First break all the rules

I was first attracted to this book by both the title, and the fact that it was co-written by Marcus Buckingham, a proponent of the ’strengths’ philosophy that I have embraced in the work place.

This is a deck of slides I have compiled for the Alt-MBA group that has spun out of Seth Godin’s Triiibes.

UPDATE:  Slideshare selected this as a featured presentation.  Nice to know it resonated with some.

Yours socially

A CEO recently told me he had an inkling he needed to get his brands on ‘some of those social media things’ but that he had no idea where to start, or whether social media marketing worked.

In contrast, Andrew Alamango of Etnika fame sold out two nights of Café Brazil jazz last autumn using Facebook as the primary means of marketing the event. Historic house museum Palazzo Falson, which has been on Facebook only a month, says it ‘could not resist the irony of having an ancient house with a strong presence on the most happening social network site’. It appears that those with little or no marketing budget are more inclined to investigate, and invest time in social media channels than potentially more cash-rich businesses.

But social media is nothing new. From internet’s earliest days, we’ve had chat, forums, message boards and virtual worlds. Today, blogs, podcasts, social networks, photo- and video-sharing sites, RSS (really simple syndication) and more, all fall within its scope. We now talk to each other by posting on a Facebook wall, uploading a video on YouTube and ‘Twittering’ about our every move. Even websites’ pre-eminence is being whittled away. Search engines pick up well-tagged blogs rather than website urls. Your homepage is now wherever someone lands when they search for you.

Little of this has, until now, interested business, particularly local business in Malta. But, when Dell has a senior Vice-President Communities & Conversations, you know that social media is moving up a gear and becoming more mainstream as a business tool. Today, any entity used to mediating and controlling its publics will have to face this paradigm shift and engage in online conversations if it is to stay relevant to its audiences.

But social media for business is not without a learning curve. There are some basics to get right, if you want to join the conversations and gain.

Get closer to your clients

Social media is about understanding customer nature, and nurturing it. Consumers today prefer to read and listen to opinions about products and services from fellow consumers and their peers. If you are going to use social media, don’t interrupt their natural conversations with corporate spin and one-way marketing messages. You need to foster a valued, trusted, authentic voice to get heard in the babble.

Listen to some home truths

On social media, your customers tell it to you straight. Dell discovered from its Twitter presence that people thought its customer support centre was abysmal. It took measures to improve the service based on the customer gripes it picked up on Facebook comments. Better to know than not know.

Market cost-effectively

In a recession, social media becomes more important simply because barriers to entering it are zero. It costs nothing to set up and manage a Facebook page or to Twitter; only your time. You can monitor return on investment though, as social media has readily-available metrics. Start low-key and learn what works.

Engage with purpose

Find people who are passionate about social media within your organisation. Let your social media-savvy employees do their bit on your behalf, but as themselves. Palazzo Falson has two staff members with responsibility for its Facebook page, and, according to the curator, they are doing a great job.

Enter social media conversations wisely

Ryan Air heard disgruntled customers moaning about it on Twitter, and entered the fray publicly on the medium giving all customers a cocky brush off. Within an hour, the Ryan Air ‘Tweets’ had been pulled, probably by a senior executive who thought a junior’s hasty responses ill advised. Social media is about immediacy, but think before you post or tweet.

Don’t socialise everywhere

Your goal should be to fish where your fish are. You don’t have to touch each conversation, but you need to be having one or two, because whether your business realises or not, it’s on social media already. Your name is being bandied about as any Google search will show you.

Lastly…see your customers as your allies, not just as people to sell to. They are your real brand value, so value their online conversations about you and with you.

Serious skills part 2

Ann E W Stone says that she once read a book that changed the course of her career, and her life.   She learnt that people make snap decisions on others based on ’signals; and that it was within one’s power to manage those signals.  The first part of her transformation was to understand the operating style she had; the second was to get some fundamentals right before she could achieve her career goals.

