SOUTH KEN — The win seems easily in hand.  It will be more of a TKO than a real back-slapping, headline-grabbing, crowd-pleasing victory.  But that’s okay.

And then the player kind of clumsily sits down and then leans forward and back… and falls down.

Suddenly the game is not over yet.

I think I am describing an indescribably painful final 2 minutes of the SuperBowl this past Sunday.

But I could also be describing the twists and turns of the GOP presidential nomination process in the Land of the Free.

It’s not there that the comparisons end either:

• the vast amounts of money spent on the event consistently exceed its real entertainment value.
• the commercials are more fun than the live action.
• the most important players are not on the field.
• the strategists and power-brokers are in no shape themselves to play the game (physically or morally).
• really, really short bursts of activity are followed by endless replays, analysis… and more commercials.
• the average American sees the whole thing as an excuse to drink and eat more… and complain about everything.

Not bad.  As far as analogies go.

And when you think about how much American voters like a quarterback (Kennedy, Reagan) it starts to actually get quite frightening.

And how far is big business removed from this kind of pantomime?  To what extent are companies run as artifice, with rules that are too complicated, by actors who are standing in for the interests of others?

You can start to think of a compelling case, which institutional shareholders taking on a ‘strategists’ role, and unskilled middle managers stumbling around a field doing a job that is unclear to them.

But the comparison doesn’t hold up for long.  Not in most well-run or actively trading businesses anyway.

Executives and managers are still surprisingly powerful.  The decisions they make can have an immediate affect on the organisation.  The enterprise should — and most often does — show results and involve people in a genuinely consuming way.

In fact, if there is a complaint about the work that we do (as white collar workers in the industrialised world) it is that it is too all consuming and too fulfilling.  People complain about working too hard, getting stressed, not taking enough holiday, etc.  None of those behaviours are driven by real coercion.  

Business strategies are usually fairly coherent.  The implementation sometimes needs work.  But you’ll rarely find a business sitting down when the action starts.

/df

According to an ICM survey, few people now believe that top bosses should be paid more than £1m a year. The poll of 2,000 adults also found two-thirds wanted wider representation from staff on remuneration committees.

What can change management tell us about this regular business dilemma?

Firstly, no one should be surprised to find that it is an issue.  Plato was the first to propose executive salary caps, when he said that a community’s highest wage should not exceed five times its lowest. That was ancient Greece.

Secondly, a good plan and prep is required. How is remuneration calculated? Who is involved in the decision making process? Of course these questions need to be answered by taking into consideration different stakeholder needs and expectations.

Executive pay isn’t something that happens irregularly, it shouldn’t catch people by surprise. It should be trailed and communicated with context through a solid long term plan.

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

The question is, just how much of an impact will the austerity measures and hard hitting rhetoric outlined in the Autumn statement have on those UK employees lucky enough to stay in a job? The answer seems to be, significant.  In the public sector pay rises have been capped at 1% until 2015, in the private sector banks are being warned to cut bonuses and build up reserves in light of the eurozone crises and elsewhere, almost 50% of SMEs are cancelling the most sacred of employee events – the Christmas party.

This raises a thorny issue. In times of economic peril, just how committed are companies to keeping existing employees engaged? By removing both financial and non-financial incentives, either through headcount reduction, curbed compensation or the cancelling of employee events, businesses may be saving the pennies but potentially risking falling engagement and in turn productivity.

We think it’s crucial to mitigate against the risks of low employee engagement during times of austerity.  It doesn’t have to be flashy, but some recognition is crucial.

What do you think?

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