Energy trumps talent

A few years back, I found myself sharing a table with Chris Blackwell, the legendary founder of Island Records.

He was a lovely man: funny, charming and self-deprecating, with a spectacular fund of stories.

The one I liked best was about how he came to give U2 their first recording contract.

‘I was in London at the time,’ he said, ‘and one of my A&R guys told me I should go and see this band from Dublin, who were playing a small venue in Hammersmith that night.

‘I didn’t really like their demo tape – it wasn’t my kind of music at all. But I was living not far from Hammersmith and the A&R guy was insistent, so I agreed to drop in.’

He arrived as the band were halfway through their third number. There were five people in the audience: Chris, his girlfriend, the A&R guy and a couple of old boys nursing their pints at the bar.

‘The thing is’, said Chris, ‘they still played the gig like it was Wembley stadium. Their energy was tremendous. Song after song, they belted it out with absolute conviction. So I told the A&R guy to sign them, but only on condition that we didn’t spend a penny promoting them.’

When Island celebrated its 40^th birthday, Chris said he felt a little embarrassed about the moving tribute paid to him by Bono for having the belief to back U2 at the start.

‘The truth is,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure I did believe in their music. But I totally believed in them. They were so determined to be the biggest band in the world that we never had to lift a finger to help them. They were so professional, so focused on getting the right gigs, the right airtime, building a fanbase: they did it all themselves.’

It’s a reminder that you can have the best plan in the world, the greatest resources, the smartest people – and none of that will make much difference if those people don’t also have the drive and belief to make it happen.

Energy trumps talent every time.

Ho ho ho

Most of you have probably seen the ‘Santa brand book’ at some point over the last eight years, but it’s still (by a country mile) my favourite piece of festive promotion.

So, in case you haven’t seen it – or just fancy seeing it again – click the link below.

Happy Christmas.

https://www.quietroom.co.uk/santa_brandbook/

Positivity is contagious

A long time ago, when I was a student, I used to spend my Summers working on campsites in France.

One of them – right on the northwest tip of Brittany – was run by a lovely old man called Pierre le Cuff. He had thick white hair, twinkling eyes and, in the three months I knew him, the only time I saw him without a broad smile on his face was when he was playing boules.

Every morning around 10, M. le Cuff used to stop at my tent. He’d pull up a chair, I’d make him a coffee and we’d chat for 20 minutes. Often about his wife, who he adored. Or about the weather, which was terrible that year.

At one point, it rained solidly for four weeks: the wind got so strong that three of his tents blew into the sea. Bookings took a hammering: the campsite was barely half-full at what ought to have been the busiest time of year – he must have been losing money hand over fist.

And still he’d show up every morning at my tent with a cheery grin and a bag of croissants.

Then he’d wander round the campsite doing the same with all his customers. Laughing about the weather, making a fuss of the kids, offering suggestions for day trips and restaurants to visit.

No wonder most of them came back year after year. Especially the British campers, of whom M. le Cuff was particularly fond. 

When I asked him why, he laughed and said:

‘Because the British broke my leg.’

In 1940, at the start of the war, M. le Cuff was in a French cavalry regiment. He broke his leg during a football match with the neighbouring British artillery. It was a bad break and he was still in hospital four days later, when his regiment went into action against the invading German Panzers. All his friends were killed – as he would have been, if not for a clumsy tackle by a burly geordie.

One of the perks of my job is that I get to meet a lot of different leaders in a lot of different businesses.

They’re a fascinating mix of personalities. But, without exception, the one characteristic all the most successful ones share is a positive outlook. 

They don’t waste time worrying about things they can’t control (like the weather or a broken leg). Instead, they focus all their energy on what they can control, because that’s where the opportunity is.

Whenever I used to grumble about the rain, M. le Cuff would make me stop and look at the scenery around us. It was beautiful, even through the drizzle: windswept dunes, turquoise water, a white sand beach with nobody on it.

He’d sweep his arm from one horizon to the other and say:

‘I’m the luckiest man in the world.’

You know what? I think he was right.

P.S. In case you’re wondering, the campsite is still there – and thriving (these days, it’s run by M. le Cuff’s son, Hubert). Camping des Abers in Landeda. One of my favourite places in the world.

It’s always about the manager

I spent Tuesday evening at the launch of WorkL’s new Employee Experience report.

WorkL is the business set up by Mark (now Lord) Price, who used to run Waitrose. It’s a data-based approach to helping organisations understand and improve their performance in the big areas that drive engagement.