Her ‘25 skills that signal that you are to be taken seriously‘ have been modelled on what she has learnt on her way to fame and fortune and an appearance on the Larry King show.

1. How you walk into a room

Walk it like you own it.  Head up, confident.

2.  Your handshake

Put your hand out at a 45 degree angle and make it firm, not harsh.

3.  How you are dressed

Ms Stone recommends that you dress for the position you aspire to.  Dark colours and jackets imply power (green is a non-starter for a suit.  Yellow, red and purple if you’re female.  No open-toed shoes or coloured stockings).

4. What you read and talk about.

You need to demonstrate that you read the papers and have an opinion on ‘word events’.  You have to assume that most people are not interested in your family affairs.

(I found this particularly difficult to embrace.  Sarah Palin is more interesting as an ice-breaker than some family anecdote?)

5.  Self-confidence and optimism

‘If you want ot get ahead in business, you have to be an optimistic person’, says Ms Stone.  ‘People want positive leaders.  People do not follow pessimists.’

6.  What you put in writing

Ms Stone says you have to think before you write.

7.   How you present new ideas

You need to lay claim to some ‘new ideas’. 

(Right).

8. Organisation skills

Ms Stone says she will always hire women re-entering the workforce after having raised young children, because their multi-tasking skills are so developed by this stage.

(This makes perfect sense).

9.  Learning and motivation outside your job space

You need to demonstrate a yearning for knowledge.  Get books, go to seminars, join a trade association.

10.  How you handle yourself in the office

No crying, giggling.  Learn from your mistakes but don’t take them personally.  Don’t talk back to the coach.

(By this time, I was thinking of my rather stubborn, curious-about-the-world six year-old.  And started giggling myself).

11. Verbal skills

You need to be able to speak in public or to groups.

(Another one for the blogging and Dale Carnegie fraternity).

12.  Vocabulary

13.  Spelling

Always use a spell-checker before you communincate in writing.  ‘Spelling tells people how intelligent you are.’

14.  Be courteous

Show good breeding.

(I thought of Trump and Alan Sugar for starters).

15.  Business cards

You need to hae one, even if you don’t have a job.

16.  Ability to delegate

Men are apparently much better at doing this than women.

17.  Computer & Technical Skills

18.  A support system both inside and outside the office

Don’t make enemies.  Keep your own counsel.  Unload only with your family

19.  Be on time

This is a signal of respect.

(Totally, totally agree with this.  Sadly, this is not a trait which works in Southern Europe.  In fact, being late is often used as a show of ‘power’)

20.  Market yourself and celebrate your sucesses

Ms Stone believes in self-promotion and advises that we should not ‘bury our accomplishments’.

(There was much nodding from the audience.  And the blogging community, I suspect).

21.  Show you love the competition

This was an interesting one.  Ms Stone believes that many people shine on the adrenalin of beating the competition.

22. Make money one of your measures of success

Ms Stone had started her talk by saying that she managed to increase her salary five-fold in 11 months once she started applying her signalling skills in earnest.

It sounded particularly hollow as the markets went into freefall. I just know so many people who love what they do without thinking of how much money they are making from ’selling their life’.

23.  Think like management

I come from the other side of the equation.  Management has to think like the factory floor to get things done.  Or the people on the help desk, the front of house, the doers and the cleaners.  Period.

24.  Have clear goals

It helps knowing what you want in life.  And work.

It’s aligning them to your company’s value system which is the key issue, I think.

25.  Show you are a team player

Make the boss look good.

This is tougher than it seems.  Especially if you are practicing 20 above.

As I left the hall, I couldn’t help feeling that Ms Stone does not spend much time advising start-ups or geeks.  Perhaps it was her disapproval of open-toed sandals.  Or making money one of the measure of success.  Or maybe it was just a transatlantic approach which does not translate in its entirey across the pond.   There was a seeming lack of awareness that there are ‘cultural differences’ that cannot be ignored when you are doing business in different parts of the world.

