Category: Expat/travel

Terminal 5 – all happy now?

July 7, 2008 12:25 pm by Adam Jones

Tom Glocer, chief executive of Reuters, says on his blog that British Airways deserves a break from the “pretty savage” treatment it has had in the UK press over the teething troubles with Terminal 5. While he says much of the criticism was deserved, things have settled down rather well in his opinion:

I have been flying in and out of Terminal 5 now for weeks and the experience is a vast improvement. The terminal itself is architecturally compelling, clearly marked and reasonably efficient…

There are many good things in the UK worthy of praise – it is time to celebrate them.

Mr Glocer’s more optimistic view seems to be backed up by the news that BA has overcome the impact of the Terminal 5 debacle to significantly improve punctuality over the past two months, in spite of the disruption caused by President Bush’s visit to London last month.

Posted in Expat/travel, Marketing/sales | Permalink

Pick of the week

May 30, 2008 7:48 pm by Adam Jones

Japan is seen as a tough place for foreign women to work. Yet new research suggests that female expatriates posted there may actually have an advantage over their male counterparts in sales and marketing.

Yin Tongyao tells how Chery became China’s leading car exporter by accident. McKinsey Quarterly has further background on the global ambitions of China’s companies too.

Elsewhere, executives are being urged to treat their poor middle managers better. Ambitious middle managers might like to know that if they covet the chief executive’s job, they should be a company lifer and a chief financial officer first.

Freek Vermeulen favours spurious reorganisations that serve no logical purpose but which nonetheless break down barriers between employees.

BV Krishnamurthy is railing against the new Bangalore International Airport, declaring: “A city that prides itself on being the Silicon City of India deserves better.”

Posted in Expat/travel, Leadership, Managing others | Permalink

Creativity of expats is not limited to their tax returns

May 18, 2008 5:06 pm by Adam Jones

Two new pieces of research suggest that managers with experience of multiple foreign postings are unusually valuable. After studying various multinationals, McKinsey says companies should move “talent” regularly between countries and divisions. Senior managers at the companies they studied had made 1.5 cross-border moves on average. At the best-performing businesses, however, the norm was to have had two such switches. Meanwhile, an academic paper in American Psychologist claims to have proved that working abroad can make you a more creative person.

As someone who has worked abroad twice, I like these findings, which massage my ego in all the right places. But there is a little piece of me that resists the idea that the mere fact of having lived in a foreign country can make you more talented or effective. It makes me think of my first term at university, with all those dreadful people who had just spent a year travelling in Asia, and who felt superior to everyone else as a consequence.

Posted in Expat/travel, Managing others | Permalink

Conference delegates get value for money in Atlanta

April 30, 2008 2:21 pm by Adam Jones

The plummeting value of the US dollar has helped Atlanta to emerge as a particularly desirable location in which to hold conferences and training sessions. The city has burst into the Economist Intelligence Unit’s list of top ten destinations for business travel, occupying 6th position. Three other US cities make the list. Here is the top ten in full (the ranking relates to December 2007 and is based on cost and environmental issues such as infrastructure and culture):

1. Vancouver

2. Toronto

3. Adelaide

4. Honolulu

5. Perth

6. Atlanta

7. Auckland

8. Helsinki

9. Pittsburgh

10. Detroit

Posted in Expat/travel | Permalink

Air miles – legitimate booty?

March 4, 2008 11:33 am by Adam Jones

Should government employees and politicians be allowed to keep the air miles they accrue on official business? No, roar the public-spending puritans. But if they aren’t allowed to keep them, why should business people be allowed to hang on to theirs? Don’t they belong to the shareholders who funded their travel in the first place? Couldn’t they at least be used to fund other corporate travel?

Michael Skapinker probes these ethical questions in today’s FT, concluding that it is a puzzle why people get so exercised by air miles when they are so difficult to use. But I have my own suggestion to add: companies could distribute the air miles accrued by their workers to those small shareholders who bother to show up to their annual meetings.

Given that most of these investors are retired, they have plenty of time on their hands to find ways of actually using the blasted things. And it would be a great spur for shareholder democracy.

Posted in Expat/travel | Permalink

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