What’s interesting about WorkL is that it uses an App to gather feedback from employees in over 27,000 organisations around the world, but it also provides specific insight and consultancy for individual businesses.  

The result is that you get a fascinating big picture view of employee experience trends across different industry sectors, countries and socio-demographic groups. And you also get practical, hands-on stuff you can do to improve your own performance.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you’ll know I’m a big fan of Lord Price. When he was at Waitrose, he pioneered a style of leadership based on culture, purpose and empowering individuals. 

Those themes are pretty standard in most businesses now but, 15 years ago, they were still groundbreaking in this country (outside HR departments) – and the success of Waitrose and John Lewis played a big part in bringing them into the mainstream.

After the presentation, I asked him what he thought was the most important factor in making employees happier and more productive at work. 

He said: 

‘Without a doubt, the relationship each individual employee has with their manager. The correlation is so strong that, if I only asked one question – do you have a good relationship with your manager? – I could tell you with confidence what their overall engagement score would be, based on that one answer alone.’

It’s a timely reminder that, whatever else we do to engage people and improve their experience of work, the thing that makes the biggest difference will always be the quality and humanity of their manager.

So choose your leaders well, at every level. Your business depends on it.

Indulge me

Back in the middle ages, papal indulgences were big business.

The basic idea was that, if you’d behaved badly, you could mitigate the spiritual consequences of that behaviour (in other words, reduce the time you had to spend in purgatory before being allowed into heaven) by funding good works.

A bit like carbon offsetting, really. Burn a village, build a cathedral – call it quits.

Of course, this kind of spiritual indemnity didn’t come cheap, so papal indulgences were mostly focused on the small group of rich and powerful people who could afford them.

The modern equivalent of these people might be a large multinational corporation: Coca-Cola, say, or BP.

Which is why it’s been interesting to see what happened this week when Cristiano Ronaldo, arguably football’s biggest superstar, ostentatiously removed a bottle of Coca-Cola from the table at a press conference and insisted on drinking water instead.

Coca-Cola, which had spent a large amount of money sponsoring the football tournament in which Ronaldo was appearing, was understandably unhappy.

Their lawyers rifled through the contract and forced UEFA into issuing a strict instruction that no more sponsors’ bottles were to be moved.

But the damage was already done. Coke’s share price plummeted by $4bn, as analysts across the globe calculated the likely impact from one of the world’s leading athletes pointing out that sugary fizzy drinks aren’t good for you.

It’s an odd thing, when you think about it. Nobody at Coke can deny that Ronaldo was right. So they find themselves, instead, in the slightly uncomfortable position of insisting that no-one be allowed to point out the truth, because they’ve paid for a different story.

UEFA, in the meantime, has to balance the embarrassment of indulging Coke in this story against the benefit to grassroots football from their sponsorship billions.

It’s a bit like the arts world, where theatres and galleries have had to wrestle with the ethics of accepting money from opioid drug dealers or oil companies – money without which they might struggle to operate.

I don’t really know what the answer is.

I suppose my view is that it’s good to have people build cathedrals.

But it would be better if they didn’t burn the villages first.

What do you (really) stand for?

This week saw some interesting anniversaries.

200 years since Napoleon died.

200 years since the Guardian made its first appearance (as the Manchester Evening Guardian).

And 100 years since Coco Chanel launched the legendary Chanel No. 5 perfume.

What I find interesting about all three is how their reputations have changed over time.

Napoleon was a small man, but a towering historical presence. He was born Italian, but became an iconic symbol of French greatness. Modern-day Paris is still dominated by landmarks and railway stations bearing the names of his military triumphs.

Yet modern-day French politicians are often careful not to associate themselves too closely with Napoleon, because he was also an avowed racist, who reintroduced slavery to French possessions in the Caribbean and cynically betrayed the Haitian independence leaders who had helped him fight the British.

Not a great look for the leader of a Republic based on liberty, equality and fraternity.

Coco Chanel is another iconic French figure: an intuitive designer, spectacular self-publicist and subtly pioneering feminist, who dragged herself up from poverty to define the style of a generation.

She was also an unapologetic anti-semite and Nazi cheerleader, who spent her war years shacked up in the Ritz hotel with a German diplomat – and was only spared imprisonment because of the personal intervention of her friend Winston Churchill. 

My point is that reputation is never set in stone: glorious achievement in one field won’t prevent your reputation being tarnished by failings in another.

However, the good news is that it also works the other way.

The Guardian was first published by Lancashire mill-owners. In its early years, it was derided by the labour movement as a mouthpiece for capitalist exploitation. During the American Civil War, it loudly supported the Confederate states in their struggle to keep slavery.