All I know is that not all of the above would work in the cauldrons of an office in Milan.. where ‘bella figura’ has its own code of behaviour.. or the earthier variations further south.

Still, in an age and medium obsessed with lists, there is some common-sense to be gleaned from Ms Stone’s thinking.

It would just be a much nicer world if we didn’t have to worry about ‘being taken seriously’ and just had the internal confidence that we are in the right place, at the right time, doing the job we are meant to be doing, to the best of our abilities.  And having some fun in the process.

You still need a web strategy and you still need to work at it!

Seth Godin’s post earlier today about the dangers behind aspirations to  ‘overnight success’ on the web really struck a chord.  In the bad old days, it used to be about going to a VC, asking for a pile of money and promising to make everyone rich in under 12 months.  Now it seems to be about people saying ‘get me on the first page of a Google search, tell me how much money I need to invest in a pay per click campaign and I will take care of things from then on.’

Seth says: ‘The irony of the web is that the tactics work really quickly.  You friend someone on Facebook and two minutes later, they friend you back. Bang.  But the strategy still takes forever. The strategy is the hard part, not the tactics’.

1. You always need a plan.  It doesn’t need to be expensive, ornate or devised by exernals.  You can even find a free template online and get started with that.  But you do need to focus on how your web project is going to a) increase your sales b) reduce your costs or c) make your current or new customers happy.  Preferably all of those.

2.  It’s about real-life business models, not the web! In all cases, that means delivering meaningful value to your visitors, customers, users.  If ‘web strategy’ sounds ‘esoteric’ – think differentiation, ROI, cashflow, competitor analysis, survival – dealing with plain old-fashioned business concerns.  Guess what?  They never go away, even after you’ve become a hit on Facebook.

3.  If you’re doing web, you cannot ignore content.  Content is expensive to produce, and requires discipline, creativity and energy.  If you cannot produce content yourself, you need to be hiring or outsourcing it to someone who understands your business model enough to do that for you.

4.  You just cannot get into anything new and expect it to work in the short term.  Most people who want a sustainable businesses know that it is unlikely to make a profit before year 4.

5.  Strategy is not something that you do once, at the start of a new project or business.  Or every three years, when someone remembers to dust off the strategic plan.  You are going to have to be making small changes all along the way.  In The 8th Habit, Stephen R. Covey talks about the ‘trim-tab’ approach.  The trim-tab is the small rudder that turns the big rudder that turns the entire ship.  Good business leaders know that you are constantly having to make small changes to navigate your business to better waters.  You always need to know where you want to go.  But you need to be aware that you are going to be in a constant phase of deconstruction and reconstruction.

6.  The temptation to give up is always there.  Seth’s little nugget The Dip is an uncomfortable reminder, on my book shelf, of what it takes to make a business sustainable.  Especially online.  There are always brick walls to be faced.  Your web strategy has to be good enough to make you see round the walls.

7.  If you hire externals to devise your web strategy, see if they are prepared to wade in with you and get things to happen.  Ask about the timeframe they envisage for the return on your investment.  Your investment in their fees, and the new web solutions being contemplated. The best external strategists I know do not stop with the plan, or the launch of the web solution.  They will roll up their sleeves and work alongside you and your people until there is enough momentum built within the organisation.  And until you are making the small, corrective changes intuitively, for your long term success.

Solving the work-life balance in Palm City, Tripoli

I’ve just returned from a whistle-stop 48 hours in Tripoli, Libya.  Not your average tourist destination, granted, and only mad dogs and Englishwomen would venture in late July to a country that’s 90 per cent desert.  But, I had a mission: to find out what living in Libya was like for expats.  My main aim was to suss out what kind of accommodation is there to greet them when they sign those three-year contracts and head to the Sahara.

