoppers. Let’s be honest, what’s not to like? The stores are upmarket but unpretentious. They’ve a quality product offering and peerless customer service.
John Lewis is different from normal retailers. They’re known as a bell-wether for high street trading, not because they mimic other retailers but because they report sales figures weekly as opposed to the normal quarterly results from the likes of Tesco and M&S. They are incredibly transparent; a throwback to being a ‘partnership’, owned by its 69,000 employees partners. This transparency and an old fashioned willingness to ‘serve’ clearly run through this business.
Although, that said, the latest ForeSee Christmas E-Retail Satisfaction Index tells a slightly different story of their online offering. In this brief but excellent study of the top 40 retailers (according to traffic), Amazon trump John Lewis as clear overall winners.
JL did come out on top when looking at the multichannel category, ahead of Boots and HMV. Most surprisingly of the pure plays (Internet only retailers) ASOS rank seventh, behind QVC and M&M Direct.
Regardless, both polls show JL is getting it very right where its customers are concerned. If I were Andrea O’Donnell, JL’s Commercial Director, I’d be very pleased but a little puzzled as to how a cold pure play like Amazon could best me when customers can’t even speak to an individual, let alone be impressed by one. Email updates obviously go a long way.
I was asked this week, ‘What does a manager really do?’ It was a fairly innocuous, rhetorical, jovial question from a well-paid, senior person.
The graduate switch flicked and I immediately thought, ‘seeing that the company’s goals are met’. After all, it’s the leader’s job to define and create those goals and aims, and it’s management’s job to realise them. Right?
But managing people is rarely a squeaky clean affair. I’m not a huge supporter of lofty job titles as they can often cause internal problems, but anyone claiming to be a ‘Manager’ will find themselves wearing several hats (in no particular order):
go between
consultant (to those above and below)
amateur psychologist
negotiator
dispute resolver
idea instigator
organiser
governor
role model
decision maker (the buck stops and all that)
communications expert (surely THE key to management)
soldier (ever metaphorically fallen on your sword?)
captain
big brother/sister (you need to eat more, drink less, curb spending)
counsellor
teacher
steward
servant
policy pursuer
change agent
supporter (of others, of the different viewpoint – perhaps the weaker voice)
challenger (of the status quo)
It strikes me that a manager who only wants to manage isn’t anywhere near up to the job. The seven-letter title is low-balling the variety of commitment needed in all but the safest of environments.
MPs follow their vocation diligently to improve our land;
teachers are wholly dedicated to the development of children;
police and law courts will keep criminals off our streets;
companies believe staff are their greatest asset;
hospitals are clean heavens of care.
What assumptions have you made about that meeting you’re holding this week? Might they be worth revisiting?
Piano maker Kemble & Co is closing after nearly 100 years producing over 350,000 pianos. They were the UK’s last large scale piano manufacturer.
It’s a reflection of yesteryear when a piano was a central asset in the home. Mum and dad would teach their kids the odd tune in the hope of lighting their musical spark. Much more likely now to see a Playstation and laptop alongside the Sky box. Even if it were still fashionable, I doubt many modern living rooms are large enough to house a piano. I’m sure Kemble is a wonderful manufacturer but they belong to a sunshine industry that is clearly setting.
Another sign of the times is the UK release of Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle. If I were a newspaper boss I’d be doing everything in my power to have my subscription service available to e-readers and smart phones. If I want eyeballs, I need to be where they are.
So why on earth are only four titles available via Amazon? The Evening Standard and Metro are free in London, but not so here. Hello! Amazon’s profits were up 68% in Q3 with the Kindle now their largest selling item by value and by volume (that’s staggering!). The music industry was far too slow to realise digital was a game changer, you’ve got to ask will the publishing and newspaper guys have learnt their lesson?
I can’t help but think of the Royal Mail strikes in the same (dimming) light. With the CWU seemingly taking glee at delaying some 50 to 60 million items, surely they’re speeding up their own inevitable death march.