Yet, over time – and under the careful stewardship of a new owner – the Guardian gradually established an editorial position more consistent with its lofty pronounced ideals.

During the Spanish civil war, it was the only mainstream British newspaper to oppose Franco. Just as it was the first British newspaper to ring alarm bells about the rise of Mussolini and Hitler, long before that become a fashionable position.

Now, I don’t say this because I’m a particular fan of the Guardian. The truth is, I rarely read it these days and, when I do, I often disagree with its editorial positions. 

But I’m glad it’s there. I think it plays an important role in keeping our leaders honest and promoting a fairer society – and I’m not alone in thinking this.

Opinion polls regularly show the Guardian to be the most trusted source of news, both online and among mainstream print media. 

It’s taken them 200 years to build that trust. Which is an example worth remembering next time you’re thinking about your organisation’s values.

You build trust by doing what you say you’re going to do and by living up to the things you say are important.

In other words, values aren’t optional. They’re not something you can disregard when it’s inconvenient or difficult (when you need to close a factory, say). 

If you do, you will lose trust – and all your other brilliant achievements won’t protect you.

So choose your values carefully.

Why change is so hard

Upton Sinclair was an American poet and political activist, who ran for the Governorship of California in 1934, at the height of the Great Depression.

His campaign slogan was ‘End poverty in California’ – EPIC, for short. His policies were radical, socialist solutions, based on collective work and shared food resources.

At the time, California was full of extremely poor people, with no jobs, no money and very little food – so Sinclair’s ideas generated plenty of interest and support.

But, when it came to the crunch, voters rejected him in favour of a more mainstream candidate with more familiar policies. They just couldn’t get their heads around the idea of such radical change.

As Sinclair himself put it, ‘it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.’

I thought about that this morning, as I was picking my way through the tent village erected by Extinction Rebellion activists at the bottom of Trafalgar Square.

The ‘rebels’ I encountered were, broadly, likeable and articulate people.

Their demands seem reasonable: tell the truth about climate change and set up a citizens’ assembly to take the lead on what we should do about it.

It’s hard not to feel sympathy with their cause. The science is compelling and the clock is ticking. Nobody really wants the planet to be irretrievably damaged, or their grandchildren to have to travel to Mars to create a habitable environment.

So why are we not all pitching tents alongside them?

I don’t have a good answer for that. But I suspect it’s a combination of self-interest (my salary depends on the status quo), fear of radical change (I don’t trust well-meaning hippies to come up with a better social system) and the nagging suspicion that none of it will make any difference until the people at the top of the world’s big economies adopt these ideas as their own.

Which is, of course, what stops change working in most businesses.

Even when confronted with the burningest of burning platforms, most of us will still wait for a signal from the people in charge before we jump.

In other words, the single most important factor in making change happen is credible leadership.

The voters of California decided that Upton Sinclair didn’t have it.

But, when Franklin Roosevelt adopted a lot of Sinclair’s ideas into his New Deal, he had the power and credibility of the Presidential office (as well as a Congressional majority) to back him up.

The question for Extinction Rebellion – and all of us – is: where will that credible leadership come from today?

Matt is the author of tribe: 66 ideas for building a winning culture, which explores the characteristics that contribute to a winning workplace culture. He’s also written inside: the 10 communication secrets that will transform your business.

If you’d like a free copy of either book, pop in to The Forge (we might even make you a coffee…)

What’s your bottom line?

Two weeks ago, something quite interesting happened in corporate America.

B Corp, a group of around 30 CEOs from leading US and international corporations (including Ben & Jerry’s, Danone and Patagonia) took out a full page ad in the New York Times, urging their peers to commit to a more ethical way of doing business.

The ad was in the form of an open letter from the group to members of the influential Business Round Table, which is made up of 181 of the most prominent CEOs in America, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Apple’s Tim Cook.

B Corp describes itself as ‘a fair trade label for companies – a global movement of people using business as a force for good’.

Their underlying idea is to shift from a culture that prioritises shareholder profits above everything else, to one where employees and the environment get equal billing: a ‘triple bottom line’.

B Corp argues that this encourages longer term thinking. Which, as well as making for fairer and more socially-useful businesses, ultimately delivers more sustainable long-term value to shareholders.

It’s hardly a new idea. In fact, just a week earlier, the Round Table had issued its own statement, re-defining the ‘purpose of a corporation’ to give equal weight to social and environmental interests. In other words, the same triple bottom line.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan and the Round Table’s Chairman, said he hoped the statement would ‘help to set a new standard for corporate leadership.’

