England football manager Fabio Capello has had a remarkably successful career in Italy, Spain and now as manager of England (ok, he hasn’t won anything yet, but they have qualified for the World Cup). Sports analogies are used too often in the world of management speak (even for a sportsfan like me) but according to an article in the Guardian about his presentation at the Global Sports Summit in London, Capello reveals a couple of interesting truths.

First, he says that when he took over England the quality of the players was very high in training but not in matches.

“I understood everything when they played Switzerland in the first match, the same players who played well in training played with fear, with no confidence, and I said this is a big problem of the mind,” he said. “Step by step, game after game, we have improved a lot.”

Continue reading "Fabio Capello on the management of fear"

Dame Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales, said today that a number of prison managers had moved out “difficult” inmates because they were worried that their presence would negatively impact their inspection.

It seemed especially farcical because, apparently, it would have had no impact if the prisoners had stayed.

“The presence of those prisoners wouldn’t have affected our inspectors assessment at all,” said Dame Anne.

“Sadly for the many staff and managers who had worked hard to improve the two prisons, their efforts will inevitably be overshadowed by these events,” she said.

“This is deplorable, not only because of the effects on individuals, but because of the underlying mind-set that prisoners are merely pieces to be moved around the board to meet performance targets or burnish the reputation of the prison.”

What really struck me about Dame Anne’s comments was her concern that this would have a damaging impact on moral for the staff and lower level managers, and provide a negative example to them.

Continue reading "Even prison managers sometimes fiddle"

• Cabinet to slims down for Sarkozy - Lucy Kellaway wrote about the balance between private health and employers earlier this week, but I’m not sure how many managers can get away with this. I especially liked his apparent suggestions he “told at least one would-be appointee to drop some weight and change his hair style if he wanted the job”
• Google paid a $1bn premium for YouTube - an interesting admission from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, that the company paid $1bn more for YouTube than it was worth simply to make sure no one else could outbid it (Hat tip: The Browser)
• Success stories in bad times - Ok, so the headline writer employed a bit of hyperbole (do Twinkies qualify as a success?) and it’s a bit US focused but chocolate chip cookies are certainly a silver lining to any recession

If you haven’t seen it already, I would highly recommend our Future of Investing series. There are a lot of interesting contributions (yes, I would say that, but check out the list of people involved - Martin Wolf, Mohamed El-Erian, Andrew Lo, Gillian Tett, Robert Shiller etc - and tell me if I’m wrong) but especially good is today’s fascinating interview with the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, which considers why ‘efficient’ markets collapse and why we need some new theories on markets.

It’s also worth highlighting an article Prof Mandelbrot wrote with Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb three years ago, for the FT’s Mastering Uncertainty series. They argued that how business approached uncertainty was the wrong way round. Risk models focused too heavily on the norm rather than the exceptions. So, just because something is correct 95 per cent of the time doesn’t mean that should predominate when the remaining 5 per cent are important enough that they could bring down the whole system.

As you would expect, they explain it much better than I do.

If you haven’t seen it already, do check out “State of Play”, our excellent series of interviews with chief executives of some of the UK’s biggest companies.

Leaders so far: Francis Salway of Land Securities; Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP; Warren East, Arm Holdings; and Michael Smith of Mind Candy.

Tomorrow: Justin King of Sainsbury’s who has some interesting things to say on how consumer behaviour may well have changed for good as a result of the recession.

All this angry shouting about healthcare reform must be really bad for people’s blood pressure. But it is no joking matter. “Health is wealth”, as they say. Nothing could be more serious.

In the heat of the debate taking place in the US, little light is being shed on what really matters: outcomes. But while the funding of healthcare is not a matter for this column, the management of it is. And it turns out that the task of introducing better healthcare for all is fundamentally a management challenge.

The Brits know this better than anybody. The UK’s National Health Service was founded, in the face of bitter opposition, more than 60 years ago. It has been a vast, living experiment, and a monument to managerialism, good and bad.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

I can’t claim to know the answer - is it really knowable? - but there certainly seem to be divergent views on the issue.

New research suggests more women on the board can improve governance but has a negative effect on profitability. In the words of Daniel Ferreira of the London School of Economics, one of the report’s authors: “This is a complicated picture.”

That may well qualify for understatement of the day but a few of recent pieces highlight just how complicated - and current - the issue is.

In today’s Lombard column, Andrew Hill points out that the authors are not coming out against female directors but do “warn that about forcing the issue with quotas, Norwegian-style, and then expecting automatic improvements in performance”.

A few weeks ago, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, a consultant and co-author of a book called Why Women Mean Business, wrote: “There is a convincing business case for designing organisations that attract and retain women to the top.” Further, she argued, “having a greater proportion of women in decision-making roles improves business performance and profitability”.

A few weeks later, our own Lucy Kellaway, who also happens to be a non-executive director, took a different view, describing the so-called “asset-to-oestrogen” ratio as “total twaddle”.

Who’s right? Comments welcome.

When it comes to battling with the competition, where do you draw the line? Is all fair in love, war and business?

The key text for believers in ruthless competition is probably Hardball: Are you playing to play or playing to win?written five years ago by Boston Consulting Group’s George Stalk and his ex-BCG colleague Rob Lachenauer.

For these two, a hardball approach means “creating discomfort for others and tolerating it in yourself”. Not that you should consider doing anything illegal – of course not. But there is a moral and legal grey area (a “caution zone”) which, the authors argue, is “rich in possibility”. A smart leader will recognise where to draw a “bright line” in this zone. He or she “lets everybody know when they’re getting close to it, and takes corrective action as soon as anyone steps over it”.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.