 

Flying in from Malta, a mere hour away, proved hassle free and required little climate adjustment, luckily.  But I did pause to wonder how a British or French family might feel arriving with treasured belongings in suitcases, having left home behind.   As you drive the highway into central Tripoli, there seems to be little housing in evidence that’s suited to expat living. 

 

There are a lot of international firms moving into North Africa, if the Economist survey ‘Club Med’ (12^th -18^th July) is anything to go by.   In time, expat employment in Libya will veer away from being solely reliant on the extraction industries and edge towards second-tier economic interests in retail, services, tourism and so on.  Judging by the busy lobby of Tripoli’s one five-star business hotel, the Corinthia Bab Africa, foreign businessmen are scouting around in Libya in droves. 

 

Soon, it won’t be just the roustabouts, rednecks and drillers who will be seeking accommodation to rent in Tripoli, but executives with suits, briefcases and, the chances are too, families in tow.  Which brings us to the question of where these people will live?  The business hotels are going up, but much regular housing of international standard for expats on more than a business trip isn’t. 

 

An exception is Palm City, 15 kilometers from central Tripoli, on the coast at Janzour.  Palm City, due to be completed by early 2009, offers ‘a total housing solution’.  You can just move in with the bare essentials like toothbrush, clothes and towels.  Palm City is international, contemporary (even designer-style) living in some 400 or so residential units ranging from superior villas to luxury maisonettes, within a secure, village-like compound.  You won’t be spending weekends on DIY in Palm City.  From what I could see, you’ll likely be in the health club, enjoying Wi-Fi access on your sea view roof terrace or with the kids in the pool. 

 

This comes as peace of mind to those who are moving to Libya and who don’t have an iota of understanding of the place.  You’ll need to persuade your new employer to locate you there as it’s on corporate leaseholds.  But, since you’ll be pioneering and it’s an employees’ market when it comes to locating smart people to Libya, you’ll be in a good position to push for a place in Palm City. 

 

The Palm City concept is so good that you wonder why it takes an enterprising firm to think of this in Libya.  It should be on offer in other countries.  The time-poor, cash-rich of today don’t want to be bogged down by hassles of repairmen, gardening and service outages anywhere.  Who would have thought that a place in Libya could have found an answer to the work-life balance? 

Getting organised to get things done

I’m trying to get organised, to get more out of my day without having to resort to three hours’ sleep, as one of my partners does.  There’s a lot of material about time management and plenty of sensible advice on Web Worker.    David Allen even coined his own phrase for getting things done. 

I’m suggesting the following approach for time-poor, web workers who mainly work on their own:

 1.  Get on top of your email.  Watch Merlin Mann’s semantic video.  I love the idea of checking my email only once an hour.  I am putting this into practice as from tomorrow. 

2.  Make Lists.  If possible, have daily ones.  If not, a weekly one will do.  I find Who / What / When Lists really work.  Park actions some place special.  Either online, using any variety of online tools like Backpack, Basecamp, Twitter or the hybrid Remember the Milk.  Or do what I do – use paper.  Just cross things off as you’re done.

3.  Delegate when you can.  Even if you work on your own, like I do sometimes, you still need to get your lists done and identify whom you need to interface with.  You will be surprised by how many of your actions are dependent on those of others.

4.  Get selective with whom to talk to.  Turn off MSN and Google Talk for a period of time.  Go invisible on skype.  Turn your mobile on vibrate.  Sometimes, just turn it off.  People can text messages to you more efficiently than spending 10 minutes yabbing about it.

5.  Unclutter.  If like me, sometimes you have problems walking round your office, it’s time to file things or dispose of them.  It helps to occasionally empty the waste paper basket and shred paper.

6.  Walk around your room.  This is especially useful for people with a bad back and puts you in the frame of mind to get things done.  If you know some Pilates, this is invaluable for a five-minute break from your laptop. 

