A book about Glue - update two

I have been sending out excerpts from my new book ‘Glue’ to reviewers for comments, and hopefully, some endorsements. The responses so far have been really heartening, with many saying that they felt the broad theme is topical and timely, ‘of the moment’, and something important for managers to wrestle with. In fact, we recently commissioned some insight work amongst the Alumni of London Business School and the second most important topic flagged amongst that respondent group (after the issue of turbulence and geo-political uncertainty) was the broad topic of “the future of work’. There is an appetite for clear ideas about leading an organisation that has adopted hybrid working, the future role of physical offices/buildings, and maintaining a productive corporate culture in a hybrid working world. It seems we are in the right ballpark with Glue, I just wish I could get into many hands more quickly!

Somone wrote and asked me to provide a short summary of where the idea for Glue came from, and what I mean by “glue’. Well, all will clearly be revealed when the book finally gets printed and distributed, but ahead of that, here is a 100 words or so, that will hopefully set scene.

A back story for Glue

In 1998 the late Sumantra Ghoshal, a Professor at LBS, developed a compelling theory about why some firms thrived and others faltered.  He proposed that those firms which cultivated social capital amongst employees, created more intellectual capital, which in turn created an ‘organisational advantage’ for that firm compared to its peers. He argued that managers should actively seek ways to configure and encourage collaboration, connections, friendship, reciprocity and trust amongst talented colleagues.  But over two decades later, in a world of remote, flexible and hybrid working, those critical interpersonal bonds seem more tenuous and harder to maintain.  Glue argues that leaders need to rethink the way they make working with others inclusive, involving, collaborative, energising and productive.  People cohere around people (not strategy, or products, or mission statements) so who you work with, who you are led by, and who you serve, is critical to creating the right organisational glue. So, this new book sets out some ideas about glue: what it is, where to look for it, how to use it and, most importantly, how to cultivate glue amongst your most valuable people.

I hope that helps, and I look forward to sharing more very soon.

A book about Glue - update one

I am delighted to share with you that my new book, ‘GLUE: Transforming Leadership in a Hybrid World’, will be published by Routledge (Taylor & Francis) in 2023.

Many of my colleagues will know of my long-term addiction to glue.  Not for sticking, or craft, or sniffing, but as the crucial ingredient you need to cultivate amongst talented people in your organisation. The past few years have seen a seismic shift for many in the nature and form of work, with remote, flexible and hybrid working the new normal. Despite this transformation, the prognosis for the modern firm is not good, with engagement still poor, low productivity and close personal ties on the wane.  The already tenuous bonds between organisations and their employees are becoming increasingly flimsy.

I began to wrestle with a crucial question: in a world of flexible, remote and hybrid working, how do you create and maintain deep engagement with, and amongst, employees who are often working apart from one another?

Most of us have relied upon two resources as a response: focusing on our own personal skills and behaviours, and by relying on a way of leading and managing learnt from the past. Both approaches are now either defunct, or much diminished in their effectiveness. The new ways we work and live our lives requires a very different leadership approach.

Leaders urgently need to refocus, not on themselves, but on harnessing relationships, making their organisations more humane, and finding new ways to engage and unleash talent. We need to transform leadership for the hybrid age, not just in a way that makes us feel less remote, but one that coheres disparate hearts, minds and souls.  To do that, the single, most impactful thing leaders must do - and it’s not easy - is to create and nurture an intangible yet essential factor called glue.

So, my new book sets out some ideas about glue: what it is, where to look for it, how to use it and, most importantly, how to cultivate glue amongst your most valuable people. It explores the approach of some unusual leaders, and of firms transformed through the ‘organisational advantage’ of smartly configuring and harnessing talent.

I have drawn upon stories from firms such as Alibaba, Apple, Barclays, Sky, Husqvarna Group, HSBC, Space X, Zopa, and Richer Sounds, to show how leaders can shape the effectiveness of teams, reimagine the workplace, and reinvigorate the business to retain the loyalty of customers through the talents, ideas, and energy of their best people.

I have written Glue for anyone who has a genuine interest in leading others with impact and wants to better unite, transform and elevate their business.  Whatever your role, function, sector, or seniority, I hope when you read it you will be energised about a new distinctive vision for leading in a hybrid world.

The book is in the hands of the lovely people at Routledge, and will be published later in 2023. I’m as excited as I am nervous, and will share an update here when I am more certain of the timings, and I know how you might pre-order a copy. I will also share a small preview when it is ready. JD

Arthouse films and rock nirvana - a year in review

THE TRIANGLE OF SADNESS: TRAVEL WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS In 2022

In one of my favourite films, Shawshank Redemption, Red offers some world-weary advice to new prison inmate Andy Dufresne.  “Hope,” he says, “is a dangerous thing.  Hope can drive a man insane”.  This week I was scrolling back through some of my gloomy journal and blog posts from 2020 and 2021, which sent me back into my own mental Shawshank, frustrated and trapped amidst the sheer bloody awfulness of lockdown, travel restrictions, social distancing; observing the near death of cinema, theatre, live music and many beloved business and cultural venues.  My hope inducing madness then was simply for a return to the nostalgia and freedom of 2019 - of live music, culture, travel, and all the joys of a bustling, interactive, creative world.   Now as we enter 2023, there are different “perildemics” which abound.  Some are the inevitable result of policy makers’ doubling down on Covid restrictions in 2021, and so, the “law of unintended consequences” was empirically proven; with economic harm, soaring inflation, impaired public health, psychological damage, and continued disruption from an older, more familiar virus, called flu. Plus ca change! #ffs

Anyway, back to that maddening need for hope.  And a new Happy New Year!

Film

2022 was a million times better than the preceding two years, with airports and hospitality overwhelmed with pent up demand for freedom, normality and fun.  Businesses were rebooted and the creative sector re-opened. London has been bursting at the seams. Movies also became fun again. Tom Cruise was smarter than the average, and left his already completed flick Top Gun Maverick, in the locker until 2022, making over 1.5 billion dollars and filling theatres with a remake of the original movie from over 30 years ago.  James Cameron did the same trick, releasing Avatar 2, as a longer version of his 2010 global blockbuster, adding an ‘Attenborough would be proud’ whales sequence to an already bladder challenging long film.  Other than The Batman, all the other blockbusters were pretty tame, terrible, or too confusedly issue driven to excite many out of their homes. Though, like much else, cinema is a now a hybrid business, so Daniel Craig’s Glass Onion [another ‘sequel’], was only in cinemas for a week before release on Netflix (and smartly timed over Christmas) and in an outstanding performance by musician Janelle Morae, it gave us a genuine new movie star.

I wrote earlier in the year about the enduring allure of the arthouse flick and I loved Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World.  It’s an art-house film with sub-titles and it’s a wistful meditation on adult life, motherhood, modern family relationships, faltering careers, fidelity, mortality and sex.  Going a little more serious ‘arthouse’, but without subtitles, Triangle of Sadness, by Ruben Östlund [who did Force Majeure a few years ago], went down a storm in Cannes in May, and literally has its cast of beautiful, but ugly, vain, and fantastically wealthy grotesques go down in a storm aboard a luxury yacht.  It also has one of those strange +/- ambiguous endings that infuriates, but also serves to make the film something you just have to talk about on the way home. Another work of creative class came from Andrew Gaynord’s All My Friends Hate Me. Starring an increasingly paranoid Tom Stourton, who co-wrote the script, it’s a terrific, nervy, cringe inducing small British film - like a Get Out, though psychologically, not bloody, violent. I could not stop thinking about LCD Sound Systems’ song All My Friends: “You spent the next five years trying to get with your friends again…It comes apart | The way it does in bad films, Except in parts | When the moral kicks in.” See it with friends and I suggest you watch it from behind the sofa. You may have repeatable-cringe injuries by the end.

Bridging arthouse levels of creativity and genuine homage to greatness, the David Bowie biopic Moonage Daydream is a must buy and must repeat when released on 4K UHD. For sheer narrative genius, and a new take on the world of action blockbusters, my film of the year was Everything Everywhere All At Once.  Directed by ‘Daniels’, theirs is one of the best films I have seen for years; an absolutely belter; imaginative, funny, sad, thought-provoking, and head-spinningly odd. The hero is a middle aged Chinese laundry-mat owner struggling with the exhausting demands of her tax-defaulting business, amidst broken relationships with her father, divorce-seeking husband and errant daughter. It’s that good you will want to tell everyone you know about it all at once.

