A wise colleague once said: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you have probably failed to grasp the seriousness of the situation.”

How bad are market conditions today? Should we be panicking or is it time to keep a cool head when all about you have lost the plot?

I cannot answer these questions for you. But we should, I think, be guided by the sobriety and realism of the words quoted above. Even if some economists have predicted all seven of the last three recessions, that doesn’t mean they are necessarily wrong this time.

Continue reading “Kipling’s wise words”

Have you noticed anyone in your team displaying any of the symptoms in this checklist lately: increased energy, activity and restlessness; excessively “high”, euphoric mood; extreme irritability; distractibility, or inability to concentrate well? Or how about unrealistic beliefs in one’s abilities and powers; poor judgment; increased sexual drive; abuse of drugs, particularly cocaine, alcohol and sleeping medications; provocative, intrusive or aggressive behaviour; denial that anything is wrong; or spending sprees (source: www.medicinenet.com)?

Most of my colleagues have managed at least one of these in the past few weeks. Happily, no one I know has clocked up too many. That would be worrying, because these are apparently the signs that someone is suffering from a bipolar disorder, or what used to be called manic depression.

This is serious but under-discussed stuff. Mental health is the last taboo. But secrecy could be unhealthy too. And suppressing or ignoring concerns about the state of our psyches is probably not healthy either.

Continue reading “A kind of madness”

Matthew was one of my favourite colleagues. In the slightly drab office where I used to work, the arrival of young Matt at the corner of my desk usually meant the chance to relax for a moment with a frivolous comment or laconic quip.

Matt didn’t really care, you see, and there was no obvious reason why he should have. A graduate, he spent a large part of the day fetching packages from the post room and filing papers. He was underemployed. We should have seen it coming, I suppose, but one day he wasn’t there any more. Finished at 23, gone to find something better to do.

Continue reading Y’s and wherefores of a multi-generational workplace

Dear Shareholder,
You have asked me to explain my outburst of a few days ago, when I threw down my copy of the Financial Times and declared, to no one in particular: “Why don’t some of these shareholders just shut up?!” I am now writing to provide some detail of my deliberations prior to making that outburst.

We have been told in recent days that the proposed changes in the Marks and Spencer boardroom are “in breach” of the UK’s combined code on corporate governance.

Apparently the English word “or”, as in “comply or explain”, has lost its meaning. M&S has, slowly and in stages, provided an explanation. You may not like that explanation. But its move does not necessarily constitute a breach of anything.

Continue reading “M&S shareholders should think before they speak”

There’s a certain type of man – middle-aged, brought up in a Commonwealth country – who, when things are going really well, will get up from his desk and (when no one is watching) dispatch an imaginary cricket ball to the cover boundary with an elegant swish.

The cover drive: perhaps human civilisation’s greatest achievement. To see David Gower, the former England captain, execute a cover drive was to experience pure bliss. I am not exaggerating.

Sport is not everybody’s cup of tea. At school, dividing lines are drawn between those who are good and bad at games. (There is also that important third category: bad at games but endlessly enthusiastic and jolly well willing to have a go.)

Continue reading “How to score a winning strategy”

It’s getting bad out there. Banks have stopped lending. Customers have stopped buying. Toshiba, Siemens and EasyJet have all issued profits warnings in the past few days. Chrysler is shutting down for two weeks in July.

I know! Why don’t we hire loads of new salespeople and get them out on the road, knocking on doors? That’s bound to change our luck.

It is not April 1. The idea of reviving door-to-door selling comes from the Boston Consulting Group. The distinguished consultancy recently published a paper in their “Opportunities for action” series called “Door-to-door sales: the forgotten channel”.

Continue reading “Desperate sales measures”

When in doubt, turn to La Rochefoucauld:

“Nous sommes si accoutumés à nous déguiser aux autres qu’enfin nous nous déguisons à nous-mêmes.” (Maximes 119)

(We get so used to disguising ourselves to others that we end up becoming disguised to ourselves.)

There’s nothing like a good dose of French scepticism to shake you up in the morning. The noble duke’s words came to mind recently when a new DVD landed on my desk. Offering an “expert’s guide” to interview skills, it was accompanied by a press release that was headlined: “Don’t just look the part, act the part.”