Right or wrong as the union’s position may be, letters are in the same ‘sunshine industry’ as pianos and newspapers. No picket line will change that.
Marc Prensky is acknowledged to have coined the term Digital Natives, but when the business world heard Rupert Murdoch use it, the term became commonplace (remember he owns MySpace).
The reference is to the swathes of people who don’t think twice about technology being an integral part of their everyday lives. It’s not exclusively a generation Y (18-28 year-olds) phenomenon either, even though saturation surely peeks there. Two ingredients strike me most about young digital natives:
They are not colour blind. They are arguably the first to start/finish higher education with a true post-racism attitude. An Obama Whitehouse can only help cement that mindset.
They are not data phobic. On the contrary, they often broadcast and share masses of information in an open display of incredible honesty.
Seems to me companies might benefit from having a digital native or two in their organisation, regardless of the CV’s relevant work experience. How about you?
The preeminent Seth Godin commented on a Charles Blow report in the NY Times, pointing out that the internet’s low barrier of entry had led to the markets flooding. He said, “If you can’t sell to 1 in 1000, why market to a million?”
The numbers from Blow’s piece were, “…of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs.”
This tells us the long tail of the Web makes Pareto’s 80-20 principle defunct. (Perhaps poor salespeople might stop overly quoting it?) The Amazons and the Play.coms of the world are now playing to different laws.
Wouldn’t you just love to get your hands on their analytics to see it with your own eyes?
Photo: Chris Anderson (from Wikipedia), who coined the phrase Long Tail in his Wired magazine article October 2004
The Web makes the impossible possible. Just imagine the pitch for eBay on a 1998 version of Dragons’ Den. “You bid a fraction of the real value… may sell for less than you paid for it… pay before you’ve even seen the goods, let alone held them… trust the seller to post the product to you… count on people writing nice reviews about you… etc.”
How about the pitch for an online encyclopaedia compiled by unpaid, unprofessional authors? Would you have fancied investing in a Wikipedia concept a decade ago?
Tom Peters advocates not even starting a business until you’ve canvassed a huge range of opinion. He’s not looking at the middle ground but the edge, the ‘berserk.’ Peters said, “Never get seriously underway until you’ve surfaced a couple of ideas that score perfect 10s, or at least 8s, on the … Berserk Scale.”
Cue eBay, Wikipedia and Craigslist.
I’m not sure if many entrepreneurs would go there deliberately, but if you end up on that much of a fringe listening to the berserk, at least you should know you’re in good company.
Debating freelance pricing recently, I started thinking how many variables can affect daily rates:
Future proof – repeat business is virtually everyone’s goal. Will this project have a long-term effect (perhaps even an adverse one) on your business?
Order book – are you currently desperate for the phone to ring or are you (and your team of assistants) flat out?
Difficulty – is the project a walk in the park requiring little incremental input from you, or will it demand herculean effort?
Sacrifice – your time is a scarce resource, what will suffer as it’s taken? Will you need to shelve other projects or cancel your honeymoon?
Want – does the project team really want you on board? Really, REALLY want you?
Competition – are their 20 other freelancers willing and able to step into the breach for less than you currently charge?
Investment – are freelancers viewed as a cost or an investment? The latter will be regarded as beneficial in far-reaching areas; the former is a painful necessity to be stopped ASAP.
Development – what will the project bring to your personal and professional benefit?
Desire – do you want to work for the organisation and on this project? Will it bring satisfaction or fulfilment?
Add to this the insecurity of being freelance in the first instance: little job security, no guaranteed income or employee benefits (for better or worse).
Should all 9 to 5ers be thinking a little bit more like this?
“…That is what strategically building a strong brand is all about today. Sure it’s about being different and creating desire and preference. But it’s also about evoking compassion, passion and pride.”
I’d go a smidge further and say that since our near complete capitalist meltdown (not yet fully avoided) there’s a new strain of business ethic and decency breaking through the scorched earth. The bankers, real estate guys, mortgage brokers et al have vividly painted a canvas of greed followed by ruin. GM, once the largest company in the world, is just the latest example of how wrong things have been.
