MARYLEBONE — This year is a big year of change. In technology, in the world economy, the world of sport, even in the way all our countries are run.  There are elections in America, France, India…

What is more significant in a country than a change of government?

And that’s what is promised in India, Malaysia, Taiwan, Serbia,  Kuwait, El Salvador, The Gambia, Armenia, Algeria, Madagascar, Libya, Mongolia, Mexico, Cameroon, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Belarus, Ukraine, Ghana, Angola, Bhutan, Guinea, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Togo.

New presidents in Yemen, Senegal, Mali, Russia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Albania, France, Kenya, Turkey, the United States of America, Venezuela, Sierra Leone, Egypt, Kosovo and Zimbabwe.  Yes, Zimbabwe.

We know that the United States presidential election of 2012 is to be held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. It will be the 57th presidential election.  And it will get a lot of attention.

But how about the world’s largest democracy?

Yes.  That’s India.  How about that one?

Or the big red splotch above?  Russia.

That’s important too.

There are other changes coming too.  Some, we seem to know for sure:

• Gold prices will keep going up.  And hit $2,000 and ounce in 2012, they say.
• The Internet is going to change.  A new IP address protocol will mean that companies may start building two sites for a doubled up Internet — the old one, and the new one.
• We’ll all be talking about faster, slimmer smart phones and The Cloud.  If you don’t know about either, now is the time to do some research.
• Plus many more things you may want to share?

This time next year things will be very different.

I promise.

Businesses will fail.  Some will be dominant that you haven’t even heard of.  Yours will merge, divest, make a 90 degree turn, or implement similar significant changes.

So, what are you doing about it?

Well it is a topic that is quite dear to our hearts at Able and How.  We are launching our Able and How Change Index this year.  And our change management work the world over continues at a pace.

We will be keeping an eye on business, political and social trends this year.  And keeping you up to date with the Able and How Change List (look for it soon in our News section).

Change is good.

Get into it with us.

/df

P.S. And, by the way, NASA assures us that the world is not going to end.  After many years of fielding wild calls, they were forced to put up this website.

LONDON — It’s been hard not to think about Korea this week.  But I have different things on my mind.  Not the loss of a dictator.  Not the worry that still has South Korean’s practicing evacuations like WWII Britain and Cold War America.

I am thinking about Korea’s fertile business culture and the country’s uncanny ability to reinvent itself, rebuild and refocus just in time for tremendous success.

See if you can read this bit without stopping in your tracks:

• in 1961 South Korea ranked 117th in the world for arable land per capita (behind Saudi Arabia and Somalia)
• in the last 50 years Korea’s per-capita GDP has grown at 23,000 percent
• today the tiny country (smaller than Iceland) has the world’s 12th largest economy by purchasing power
• unemployment is 3.2 percent
• one of the world’s lowest rates of public debt
• 80% of the 49 million people live in urban areas
• Koreans are four times as likely to have high-speed internet access as Americans and they pay very little for it

A series of seemingly prescient government decisions have constantly shoved the economy in the right direction.  Even through the tough economic times in the late 90s and mid 2000s the countries has seemed to make the right choices.

Today they are pushing — against their own traditions — for more entrepreneurship.  And I wouldn’t bet against them.

In fact, I’d like to be there now. If the chaebols’ would give us a call? Samsung, LG, SK… we’d like a word.

/df

LONDON — We’re crashing into Christmas. Like everyone else.  Lurking in shop doorways on Dec 24th and thinking “I said I’d never do this again.”

It’s been an odd and uncomfortable week amongst men in the UK though.  The dominant pagan religion of football has seen people talking about “goodwill toward men”, but in reverse.

What qualifies as “lacking goodwill” and what is “just part of a highly emotional, competitive game”?

The answers aren’t making anyone happy.  Teams and players who have been found to have been racially abusing people have been met with police investigations and eight game suspensions.  If you haven’t read about it, I wouldn’t recommend it.

The coverage and fan comments does no one proud.

And ill-prepared TV pundits have weighed in about how much they like ‘coloured people’.  It’s just hard to watch.

None of the people involved have a history of covering themselves in glory.

So it comes back to a question of what we will tolerate in our society and what we won’t.  And although I have heard lots of people say “it’s much better than it was 20 years ago” and “it’s just a bit of fun… you get used to it”, you don’t and you shouldn’t.

In the next few days football fans and football players, reporters, columnists, politicians and you and I have a chance to show some goodwill toward men.  Let’s do it.

Peace on earth in 2012.

I’m in.

/df

MY HOUSE — I am off for Christmas.  Great place to be.  Catching up on sleep.  Meeting my kids again.  Fighting a cold.