Music

In the summer I did peak gig at the Taylor Hawkins tribute.  Nothing will surpass it.  This was the twenty-first century version of Live Aid, but turned up to 11, rock 'n roll style.  Dave Grohl, the founder and frontman for Foo Fighters, is an extraordinary human being, musician, communicator, and genuine rock-music legend, harnessing Liam Gallagher, Josh Holme, Stuart Copeland, Brian Johnson, Justin Hawkins, Sam Ryder, Lars Ulrich, Roger Taylor, (his son) Rufus Taylor, Travis Baker, and Omar Hakim, as well as Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee of Rush.  It was a sad occasion, to mark the loss of a great drummer, but as a nostalgic, joyful shot in the arm of astounding rock music, then there was no better way of moving on. I also saw Kings of Leon, The War on Drugs, C2C at The O2, James Taylor, Verdi’s Requiem, Steve Hackett, and David Gray playing White Ladder. All great gigs, but all pale compared to the rock-behemoth that Grohl created.

Looking forward

There are very many joys to look forward to creatively in 2023.   Peter Gabriel is releasing new music and touring live, Springsteen is too (though probably too pricey). Groundhog Day is coming back to The Old Vic, The Bridge are reviving Guys and Dolls and also The Bridge’s Nicholas Hytner is launching a new audio visual show with David Hockney, which should brighten up a new venue in Kings Cross in the early part of the year. I have recently become hooked on reading R.F. Kuang, who wrote The Poppy Wars, which will keep me busy for much of the year. For, me, all being well, I will have a new project called Glue that is coming to fruition in 2023. Lots to look forward to. I hope.

Films of the Year

Everything Everywhere All At Once
Triangle of Sadness
Glass Onion
All My Friends Hate Me
Moonage Daydream
Top Gun Maverick
Boiling Point
The Northman

Records of the Year

Somethings Never Change, Priestgate
Wild Front, Wild Front
Angel in Real Time, Gangs of Youth
Life is Yours, Foals
Better With You, Kamala
An Hour Before it’s Dark, Marillion
Since the Dog Died, and others, Fuzzy Sun

A great tragedy in China unfolds

A great tragedy is unfolding in China and there seems no end in sight for the misery of its people. Just three years ago, much was different. China was exciting, buoyant and (relatively) open to the West. Now borders are effectively closed both ways, major cities are in lockdown, universities are closed, and protests have been curtailed, with snatch squads, and the fast mobilisation of even more oppressive and fearsome measures. A million Chinese are in quarantine huts, with hundreds of thousands more being built in camp-cities near Guangzhou and other major centres. The full economic impact is hard to discern from official sources, but any westerners still left in Shanghai, are exhaustedly leaving and are unlikely to return. China is, whether deliberately so, or not, turning in on itself. They are pulling down the blinds and bolting people metaphorically, and literally, into their homes. The shutters are also closed in other ways. Chinese authorities are even ‘blurring’ TV coverage of the World Cup in Qatar, so citizens cannot see 80,000 unmasked people in the stands getting on with living their lives like it’s 2018.

Despite the emerging economic and healthcare disaster, President Xi and China’s local officials remain indefatigable in their commitment to Zero-Covid. As the FT reports today: “In late 2020, Xi extolled China as the “first major economy to have recuperated from the crisis and achieved economic recovery, a testimony to its resilience and vibrancy”. Now though, cases are close to record levels, economic vibrancy has been clobbered by rolling urban lockdowns and a large cohort of insufficiently vaccinated elderly people remain at risk.”

I first visited about 15 years ago and returned numerous times. My son studied Mandarin at Jiao Tong University.  I enjoyed watching world-class golf there, as a guest at 150th anniversary celebrations of HSBC. Just four years ago, we enjoyed a family holiday in China, climbing the Great Wall, travelling by bullet train, visiting the Forbidden City, and glimpsing something of the history and culture of this amazing country. I have in recent years led learning programs and discovery visits with large groups of western executives to Hangzhou and Shanghai. Those visits were inspiring and unnerving in many ways; leaving us amazed at the sheer ambition, appetite and invention of the Chinese. I have written elsewhere about visiting The World Expo and the headquarters of Alibaba in 2010, and of the profound impact that trip had on me and many others. The view from The Bund (or back towards it from Pudong) remains one of the most extraordinary nighttime city-scapes in the world, etched in the mind. We have always experienced great hospitality, warmth and civility from our hosts in China. But any prospect of a return seems many years away, if ever.

Zero-COVID probably made sense in the early days of the pandemic. Three years later, as the whole world watches agog, it looks like perverse lunacy, like King Canute, stood before the waves. 

There is a tragedy unfolding in China, and for those of us who have glimpsed something of this remarkable nation, it's heartbreaking to watch.

Reboot storytelling to build belonging

Once popular, storytelling in business has fallen out of favour.  But the power of a human story is hugely underestimated. It may be the modern default approach, but business leaders seldom win hearts and minds with their usual communications toolbox, of well-presented slide shows, data analysis, carefully crafted e-mails, or glossy corporate comms.  Leaders should learn to use stories, which are more memorable, emotionally resonant and speak volumes. 

The stories your people share say much about what your organisation does, what is important, and how people are regarded.  Such stories can give indications of culture in action; team accomplishments, memorable wins, new product launches, tackling villainous competitors, celebrating heroic successes, as well as sharing the pain of failure.  Storytelling can be a smart way of you communicating culture; in the way you talk about your business; highlighting examples of collaboration, innovation and experiments, and the outcomes achieved. The hero of the story does not have to be the usual suspect, but may well be an unusual, or unsung contributor. The outcome of the tale may not just be a financial goal achieved; it could more likely be a contribution to the wider community, lessons learned, and values shared. 

For stories about culture, the key narrative device ought to be one that uses the pronoun “we”.  But the typical hero in the story is almost always the entrepreneurial genius; a Jobs, Ma, or Musk, and others.  But it is the teams they brought together that designed and built the Mac, brought e-commerce to China, and sent rockets to space and back.  The leader often takes the limelight, but 53 were credited inside the Mac, 18 men and women-built Alibaba from scratch, and Musk succeeded because he was avaricious in his recruitment of talents from other firms.  Musk’s former head of talent as SpaceX describes the brief like this, and it sounds like a scene from science fiction adventure movie: “SpaceX is ‘Special Forces’.  We take on the missions that others deem impossible. We told them, this will be the hardest thing you will ever do in your life.  We sought the kind of personality that wants to a Navy SEAL - the engineering equivalent of that.” 

Once Upon A Time in a Conference Hall Far Far Away

For several years, storytelling in business seemed to be all the rage.  A decade ago, I attended numerous leadership conferences, seminars, and strategy workshops, where some enigmatic speaker would have the audience completely captivated, as they unpacked the “three beats of the leader’s story,” or espoused the value of sitting cross-legged around our imaginary campfires to explore the mystery and magic of the storyteller’s art.  In leadership workshops, jaded executives were encouraged to re-imagine their corporate resume as a “leadership journey” illuminated with moments of personal “epiphany” and hard-won life-lessons.  As a welcome relief from the usual death by PowerPoint, storytelling seemed a rich seam to explore.  I discovered at one workshop that almost all business and personal challenges could be better understood through some cleverly curated clips from movies.  Most memorably, through a deconstruction of The Shawshank Redemption, I learnt about true friendship, personal resilience, work-place bullying, and the enduring value of knowing a good accountant. 

Some of the conference speakers were as extraordinary in the flesh as they were in the best-selling books they had written.  Bear Grylls (broke his back, but then climbed Everest before he was 21), Joe Simpson (survived catastrophic injuries on a mountain, but made life and death decisions that haunt him to this day), John McCarthy (held captive in a basement in Beirut for five years, but emerged as man of great warmth and unbelievable tolerance) and Ellen MacArthur (solo-circumnavigated the world in 94 days, but emerged an articulate public champion of sustainability, before the topic was de rigour). These days, though, if I attend a business forum, the inclusion of a storyteller on the agenda is now more likely to prompt a world-weary sigh rather than a standing ovation.

The alchemists

Advertisers and marketers once embraced storytelling as the mode through which they would drive up the sales of desirable products. There were some wondrous and very memorable moments, where classic story themes were fused with brand campaigns.  Apple’s ‘1984’ Mac launch (evoking Orwell’s dystopian vision) and the Guinness ‘Surfer’ (narrating Melville’s Moby Dick) were each brilliantly done; smart, imaginative, and thought-provoking.

It is both remarkable and kind of wonderful that two of cinemas’ great directors started their careers selling colourful PCs and dark draft beer. The Surfer’s director Jonathan Glazer went on to make Sexy Beast, with Ben Kingsley, described by Martin Scorsese as the best British film he had ever seen.  Apple’s 1984 was the breakout moment for Ridley Scott, who went on to create iconic blockbusters like Alien, Blade Runner, The Martian, and the Academy Award winning Gladiator.

