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

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

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

But is there really a difference between engagement and enablement? Is anyone out there using ‘enablement’ and if so, how do you implement it alongside engagement?

Do we really need to re-badge or re-brand our communication activities?  Shouldn’t we really just focus on whether there’s been a change in behaviour and that there have been good outcomes for the business?

Or maybe this is too simplistic….

BAHRAIN — This is my first time in Bahrain.  That leaves only really Oman in the area that I haven’t been to / worked in.

United Arab Emirates?
√ Check
Saudi Arabia?
√ Check
Kuwait?
√ Check
Qatar?
√ Check

It’s a part of the world that many people can’t (or choose not to) understand.

In the last three weeks I have flown over it 5 times.  Three of those times I have flown over Iraq.

Well, it’s on the way.

The other two times we diverted.  And flew over Syria instead.

But although areas of conflict may be the image and abiding sense that many people have of the Arab Gulf states, it’s not representative.  (No more than when I was a boy living in London and people always thought I’d be caught up in IRA bombs.)

‘The region’, as locals call it, is very diverse and very active in sport, culture and business.  The region is quietly taking on the world.

And that’s not a bad thing.

Change is good.  And planning and communicating change in this region is important.

The oil and natural gas revenues have allowed visionary leaders to invest heavily in construction and in businesses.  The foreign investment is well documented — both successes and failures.  What is less well documented is the local investment.  It’s immense.

And as a result the region is re-writing business laws.  Some of the smartest people working in business anywhere are working here.

It’s something to see.  Long may it last.

/df

AT HOME — I’ve been trying to figure out how I ended up with a four-digit dentist’s bill this month, without ever discussing even the procedure, let alone the fees.

And I can’t really make sense of it.

Similarly we have been working with a mid-level legal firm a few years and we keep getting bills through the door with what seems a very random assortment of numbers on them.  When we ask for ‘detail’ we can (twice so far in three years) get a long list of random adjectives and nouns:

 research
 meeting
 discussion
 teleconference
 draft

No time is listed against anything.  No context is provided.  Sometimes the bills don’t even have dates on them.

And we pay them!  I wonder why sometimes…

So let me tell you about how we — as a management consultancy — manage our ‘contracting’.

NO COSTS UNTIL AGREED

We will happily talk to you, meet with you, sometimes even work with you, before we even get to discussions about what kind of work you need, how we’d provide that… and what that would cost.

Those discussions are open and free.  As well as free-flowing.

Sometimes we’ll even tell you that we aren’t the right people to work with you.  Sometimes we’ll say that you need less support than you think.  The conversations are always interesting and we’d always encourage you to have them.

After we have discussed the problem we’ll start to talk about how we’d approach it.  At that point — and only once you’ve asked for it! — we would prepare a Statement of Work.  You would receive that.  Look at it, discuss it… and then hopefully sign it.

Only after all that… we’d start working and you’d start to incur costs.

EXPLANATION OF FEES

Like most consulting firms we charge on a ‘time and expense’ basis.  That means we bill hourly for work.

Some people find that hard to imagine.  So let’s put some parameters around even that to make it clearer. 

We set an estimate of how much the work will cost with you before we start.  (See Statement of Work!)  In that there is a single number that we have agreed.  Our work may come in below that but it cannot come in above it.  In other words, you will know the fees and your job is not to worry about each hour.  Fees shouldn’t really be a concern after we start.

…AND EXPENSES

Then there are the horror stories about expenses.  I’m not sure where they come from.  Probably from the rare occurrences when bankers or big accountancies spend too much at the bar.  Expenses should be part of the contract.  They are with us.  We work out the travel policy with you — if you want us to travel — and frankly, we often just take the Tube.  Expenses are not a big part of it.

What we like about consulting is the opportunity to make a real change and have a positive impact on our client businesses and our client’s careers.  Clearly we’re going to charge fees along the way.  But that shouldn’t keep people away.

If you have a question about it… please just call.

And if anyone is charging you like my dentist does (sorry George), just don’t put up with it.

/df

HYDE PARK CORNER — I had a run of texts from a politically obsessed British friend last week. “Have you heard the latest joke about Chris Christie?”

I hadn’t. In fact I hadn’t even heard of Chris Christie.  I was still catching up on the impossible rise and fall of Rick Perry (who I also hadn’t heard of a few months ago.)

So, yes, we’re talking about the US Presidential race.  And Mr Christie, as I have just started to find out, is the current Governor of New Jersey.  Furthermore, it seems that for a few hours last week he was also going to be “the next President of the United States.”

It’s not hard to see why he backed away, even after backing away before.

In many respects you could argue that business is much more forgiving than politics.  Corporate leaders don’t have to submit themselves and their families to the kind of attention and ridicule that politicians do.

However, on the other hand, leaders in business have to appeal to more demographics than politicians.  They have to be leaders of divisions, countries, hierarchies and Boards. 

Being religious might be a requirement for the US Presidency.  But it’s a detriment to a business career.  Leaders of industry need to be able to appeal to people of every background, so long as they can hold a job.

Similarly Presidential candidates have to submit to comments and sniping about everything from their weight to their daughters.  While business leaders may be able to keep their peccadilloes hidden, they also don’t have staff at their disposal to burnish their image.

As Chris Christie found out, leadership comes with it’s challenges that have little to do with the job.

Some days you have to wonder, who’d want to do it?

/df