Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: managerialism

  • Transparent falsehoods

    Transparent falsehoods

    Transparency, openness, innovation and entrepreneurialism are all popular buzzwords, but do organisations really value these attributes?

    At a cloud computing conference this week I sat in on an innovation presentation. Almost everyone in the room was wearing a dark suit.

    Despite their dress, most of those folk desperately wanted to be ‘innovative’ and almost all of them worked in organisations that would really benefit with a dash of genuine creative thinking.

    I thought of that conference when reading of the attempted shutting down of a primary school student’s food blog by her local education authority.

    The saga of the Never Seconds food blog illustrated the classic responses of managers when faced with something they can’t control – shut it down on whatever grounds you can find.

    In the case of Never Seconds it was because the food service staff feared they would lose their jobs. Bless the council for caring so much about their staff.

    As always in these situations, it was an opportunity missed to promote the school district and improve the services they provide.

    Never Seconds is also a great place where other school students shared their school lunches. It is a great idea to promote healthy eating for kids.

    Thankfully the Argyll and Bute Council relented on their ban and the Never Seconds blog is back for lunch.

    Educators around the world talk about promoting children’s curiosity and creativity yet when a child expresses them in a way that threatens staff or bureaucrat power, they are quickly slapped down.

    The same happens in the workplace, most organisations will treat truly innovative and original thinkers like the naughty children they probably were.

    For too many organisations – businesses, political parties and even schools – words like innovation, creativity, openness and transparency are just empty buzzwords.

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  • Beating Buzzword Bingo

    Beating Buzzword Bingo

    One of the curses of modern business is the buzzword, a perfectly good word that is ruined by constant use.

    The IT industry is particularly prone to buzzwords as people try to distil complex concepts into easy to understand terms – cloud computing is a good example of this.

    More malign in the tech sector, and many other industries, are clueless managers and salespeople who try to baffle superiors, clients and staff with buzzwords to cover their total ignorance of what their business actually does.

    For the canny supplier or contractor, the buzzword addled customer is a great sales opportunity as the customer’s managers are always grateful to buy a product tagged with some complex sounding terms that they can impress other with.

    The security software vendors are very good at this as are management consultants who’ve literally written books stuffed full buzzwords guaranteeing them millions of billable hours.

    One of the current favourite buzzwords is IPv6, the Internet standard replacing the current protocol that has run out of numbers. Saying you’re IPv6 compliant even when your business is more affected by cabbage prices in Shanghai is good to impress a few people who should know better.

    Probably the greatest buzzword of the last decade was innovation. Every company, every new product and even government departments had to be “innovative” or lose credibility on the information superhighway.

    Eventually though terms fall out of favour and innovation is one of those whose time has passed – those still dropping it into conversations today are usually 1990s MBA graduates who’ve dozed through the last five years of their professional development courses.

    Watching out for those outdated buzzwords is useful not just as a sucker indicator for smart salespeople but also for job hunters.

    For instance, when a company or recruiter constantly uses the word “innovation” in their job descriptions, you can be sure the organisation is one the least innovative on the planet, except possibly in the way management have structured their KPIs and option packages.

    Generally the use of buzzwords in job descriptions or “mission statements” (another 1990s MBA fad) is inversely proportional to how applicable those terms are in the organisation.

    For instance an organisation that claims it wants employees who are “self-motivated, curious and are selfless enough to seek what’s best for the company first,” is almost certainly run by control freaks practicing CYA management who mercilessly punish anyone under them foolish enough to take the initiative or ask questions.

    Overall, buzzwords are a force for good as they let savvy employees identify those workplaces and managers that are best avoided. For those of us running businesses, it could mean opportunity or danger depending on what we’re selling to these organisations.

    The greatest thing with buzzwords though is they are constantly evolving, meaning I get the opportunity to rewrite this column again in two years time by just changing a few words.

    Innovation is already passé and “cloud” is peaking. What are next buzzwords we should watch for and enjoy?

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  • Inflating titles, inflated apirations

    Inflating titles, inflated apirations

    This story first appeared in Smart Company on 19 April 2012.