And still word comes this weekend that a great character from my childhood has passed away.

The Rev James Leo was the Dean of the American Cathedral in Paris when I was a teenager.  His son Jason was a great mate.  Jason and I went to French high school together, went skiing, and got in trouble.

People talk blithely in business about great leaders and use examples that people want to identify with.  And most often they’ve nothing to do with business.  He was one of those guys.  Business’ loss, but the world’s gain.

Although I remember the 70s and 80s well, they do seem like a distant country now.  And people like Dean Leo lived lives that seem braver and more worthy than ours.  He was a lovely, fun and funny man.  His book of memoires can show you that.  But he was also a tough guy who looked out for others more than most of us would ever dream of.

He was one of a great cast of characters that my own lovely dad managed to associate with.  And just as my dad interviewed kings and tyrants, Jim Leo hosted Presidents, famously gave the last rites to Wallis Simpson and sat patiently while Olivia de Havilland read the lesson.  He spoke in a way that was funny, intelligent and engaging.  A way I have always wanted to speak.

A strength of character and humility shone through.

His Cathedral was an open and inviting place. “That one’s a spy…” my dad would say, as another ‘commercial attaché’ wandered around the coffee room.  And the Dean presided firmly over it all.  Pedro the caretaker never let us get into the communion wine, but when Paris offered us its own poisons the Dean would come out and get us, wedging my head in the electric window so I didn’t spoil his upholstery.

Thank you Jim Leo.  I will miss you.  And the world will be a lesser place without you.

/df

LONDON — I talked to an M&A banker on the weekend.  Made me think of my time at high school dances.  Always standing on the wall, trying to look cool.  But never out on the actual dance floor.

The merger and acquisition market is a bit quiet at the moment.  And amen to that.  We’re busy enough without it.  Businesses are — rightly — taking advantage of the quiet and their own peaceful progress, to transform their operations.

We’re working on big “transformation” programmes on several continents and in a diversity of sectors.  Change management is in high demand.  And that’s good.

But M&A will be back.  My friend should be up frugging, ‘cutting some rug’ and doing The Hustle by Q2 at the latest.

Transformation is the powder room before the ball.

That’s my prediction.

Watch this space.

/df

EARL’S COURT — Not sure how I missed this one.  But The Independent has been running a investigative series on lobbyists.  And they’ve chosen one of the biggest and most respected firms to ‘expose’.

In summary, some journalists pretended to be wealthy potential clients from a large foreign country and they recorded the communications professionals bragging about things they shouldn’t have been bragging about.

It’s pretty white-knuckle stuff.  It doesn’t look good in print.

But…

You can easily see where it comes from on both sides.

NEWSPAPERS – Have been the centre of attention from politicians and communications professionals for months over phone hacking and other unsavoury practices.  They probably feel betrayed.  Some columnists are already revelling in the chance to someone else “dirty” and “seedy”.

LOBBYISTS – See themselves as great facilitators, bringing people and politicians together.  And helping the democratic process. They are well paid and unregulated. But perform and important service.

The impact that journalists and a story like this can have can be frightening.  (Although few would argue that journalists themselves can coordinate and wielded it with any precision.)

Furthermore, yes, the lobbyists in question look pretty silly, and their contacts are knocking each other over to get out of their way.  And even Buckingham Palace has launched a stinging (oh!) rebuke.  But what business conversation wouldn’t look silly on paper?  Would the Boardroom and kitchen discussions of any average Briton not be surprising and alarming to many people who read them?

It makes me think of the amateur sting operations in secondary school that caught Harris admitting he’s stolen someone’s can of Coke.

SELF IMOLATION
However the real sport in this story may be elsewhere.

It’s interesting to see some of the Dons of the communication agency businesses lining up to betray each other.

It’s mild at the moment, questioning the accuracy of the other CEO.  Filing toothless complaints with gummy bodies.  Or suggesting that exaggeration is not healthy.  But some of these fellows are pretty tough.  The backroom brawls of the past — though generally unreported — are legendary.  When communication bosses take each other on, it can get messy.

I recommend standing back.  And maybe getting some popcorn.

/df

It was Christmas Jumpers Day today at Able and How.  Few looked like they were new.  Clearly the back of the closet is not as far away as it would appear.

Earlier this week, festive elves hung socks around our staircase with every employees’ names on them.  So far no surprises.

Happy holiday season.

/df

SOUTH KENSINGTON — There was a piece in the Independent yesterday about Sir Richard Branson’s “three point plan” to get the UK economy going.

Unfortunately the plan is completely pants.

I wish it weren’t, but it is.