The training film is divided into sections such as “Ensure you are instantly liked”, “Breeze past tricky questions”, and “Close the interview with style”. All your problems solved for just £14.99. How deep can the crisis in capitalism really be if the market is still coming up with products like this?

But the DVD’s producers have, perhaps without realising it, hit upon a recurring management challenge. How should you present yourself to the world? What sort of leadership style does the situation demand? Or should you simply ignore such thoughts as you get on with the business of “being yourself”?

Continue reading Know who you are meant to be

You are 40 years old, head of China investment banking for Merrill Lynch, the pride of your family and clearly destined for greatness. So, Wilson Feng, what do you say to the Bloomberg reporter who phones you up and asks for an interview?

“I want to change my life,” Mr Feng said. “It’s a nightmare. My father won’t recognise me if I stay in investment banking.”

Mr Feng is off to go and work for a state-owned Chinese company. “Salaries at state-owned enterprises are low compared with investment banking, but you can have a better life,” he explained. Merrill Lynch is gutted. “It’s sad to see him go. He was a model employee,” said Damian Chunilal, head of Pacific Rim investment banking.

Continue reading “The meaning of life at work”

The UK’s Combined Code on Corporate Governance requires public companies to comply with its recommendations, or explain why they have chosen to ignore them. As of today Marks and Spencer has a lot of explaining to do.

From 1 June, the company said today, Sir Stuart Rose will become executive chairman, effectively combining the roles of chair and CEO. This flies in the face of Combined Code orthodoxy. True, other colleagues are stepping up to take on some of Sir Stuart’s duties. Ian Dyson, currently finance director, will take on the additional responsibility of HR and operations. Kate Bostock, head of women’s wear, and Steve Esom, head of food, join the board.

Sir Stuart now says he will not leave the company before 2011, thus allowing his fellow executive directors time to build their case to win the top job in due course.

Shareholders and analysts will be concerned that this move formally concentrates too much power in Sir Stuart’s hands. One, L&G, went on the record with its objections only a few hours after M&S’s announcement.

Personally, I will take some of the governance gurus’ objections with an unhealthily large pinch of salt. Sir Stuart is clearly his own man, and has been well and truly in charge at M&S for several years. Lord Burns, the outgoing chairman, says that execs and non-execs alike at M&S are happy with the new arrangements. Where is the problem?

If Sir Stuart were a crook, or an incompetent, we might have grounds for concern. But this is someone who turned down the prospect of absolutely gigantic rewards, running M&S for Sir Philip Green’s private equity-style bid in 2004, and instead took the riskier and relatively much less well paid option of keeping M&S public. He has done an excellent job so far. If this is his chosen method of exit, and this seems to him to be the best way of blooding a successor, I think we should trust him and back his judgment.

Of course, if things now go badly wrong for him and the company I will be among the first to condemn him.

Managers are supposed to be good at giving and receiving “feedback”. To help make this a reality the “open door policy” has many fans. So what to make of the action by workers at Michelin’s tyre factory in Toul in north-eastern France, where feedback consisted of the doors being shut on two senior HR managers, who were then held hostage for three days in protest at the company’s plans to close the plant?

This startling intervention by militant trade unionists raises two important questions. First, how long does an HR manager have to be held captive before anyone notices that he or she is missing? And second, did the terms of this imprisonment allow for the usual three-course lunch to be served?

There are, I suppose, other questions we could consider here as well, such as “are we entering a new era of muscular trade union activism?”, or “is the employer-employee relationship in the developed world bound to come under ever-increasing strain?”

The history of industrial relations weighs heavily on managers and employees alike. A collective folk memory is at work here, often at a subconscious level. Even as we try to look ahead and focus on future challenges, the tug of the past brings us back. As in other kinds of relationships, cumulative experience counts for a lot and colours judgments made today.

Which is all a rather grand way of saying that bosses are often on the look-out for signs of a resurgence of worker unrest – although actually getting locked in their own offices is probably not something they expect. You have to hand it to the French: it is a fine demonstration of how to make the element of surprise work for you.

(more…)