Non-myopic businesses can highlight the error of our ways and show a better understanding of decency, purpose and belief. Of not doing ‘it’ simply because you can; because it’s legal and within the rules or guidelines. Of doing more of the right thing even if it hurts your immediate bottom line.
Unfortunately it’s not going to be an en masse phoenix-like regeneration. Things will be much subtler and change will take time, but surely consumers will migrate to those organisations that act more correct: more ‘green.’
If only our politicians had realised more of this selflessly, rather than playing by the Enron book of ethics and being browbeaten into change by the Telegraph.
It’s the time of year when schools christen students with some work experience by sending them out to organisations to be blooded with genuine toil.
I vividly remember donning a snazzy tie and Hush Puppies and turning up for my fortnight’s work experience at a high street bank. They were great. No floor polishing or coffee making for me: I sorted the personal cheques (remember them?), I printed statements, I opened mail and weighed coins. They even gave me the code for the door so I could get back in from lunch!
But thinking about this also brought back memories of the cheery store manager. He was a large character that would be right at home holding forth in the golf club bar. On day one, I thought he was a nice chap.
Then I saw him grab one of the female teller’s backsides as she walked past him. Between repeating this on several prey and dishing out overly long hugs that had women craning their necks away from his leer, I soon changed my mind.
Sexist rubbish in the workplace has come a long way in twenty odd years but a business forum I recently attended tells me it’s not come far enough.
The opening speaker was littered with innuendo and lewd comments. Granted, there was a sporting slant to the day (Joe Lydon’s coaching talk was excellent) but the title of the event was ‘High Performance Society,’ not ‘Bar Room Tales of Totty.’ Three of the seven seats at my table complained; two left early asking for their money back.
We’ve still got further to go gents. Much further. Even your work experience student can probably point that out to you.
Photo: one of my favourite business women, Mary Portas
Complacent and lazy marketers know people like to follow the crowd. There’s safety in numbers, right?
They play this card as often as possible with their marketing messages. The company mindset can be, ‘Why do we need to do any better when product X sells just fine?’ It strikes me that the banking and motor industries have entrenched their businesses in this attitude.
The brave ones break new ground and create a tribe.
At the back of every great fortune lies a great crime (Honoré de Balzac).
What’s remarkable is that the same candidate could be ideal for both positions, yet the view from both chairs couldn’t be more polarised.
MySpace is one of the great brands of the new millennium and the next CEO has a massive opportunity if he/she thinks big enough (could you put Facebook on the ropes?). ITV is a beacon of the past with largely outdated revenue models and the reality that its scale is shrinking.
Both are ‘big ask’ tenures as they’ll surely oversee the most challenging make-or-break, eat-or-be-eaten stuff either firm has encountered. Very exciting times.
Richard Branson recently launched PitchTV to help entrepreneurs find investors – a mini Dragons’ Den if you like.
The hopeful amongst you can upload a two minute video which gets voted online and the favourites will be broadcast on Virgin planes. Getting your ideas seen by business travellers would be a huge coo (for exposure if nothing else!).
The barrier to this is simply time. Don’t be thinking about spending your seed money on pucka cameras and an editing team. You can do the lot with a Flip and stopwatch for under £100 (honestly). Here’s the third example to be put online. You could’ve created something of equal quality last weekend if you’d wanted to.
For the audience, there’s the added benefit of not having to watch the Simon Cowell wannabies lash into the dreams of everyday passionate people in ‘the Den’. Oh yeah, there’s also an annual special prize from Sir B himself, and my bet is that’ll be some first-rate business support not recycled Christmas socks!
The poor economy is equally affecting both extremes of the working age spectrum.
One in three 16 to 17-year-olds are unemployed in the UK (BBC Today snippet). Ten percent of 16 to 18-year-olds are not in education, employment or training (N.E.E.T.). Considering that’s a Government stat I think it’s fair to say it’ll be on the low side of real.