Years ago, when I worked in politics a very worthy husband and wife team approached my cabinet ministers with suggested legislation: A Good Samaritan bill.  The bill was to recognise that restaurants, food stores and food services companies throw out masses of food everyday.  And yet many, many people didn’t have enough food to eat.  The only reason this happened — they said — was because you could be held liable if you gave people food that made them ill.

The Good Samaritan Bill would solve that “by absolving people of all legal responsibility for the food they made available…”

What?!

I was so surprised by how wrong that was that I couldn’t even talk to the proposers.

Today Sir Richard proposes a plan that would:
- make it much easier for businesses to hire and fire young people
- offer small entrepreneurs easier access to small amounts of money and
- reducing time spent at university

And I feel the same kind of confusion.  Why would it be better for businesses to be able to take on more people for shorter periods of time?

Do we believe in the fairness of our laws, or not?  Do we want to protect people from the pure business drivers of companies?  Or are we happy to have them bought and sold, hired and fired, compensated appropriately, or not?

The appeal for business is obvious.  Any business manager could see that.

But for young people?  It’s much harder to rationalise.  I have no doubt one can rationalise it… But should you?

The same unfortunately goes for micro-finance for entrepreneurs.

Yes, small businesses account for much of the job growth in the UK.  Yes, entrepreneurs (like Sir Richard… like me) help bring better competition and innovation to our economy.

But that does not mean that if we could convince more people to to try it we’d get even more jobs and more innovation.

Creating and sustaining a business is the single hardest thing I have ever done in my life.  Without exception.  I am still not sure that God really meant for me to be an entrepreneur.  But we did really do all our due diligence, never borrowed, worked like crazy, fought off dragons, made millions of mistakes and only just scarped through.

Often I think it’s something that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.  Why would we decide that more and more and more people should do it?  How many more open and closed restaurants do we need on our High Streets.

And less time in university.  Really?

There are answers to this economic crisis.  Or certainly things we can do to help fix it.  But I am far from convinced that these are they.

Give me better managers and better trained and supported entrepreneurs… better skills… any day.

But not this.

/df

PICADILLY CIRCUS — Looks like the sun might actually come up in London today.  That’s a relief.  And one of my biggest concerns.  Yesterday was dark and I can’t handle that.

So, how lucky am I?  That trivial issues like that concern me?

Yesterday umpteen decisions were made that affect all of our lives and futures.  Not just in London, New York and Beijing.  But in Rome and Athens.  In Geneva and Berlin and Paris.  And in Damascus and Doha. And…

Open the paper and have a look through.  There are an amazing amount of fundamental, big decisions being made by people in places all around the world.

Last Monday Chancellor Merkel said she thinks we’re in the biggest global crisis since 1945.

And she and a group of other diverse, independent leaders, are trying to make sense of the whole thing.  New leaders are being sworn in.  Senior financial gurus are being tapped up.

And big decisions are being made.

In recent years here in the UK a chorus goes up of people saying: easiest job in the world! Paid for nothing! Crooked! Useless!

And today they are doing more than any of us to save our collective backsides.  That’s what leadership is — and probably what we need.  It may even be more than we deserve.

/df

DOHA, QATAR — We’re working on four different ‘transformation programmes’ at the moment. Combined they are on three continents, in over 30 countries.

You would think that would provide some shocking contrasts.  But it does something quite different. It shows startling similarities.

Everything has superficial differences: language, geography, industry, structure…

Yes, those can seem superficial.

The issues in big business transformation generally fall into two buckets: human and process.

Human
When I worked in the airline industry we used to talk about “human factors in aviation”, and I thought that was very funny.  In that, without humans we would not need commercial aviation at all… so humans were a pretty key ingredient.

Transformations can be seen the same way.  Strategy teams and professional project managers can seem quite content to act as if humans are not involved.

And how many businesses exist without ‘human factors’?

Coordinating, informing, involving, managing, aligning, working with and working around humans is one of the hardest parts of any transformation.

Ask anyone with the scars of a big change programme, successful or not, and they’ll say communication and people are the two most under-appreciated areas.

Process
Businesses need a sense of direction.  Even restaurants must know what is important (filling tables) and what to do to try to fill more.

However most large businesses are more complex than that.  With function, regions, business units and many horizontal layers of people influencing or directing each others’ work.

To create and sustain a sense of direction you need processes.

There is no one set of words or no single way of talking to people.  You cannot expect a data specialist to need the same information as an assembly line worker.

In order to be clear on what you are saying, to create a core of content and to move and support the transformation you need to have a plan… several plans often… and many processes to follow to see that you are consistent, coordinated and coherent across all of your business.

And then you need to sustain that over time.

Easy. Right.

Same, same, not always different.

/df