The idea of the advertiser as storyteller par excellence may have inspired the writers of the TV series Mad Men, where its anti-hero and creative genius Don Draper uses brilliant storytelling to pitch his campaign ideas.  In 'The Carousel Pitch’, his heartfelt epithets and tear-inducing sincerity wow the executives from new prospective client Kodak-Eastman.  Draper’s successful pitch rescues his firm’s tenuous place among the big agencies on Madison Avenue. But like many of the best stories, there is, of course, a twist.  The real magic of the pitch was that, for Don, the performance was nothing more than that - an act.  A charade.  He had left all authenticity outside in the trash, using his wife and children as mere visual assets to sell his concept. I implore you to watch it and be amazed by the power of the master (and duplicitous) storyteller.  

I am less sure the advertisers of today use storytelling with such conviction or skill.  Their objective is not the memorable story retold, but the widely distributed meme or gif. The allegorical and metaphorical wit found in adapting Melville or Orwell seems to be seldom bothered with. The advertisers’ goal is to gain a momentary mindshare, a nanosecond span of attention, and their creative solution is to treat the audience like kindergarten consumers, grasping for the screenshot-friendly marshmallows on offer. The writer and cartoonist Hugh McLeod summed up the dumbed-down approach beautifully: “If you spoke to people the way advertising now speaks to people, they would punch you in the face.”

Death of the story

Technology has played a part in making stories both unbelievably easy to access, and simultaneously, too easy to ignore.  While we can readily access more than 30 million books via Amazon, we are a mere thumb-swipe away from the distraction of instantaneous stories of global importance and/or celebrity gossip, super-condensed into a few hundred characters on Twitter. Worse still, the long-form story version of the tweet starts with the soul-destroying tease “Thread”. 

On Instagram, a story is now described as “slideshow that allows us to capture and post related images and video content, so we share more of our lives with those we are close with”. Another thumb swipe and Facebook sends us photo-montage stories of our colleagues’ enviable holidays, our half-remembered second-cousin’s birthday and our pet’s best adventures.  Not much room then for Melville’s 585 dense pages.

TED Talks have become the modern equivalent of business storytelling.  In a puritanically branded event, an over-rehearsed speaker has up to 18 minutes to enlighten, persuade and inform – and hope that their nuggets of knowledge will be worthy enough to be shared by millions online.  Depending on your perspective, TED Talks is a medium that has either saved Western thinking and the promulgation of new ideas, or alternatively, it has not.  Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo is a massive bestseller.  And the TED franchise has created a whole industry of training, books, videos and professional tutors to help you Present Like TED, Own the Room and Rock it Like TED.   Airport bookshops are packed with TED’s alum.  TED’s own editorial has a succinct take on what Storytelling is enormously helpful: “How do you foster connecting, empathy and understanding between people.  Tell a good story, of course.”

As you’d expect, in the myriad of eclectic topics and more than 3,000 official talks now available, there are duds and some gems.  But one of the very best is just five minutes in length, one of the shortest TED talks ever shared.

Save The Shoes

The story is titled ‘A life lesson from a volunteer firefighter’, by Mark Bezos, sometime more simply Save The Shoes. Like all the best stories, Bezos immediately ignites your imagination. His mode of telling has a theatrical wow factor, walking onto the stage dressed as a fireman, holding his hard hat, and with humility and great humour he shares the story.  He seems genuine and authentic, making the story both personal and universal. On a night of much drama when a house is on fire, his only contribution is to rescue the home-owners’ shoes from the fire.  In its punchline and Bezos’ brief epilogue, there is a sticky reminder of how powerful lessons can be found in real-life experiences and how great storytelling can still blow up a room.  As Bezos finishes, he brings the house down:

“In both my vocation and my avocation as a volunteer firefighter, I am a witness to acts of generosity and kindness on a monumental scale, but I'm also a witness to acts of grace and courage on an individual basis. And you know what I've learned? They all matter. So, as I look around this room at people who either have achieved, or are on their way to achieving, remarkable levels of success, I would offer this reminder: don't wait. Don't wait until you make your first million to make a difference in somebody's life. If you have something to give, give it now. Serve food at a soup kitchen. Clean up a neighbourhood park. Be a mentor. Not every day is going to offer us a chance to save somebody's life, but every day offers us an opportunity to affect one. So, get in the game. Save the shoes.”

Exploring strategic challenges

At LBS, we sometimes build some form of storytelling element into our Executive Education learning programmes.  At its simplest level this might be in the way cohort members are encouraged to introduce themselves to one another (by sharing their story), or at a more sophisticated level, it might be around building a strategic challenge into a compelling narrative that engages and excites others. We use expert facilitators, often writers themselves, as well as actors, stand-up comedians, filmmakers and improvisers to enthuse and build confidence.  There are also some very simple ways you might use storytelling in your teams to make better sense of business problems.

Business ‘models’ are not always very memorable. We more easily recall Star Wars’ The Force than Porter’s Five Forces8. When doing team exercises, familiar tales, tropes, and characters are good ways to instantly connect ideas and minds.

Why not use a familiar story (movie, or book) and get your team to think about a business challenge using a metaphor from that familiar tale? Rather than plot some actions from a hurried SWOT, ask the team: “What if you had Harry Potter’s magic wand and three spells you could cast, what issues, fixes or gaps would you choose to use them on in your business?” Get them to discern and rank their choices. Alternatively, use a film like Back to the Future as a launchpad to discuss what your organisation would look like 10 years from now and the actions you need to take now for it to survive and thrive in the future.

Storytelling glue

There is something both democratic (we can all tell a good yarn, right?), as well as refreshingly human about exploring a business challenge through the format or metaphor of a story.  Stories are familiar, memorable, and easily shared.  Great stories cross borders and can be translated and adapted for different tastes and cultures. They resonate more than business theory, purpose, vision and the features of a product or service.  In the words of Mad Men’s Don Draper, using stories creates a “sentimental bond” with your audience, and much deeper and potent connection.  Stories are a good way of reinforcing glue.

A richer purpose at work

Many mature organisations still spend much thought, time, and money, wrestling with defining their organisational purpose. Some new start-ups begin trying to solve that conundrum, before even shipping a single product, holding to Sinek’s memorable refrain; “people don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” A true, inspiring, story from the UK shows a different way of defining purpose; nurturing from day one and being true to that purpose for 40 years.

Julian Richer started buying and selling hi-fi separates at school when he was 14. He co-founded Richer Sounds in 1978 and led and managed the business for 41 years until he divested ownership of the business in 2019, in an unusual way.  Richer is in many ways, an unusual leader, with a view of business, and a perspective on life and work, which is shaped by his deep conviction about ethical practice, and in later life, by his Christian faith.  He was just 19 years old when he opened his first shop near London Bridge, selling hi-fi, TV, and audio-visual kit. The store was a hit and became listed for over 20 years in Guinness World Records as achieving the highest sales per square foot of any retail outlet in the world.

The business grew across the UK and today it now trades from 51 stores across the UK as well as online and through a telesales and business to business operation. Many employees have side-hustles as DJs, are musicians and music producers, and through Richer Unsigned, a not-for profit unit, it provides a free platform for over 3,000 unsigned bands and artists. By 2019, Richer had built what he calls a “responsible business” to a turnover to over £200 million a year. The whole business shared the value created, with reward fairly shared amongst employees, and also with 15 per cent of the company’s profits donated to some 400 charitable causes.  His belief on treating staff well is not just a moral choice, it’s a business imperative:

“There is, of course, a cost involved: paying your people above the minimum and going the extra mile for customers, and even paying your suppliers on time. But the financial payback is huge. I am talking about savings from recruitment and training because your labour turnover will be tiny. Your best people who have the most experience will stay — they are a valuable commodity you surely want to hang on to. Your staff will take less time off for sickness and your shrinkage will be minuscule.”

Richer was interviewed in 2016, and announced, with some wit, that he had made plans to hand his entire business to his employees when he dies, saying he lacked a “spoilt child to run the business”. Three years later, then aged 60, he announced that he had transferred ownership to his employees by passing 60% of his shares to a trust. Each of his 500 employees, excluding directors, received a thank-you bonus of £1,000 for every year of work, with 8 years’ service being the average tenure.

He continues to be a vocal proponent of ethical business, writing a column in The Sunday Times, publishing a book in 2018 called The Ethical Capitalist, and regularly speaking about business ethics, employee engagement, fairness, and transparency. His legacy remains a firm that still makes much of its unusual ownership structure, and distinctive culture, recruiting based on natural friendliness, rather than high-pressure sales skills. The ethical approach was a founder passion, but it is also one that secured commitment and loyalty from staff and remans ingrained in the business today.

The “responsible business" is an unusual model, but by retaining an employee-owned structure, clear convictions, and explicit values, backed by generous giving, it creates a particular kind of glue between employer and employee, which in turn wins loyalty and recommendation from customers, securing numerous Which? Best Retailer awards.

