HYDE PARK — Listen up. Especially if you’re new to consulting, or if you travel a lot on business.

A fellow called Tom Aiken (not the cook) taught me this important life lesson in a restaurant by the river in Philadephia… about 15 years ago.

I have always remembered.

“My wife and I have an agreement,” he said.  “When I am travelling on business and we talk on the phone, I am always ‘in my hotel room having a tuna fish sandwich’.”

“It’s just easier that way.”

With Skywalker-like devotion I have stuck to Tom’s rule.  Through three children and umpteen thousands of miles of travel it has always stood me in good stead.

Imagine the conversation otherwise:

You: “Baby?! You there?! Can you hear me?! Sorry about the noise!  You wouldn’t believe it… I’m, like, in the back of this big stretch limo, we’re going through Times Square… We just had this amazing meal… Robert De Niro was sitting beside us… and…. and in my hotel room, I’ve got a free loofa… it’s amazing!”

“Yea, yea. What’s up with you?”

“You’re… What?  Sorry?  You’re… standing in a flooded basement changing a nappy in the dark?”

“Oh.”

“How’s that going?”

Tuna fish.  Brown bread.  Nothing on the TV.

Trust me.

/df

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

LONDON — I am still a bit disturbed by an interview I read while on holiday. I have no idea why, while off the grid for a fortnight, I managed to read Lucy Kellaway’s interview with Roland Rudd. But I did.

Have a quick read of it and then come back.

Let me start by saying that I have no agenda with either. Lucy Kellaway will never report on my business.  I have seen her speak once, but never met her.  Rudd is in a parallel business to mine, and although I have met him once, I will never be invited to dinner at his, and for many reasons out companies are guaranteed never to work together.

There is no doubt in my mind that Public Relations (PR) is a dark art.  To many it seems like a job that isn’t really a job.  Even if the PRCA Training manual just landed on my desk and has 55 pages of courses.  Many people feel that PR people sell influence and that influence is hard to measure.

Again, I don’t want to argue that point.  What I am interested in is the way in which Mr Rudd is fairly ruthlessly dispatched.  He’s been “making a handsome living” advising CEOs.  It’s all about people “having their egos tickled”.

It’s not a wholly abusive article.  But it’s not exactly like other profiles in the FT either.  It’s gossipy, dismissive and not particularly fun in the process.  There is something about it that is quite dark.

And I wonder if the uncomfortable relationship between journalists and business has something to do with it?  Why is it for example that these two people in the story, who started their careers together, can have had such different lives as a result?

What I wonder is would a film producer, or a Royal Academician, or a computer company owner have received the same treatment…?

/df

WEST LONDON — There’s a hording around the big, refurbished church at Hammersmith flyover that says TRANSFORMATIONSPACE.  The hordings in the photo above are at the base of the new Shard of Glass building at London Bridge.

What are they on about?

The words ‘change’ and ‘transformation’ are starting to gain some currency in business circles these days.  Many, many large companies are going through Transformation programmes.  And ‘change management’ is a skill or capability that most industries are finding they need.

Transformation has perhaps just become a watch word for the speed and frequency with which big businesses have had to adapt.

Times change and businesses must too.

Today, of course, pressures are changing daily.  So you must as well.

What is amazing to watch about the business change programmes we are working on — and they include some of the biggest ones happening now — is that they are no less ambitious or transformative than London’s tallest skyscraper, or Hammersmith’s church under the highway.

That is: What was there before is totally transformed.

When you think about the complexities of business that’s an amazing thing: across divisions, functions, offices, regions, through the management line… affecting customers, suppliers, employees and plenty of other stakeholders.

Change can happen in big, complicated organisations.  they can be transformed.  But it is no easy task. 

And without proper change management and the engagement of key audiences it just won’t work.

That has been shown over and over again.

/df

GREAT PORTLAND STREET - Not far from our offices is the Chinese Embassy in the UK.  Across the street there’s a booth set up and someone practising Falun Gong 24 hours a day. Falun Gong (which just looks like aerobics to you and me) is illegal in China.

It’s undoubted that they are annoying the Embassy by doing this. And drawing attention to themselves in a peculiar way — though one that Jane Fonda would approve of.

This is a very subtle, but effective, way of drawing attention to yourself.  It’s probably not for us.

How to draw attention to yourself is a question we face in professional services. We want to share our ideas and expertise with people.  But we can’t take out ads, or stage protests or stunts.

And this week we have a film to promote. We think Social Media @ Work is a very interesting online event.  We like the idea of putting experts and interesting people infront of a camera to debate.  And then broadcasting that in a form that is engaging and interesting.

We want you to see it.

So how do we do that?

/df

BROOK GREEN — It might seem obvious what the case for change is, with revolutions rolling across north Africa and the Middle East.  Self-immolation seems a good reason. 

Desperation and people fed up with the status quo is driving daily headlines in the month of February 2011.  And that is crisis-driven change.

Real, genuine, people-dying-in-the-street change.

That’s compelling.

But it doesn’t happen in business that often.

Then there is business change that is more like a wake-up call.  Thanks, in part, to the uncomfortable, protracted analogy of newbie, Canadian Nokia head Stephen Elop, we are more and more familiar with the idea of a ‘burning platform’.  Businesses often have a burning platform for change.

But we still struggle too often to convince our stakeholders of the need for a more consistent, and persistent, on-going change management.  The kind that supports regular change and also insures you against the need for regular wake-up calls.

