SURREY (I think) — I know I still speak with a nasal, uncouth sounding accent.  I know I will never pass too easily for Bob Hoskins or Anthony Hopkins.  But I am increasingly growing into my second citizenship.  I have a fondness for pastel coloured trousers.  And curry.

An article on Britain in a recent Sunday Times brought me to tears.  Am I allowed to say that?  I think I am.  I wish you could read it, but it’s behind Mr Murdoch’s paywall and I don’t want you giving him any more cash. (Wo-ho maybe you can see it.  On my machine it is here.)

However, what it says is that:
- we have a political system that works
- an open, fair and increasingly multi-cultural society
- an interest in knowledge over ideology
- a dynamic and interesting set of traditions
- and so on

All good.

Does it sound smug to say all that?  Do you worry that I’ll go all soft and start singing?

Well that’s the bit that increasingly feels more and more comfortable.  It’s a lack of cod-nationalism.  No jingoism.  It’s almost guile-less

Two weeks ago when a Briton won the Formula 1 race in Germany — beating a reigning German champion – he did the strangest things…

Guess what he did?

…600 years of historic antipathy between the countries…

And he complained that the British anthem wasn’t long enough to really enjoy the moment.  And so a quiet debate ensued.

I like that.

Good communications doesn’t draw attention to itself.  It isn’t brash or boastful.  It just does what it needs to do.

And sometimes has a good time doing it.

/df

SW LONDON — “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

That used to be my stock answer to things I didn’t understand. I thought of it as a knowing wink to the way that old people talk. But as my own age has been rising faster recently than East Coast temperatures, it has become less funny and more fact.

And there’s an issue with people in business staying relevant.  I take that bit seriously.  And there’s almost nothing that isn’t relevant.

So this week I set out to work my way entirely through my children’s Harry Potter film collection.  There are 7… plus one in the theatre.  If I can get through them all then I’ll go see number 7.5 in the cinema.

Why?

I’ve never been good at science fiction.  I couldn’t read JRR Tolkien or even CS Lewis.  I wish I could have, but no.

However, in Britain, H. Potter is not only a major export, it has employed all our great actors, boosted boarding school enrolments and driven tourists to run into walls at train stations.

That’s something that cannot be ignored.

Problem is I am three nights in and not yet finished Harry Potter 1.

It could be a long week.

/df

He is without a doubt one of the most interesting and amusing guys I have ever met. (And I’ve me a LOT of people.) And his candidacy in 2011 is inspirational.

He recently posted a note on Facebook early in the UK morning – so the middle of the Ontario night – to say he’d just come from his garage where he’d finished building his campaign secret weapon. “Stay tuned as it is unleashed at the Stratford Farmers Market on Saturday,” he promised.

And sure enough his “Truth Booth” showed up on Saturday as threatened.

Although it is state of the art, fully mobile and with wifi, Candidate Cowling did say “the truth is it is almost impossible to use a laptop in bright sunlight.”  Honesty from the outset.

I am filled with admiration for John’s conviction. And for his creativity and determination. I like the way he is unbowed.

And you’d have to be very unsympathetic not to recognise that the world has moved closer to John over time — rather than his having to bend to it.

I read a great line somewhere today that said: People will only criticise your leadership skills if you’ve managed to get yourself into a position of leadership in the first place.

And we know that getting into leadership roles in business and in public life actually means that you’ve had to be very good at working with others and building consensus… read ‘compromise’.

So whether it’s into the Canadian Parliament, or when running a local hardware chain store, you have to applaud people who can stick to their convictions and champion what they believe to be true consistently. Without wavering.

Canada would be a better place with John Cowling in Parliament.  When the people of Perth-Wellington vote for him in, his determination and conviction will finally be rewarded.

/df

TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD — Or so says Andy Gill in today’s Independent review of new records.

And what a week it is.  A new Elbow album.  A new REM one too.  And a third from Noah and The Whale.

All well reviewed.

Any one of those would be good enough to make a week for me… But three!

Change and retrospection are good themes this week as well.  Not only professionally, but at this time of year and at this point in our economic history.