Richer believes that leaders should put business in the service of society, and provide a new kinder, fairer form of capitalism. In his book he argues “ethically run businesses are invariably more efficient, more motivated and more innovative than those that care only about the bottom line.” There are many areas on which a business should choose to focus; growth, profitability, sustainability, but for Richer it is more fundamentally a choice about doing the right thing, and at the heart of that is the leader's role in treating employees well.  "Our philosophy is that staff should come first.”

A Richer legacy

Richer did not delay opening his first shop until he had defined precisely what he meant by a truly “Responsible Business”; he started by selling consumer electronics, and then spent 40 years building, cultivating, and reinforcing the right way to do that, ensuring his staff were well treated and that their achievements were celebrated along the way.  But because of that distinctive culture, and a deepening shared sense of doing things differently, employees stuck around for many years, and those remaining when he retired, received more than just a cash bonus as the founder’s legacy.  He passed to them the firm. It is quite a story built around an inspiring leader, but is also one delivered 7 days a week, in 52 high-street shops, and on the web, by the concerted effort of over 500 committed people, somehow imbued with a kind of common glue.   

Elon Musk - A Man in Full

For those in the UK, or with access to the BBC iPlayer, there is an absolute ‘must watch’ series just started, called The Elon Musk show.  It is a smartly produced documentary, with episode one introducing an array of characters; his former-wife, his mother, various rocket scientists, early investors, exhausted colleagues, and his first wife Justine.  From the off, there are some psychological truth-bombs that are jaw-dropping.  Early in his days as CEO of SpaceX and the Chairman of Tesla, Musk is interviewed about the work-life challenges of being a father of five (he and Justine had twins and triplets) and his candidness is profound; “actually it impairs my ability to execute here,” he says.

Not long after this, he confirms that he is filing for divorce from Justine, his college sweetheart, by efficiently leaving a message on their marriage therapist’s phone.  His work ethic is remarked on by everyone and his mother explains why he finds settled relationships so difficult; “He compartmentalises his brain…when you date or marry Elon, you don’t see him much.”  His commitment to his enterprise is unquestionable though.  When there is delay to delivery of the first Teslas, he throws himself at the minutiae of the supply problems: “I’m available 24/7, call me at 3 am on a Sunday, I don’t care.”

As you watch, there is the sense of a man of incalculable genius and entrepreneurial vision; and a rare human-being with profoundly odd behaviours and some strange emotional vacuity.  It would be easy to watch the show and grow a sense of moral outrage, as I am sure some commentators will, as the PayPal millionaire becomes the billionaire, and then within two decades, the richest man in the universe.  But for me, it is the business insights that are most illuminating.  He obviously had a profound sense of the future; a vision for a more sustainable planet, and the opportunity for human exploration beyond this earth.  We also discover some small nuggets about how he sought to galvanise and lead others with a team-philosophy that is Steve Jobs-like in its brevity and acuity.

Thomas Mueller is a Rocket Propulsion Engineer at Space X and was “employee number 1” when hired by Musk.  He talks of Musk’s determination to get the whole team wholly focused and completely committed to the success of the venture.  After an early rocket explodes on an island in the Pacific, Musk exits some engineers and others he feels are not fully committed. Mueller describes Musk’s approach like this:

“I noticed that if people were negative, they were not in the next meeting. He said a company is a bunch of vectors, each person is a vector, and they need to point in the direction you want to go. Bureaucracy and office politics and low morale, it’s almost random vectors. He was always about making all the vectors, which are all the employees, pointing in the right direction, moving forward.”

There are, I hope, more gems and jaw-dropping moments to follow in the series.  Musk’s story is, in a way, very familiar, but here in the details of the telling, and in the warmth, amazement, and openness with which his family and colleagues tell the tale, a fascinating picture emerges of what Tom Wolfe might have termed “a man in full”.

Dave Grohl creates the greatest show on earth

I am just back from the Taylor Hawkins Tribute gig at Wembley Stadium.  I have now done peak gig.  Nothing will surpass it.  This was the twenty-first century version of Live Aid, but turned up to 11, rock 'n roll style. Dave Grohl, the founder and frontman for Foo Fighters, is an extraordinary human being, musician, communicator, and genuine rock-music legend. For some 6 hours yesterday, he curated, played and hosted the most extraordinary tribute gig for his bandmate Taylor Hawkins, who died earlier this year while on tour in Argentina. The performers were numerous (over 40 musicians name-checked), many legendary in status, and amazingly well-rehearsed. The show made sense, built momentum as the evening grew, and was coherent and at times moving, delivering so much more than seemed possible from what initially appeared a random potpourri of the musical heroes who had inspired Hawkins.  It was also the surprise formats and combinations that provided the magic. Liam Gallagher, who opened, is not everyone’s cup of tea, but with The Foo Fighters as his backing band, he was literally a rock n roll star revitalised, trying hard to be all sour puss and snarly, he nearly smiled amidst the ovation, throwing his maracas away into the crowd. American indie-rocker Josh Holme (new to me and amazing) boldly sang both Bowie and Elton John classics in their own back-yard. Stuart Copeland played The Police with the Foos, Brian Johnson of ACDC then fronted the band to play Back in Black, and relative newcomer Sam Ryder fronted Queen like it was the role we had been prepared for all his life.

This gig was nirvana (forgive me) for a fan of great rock drummers. Stuart Copeland, Lars Ulrich, Roger Taylor, (his son) Rufus Taylor, Travis Baker, and (12 year-old prodigy) Nandi Bushell, all swapping places on the drum riser. Hawkin’s own 16 year-old son Shane, smashed his way through My Hero, which set the waterworks off amongst many of the 75,000 punters packing the stadium.  Omar Hakim [who famously played for Bowie on Let’s Dance in 1983, and Kate Bush’s live band in 2014] played with both Nile Rogers and Paul McCartney, and then most astonishingly of all, followed Dave Grohl (who had thundered his way through two early career classics) to form a triumvirate with Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee of Rush.

Yes, Rush. It is nearly three years since Rush’s Neil Peart died (and Lee mentioned the loss of his own “brother’), but over seven years since Lifeson and Lee had played together in a three-piece. The sound, musicianship and virtuoso skills are still there for Lifeson and Lee, and with such an extraordinary performance, then surely they must ponder if there is a way they can record and play live again?  The whole sense of the show was about a celebration of Hawkins, and musicians from across generations (aged 12 to 80) covering different bases, collaborating, jamming, noodling, and rocking hard, in time, together. And making that happen, always at the back (be it Grohl, Hakim, Copeland, Ulrich, etc.) someone seated, literally watching everyone’s back, staring out at the crowd and using their feet and hands with precision, deploying a physical conviction and commitment that a world-class boxer or athlete would be humbled by.

There are many clips I could share, and the Rush segment with Grohl and Hakim will live long in the memory, but for the sheer wonder and life-affirming joy of being a drummer in a rock n roll band, please see below this clip of Nandi Bushell. She is so small, she had to clamber on to the rises, but then bosses it like the best. Drummers, huh?

Philip Larkin - 100 Not Out

Today, the 9th August 2022, is the 100th anniversary of the poet Philip Larkin’s birth. A national treasure, not without some controversy, he was also the Librarian of the University of Hull. I ‘read’ Larkin’s Whitsun Weddings at School, which I still cherish, visited his grave in Cottingham, and considered having “All night North” tattooed on my arm, while drunk one time. There are better written eulogies online today about this peculiarly English genius - and much concern that he is being 'cancelled' from school curriculums, but I could not let the moment pass without sharing one of the best moments of my time as a Hull graduate.

A literal fire-side chat with Hull Uni Alum, journalist, former hostage, and brilliant human being, John McCarthy, talking about an unwanted encounter with Larkin. Enjoy. 🚬

Tell Everyone About This All At Once

I noticed this week a stage production of The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe is being revived in London. I remember seeing it a few years ago and being absolutely floored.  There is something about that wardrobe.  A gateway, a portal, a doorway, a time-machine, a bridge between there, and elsewhere.  As a narrative device, it has simply never been topped, in any literature or film. Audiences love that sense of escape, of pushing through nervously, and emerging from the darkness into the landscape of an unfamiliar and magical world. Most of the movies and tales I have discovered, loved and returned to again and again, feature a similar ‘wardrobe’ motif; be it a souped-up DeLorean, a Time Bandits’ map, a Tardis, a Stargate, Neo’s red pill, or a Subtle Knife that cuts through time and space.