Why is that?  We didn’t need to do this so much in the past.  What is different?

CASE 1: We don’t make stuff any more. 

In the western world we are making less and less.  And even where we are we are having to focus more on the people than the production.  So LEAN systems and TQM were built for processes and people are more difficult than that.

CASE 2:  Markets move faster than ever.

Organisations can’t afford to wait for people to adapt.  Customers can be gone from one minute to the next.  Our biggest companies provide services and/or rely on relationships that are constantly under pressure.  If you miss a beat, the music stops.

CASE 3: People are less efficient than machines.

…But inherently more useful.  However you cannot easily turn them up and down.  Or remove steps in the cycle to save time and money.  People are rational and therefore harder to rationalise.  They need to be ‘managed’ rather than recalibrate.

CASE 4: People leave.

You can open almost any annual report and find two key pieces of information: 1) The CEO letter that says “people are our most important asset” and 2) the financial information that shows a massive budget line for ‘people costs’.  Unfortunately this seems to mean VERY LITTLE to most businesses.  Hanging on to your people is an art.  And it’s done by managers who can handle change.

CASE 5: Delivering your strategy.

You can choose your own favourite statistic about the dismal success rates that businesses have with change and strategy delivery.  We believe that most strategies are good strategies.  They just go undelivered.  Because no one knows how to make the change. 

Some professions are disappearing.  Some are changing dramatically.  But few are rising as fast and with such determination and importance as ‘change management’.

Bring it on.

/df

Avram Grant is becoming superstitious

Board backs Houllier to ‘change culture’
says my paper this morning.  Suggesting the French football managers responsible for the rapidly sinking team Aston Villa might fix some unnamed ills that were made evident over the summer.  Culture change, eh?  We do that.

Grant pushed faith in lucky Hammers scarf
says the piece beside it.  So the Israeli manager of West Ham football team has chosen a less complicated route to glory. How many businesses do this? ‘CEO to keep wearing lucky shoes.’

Love of ‘Brigadoon’ inspires Vegas tycoon to leave fortune to Scotland
is about an eccentric man from Vegas with a vaguely Scottish name who has killed himself and left his fortune to the National Trust for Scotland.  He’s never been there, but loved the film Brigadoon.  His best mate who got his dog and vet bills, but no cash, was unimpressed.

Buying BP or backing EasyJet
are both business stories that are being written like page turning novels. We have worked with execs at both. Stories of their success are far more exciting that the ones of failure the press are looking for.

Unfortunately, success, like big dreams, dirty scarves and culture change, happens slowly over time… more suited to the book than the headline or tweet.

/df

Might As Well Go For a Soda

• You can listed to your local radio half-way around the world. On the 14 bus even. And I now think I may finally know why some Canadian rock and roll never found a larger audience. April Wine? Tom Cochrane?  Kim Mitchell? Yea.

Google Translate Won’t Do

• Speaking other languages is still important. But business is business. I worked in another language this year for the first time in… 10 years? And it was great. But our recommendations and processes were largely unchanged because of it.

Your Eyes Will Go Square

• Small screens are in. This year everyone was staring at one. From small kids playing games to grown-ups reading books. No one will tolerate ignorance anymore — we feel we must know who the 4th string actor is in this TV show and why we recognise them. (Knowledge?  Well that’s still in short supply.)

Men in Plaid

• Golf can be exciting. When the Ryder Cup went to an extra day, the Welsh golf course hosting the match was still packed and the TV cameras returned. Maybe golf isn’t just something middle aged men watch to avoid household chores.

Like Sand Through The Hourglass

• Business cycles are unavoidable. And as you get older they get more violent. I’ve already heard people talk about the “crash of 2008“. But is it history already? It still feels real. And the crash of 2001-02? I think I missed it…

The  Revolution has been Postponed

• The Social Media revolution has been downgraded.  Maybe it’s just a “skirmish in a coffee shop”.  Yes, more and more people are using Facebook.  BBM and Skype are powerful enough that edgy governments are taking a second look.  But it’s not replaced email, phone calls, actual human contact…  There are people who use it every day, but they’re fewer and more radical than last week.

Change is Good

• It’s been a good year for Able and How.  Lots of changes.  New offices, plenty of new employees.  Some brilliant new clients (who ever dreamed of a client in Fort Lauderdale?  Really?)  And another year where helping people through change was not only good business to be in, but one where it was rewarding work to do.  Not everyone can say that.

So, thanks 2010.  We will not forget you.

/df

P.S. On that Canadian rockers bit: maybe it was the hair?

I had to spend most of the past week reminding myself how ‘change management’ becomes « la conduite du changement » but, by and large, I think I got away with it.

I have spent many years of my life in France, and many more working and living in French. But I am still an outsider: « Vous ne comprenez-pas comment ca marche ici, » I am often told.

And I am sure I do not. It would be very condescending for me to think otherwise.

However, like most other places that I work, France is in the midst of steady, unstoppable change. The workplace is not what it once was. The old pressures have been replaced by new ones. And the way we have always done things is slowly being supplanted by another, unique way of doing things.

Change management and internal communications are just as important in France as they are in Florida or the Philippines. They manifest themselves slightly differently. They face variant challenges along the way. And they essentially are core skills that businesses cannot do without.

To say otherwise it to tilt at windmills.

Vive la différence.

Plus ca change…

And all that.

/df