They sound like they should be melancholy. But neither change nor retrospection need to be sad affairs.  I find the ideas (and the music) to be life affirming.

Change brings renewal.  And without change we all end up getting a bit stale, and life goes stale with it. 

And retrospection (which I don’t think is a word) is a sign of wisdom.  To my eyes anyway.  We often find that self-awareness is a difficult thing.  Looking back makes you more assured in moving forward.

Maybe that’s a sign of age.

/df

What do they keep in their fridges in the 1950s?  Seriously.

What is art?  Maria Schneider died this week.  Best known for The Last Tango in Paris which I saw at about age 14, and found quite disturbing.  She maintained that she was abused and — yes — raped as part of the film.  And yet film buffs still whisper about it’s ‘great art’ in smoky corridors.  Which is it?

There was an early website called Bert is Evil (now mirrored and RASC’ed) by a young American student in which he Photoshop’ed Bert (of Sesame Street fame)  into photos to prove that he is evil.  Protesters in the Arab world downloaded pictures of Bin Laden off the Internet to make posters… not realising that Bert was joining their protest.

He’s evil now.

/df

PICCADILLY — I sat, tired, with 300 other parents at a school information session about our 13-year-old daughters’ futures.  It was exhausting.  Not only because school administrators — as a species — don’t seem to be able to speak in public.  But because it was really just a parents de-programming session.

The main messages were:

• Don’t force your child to take subjects they don’t like
• Let them drop stuff if they’re rubbish

And then there were a few conflicting messages:

• What they decide now will not affect their future decisions
• If you want to get into X in the future, you’ll have to take Y

And it got me to thinking: What do you need to study to be successful these days? 

Not sure.

I remember my old communications team at Towers Perrin we had two ballerinas, a couple of journalists, some social workers, an actuary…

One of my favourite jobs was sorting beer bottles in a brewery.  I got paid to do that in 1988.  And then there was my brief tour as a receptionist.  I wasn’t very good at that.  But all were instrumental in getting me to where I am now…

I have a friend who is a very successful banker and he started his life as a traffic reporter for the Washington Post. A guy on my street works in corporate finance and got there directly (?) from the Royal Marines…

Obviously.

So I thought I would go over to our Change Management and Internal Communications LinkedIn group and ask the question: “How did you get into this business?”

And what I am really interested in is what odd path did you take…?

See you there.

/df

EDGWARE ROAD — As you know we suffer from SCS at Able and How sometimes.  Not often, but sometimes.  SCS? Seasonal Cool Syndrome — sometimes in the holiday seasons we fail to realise that we’re not that cool.

This is one such time.

I challenged my colleagues to tell me their albums of the year.  Only the genuinely cool Matt West responded (but he did so with far from detached speed.)

Here’s his list:

1.       The National – High Violet
2.       Foals – Total Life Forever
3.       Beach House – Teen Dream
4.       The Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
5.       The Black Keys - Brothers
6.       Warpaint – The Fool
7.       Caribou - Swim
8.       LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
9.       Gil Scott Heron – I’m New Here
10.   Vampire Weekend - Contra

Not bad.

(Actually I am impressed I have heard of 6 of them… and actually own… well, one…)

So here’s mine.  ‘In no particular order’:

1. The XX – The XX
2. Brandon Flowers – Flamingo
3. Noah and the Whale – The First Days of Spring
4. Steve Mason – Boys Outside
5. Lissie – Catch a Tiger
6. Vampire Weekend – Contra
7. I Am Kloot – Sky At Night
8. Peter Gabriel – Scratch my back
9. Egyptian Hip Hop – Some Reptiles Developed Wings
10. Diana Vickers – Under the Tainted Cherry Tree

Here’s your job:

• Write up the ones we missed below.
• Entertain Matt and I by voting for the best list. (You know we’ll both be at home voting for ourselves all night…)

Happy Christmas and enjoy your holidays.

/df

LONDON — I have been on a BBC topical-news show kick this year.  And earlier in the year I was watching a show called something like What the Arabs did for us…  It made the point that many, many interesting thing were created in times of conflict.

And there is an unassailable logic to that. 