For millions of cinema goers, the movie equivalent of that wardrobe; transporting the viewer to another dimension, has been the Marvel logo graphic, unfolding across a cinema screen. Now, unostentatiously, called the Marvel Cinematic Universe (‘MCU’), the production studio, has now clocked up some 29 films since 2007, with at least 11 more in various stages of development. These titles have already grossed nearly USD30billion.  The films ‘transport’ two sorts of the viewers though; the casual cinema goer, often fairly new to these characters, super-heroes and fantastical worlds, and a second smaller segment (including me) who bought and devoured the comics in the 1980s, on which much of the world-building is based. For these aficionados, crossing into the MCU from the world of the comics, is not a trivial, or passive experience.  Their regard for those original comics is held with a kind of religious fervour. They call it ‘canon’ and you mess with it at your peril.  The starting point for any fandom is a mild form of fanaticism, often formed in younger years, when emotions and reactions are most visceral.  The best of the MCU movie makers have adopted a sense of responsibility in adapting comic to screen, from costume design, to dialogue, to character arc, and casting choice, which for the comic-book fans are profoundly important decisions. When the Directors have nailed it, the outcomes at the box office are astounding. When the Russo Brothers directed the two-part Avengers saga Infinity Wars and Endgame, they collectively made over USD5billion, with Endgame becoming the highest grossing movie of all time.

But after nearly 30 films, it seems something is going awry.  Film forums, fan groups, and online discussion boards are in meltdown.  The problem for the Hollywood producers is that if you transport a modern audience into the comic world of the 1980s, it now somehow doesn’t work: returning to a culturally alien landscape that feels awkward, patriarchic, not just patriotic, where female characters are (often) sexually objectified by the cartoonist, not drawn as self-determined, independent, fully formed characters.  So, here on the 21st Century side of the Marvel wardrobe, the women take the lead; Thor and the Hulk become female, Iron Man is killed off; the lead titles are Widows, Women, and to their critics, overtly Woke.  Marvel has suddenly stumbled (or deliberately hurtled, depending on your view) into the modern culture wars, of identity, sexuality, and diversity.  Which is in some ways no surprise, when the original comics were written by men for boys, full of machismo heroics, masculinity, power, strength and wars.  For more articulate insights on this transformation, there are much better sources than mine, with everyone from The Guardian, to The New Yorker, The Telegraph and others, taking a relatively high-minded perspective on the cultural tensions being played out. Or you could look up former comic book retailer, Gary Buechler, whose online show Nerdrotic, garners half a mission subscribers, whom I guess agree with him that the MCU is now a Disney owned woke-promoting media monster from hell.

So in a most extraordinary plot-twist in this emerging ‘conflict’ came to our screens this spring.  MCU recently released Doctor Strange and The Multiverse of Madness. Now, any title as convoluted as that bodes ill for any sense in the telling of the tale, and having watched it, it is indeed an over-wrought, complicated, CGI over-heavy nonsensical mess, that has little heart, purpose, or surprise (other than the antagonist being a nasty badass version of a character we have cheered for in pervious MCU films). In contrast, the Russo Brothers, MCU’s most successful directors, have produced their own non-MCU movie, Everything Everywhere All At Once, which was released almost simultaneously.

Directed by another creative pair (monikored ‘Daniels’), theirs is one of the best films I have seen for years. Like the Doctor Strange movie, it is a story about a hero’s ability to be transported to different ‘multiverses’, places where there are different versions of the self, each with different traits, powers and purposes.  But while the MCU movie is a dud, Everything Everywhere All at Once is an absolutely belter; imaginative, funny, sad, thought-provoking, and head-spinningly odd. The hero is a middle aged Chinese laundry-mat owner struggling with the exhausting demands of her tax-defaulting business, amidst broken relationships with her father, divorce-seeking husband and errant daughter, who has fallen in love with a woman. I will not even attempt to do a full review, please just see it and be genuinely wowed.  I have not seen anything as imaginative, bar Christopher Nolan’s recent run of escapism movies, or the original The Matrix made over 20 years ago. Empire gave it 5/5, Rotten Tomatoes has it 95% and IMDB at 8.2…for a movie about a failed laundromat owner having a bad day. It’s that good you will want to tell everyone you know about it all at once.

Post-Credit Scene

Meanwhile, MCU’s most recent slate seems to be faltering. The title that achieves a billion dollar gross seems long gone. Recent releases have none of the gargantuan take of the Russo’s Avengers’s franchise.  The movie press and rumour mill is rife that MCU’s head Kevin Feige is desperate to get the Russo brothers to return and make movies for them again.  When asked what they would want to do, if a deal could be struck, they said Secret Wars; a story full of shape-shifting violence, insurrection and a macho dystopian war. Comic book fandom would go nuts.  It will be interesting to see if Feige signs the cheque. It will be a pay day to top all movie paydays and a return to an alternative universe few thought we would see again.

A short post about drummers

It’s been a horrid few years if you love your rock drummers, so it was a great to see The War on Drugs and their stickman Charlie Hall at the top of his game in London this week. In recent months, we have lost Charlie Watts, Neil Peart, Ginger Baker and now this month, tragically we hear of the death at the age of 50 of the brilliant Taylor Hawkins. Drumming looks easy, compared to the “musicality’ of the lead-guitarist, or virtuosity of the keyboard player, but the compelling mix of purpose and power is the key. You also don’t need to have the technical pyrotechnics and seventy-piece kit like Neil “the Professor” Peart. Charlie Hall, like his name sakes Watts, keeps it simple and he keeps thunderous time. He stays out of the limelight during a War on Drugs show. Only for thirty seconds does the lighting engineer even focus on him, and that’s when he is playing a simple hi-hat double-handed during in a moody interlude in Under The Pressure. As it builds and builds, he looks a man in his element, and when he suddenly bounces back off the tom and floor tom, to bring the band back together as one, it is one of the best sights and sounds in live rock music. I have caught it before on Wave Your Arms, but not before this close and personal. After a time of much mourning for drummers, see below and see what joy!

The enduring allure of the clever auteur

I’m just back from seeing The Worst Person in the World, an Oscar-nominated Norwegian romantic drama starring Renate Reinsve, as our heroine Julie, and Anders Danielsen Lie as Aksel, her cartoon drawing lover. Directed by Joachim Trier and elegantly shot by Kasper Tuxen, it’s an art-house film with sub-titles.

Trier has produced a wistful meditation on adult life, motherhood, modern family relationships, faltering careers, fidelity, mortality and sex, and it wrestles at the end with a heated debate about whether an artist should be allowed to offend. TWPITW covers four years in Julie’s life, but is also “about” very many other different things, episodically imparted though 12 chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue. Bridging these chapters, cinematographer Tuxen keeps our gaze fixed on the sunsets across Oslo, or settles for long minutes on the wonderful Reinsvre, who is captivating throughout, even when just sat silently, thinking, looking a bit sad, and yet hopeful. She does that a lot, as it’s an art-house film with sub-titles.

The last time I was in the cinema, it was to see Spiderman - No Way Home, which was about a new version of Spiderman, self-referencing some other recent Spiderman movies. I won't necessarily endorse Martin Scorsese’s claim that superhero films “aren’t real movies”, as I love a multi-plex SFX heavy blow ‘em up spectacle as the next guy, but he does have a point. Movies can also be art as well as entertainment. At one point, Julie and her dying ex-lover talk about the movies they could watch time and time again; “David Lynch, The Godfather II…Dog Day Afternoon?” In art-house movies, the characters are suitably absorbed and ennobled by watching, reading and consuming others’ art, not binge-watching a box set.

At various points Trier goes on a cinematic homage to others. A photo montage sequence of mothers, accompanied by plaintive music reminded me of the best moments of British director Stephen Poliakoff. Films like Perfect Strangers, or Shooting The Past (for me, mesmeric TV movies that have never been bettered in the subsequent twenty years). When Julie leaves her lover, she flicks a switch that freezes the residents of Oslo in time, as she skips through the streets to kiss a charming Barista; as romantic and as fanciful as Terry Gilliam’s Grand Central sequence in The Fisher King. Less successful is an over-wrought scene of a drug-fuelled hallucination, but Trier redeems himself throughout with an idiosyncratic soundtrack to counterpoint the story, using dozens of artists including retro throw-backs like Christopher Cross, Billie Holiday and Art Garfunkel.

The film in ‘12 Chapters’ approach seemed unnecessary, though just this week there is a literary reminder that auteur’s like the artifice and the discipline of such structures, with Julian Barnes publishing a new novel. Memorably, Barnes’ The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, remains one of the few books I have read more than once and then loved it more the second time. Barnes’ early novels are the literary equivalent of the art-house flick, without subtitles, and I am sure his books would not be out of place on Aksel’s well-stocked shelves.

In a world where the online box-set and endless streams of mindless content dominate producers’ slates, it is a joy to see something like TWPITW actually get made. With enough imaginative backers, creative film makers can still produce thought provoking, memorable storytelling that moves you enough to immediately hit the keys and share a recommendation with others. It’s an art-house film with sub-titles worth seeing.

Why Musk’s Twitter pursuit is pointless

I joined Twitter in March 2009 and found the experience at once exhilarating and somewhat unnerving. I had never really bought into social before, being almost non-existent on Facebook, and suddenly the ability to read, comment, respond and connect with others was instantaneous. I shared a few views, liked a few pictures and jokes and, as people jumped on, I secured a few hundred followers, and I tweeted a lot about writing (and the common challenge of getting read) and met some others who shared my pain.  Good times.