7.  Decide whether you’re a morning or night person and allocate your work load accordingly.  We cannot be productive for the whole 24 hours.   I try and get meetings done in the morning and I prefer to do the brain work at night, when I know I am most alert.   If you still need to decide what kind of person you are, read this book.

8. Decide whether you need background noise or not.  Some people need total silence to focus.  Others need a hum.  I tend to use Groove Salad Radio from SomaFM.  I make sure it’s on if I’m writing.

9.  Sometimes, remember to get some quality time to recharge your batteries.  Watch a movie, talk to your loved ones, exercise, read a book instead of Wilfing.

10.  On those days when everything seems to get on top of you, and you risk ‘panic paralysis’, it helps to stop.  You’re not alone.  There are millions of others like you, right now, battling with hundreds of things, trying to prioritise, and make a living.  It also helps to read this occasionally to improve your confidence and get a sense of perspective.  On focusing on what is really important in life. 

The Stelios Soundbites

London in the sunshine, 230 exhibitors, 160 seminars and 20,000 people with some aspiration to starting up a business. I dropped into Business Startup 2007 at ExCel with no particular agenda other than to listen into conversations. Real ones, as opposed to the online ones we all tune into.  In the brash, cattle market atmosphere of ExCel, full of multimedia presentations, Darth Vaders and kids with loud microphones, you just cannot go to all the presentations, visit all the stands, or network with people you need to connect with. I knew I definitely wanted to listen to Stelios.

So I queued, with the aspiring chef, nutritionist, private investigator, life coach, the small motor-mouth Jewish fifty year-old who used to run a cemetery somewhere up north and was now ‘looking for new opportunities’, and the granny from Liverpool who was setting up a company to help people with a phobia of flying. And Stelios was queuing too. At first glance, he looks a bit like an encyclopaedia salesman who has done plenty of long lunches. White trousers that hang too long over loafers, an over-sized blazer that hangs awkwardly on a rugby player’s frame. He looks slightly nervous. You have to blink hard to think that this guy is seriously rich, powerful, a captain of industry.

Then he starts to talk, in his Anglo-Greek, and you know you are in the company of a master communicator. Stelios confessed to not having prepared anything – except for one slide with the 17 Easy brands he stands for and a plug for the new EasyOffice space for start-ups.

So here are the sound bites I picked up, between a fair bit of laughter and the occasional discomfort when people referred to his wealth, especially with one young guy who tried to put him on the spot about ‘investing in young people’.

1.   You really must want to be your own boss if you are going to start up your business. I know it sounds obvious. Either that, or you get a rich Dad, like I had. Sure, Dad’s money helped. But the over-riding desire to be your own boss has to prevail. In my family, I knew there were too many bosses. I knew I had to do my own thing. I called my first business StelMar to make a point. I was the brand. Nobody else. Even if my first foray was in shipping, which is where my family had made its money.

2. You have to be a risk taker to be in business. Don’t expect to get superior returns without risks. You have to be prepared to risk your own capital.

3. You have to take calculated risks. Don’t bet the farm. Yes, sometimes you have to mortgage the house. But if it gets to that, you really need to stop and take a good hard look around you.

4. I’ve taken my share of knocks, like everyone in business. Especially after September 11^th. But I have always believed that I can see things through. Even in the bad times.

5. The best culture for entrepreneurship is one that celebrates success and tolerates failure. That’s not always the case in the UK – unlike the Chapter 11 cushion you have across the pond.

6. You have to learn from your mistakes. You have to survive them, learn not to make the same ones, and move rapidly on.

7. If you have a product to market, decide from the outset who is your target audience. Are you marketing to the many, or to the few? I’m a B2C mass marketing guy – I serve the many. It’s OK to do B2B – though I still think that you cannot lose sight of who the end customer is, whichever sector you’re in.

8. Offer value for money. You cannot take the cheese out of a pizza! Or if you do, call it something else. Call it bread, just don’t call it a pizza. We all know that Ryan Air does not care about their passengers or their crew. Michael Ryan makes no secret of that. We do things differently. And that’s a good plug, no?