Generation Y (born 1980 – 1999) look to be at the forefront of the redundancy queue. They are felt to have less experience – therefore less value – and have less service under their belts making the cost and effort of redundancy less.
At the opposite end of the working generations is my father who retires this month. He couldn’t afford to fully retire so was planning to scale right back, working a day or two a week at his current employer. But now he’s had the double whammy of his industry shrinking and his pension paying 40% less than was forecast only six month’s ago. After working diligently for 47 years he has less income than planned and even less of a chance of making up the short fall.
You can see these chains of pain in every town across Europe. Sure, Japan’s shrinking GDP and America’s supersonic unemployment are worrisome, but 2009 will be the year this worldwide fiasco really hits home for the majority of us (if it hasn’t already). Photo credit: Daquella Manera
Well, that’s my prediction. They’ll stop burning dollars acquiring paper mills and fork out $750+ million for Twitter.
Twitter is the most popular and certainly the most talked about social media tool of the moment, yet there’s no clear indication on how they’ll monetise the whole shebang. They raised another $35 million in venture capital last month but to what end?
If you concede that Google want to know far more about you and your digital habits along with the world at large, this source would make an obvious acquisition. The speed at which trends and news appear on Twitter is unmatched elsewhere on the web. Google could leverage this into their algorithm and gain much more real-time searching (certainly opposed to Google News).
Of course, we’re not privy to the magic that’s being created right now in Mountain View where Google’s rocket scientists wave their wands over the web with reckless talent. Have they got a Twitter-killer waiting in the wings? Personally I doubt it. And if they have, will it be another Google Video which was always the poor cousin to YouTube – remember Google later bought YouTube purely to get that online video foothold?
They’re into harvesting strategies and don’t need to monetise everything immediately. Again, YouTube teaches us that. So the lack of income at Twitter won’t be such a problem; the data is the treasure worth the capital outlay. Although, Twitter wont keep its monopoly forever – when you show the market what’s it’s capable of, it rarely stands and applauds for long. Immitation is immenant.
Then again, others might get to the buy-out first. Facebook is reported to have offered $500 million and Carol Bartz could do with creating some buzz about Yahoo other than dismal reports of staff exoduses. Either of these firms would be salivating at the thought of gaining those 6 million Twitterers and all that live data.
What do you reckon? Do you think Google will crush Twitter, buy Twitter or just look at it like a play-thing in the corner?
Seth Godin is giving his only UK talk on Tuesday. Yep, yours truly has booked a day off and got a ticket to the Big Smoke to see my man Seth.
He’s not a ground-breaking intellectual – academia would never cite him like they do Philip Kotler et al (and we wouldn’t read him either). But he’s superb at taking ideas and formatting them into cohesive thoughts that spread via his stories. He is a visionary and he’s dialled into leveraging the web 100%.
He’s most captivating because his ideas are top-notch and he shares absolutely loads of them. This, coupled with his style and honesty, make him unmissable.
My wife thinks I’ll meet him in the corridor. She also reckons I’ll dribble and soil myself at the mere presence of a [my] marketing god. Let’s hope she’s 50% right.
Bonus payments to bankers are far more problematic than the media is allowing. Banning bonuses and capping pay sounds about right for companies that needed tax payers’ cash in order to open their doors. But part-nationalisation was always going to bring about such headaches, and RBS is calling for morphine not paracetamol.
Despite colossal losses, employees within RBS will have smashed targets and proven themselves thoroughly deserving of the rewards offered when negotiating their terms of employment.
Of course, public contempt is such that our knee-jerk reaction is to cease and desist on ALL bonuses. Today’s coerced apologies will do little to reverse that derision. But this would almost certainly breach employment contracts, anger deserving staff and demoralise a non-too-confident team.