But Twitter was ruined and the experience turned into a shit-show when Brexit brewed, divided and devoured Britain. I had a vague hope that it would become palatable again, but then COVID struck, and the subsequent Twitter algorithm and bot engineered pile-on against (for example) any expressed scepticism about the “merits” of Wuhan style lockdowns made me quickly reach for the delete button. On Twitter, campaigns to cancel just about anyone with an opposing view were played out like a dystopian ‘war-game’ between the left and right, right and wrong, conservative and liberal, religious and atheist, enlightened and un-educated. Every issue was seen through the narrow lens by which your ‘tribe’ perceived the world. Twitter, Facebook and other social channels have spent very many billions on processes, filters, buttons, badges, people, editors, curators, warnings and censors, to ensure that these social forums remain safe spaces, free from hate speech, threats, antagonism and vitriol.  They’ve failed. It’s now the Brexit toned divisive shit-show, but on every topic from Bake Off to Bournemouth beach huts.

So, Elon Musk has decided to ride to the rescue.  Not content with several kids, being the richest man on earth, with compelling ventures that include space exploration, a manned mission to the Mars, the fastest growing car brand on earth and providing internet connectivity from low-earth orbit to the whole planet, Elon wants to save “western civilisation” by ensuring free-speech in the “public square” of Twitter. He may well succeed - and if the funding is “secured”, then he has every right to take his share offer to existing shareholders and convince them on the basis of the price-value call he has made. But why bother?

Pursuing Twitter now is like getting belatedly agitated about the dominance of Murdoch’s News International a decade ago, or getting hung-up on the vagaries of editorial independence at CNN, or the Wall Street Journal. Like these crumbling legacy ‘organs’, Twitter is a dying platform. [See Worldwide user numbers - basically flat for over 7 years in a sector associated with exponential growth. Also, if you factor for the ubiquitous ‘bots’ who dominate the platform, the real-person users numbers have collapsed.] Twitter’s explosive growth from 2010 was borne out of a once in a generation coincidence of the internet suddenly being in “our hands”, on our iPhones. That made its founder Dorsey horribly rich, but did little to enrich public debate and discourse. Celebrities have already moved on to Insta, or Snap, or TikTok, or coordinate their own multi-channel campaigns, riding a wave of growth. Meanwhile users have flocked to subscriber content, closed channels, Patreon-only access and ‘value-for value’ content creators.  You Tube users add 720,000 hours of content every day. Twitter thrives on letting politicians and drunk people on the bus let off fumes; but essentially, it's the same people shouting the same things at one another.

So, please Mr Musk, continue to focus on the mid-21st Century challenges of climate change, autonomous electric cars, giga-power and a longer-term ambition to colonise planets.  These seem visionary, bold and noble business endeavours.  Someone wise once said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Well given the culture inherent on Twitter, surely for Musk, its better to pass, pause and watch Twitter simply devour itself. 

The staggering value of "other stuff" sold by Apple

Apple have just announced that their annual developers' conference WWDC will remain online in 2022. You can look forward to 4 days of nerdy tech stuff about coding iOS, MacOS, iPadOS, etc. Which got me thinking about my first Mac, bought in 2002; an angle poise iMacG4, with swivel neck and 256MB of memory. Apple Inc has done well since then. What I should have done in 2002 was not buy a shiny machine that was redundant just two years later, but purchase some Apple stock.

In 2002, an Apple share was $23. By 2019 the share price was $230, but interestingly, that story of enormous value growth was not about the Mac, or even the ubiquitous iPhone, it was also about a clever cultivation of the “Apple eco-system", or rather "other stuff" to you and me. To illustrate, the market cap of Apple in 2002 was about $23 billion - which is about the same as the 2020 revenues for AirPods alone. Staggeringly, the replacement business for "earbuds and cases" is estimated to be worth over $7 billion in revenues.

My point? Well, who knew? Growth doesn't have to be about just swimming more effectively in the same lane; it's about developing adjacent and "non-linear" business, which can sometimes outstrip the core product offer. So beware of keeping ploughing down the same lane and make your "other stuff" as attractive as the core offer.

[Ed. Article originally published on Linked-in.]

The Great Resignation is endemic, but is there another way of making talent want to stay?

The 'Great Resignation' sucks, but as a senior leader or business manager, what can you do?  The key question in the 'war for talent' used to be how you could answer "why should I work for you?"  Now amidst the disruption of the 'great resignation', the big people challenge is answering "Why should I bother staying?"

A recent report by PWC [see link below] delves deep into the mindset of 'millennials' (for them, employees aged 31 and under) and maybe provides some clues to the root causes of the talent exodus. None of it bodes well.  Attracting young recruits is not the issue; but keeping them for long looks impossible. The headlines, summarised in brief: 

• Loyalty is for the birds. Over a quarter now expect to have six employers or more, compared with just 10% in 2008. 38% of millennials who are currently working said they were actively looking for a different role and 43% said they were open to offers. Only 18% expect to stay with their current employer for the long term.

• You can't buy loyalty with cash. Development and work/life balance are more important than financial rewards, with cash reward rated only third. 🧐

• They're 24/7 Connected, but not to you. It's difficult to build meaningful relationships and the critical "glue" when remote and hybrid working is the policy 'du-jour' and 41% say they prefer to communicate electronically at work than face to face or even over the telephone. 

• They want promotion, and now. Career progression is the top priority for millennials who expect to rise rapidly through the organisation. 52% said this was the main attraction in an employer.

• Doing good isn’t enough anymore. Strong employer brands are waning in importance. In 2008, 88% were looking for employers with CSR values. Fast forward three years and just over half are attracted to employers because of their CSR position. 

If you’re looking to attract and RETAIN new talent, it’s a sobering read.

My own take on the solution to the Great Resignation is that all of us, as employees, thrive on a different kind of ‘glue’. It is a sense of belonging that makes our work more meaningful, engaging and (hopefully, at times) inspiring.  Those who have worked with me before will know of my ‘addiction’ to Glue and bemusement at the scant attention organisations pay to it. Creating glue isn’t about a tactical set of hurriedly adopted hybrid working policies, annual pay tweaks, mission statement comms, and an improved canteen; it’s about building leaders who genuinely love what they do taking people along with them. People cohere around people, not around a strategy, or product offer. Post-pandemic, firms need to take a long hard look, but not at WHAT they do, or WHY they do what they do, but WHO they are, and how they make working with others, inclusive, involving, collaborative and sticky.  WHO you work with, WHO you are led by and WHO you serve is critical to creating the right glue.

So, do you know anyone out there who is creating great ‘glue’? Let me know and give them a shout out!  

The excellent PWC report is attached here. 
https://lnkd.in/e_EZnadZ

2021 - A Year in Review

Listening

Once finally re-opened in the summer, live music rocked in London. Artists were finally unleashed again after over a year of being locked-out from their originally scheduled dates.  Amongst many great nights, Admiral Fallow at The Omeara, Steve Hackett at The Palladium, Courtney Marie Andrews at The Union Chapel, Public Service Broadcasting at Brixton Academy, and Kawala at their ‘homecoming’ venue of Kentish Town, were all worth the wait.  In 2022, radio will discover Kawala and they are going to be enormous. Watching 73-year-old Steve Hackett play for three hours was humbling and inspiring, while across town, Genesis played with a physically shot Phil Collins in a show that at best inspired mixed feelings.  Elsewhere in Devon, it rained and rained at The Leveller’s Beautiful Days festival, where Gary Numan’s set was suitably apocalyptic and dark, until he was hit by an inflatable banana from the crowd.  What joy!  

My record of the year is a six track EP called Since the Dog Died by Manchester band Fuzzy Sun.  While the punchy guitar-riff singalongs are good enough, elsewhere their stunning arrangements, melodic soundscape, and plaintiff vocals on songs like Moviestar and Kolm, are gorgeous and point towards a future sound altogether more mature than a five-piece guitar band from Manchester might naturally churn out.  One to watch, and more here.  Sadly, the wonderfully talented David Longdon [pictured above] of Big Big Train died on the eve of the band’s long delayed tour.  Intriguingly, Longdon once auditioned and came very close to replacing Collins as the singer for Genesis in the 1990s.  His death was a huge loss, and with the ‘accidental’ circumstances clearly odd, a low moment in 2021. Records of the year: 

Fuzzy Sun, Since the Dog Died
Tori Amos, Ocean to Ocean
The War on Drugs, I Don’t Live Here Anymore
The Weather Station, Ignorance
Alfie Templeman, Forever Isn't Long Enough
Wild Front, Drowning in the Light
Admiral Fallow, The Idea of You
The Anchoress, The Art of Losing
Nick Hudson, Font of Human Fractures
Wolf Alice, Blue Weekend. 

