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

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

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

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

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

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

LONDON — Last night’s black-tie film premiere was a great chance to catch up with some people in the business.  There were too many people to talk to properly, unfortunately.  But some conversations I’ve been mulling over in my sleep.

Quite a few senior people working in communications at the moment are in distress.

I’m not saying it’s a pandemic.  It might just be that I know quite a lot of people, and only a few are talking about it.  But some very senior people in big businesses are struggling.

Here are my top ten signs that your communication job is going horribly wrong.

1. You’re stopping more stuff than you’re starting.

2. People who bring you new ideas are irritating you.

3. You want to know about every decision that is being made on your watch.

4. You’re starting to believe that saying nothing is working.

5. Lunchtime is ideally spent with the guy from HR… or Sales.

6. You miss the days when people believed what you told them.

7. You’ve stopped hiring the best person for the job – they rarely work out.

8. You notice the CEO and Board are much busier than they used to be.

9. Your boss has said that your job is safe.

10. You’re a little worried about your boss’ job.

Hopefully no one looks at that list and thinks we’re making light of a bad situation.  It’s more a reality of modern business.

You could substitute HR / Marketing / Sales director for many of the above.

All is not lost though.  Many Communications professionals just need to get their mojo back.  Sometimes… just sometimes… that’s in a different role.

However, companies and people who let that happen break our hearts.  Because it doesn’t have to be that way.

/df

LONDON — Last night there was an interesting recounting of a discussion in a television interview.  It went roughly like this:

“I asked him about his son and started to imply differences and he stopped me and he said…  
‘Ah, yes, but he is a romantic.  And I am a pragmatist. 
Sometimes romantics think that pragmatists are unfeeling.’ “

The exchange was between an interviewer and the 90 year-old Duke of Edinburgh.  His son, of course, is the much maligned Prince of Wales.  (UK residents can see it here.)

It is a single line, in an hour long show, that sticks with you.  It explains a relationship of 60 years between father and son.  It shows how people who work together day-in and day-out can start to think and act alike.  It also shows how some relationships can never overcome basic perceived differences.

Today the Financial Times published a headline that I suspect will look silly in a few years time (see above).  They talk about Directors of the International Monetary Fund from Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) who have worked together in a “rare example” of cooperation and coordination.

Who is to say that they cannot and should not work together?  Yes, it might seem incongruous in a world with a Dr Strangelove view of international relations.  But it’s not unreasonable.  In fact, it seems obvious.  These countries should actually be running the world.  And before long they probably will.  Why not work together?

We often see style, language and culture as a barrier to cooperation.  That’s not really the case.  You can never expect two people — even who share the same genes and history — to agree on everything.  No two people share a brain. 

However, circumstances and objectives push people together and language, culture and style are no barrier to good work coming from their joint efforts.

/df

FITZROVIA – Batman Syndrome* is when you have achieved all sorts of fame and fortune, and regular life holds no challenges, so you start to do anti-social, dangerous things.

In the case of Bruce Wayne it’s putting you knickers outside you tights and fighting crime.

In the cases of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn it’s something else.

I don’t know if this is a real syndrome. I haven’t done the socio-psycho research to prove it. But it certainly helps explain a lot.

Both the head of the IMF and the former Governor of California had form.  They were known to have gotten into trouble before.  But they escaped censure. So it escalated.

And the point of interest for us mortals is to look out for when it might start to exhibit itself in the work place.

I can see, for example, shades of it what I call “first time as a Prefect” management style. This is when people get drunk on their new found responsibilities and start using their power in weird and unhelpful ways.

In the case of these two major political figures that’s quite an understatement.

Calling people on their bad behaviour has been a feature of politics forever.

It is starting to happen with journalists and CEOs too.

But it’s not yet common in most offices and workplaces.

Don’t think it’s not coming though.

The cape and tights didn’t help DSK and Arnie.  They shouldn’t help people in business either.

/df

* Not to be confused with this Batman Syndrome which is described as the inability to move one’s head without moving your whole torso.  Although…