If you look simply at what has been invented out of war– from rockets to field medicine — or what we are still using that came to us out of the space race — from teflon to water filters — then it is easy to see how conflict drives innovation.

So if it works in the world, why can it not work in a business setting?

Many, many businesses require constant innovation and new ideas to keep growing.  But they struggle to get them.  And to keep them coming.

There are two ways to look at this issue in the workplace:

1) How do we innovate and create new ideas without conflict? or
2) How do we encourage and manage conflict so that is works for us?

The first is the default position of most businesses.  Particularly big businesses.

However, it is the second one that really holds the greatest promise for making great leaps forward.

To get to the bottom of it, we need to look at how we can simulate or generate conflict in ways that helps us reach our goals… without undermining our ability to operate.  Or our ‘duty of care’ to our people.

There are ways.

What do you think?

/df

DISTRICT LINE — What ever happened to ‘new’?  Where is our sense of adventure?  Where are the new faces and voices of the future?

Here we are, 11 months into a new decade and we’re still talking about some of the least interesting characters of the 80s, 90s and Noughties.

George Bush has a book out.  Reviewed today it talks about dog poo and tries to re-cast him as an ordinary guy.  But quite apart from being US President, anyone who knows about W’s upbringing knows that he was never an ordinary guy.  Just very much filled with insecurity and doubt like all the rest of us.  And yet he had so much opportunity and so many advantages in life.

He may be one of the few people for whom being a two-term US President arguably wasn’t really living up to his potential.

Then there’s news of Michael Jackson and his amazingly growing immediate family.  Some parents, brother, sisters, nieces and nephews have profited from his 2009 heart failure, and some have not.  So now their is an unseemly dispute (and additional publicity) over the release of a ‘new’ album.  Tracks are out today.

New?  No.  Posthumous even.  (And it doesn’t even sound like him.)

And finally the Scottish superstar Susan Boyle has patched up her feud with former Velvet Underground front-man Lou Reed.  (Yes, you can rub your eyes, drink some coffee and read that again.) And Lou has directed her in the video for his song ‘Perfect Day’.

Really?

Really??

Surely the Teens (is that what we’re calling this decade?) has every right to have it’s own stars.  Where are the great actors, musicians, authors, politicians and business leaders of the Teens?

It feels like we’ve lost our mojo.  We are too stuck in the past to think about the future.

Where’s the excitement and optimist of a new age?

Anyone?

/df

LONDON — I am very pleased that this is National Novel Writing Month. It is, I think, just a ruse for a book publishing website. But for me, it’s working.

My 13-year-old daughter and I started yesterday morning. We get up early and tap away in the kitchen before the sun comes up. On day two she’s on target… churning out thousands of words a day.

Me… not so much.

But I am still at it. And I have published two books already so I am a bit smug.

“How many words have you got daddy?”

“825. You?”

“2,225.”

“Ah, yes, but mine are really *good* words.”

“Yea. Right.”

I look over her shoulder.

“In the first para, ‘bath’ is spelled with a capital B,” I offer helpfully.

“‘Never go back.’ We’re not meant to edit until the end,” she explains, and intuitively I know that I will never be allowed to look over her shoulder again.

So it takes me to thinking about why kids who text and Skype and talk utter rubbish (okay that’s my view) should still be interested in writing long form novels? And the answer is the same as texting, Skyping, Instant Messaging … or for that matter painting, dancing or playing football:

It’s a mode of self-expression, it’s something that we can pass on to others, it’s a longer commitment to communicating… and therefore something else that we people do that separates us from the occupants of the London Zoo.

Our business, Able and How, is a change management consultancy. Okay, it’s THE change management consultancy. We help people plan and communicate change. We work with words. We do it in video, online, face to face and on paper.

It’s exciting and it’s got great value. By writing, talking, planning and publishing we regularly save companies lots and lots of money.

Over time that’s not going to change. The way the words are consumed will. From Kindles to smart phones we’re just finding new and easier ways of reading more and more stuff.

How long has it been since you sat somewhere with nothing to read or do?  We’re reading now on the Tube, on the chair-lift… anywhere that you can find a few minutes.

Words are important and increasingly so.

/df