Honourable mentions also go to Kawala, Prioritise Pleasure, Circa Waves, The Magic Gang, Spector, The People Versus and Portobello. If you feel tempted, there is a Spotify Playlist here of the best of the above and some other tracks that made 2021 a musical return to form.

Watching

One of the best films of the year was probably the smallest.  While Spider-Man NWH was head-spinningly great fun and the overlong swansong for Daniel Craig in No Time to Die finally put some much-needed cash into the local Picture House tills, it was a tiny movie The Dig, that reminded me of how good well-made films can be. Watching Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan set against gorgeously filmed English countryside, The Dig was beautifully written, acted, produced, and shot.  The cinematographer tried to make east of England appear like something out of Lawrence of Arabia.  The Dig was streamed, not exhibited.  I don’t know if the intention ever was for it to get a theatrical release. Film buffs will still breathe deeply, frown sagely and let you know that there is nothing like seeing a movie in the cinema, wide-screen, surround sound, in the dark, munching snacks. I saw Denis Villeneuve’s DUNE, on a huge canvas, reclined, in crisp Dolby Atmos, in the ‘XL’ format at my local Cineworld and it was indeed, draw droppingly good and I am desperate to see it again.  While something like Dune is hard to match from the comfort of your sofa, the production values and quality of the very best of TV is now so extraordinary that its harder and harder to make the case for theatres only, or even ‘features’ as the pinnacle format.  There is too little of any quality on Netflix, or Amazon Prime, but if you can get HBO streamed, or Apple TV, then Westworld (first two seasons), Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, The Witcher and Succession have raised the bar for streamed TV to a level make the pile it high and stream it cheap approach of Netflix risible.   

Foundation was long awaited and much anticipated - based on the most extraordinary series of books I had read as a teenager. The showrunners took some huge liberties with the story and production direction, but the look, the feel, the mood, the scope and the scale were all extraordinarily well done and the choice of Lee Pace as ‘Brother Day’ and Jared Harris as Harry Seldon was just perfect. Back in the real world, I was outside The Criterion Theatre, pretty much the first day theatres were allowed to re-open and enjoyed the verve and quirkiness of Amelie. Back to The Future at The Adelphi was a life-affirming nostalgic blast, but shows booked at The Bridge were postponed to next year. Most enjoyed watching of the year: 

Dune
The Dig (Netflix)
Foundation (Apple TV Series)
The Mandalorian (Disney TV series)
Succession (HBO TV, season III)
The Witcher
Spider Man - No Way Home
The Last Duel
Midnight in Soho

Elsewhere

Locked down during our 25th wedding anniversary, there was no option to return to Italy, so we found a new hideaway at The Pig, in Combe in Devon.  It is a remarkable place, found down a rough unmarked track, it is beautifully kept, with roaring log fires, out-door fire pits, fresh garden produce, great dining, and sumptuous accommodation.  Securing a weekend room at The Pig is akin to a lottery win – both in terms of the scarce chance of it happening and the unfathomable expense, paid in advance.  We finally got back to Italy in November 2021, where I developed an unhealthy obsession with obelisks.  

Writing

I read very little fiction in 2021 and wrote even less, though I did devour some terrific thought-leadership books (see Reviews). I discovered some amazing source reference material for a book about Seven Dials, with field trips to Weybridge (to see more obelisks) and Tunbridge Wells.  I remain determined to produce something coherent in 2022.  The BLOG continues to get good hits and this year, I continued to develop the #Smorgasbord, a listing and reference resource of the best 250 business/smart-thinking books written in the 21st Century.  You can find out more here.  

Coda

Thank you to everyone for reading and for those who have sent me your comments, twitter follows and feedback here and on Linked-in.  Like millions of others, I have found the past couple of years deeply affecting – and seldom in a good way. I remain hopeful the tide will turn.  In 1666, it took the ferocity of the Great Fire of London to finally wake up the English to the squalor, deprivation and poor hygiene of much of the City and to rebuild and move on from the devastating plague to more prosperous time of peace, enlightenment and revolution. In 2022 we don’t need a fire, or some major geo-political “distraction” (which I do fear might be sprung) to turn our minds from lockdown addiction. We do though need to awaken from the stupor of the past two years, look up and move on. Some of the tunes, viewing and places mentioned above form the soundtrack to a partially wasted year. No time to waste in ‘22.

That was the year that wasn’t

My annual year in review will be here shortly (see above). I did not bother writing one in 2020.  I struggled in 2021.  Music, film, sport, theatre, the arts, culture, collaboration, fellowship, singing, worship, fun…all became at various points in the past 20-months, initially ill-advised, then banned, made illegal under emergency legislation, with public objections and protests ignored, then repressed ‘regime-style’ with fines, arrests, and prosecutions, while the mainstream media sneered from the suburbs and the politicians sat in Downing Street quaffing cheese and sipping Beaujolais.

This was not some dystopian sci-fiction novel, but the reality of the public-policy response of numerous governments around the world and, inexplicably now again in late 2021, the approach of the UK Governments. I am hopeful that when the critical gaze of history and hindsight looks back on 2020/21, it will not be a write-up of heroic vaccine roll-outs and the billions spent on furlough; the key conclusion will be the abject failure of public institutions, governments, and vain politicians to see the ‘bigger picture’ beyond COVID-19 and their sheer narrow-minded obliviousness to the plainly obvious and unforeseen consequences of lockdowns, enforced social-dislocation, and the innumerable health and mental-health harms that sledgehammer policy responses create.  Perhaps as we end 2021, the newspapers might slowly start to smell the horrendous consequences of their own obsequies. In the UK, there were 223 child deaths, including that of tragic Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, reported by social services departments across the country between April 2020 and March 2021. Meanwhile, 6 (six) under 18s with “no underlying health conditions” died from Covid-19 in England in the same period. By any measure, a criminal neglect of vulnerable children, while the politically blinkered prioritised the ‘protection’ of the vast majority with little or no chance of being harmed by the virus. Please don't judge the veracity of my argument on the basis of my probable ignorance, there are innumerable sources of scientific and alternative commentary that say that the rich, the middle-class, the professionals and the public sector civil servants have largely been beneficiaries of lockdowns, hybrid working, financial bailouts. The poor, the vulnerable and the isolated (particularly the very youngest and most elderly) have been irreparably harmed.

If anything, 2021 proved the vital importance of “elsewhere”. The poet Philip Larkin put it beautifully: “Lonely in Ireland, since it was not home, Strangeness made sense.”  Like Larkin, we might not skip with joy through the streets of elsewhere, but we make better sense of our thoughts and feelings whilst there. When our surroundings are less familiar, the unfamiliar sights and sounds provide a different context, and we look up more – at the sky, not the pavement. The absence of elsewhere could not have been felt more profound than in 2021.  Despite military scale vaccines rollouts, social distancing, mask-wearing and the omnipresent smell of hand sanitiser, most citizens in the UK (and around the world) simply stayed put – isolated at home, not venturing elsewhere, for the first half of 2021.  I went onto the Campus of London Business School about four times in the first part of the year.  The School quad was sign-posted with one-way systems, designed it seemed for the benefit of the tumbleweed that trundled across the path. If I had anything social had been pre-booked, it was cancelled.  If I wished to go abroad, then I was either prohibited by some red/amber/green nightmare list of rules, or I was threatened with confinement on entry by the same bureaucratic variable nonsense in the destination of choice.  Friends, colleagues, and clients around the world were similarly locked-in, prohibited from escaping the familiar for the less familiar.  Somehow, policy makers decided that endemic viruses would respect borders and turn back when they saw the officious border guards. The policy, as we knew then and know now, was akin to the pompous vanity of King Canute’s entourage – encouraging him to hold up his hand to the waves and expecting that they would simply recede.

After a brief glimmer of hope, tantalisingly teased by the UK Government in August, we end the year under renewed mask mandates, work from home orders, vaccine passports, closed borders, entertainment and hospitality on its knees, and with the ever-present threat of a new lockdown in the offing. The media fuels a putative public debate about enforced vaccination of citizens and the mandated unemployment and ostracism of those hesitant to be jabbed. It is as if, during the steepest and most profound learning curve in post-War history, our governments and leaders have learnt nothing at all.   Whatever the modellers and epidemiologists say, the reality is that no one really knows how the pandemic will pan out, but policy makers know with certainty that more kids will be harmed and abused, their education and social skills will suffer, and others, like poor Arthur, will be killed by further lockdowns.  Surely in 2022, the governments and their learned advisors much change tact? I hope.