So why did B Corp feel the need to press for a firmer commitment?

Perhaps because the Round Table hasn’t always been consistent in its thinking.

Through the 1980s and early 1990s, when the US economy was booming, they promoted a similarly inclusive definition of a corporation’s purpose.

But, in 1997, when the global economy started to look a little more challenging, they rowed back on this progressive thinking and defined corporate purpose in much narrower, shareholder-first terms – and that’s where they’ve stayed ever since, until last month’s statement.

Which is why the B Corp open letter is so interesting.

They’re essentially challenging America’s biggest businesses to put their money where their mouth is.

Don’t just talk about a better model of business, they’re saying.

Commit to it.

Sign up.

Become a B Corp member.

It’s an interesting challenge because, if you do sign up, you’re changing the way decisions are made in your business.

For instance, using tricky loopholes to get round inconvenient tax rules (good for shareholder returns) would no longer be something you could justify (bad for the wider community).

And what happens when the global economy goes through another downturn – as economic indicators seem to suggest may happen soon?

Will your shareholders accept lower profits and smaller dividends, while you reinvest to protect your workforce and make your business more sustainable in the long term?

Or will they fire you?

As Bill Bernbach used to say, a principle isn’t a principle until it costs you money.

Let’s see if the Business Round Table are really willing to live up to the bold words in their statement.

Matt is the author of tribe: 66 ideas for building a winning culture, which explores the characteristics that contribute to a winning workplace culture. He’s also written inside: the 10 communication secrets that will transform your business.

If you’d like a free copy of either book, pop in to The Forge (we might even make you a coffee…)

 

 

How to sabotage your own reputation

When you buy a ticket for an airline flight, what do you think you’re buying?

The ability to travel from A to B at the date and time on your ticket?

Not according to British Airways.

(Regular readers of this blog may sigh to hear me bring up that name again – but bear with me. I promise there’s a point…)

When I complained to BA recently about bumping me off a flight back from Texas, they handled it every bit as badly as the original incident (which is to say, they ignored it completely, until I sent a second stroppy letter to their CEO – at which point, they offered a grudging apology and a few quid off another flight).

The most interesting part was that they denied liability for any losses caused by the delay, because they said they weren’t contractually obliged to carry me on the flight they’d sold me the ticket for.

This didn’t seem to make sense, so I checked twice, to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood. I hadn’t. They said: ‘BA reserves the right not to let you on the flight if we’ve oversold it.’

In other words, when you buy a ticket from BA, what you’re actually buying is the ability to travel from A to B at a time that suits the airline, even if it totally disrupts your own plans.

Or, to put it another way, if you’re counting on BA to get you to a meeting, or a concert, or a family wedding on time, you’d better hope you’re one of the lucky ones that doesn’t get bumped off when they sell more tickets than they have seats on the plane.

You might think this is a rather odd policy for an airline that claims to pride itself on customer experience.

Until you remember it’s the same airline that, this week, got hit with a £183m fine for letting hackers access its customers’ confidential data.

‘This fine isn’t fair’, whined BA’s management. ‘We’re all about customers – we’ve just spent loads on some new bag drops at Heathrow. How can we be the bad guys here?’

And that’s the point. BA just don’t get it.

You can have the best bag-drops in the world. The fanciest menus. The softest cushions.

And none of that matters if you can’t get the basic elements of customer experience right. Such as taking people where they want to go when you said you would. And not exposing their personal and financial data to criminals.

If your customers can’t trust you, nothing else matters – and, if BA really cared about their customers’ experience, they’d know that.

But they don’t. And that’s why they’re now £183m worse off.

Never trust anyone without a sense of humour

There’s nothing wrong with being professional, but it’s a good rule to be wary of people who take themselves too seriously.

A sense of humour is just common sense with the volume turned up. That’s why comedians are so good at capturing and expressing simple, timeless, human truths.

Dull, serious people, by contrast, tend to see the world in black-and-white terms. They’re not usually good at grasping alternative viewpoints or engaging with new ideas. You should be especially wary of any leader who won’t poke fun at themselves, because it’s a sign either of insecurity or of a narcissistic personality disorder.

As Eric Sykes put it: ’We are all idiots. The ones who don’t think they’re idiots – they’re the ones who are dangerous.’

This blog is an excerpt from Matt’s new book; tribe: 66 ideas for building a winning culture. The book explores the characteristics that contribute to a winning workplace culture. If you fancy some bedtime reading, you can buy a copy here. Or pop into The Forge and pick one up for free (we might even make you a coffee…)