I can hear myself saying, “So what? They ruined the business. We own 70% of RBS and if they don’t like it…” Well, we need the banks to drag themselves back from the brink and pay back our investment. We do hope to get our money out remember and like it or not, we’re in bed with these bankers.
Whipping all RBS staff with the same ferocity and capping salaries will lead to a two-tier City: capped, non-bonus work for the Chancellor; and, non-capped, bonus-rewarding. Barclays appear to want to be in the latter group. Which of the two sectors do you think the brightest talents will be attracted to?
Carl Icahn writes, “The real problem is that many corporate managements operate with impunity—with little oversight by, or accountability to, shareholders. Instead of operating as aggressive watchdogs over management and corporate assets, many boards act more like lapdogs.”
Many would vote for re-opening Alcatraz to house Sir Fred and his brethren. The negligence and recklessness of these ‘industry leaders’ and their ilk has brought the world to its knees. The greed of bizarre derivatives and securities filtered through their investment arms like heroin. They’re more deserving of pistol-whipping than a pay packet. These guys should get nada.
But below board and senior management level the bonuses will probably stand, albeit deflated and with more leaning to deferment. And rightly so I think. Staff should be grateful the bank is still solvent and paying salaries, let alone bonuses. Scores of other employers weren’t felt so valuable to the UK that they be given CPR (think Woolies, Adams, JJB et al). Banking has proven itself a special case. I pray it can do something special in return.
Bottom line: the reason this all smells like a rotten carcass is because that’s exactly what we taxpayers bought.
[You noticed how few females have featured in this whole debacle?]
My business hero list is short but distinguished. Toward the top – probably at the pinnacle – sit Ron Dennis of McLaren and Steve Jobs of Apple.
These guys have proven themselves entrepreneurs, figureheads, statesmen, leaders and visionaries. Their products embody people’s emotions. Both are bowing out of their current roles: SJ to hopefully improve his health; RD to look after the bigger picture at McLaren Group. SJ is planning to return in June, RD is an always-listening ear to call on.
Game-changers like this pair don’t need my luck but I certainly wish it.
“The real leader has no need to lead – he is content to point the way.” Henry Miller
In The Bear and the Dragon, Tom Clancy paints the courageous character of Gennady Iosifovich, a Russian General. Our brave General finds himself the senior man called to defend his country against a warring China, who massively outnumber him. Prior to battle he talks to his aid about soldiers’ universal trio of needs: training, resources and leadership.
Tom Clancy is more than intelligent enough to have created that himself, but I doubt there’s an organisation in the world that could’ve helped him write it any more succinctly. Can you name a workforce – from the factory floor to the football pitch – that doesn’t require training, resources and leadership?
Read a great article over on Inc. about Nick Sarillo and his pizza restaurants.
Piano maker Kemble & Co is closing after nearly 100 years producing over 350,000 pianos. They were the UK’s 
Marc Prensky is acknowledged to have coined the term Digital Natives, but when the business world heard Rupert Murdoch use it, the term became commonplace (remember he owns MySpace).
The preeminent Seth Godin 
I’d go a smidge further and say that since our near complete capitalist meltdown (not yet fully avoided) there’s a new strain of business ethic and decency breaking through the scorched earth. The bankers, real estate guys, mortgage brokers et al have vividly painted a canvas of greed followed by ruin. GM, once the largest company in the world, is just the latest example of how wrong things have been.
It’s the time of year when schools christen students with some work experience by sending them out to organisations to be blooded with genuine toil.
Complacent and lazy marketers know people like to follow the crowd. There’s safety in numbers, right?
Two huge media companies are looking for new top dogs this week. MySpace chief executive and co-founder, 
Richard Branson recently 
The poor economy is equally affecting both extremes of the working age spectrum.
Well, that’s my prediction. They’ll stop burning dollars 
Bonus payments to bankers are far more problematic than the media is allowing. Banning bonuses and capping pay sounds about right for companies that needed tax payers’ cash in order to open their doors. But part-nationalisation was always going to bring about such headaches, and RBS is calling for morphine not paracetamol.