9. Startup entrepreneurs have to behave like consumers from day one.

10. There is no stigma to going the franchising way. We do that, in many places. We partner our brands with the entrepreneurial activities and energies of individuals. Franchising works – and so does outsourcing. EasyBus in entirely built around the outsourcing concept.

11. I got to ExCel by Tube. A driver would have taken the same amount of time. The Tube gives me a great opportunity to see what my customers are seeing, on their daily journeys to and from work. I run a consumer-facing business. I have to stay in touch with what they face.

12. I’m a Blackberry addict. I am a total believer in technology productivity. I travel a lot. Technology means I am always available, to the people who need to reach me.

13. A Brand is a promise. Before we had a quid’s worth of revenues, we had to spend all the money we had on marketing the product we had. A million’s worth of it.

14. You should, on average, allow three to five years for a business to become profitable.

15. An entrepreneur is not always likely to be the best operator. The character traits are totally different.

16. You cannot delegate entrepreneurship.

17. You inevitably have to delegate a lot when you go to the stock market. I have always insisted that the roles of Chairman, CEO and largest shareholder vest in different persons at Easy Jet.

18. My biggest mistake was believing my own bullshit during the dotcom bust. We believed that the Internet Cafe’s could become like McDonalds – and we proceeded with investing considerable sums of money to grow the numbers. Everyone knows that in situations like this, costs spiral out of control. I was advised, at one stage, to let the Cafes go under. I decided that I had to do what was right – pay off the debts, restructure, take the hit. I also had to limit damaging our brand. Nowadays, Internet Cafes are primarily used by tourists, as everyone else seems to have a laptop and wireless. And yet, in every city I go to, there is always the ubiquitous Internet Cafe. So some sense of legacy we do have.

19. Work hard! There is no free lunch, on quick win, despite the occasional rich Dad. Entrepreneurs are passionate about what they do. EasyMoney is a cool name, but not a promise that money can be made easily.

20. Doing business in other countries is very different to doing business in your own. Be careful of cross-border deals – be aware of differences in culture, labour practices, mind-sets. Sometimes, it pays to franchise!

21. People are more likely to trust a person than a company they have never heard of. Do not be scared of using your own past successful track record as a PR vehicle. Personalisation is key – I have always preferred to use PR rather than plain vanilla marketing.

22. Make a difference in people’s lives!

Reinventing yourself

Isn’t it strange? Sometimes you are thinking of something, then your eye drifts over the NetVibes feeds and a post leaps up to reinforce what was on your mind just before your eyes landed on the text.   Or else you purposely visit one of your regular sources, and find that Hugh MacLeod has again posted something inspirational.

I am part of a generation of restless 40-somethings.  The first to be constantly reinvent itself.  To have had multiple careers, lived in different countries, and moved seamlessly from fixed term jobs to entrepeneurship and back to short term assignments.  We consciously, regularly, push the ship of our lives into different directions.  Looking to spread ourselves over many things.  After the best part of a year working on a large project, I again feel the need to diversify.  Tomorrow I will kickstart a telecoms research project.  I’m quietly exploring a start-up with two partner companies.  And I’m toying with the idea of further study.  A perennial item, which surfaces every time I raise my head above the barricade of whatever I’m doing. I want to explore all of these things, right now. Some will work, some will remain on the drawing board. The important thing is to channel my restless energy positively. Creatively. Restlessness works.

About five weeks ago, I connected a friend of mine in Rio, a former Andersen Consultant, with a former partner, the CEO of a well-funded technology start-up with offices in London and Malta. Three conference calls later, both parties took a big leap of faith, and she has just moved from Rio to London to work on Entropay’s new marketing programs. She’s 45. She believes most times we make our own luck, but there is always a time when you can move things quickly, and other times when you need to wait for the right time. She believes that no experience is wasted.