Fuzzy memories of Reservoir Road

Good Question DEREK

Thirty years ago, or thereabouts, I lived on Reservoir Road in Birmingham, with some members of a band called Good Question Derek.  They were a close-knit group of friends who had met at Birmingham Poly and after graduating, stayed in a cluster of houses, almost on top of one another, with roadie, manager, and girlfriends all in the mix, a few streets off the Hagley Road.  The band gigged and gigged across the country, from the South-West to the Shetland Islands, recorded a few LPs, appeared on BBC TV with Danny Baker, and had an almost hit with a tongue in cheek song called Ugly.  At times, it was like living in a fly on the wall documentary, lodging “amidst the sights, sounds and smells” (Marty DiBergi) of a hard-working and talented band.  For me, a fish out of water in Brum, I learnt lots and despite having a besuited job, slept little.  I’m not sure what happened, or rather why it didn’t happen, for them.  

GQD were great live, worked hard, had a sack full of tunes and tonnes of personality. I saw them live at The Powerhouse in London and they shared dressing room riders with Wilko Johnson, The Sultans of Ping FC and various others. They didn’t become famous and split a few years later, though they did get back together to record a nostalgic single just a few years ago.  The thing that struck me, messily embroiled in those heady days of 1992, is how simultaneously near and far “breaking it” feels to a band every time they go out to play, and how perilously close to saying “fuck this” they equally feel the next morning.  GQD played when there was no social media, so they relied on word of mouth, entertainment officers who took a chance, band members and managers on the phone ALL THE TIME, sending out tapes and clippings from newspaper reviews.  All this, with the vague chance of some serendipitous one in a million happenstance of being spotted, loved and signed for a six album deal later that night.  There is no rhyme, nor reason, no magic formula, no secret sauce. I have no idea why fame didn’t grab Good Question Derek, but I was privileged to be in their bubble for a while and grateful to experience the ride.

Memories of GQD came flooding back on Monday at a small gig at The Grace, above The Garage in Islington.  It could have been 1992 again.  A new band from Manchester, Fuzzy Sun, were in London on a miserable wet night.  On tour again, after the disrupted shit-show that was much of 2020 and 2021.  Fuzzy Sun are an indie guitar band, fronted by a long-haired guitarist and singer Kyle Ross, who sounds a bit like a young Roger Hodgson, and their music is strangely genre-defying, part Blur, part Nile Rogers, with touches of Radiohead and The 1975.  Because of this, they may well be completely stuffed in a world of “categorisation” where the algorithm of Spotify or iTunes will not easily find them perfect song-list bed partners.  

But at The Grace, they play with verve, the songs soar and the set slowly builds, creating a joyous singalong and they shared enough earworm tunes to keep us humming on the Tube.  I had a brief chat with Kyle after – while he was selling t-shirts and vinyl (again nothing much has changed for bands since 1992) and he was warm, genuine, humble and generous with his time.  I don’t know what will happen in 2022 for Kyle and the band.  Like GQD in 1992, all the ingredients are there: the playing, the song-writing, the ambition.  I wish them well.  You can see a glimpse here.  

Fuzzy Sun, live in London, December 2021

Starlink might be bigger than even Musk can imagine

I signed up for Starlink. I paid a small fee for a service that doesn't work where I live...and it won't for at least a year.

Still, I am pretty sure it is the best early adopter decision I have ever made and when it launches, it will demolish the current eco-system for network, data and mobile systems. It might seem a bold prediction, but the market is ripe for disruption and the destructible elements (expensive incumbents, static market, monopoly behaviours, over-regulation) are already starkly in place and ready for a new ready player.

Consider the state of the current proposition:

• Broadband (expensive, unreliable, bundled with stuff you don't want);

• Mobile: ugly masts, dominated by undifferentiated operators (in the UK, Vodafone, EE, Three and O2)

• Handsets: a three-opoly (Apple, Samsung, Huawei) and 3 major OS (iOS, Android and Harmony)

• Coverage: good in cities, but 5G over-hyped, and no coverage up mountains, in rural areas, deserts, forests, at sea.

Disruption is often there in plain sight. We take the expense and annoyance(s) of the current service proposition and expect it to trundle on forever. I own shares in Vodafone and I know that they will be toast when phones move from using 4G signals to internet calls connected by an array of satellites enveloping the world. A planet-sized (not just metropolitan) market opens up. The legacy players' PR defence will be immense, and vicious, and early adopters will take on some risk, but I predict Starlink will be more enormous than anyone can possibly imagine, even its visionary founder.

And if Musk pivots from Tesla Cars, to Tesla Phones (just as Apple is reputedly and confusingly pivoting from phones to autonomous cars) then the handset market will find a radical fourth option, where battery life worries will be a thing of the past.

[I will book mark this post. Give it three years. JD]

Navigating Rome by ancient Obelisk

After two years grounded, we finally got on a plane last week and went back to Rome; the greatest outdoor museum in the whole world. Rome remains an extraordinary place; perhaps the best place on earth to get quickly re-acquainted with all the best things that lift the spirits and inspire; history, art, architecture, great food, delicious wine. There is much that is wonderful to report about a familiar and much loved place, but also a few things have changed and others that seem worthy of note. We start in predictable fashion, queueing for food.

The Sandwich shop

The Romans have gone slightly crazy post-lockdown...for a particular type of sandwich shop. All'antico Vinaio, is like an uber-high-end sandwich shop, with spicy meats enveloped in flatbread, with cheeses and sauces that melt in your mouth and put a sizeable dent in your wallet. The queues started hours before opening and stretched down the cobbles.I am not sure if the offer will translate everywhere, but they are already proudly packing pavements with 'lines' in New York and Los Angeles, as well as a 'home' shop in Florence. Which got me thinking, what are they doing differently that compels young adults to queue for two hours in the rain at 11 pm for a sandwich? Then I took a bite...Bada A La Fume!

The Pensione

We stayed in the centre on Piazza della Rotonda at the Albergo Abruzzi. We had stayed there some 27 years ago when it was a ‘humble’ (in other words, ramshackle) Pensione. The entrance was the same, a step off the street, and the welcome still eclectic [an immediate over-familiarity, which I am sure might rock some back on their heels and disconcert others], but the rooms had been improved, the stairs had carpets and this time we didn’t (as he had to in 1994) have to share a bathroom and showers with other guests on the same floor. When we had first stayed there, rooms were about 90,000 Lira a night, which I recall was about £30. There had been some hyper-inflation in the intervening period, so the price was radically different, but the view from the rooms overlooking the Pantheon remains the most amazing in the whole of Rome. Priceless.

The Obelisks

The best way to navigate Rome is not by the Maps on your phone, or via the free crumpled handout on the desk of the Pensione. The City layout, its greatest sights and dramatic open spaces, are often signposted by the placement of some staggering Obelisk. There are more obelisks in Rome than in ancient Egypt. In fact, there are more obelisks in Rome than anywhere else in the World, eight ancient Egyptian examples, five Roman and a number of modern ones. By methods we cannot fathom, these vast Egyptian precision cut stone monuments were mined and erected in a land of Pharaohs (or perhaps in earlier unrecorded times), then ransacked, packed and transported from Egypt during the Roman Empire. In the same way no one really knows how they were excavated intact from the quarries of Aswan and moved hundreds of miles to Thebes or Luxor, no one is really sure how they were then shipped across the Mediterranean to Rome. But they must have done - because here they stand in prominent positions throughout the City, marking out the map like monolithic Google pin drops.  Each one is stunning: Piazza del Popolo, at the summit of the Spanish Steps, in front of the Pantheon, at The Laternum, and across the river in St Peter’s Square.

The only obelisk to have remained standing since Roman times is the Vatican Obelisk on St Peter’s Square in the Vatican. The famous unmarked Obelisk sits dead-centre in St Peter’s Square, in front of the enormous Basilica and frowned upon all around by the statues of former Pope’s and Apostles. Over 25 meters tall, it is estimated to weigh some 330 tonnes; far heavier than a 747-400, and the equivalent of 26 London Routemaster buses. When it was erected in the Square in 1586, its relocation (from the nearby Circus of Nero) was started in early April, using hemp ropes and iron bars weighing 40,000 pounds, plus 1,000 men and 72 horses, and was finally completed on Sept. 10 of the same year. It took years of planning and then five months of astonishing effort to move just a few hundred metres. Numerous illustrations survive to commemorate the sheer scale and drama of the process. The mind boggles that it took such engineering skill and physical resources in 1586 to move the stone across a relatively level prepared route to the Square and elevate it to a vertical position. How some 1,300 years earlier they moved it several hundred kilometres - including the sea crossing - from Heliopolis seems unfathomable. And how it was cut, excavated and moved and erected in Heliopolis over a 1,000 years before that is just beyond comprehension. There are theories, but much of ancient history is a collection of guesses and surmises that never really seem certain, or definitive, regardless of the ‘expertise’ of the scholar. The only thing that is truly solid is the stone. Standing timeless against a blue sky, watching the petty mortals who hurry and fuss across the Ages, which seem to it just a brief moment in time.

Arriverdverci!