    “She listed her job on LinkedIn as my ghostwriter,” reflected the journalist about his publishing business’ Gen-Y staff member.

    The journalist’s lament reflects an unexpected corporate risk in social media; that of employees giving themselves grandiose and sometimes damaging job profiles.

    Over the last 20 years, title inflation has been rife in the business world as corporations and government agencies doled out grandiose titles to soothe the egos of fragile management egos.

    So it isn’t surprising that many of us succumb to the temptation to give ourselves a grand title online.

    In the journo’s case a young graduate working as an editor in his publishing business listed herself as his ghostwriter, risking a huge dent to his credibility among other the lizards at the pub or the Quill Awards.

    That business journalist is not alone, in the connected economy what would have been a quaint title on a business card or nameplate is now being advertised to the world.

    Making matters worse, we now have tools like LinkedIn and other social media sites to check out a business’ background and who are the key contacts in an organisation.

    So what your staff call themselves is now important. It can confuse customers, cause internal staff problems (“how come he’s an Executive Group General Manager?”), damage business reputations and quite often put an unexpected workload on a relatively junior employee.

    In your social media policy – which is now essential in any business that employs staff – you need to clarify what titles your people can bestow upon themselves.

    As well as making this clear to new staff, a regular web search on your business that includes all of the popular social media sites should be a regular task.

    Just as economic inflation can hurt your business, so too can uncontrolled title inflation. Watch it isn’t affecting your operations.

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  • Culture beats strategy

    Culture beats strategy

    Writer and business consultant Joseph Michelli says”Culture beats strategy, in fact it eats it for breakfast and lunch”.

    This was one of the key points in a recent webinar about online retailer Zappos and its customer service culture.

    Joseph’s right, the culture of an organisation is the ultimate key to its success, if managers and staff work “according to the book” and declaring “it’s not my job” then you end up with a siloed organisation where management are more interesting in protecting and growing their empires over helping customers.

    With Zappos it’s interesting how it appears easy the integration into Amazon’s ownership has gone and this is probably because both have service centric cultures.

    Both companies seem to have avoided employing Bozos as Guy Kawasaki famously put it a few years ago.

    Your parking lot’s “biorhythm” looks like this:

    • 8:00 am – 10:00 am–Japanese cars exceed German cars
    • 10:00 am – 5:00 pm–German cars exceed Japanese cars
    • 5:00 pm – 10:00 pm–Japanese cars exceed German cars

    Guy’s German car observation is spot on. When I was running a service business, one measure I used for a potentially troublesome client was how many expensive German cars were in the executive parking spaces, it was usually a good indicator that an organisation’s leaders are more interested in management perks than maintaining their technology.

    Another useful measure was where those cars are parked, a good indicator of management’s sense of entitlement is when executive parking spots are conveniently next to the building entrance or lift lobby while customers expected to find a spot anywhere within ten blocks.

    It all comes down to culture and when management are more concerned about parking spots and staff about free lunches, you know you’re dealing with an organisation where the customer – or the shareholder – isn’t the priority.

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  • David Jones’ wasted decade

    David Jones’ wasted decade

    In 2001 Australian retailer David Jones shut down their website.

    Back then, the future was clear; profits were in financial services and certainly not in online sales or investing in improved stores and service.

    Today the company released their strategic review that looks forward to financial years 2013 and beyond. You can downloaded it from David Jones’ investor website.

    On Page 13, they show just how far David Jones has fallen behind their international competitors. Less that 1% of DJ’s sales are online compared to 4.5% of the UK’s House Of Fraser and 13% of John Lewis.

    Australian executives claim they are in a global market for their talents which is why they deserve world standard remuneration. David Jones’ results show how hollow that mantra is.

    The problems start with the board, five of the eight current David Jones directors were with the company when that decision was made in 2001.

    None of them have been held to account.

    David Jones illustrates the weakness in Australia’s business sector – largely unaccountable boards answering only to institutional investors who themselves have grown fat and lazy on clipping the compulsory superannuation ticket.

    One hopes the some of the competitors who are displacing flaccid incumbents like David Jones are based in Australia or the locals may soon find that many of these sectors, not just in retail, will go offshore to better run companies.

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