Another close friend Joe, an ISO process specialist, is battling with a life-threatening disease in hospital. When we meet, in his ward at St Luke’s, we now talk about the really important stuff. Two months ago, I told him his business model needed to be readdressed. We were exploring creating a new vehicle together when his illness struck. I know we still will.  But this temporary hiccup, in his life, is forcing us both again to take stock.  Of what is important.  Of how to put our time to better use.  And how to do something meaningful.

That’s all that matters, right now.

Letting go

Every external change agent knows the time has to come when you have to let go. Over the past weeks, it became clear that I was reaching the end of the road with a project I have been running for a client company for the best part of 17 months.

Several things have been unusual about this one. For a start, I was involved in managing and driving four very different areas: ICT infrastructure; software development of an inhouse business support system; e-business (from SEO all the way to design and build of web solutions used in the sales channel); and knowledge management. And then there was the intensity of the programmes – many things had to be built from the base up – and the longevity of the project. A lot happens in 17 months. Bonds are made. You become part of the furniture.

Change Agents can can only be effective if their passion for change is matched by the appetite of whoever championed it. Still, the writing is always on the wall when it is time to move on.

Symptoms a Change Agent needs to look out for in determing an exit:

• Those who initially denied there was a need for any change (and put spokes in your wheels) start telling you things you told them months ago
• The team you set up to implement change needs little direction to get on with the day-to-day
• People start lifting parts of your presentations
• The CEO starts behaving as if you are a subordinate /direct report
• Targets have been surpassed
• What used to be change is now process
• You start getting restless

Sometimes I think there is something seriously dysfunctional in the work change agents do. We identify problems, devise solutions, roll our sleeves, get on with it, win some friends, make some enemies, build a legacy, and then.. just as things start to purr… we move on. We devise the exit strategy, agree handover timeframes and prepare to go back on the outside.

At times like this, I always delve into Patrick Dixon’s excellent Building a Better Business. Open any page. If you see something that resonates, in the change you have been driving, you will know that you have done a good job. And that it is time to get on with something else in your life.

It’s not about the code

London always gets me to do some soul-searching.  There are days when I wonder why I turned my back on it, in the nineties.  Whenever I am in the city, I guess I reconnect with the part of me I leave behind – and my old ghosts. 

I moved to London in 1985.  Costa Coffee and Bar Italia were the closest to a real cappuccino.  Ken Livingstone was about to be kicked out of the Greater London Council.  The Brixton Riots designated chunks of South London as a no-go zone.  The Who were planning a 25^th Anniversary concert.  Music was just plain horrible.  It was the first time I had seen a PC, one of those first IBM ‘portables’ with a screen built into the case and a keyboard dangling out of a socket.    Six months after my arrival, I qualified as a Chartered Accountant and my boss told me that now I had a licence to make money.  The statement was not exactly prophetic.  Eighties London was rubber-stamped by bean counters, Margaret Thatcher and Loadsamoney.  I wasn’t particularly taken by the concept of making money, but I knew I wanted to travel and that something in strategy was probably more life-rewarding than accountancy.  So my natural habitat became multinationals.  On the day I was interviewed for a European controller job with IP Sharp (IPSA), a Canadian computer timesharing and consulting Group, I was informed that Reuters were close to a takeover.  In other words, the risk of LIFO loomed over any eventual appointment.

As it happened, I spent two years immersed in restructuring and change management – and understanding the promise and limitations of technology.  At face value, the IPSA / Reuters deal was a marriage made in heaven.  IPSA specialised in data warehousing, yesterday’s information, Reuters in today’s, the Reuters screen.  Reuters decided early on to integrate the IPSA product into its core service offering, believing it could corner the market.  What Reuters failed to understand was that Sharp’s product had been developed by a network of brilliant, but highly ‘un-corporate’ APL software developers.  People who worked weird hours, often from home, and in many cases were accountable to nobody other than their own whims.  The clash with Reuters’ blue-chip corporate culture where information was transient, and nobody was indispensable, was immediate.  Reuters’s frustration grew by the day as the Special projects team charged with the integration realised that:  the APL developers were indispensable; that IPSA was a ‘people’ business as opposed to a technology platform; and that there the company they had purchased was worthless without some major culture changes in both organisations – and a leap of faith from both camps to try and get the deal to work.  Being the new kid on the block, my job quickly evolved into working with IPSA country managers to prepare people and systems for the inevitable integration and determine who could make the transition.  I also became a conduit to the Reuters guys whose job was on the line to ‘complete integration’ within two years.  By the time this period had flashed by, I had worked in many countries in Continental Europe, learnt about the idiosyncrasies of multinationals, saw some people resist and others thrive on change.  There are always winners and losers in acquisitions and mergers.  Some of IPSA’s best people could not accept the new suits and moved – in some cases, with crippling consequences on the core product.  The more political elements (sic. sales and marketing) were in a rush to move their desks to Fleet Street from Victoria.  And in typical fashion, having got through my two-year project and being told to ‘cruise and wait for the new dream position in Reuters Special Projects Department to be approved ‘ – I decided life was short, and moved on to Hitachi Data Systems.   

This week, in London, I ran a Forum for key users of a legacy business support system, built over some eight years by a Delphi developer.   I had to use whatever powers of persuasion I have to convince my client that it was worth the investment to get people round a table to take stock of developments over the past 12 months and address the thorny issues of standardisation.  This in an environment where customisation was the name of the game, where system changes were made ‘on the run’ and in many cases undocumented, and where the developer and his team were in a never-ending spiral of design, build, customise, support, design.  User training was sporadic and had to be fitted around the developers’ support time.  User and technical documentation was virtually non-existent.  Twelve months ago, the CEO lived in perpetual fear that the developers would move and leave the company stranded without the backbone of its successful business model.   Which was why I was called in.

The situation with the legacy system twelve months ago reminded me of the scenario Reuters inherited when it bought IP Sharp.  The mistake Reuters made then was to ignore the people side of things (‘soft’ was the buzz word then) and try and rail-road the solution by focusing on getting the technologies to talk to each other.  I decided the only way round the undocumented legacy system was to engage with the people behind it and get into their headspace – before developing a strategy to get out of the never-ending spiral of customisation and ‘software development on demand.’  I made mistakes, tried to move things too quickly, retrenched, did the drinking / listening / bonding bit.. whatever it took.  Ultimately, developers demand respect, like anybody else working for a living.  In this case, these guys had just barricaded themselves in.  Slowly, I gained some level of trust.  To enable us to get out of crisis management mode into starting to establish clear arms-length relationships with the non ICT literate users of the system.  In 12 months, the system was documented, users were forced to stop bickering and request changes via formal channels – significantly reducing the number of changes until they trickled into nothing.  We focused on user interfaces as opposed to more development changes.  I engaged a process specialist to map out the company’s core business processes as I was convinced that the system had simply evolved to support the whims of the more vociferous elements of management instead of what core business required.  We made some major changes within the organisational framework of the system to mirror the real life processes.  We did some stuff like relabelling and designing new icons to help navigation.  And on a particularly inspired evening, we branded the system Elvis, to send a playful signal to the rest of the organisation that the system had a life of its own, and was no longer the domain of a particular developer.

I guess sitting with ten people in London with people who caught trains and planes to engage in a discussion on an IT system they loved to hate was a bit of a coup.

Sometimes I wonder whether middle age is when déjà vu really kicks in.  Sometimes I feel l can see the movie of my life flash past.  When mainframes ruled at IPSA and we shared files over our global networks and used email many years before the Internet made it all pervasive .

Then I see my four year-old, clicking a mouse and laughing at the clips I have uploaded on Google Video and realise how we all have to relearn what we thought we knew.  Every day.