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 — 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

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

CHELSEA — The problem with change is that you cannot always foresee what might happen next.  So you create an anticipated direction of travel and risks, issues, dependencies etc. along the way.

That’s how it’s done.  In a nutshell.

The problem with Britain’s big banks though is not that they don’t know what might happen next.  They do, but they’re determined to fight against it.

It is clear when you compare the banking systems of, say, Canada, what the problems of the UK and US systems were.  You can’t really argue it.

As the Chancellor George Osborne has said:

Take the financial sector out of the equation and economic growth in the rest of the economy during recovery has actually been above its average rate of the last two decades.

In fact, the Office of National Statistics says that Britain’s banks are responsible for 1/3 of our national fall in output since 2008.

That’s not really all that funny.

According to many of the banks the recovery is too unclear for action to be taken now.  However, for all the lack of clarity they see around the recovery, the implications of further regulation do seem clear to them.

And they know that that change wouldn’t be good.

Which, of course, is total rubbish.

Change is good.

When it comes to further regulation… and ring-fencing of retail banking, for example… there can really be little argument.

Let’s get on with managing the change.

/df

LATE IN LONDON — We like lists and in recent times this blog may have been harder on Internal Communicators than is deserved.

So here are a few things that you can do in a single day.  They will advance your case, secure your reputation and make your organisation more successful.

1. Create a six month plan on one page

Put the months across the top and down the left hand side write the business-wide, functional, geographic and any other grouping where activities are generated.  Put your channel publication schedule across the very bottom (if it will fit.)

2. Go and help a colleague communicate something

It doesn’t have to be the CEO or Board, or the Head of HR or Finance.  It can be Bill in Facilities.  Just make a friend and hone your skills on something that will give you no glory, but make Bill’s communication more successful.

3. Spike that human-interest story

You know the one about the lady in that office.  Which is far from here.  And she does that thing, that you can’t help being a bit patronising about.

Write instead about someone doing something vital and exciting that really is ambitious and takes the business forward.  It could even be that lady in that office, but you’ve gotta be impressed by it (and a bit in awe).

4. Get in front of the big change communications programmes

You know the thing that is rumoured?  Or announced but feared?  You may even be aware of it and a bit worried that you may be asked to help with it.  It’s big and not popular or not guaranteed success.

That’s the one.  It’s going to change the business, and like it or not, it’s your job to help make it work.  Go now and get in front of it.

5. Say “I know a really good change communications company.” And get some good advice

It doesn’t have to be us (although I’d rather if it was) but there are a unique combination of skills that you need.  You have to get the project sponsors to draw breath long enough to regroup and focus their planning and engagement.  You can do it.  You’ll learn in the process.

Thanks for listening.  I can go to sleep now.

/df

P.S. The lady up top is ‘leading the parade’.  Right.

ST ANDREW’S — The temperature drops about 3 degrees in 500 yards from the town down to the Old Course. And it’s not 26C like London.  It’s 9C.

The town is a buzz 10 days before the wedding of William and Kate, who met here.

Further to the south in town the old St Andrew’s Cathedral is filled with ancient tombstones.  Plaques built into the ground show you where the different parts of the giant church once stood.  Before an awe-inspiring storm blew it down.

It’s hard to see how many of the big companies we work for — Amex, GE, RBS – have a big role to play in daily life here.  I know they do.  But it’s a long way from the City of London or Wall Street.

As the magazines, newspapers and TV sofas prepare to talk about love, tradition and ceremony… it’s too easy to wonder why we toil in our cubes, behind flickering screen each day.

And maybe St Andrews is as good a place to ask that as any. It is well hidden here, but its roots and remains are far more entrenched than they are in Dearborn, Michigan, or Guangdong, China.

From the cathedral to the Old Course — one of seven courses run by the R&A — industry has driven and continues to drive this town too.  The pavements are lined with pear shaped retirees from around the world (but mostly America) who have come to blend-in to the history of golf and live the dream on the Road Hole in the freezing cold.  That experience may start at the Fairmont 5* resort and golf course on the road out of town.

In the middle the oldest university in Scotland is filled with students from around the world.  They drive another service industry in town.  And although, like everything else, the royal connections of St Andrews are dialed down, they are here to be seen… and sold and bought.

The wedding will undoubtedly be lovely.  We will watch.  Maybe from St James’ Park.  And no one will be less than enchanted.

And…

At the same time it is estimated that it will be a bigger boost to the UK economy than next year’s 17 day 2012 Olympics!

Tour companies, (real) estate agents, potters, broadcasters, churches, tea sellers, banks, hotels, petrol stations… etc all will have a good run.

The number of Hamley’s bags alone alighting at Parsons Green tube stop yesterday suggested that the selling season has already begun.

It’s not that far from what you do.

How do you connect up to it and make sense of it at your work?

/df

(P.S. Bunting and look-a-likey competitions are not the answer.)

KENSINGTON — There’s not much that is ‘commercial’ in my house.  Maybe a few dozen old newspapers with adverts in them.  A poster on a child’s wall that promotes a museum or a football team.  One doesn’t expect to be sold to at home.

However there is one exception: the cereal boxes.

We’ve got seven of them.  All different.  All placed at eye-level in front of the kids first thing in the morning.  All shouting something different.  They’re like little, print-based sirens.

And they work.

“Dad! What’s ‘riboflavin’?!”

“How come I’ve never been to Alton Towers!”

“Can we enter this contest?”

When I was a boy Shreddies used to have the most amazing-looking plastic toys at the bottom of the box.  They never quite flew, danced, floated like they did on TV… but what fun.

My cereal boxes were turned upside-down and by the time they were re-assembles they were missing panels and the internal bags hung out the side like… well like things you only usually see in med school.

And that’s why Internal Comms people are a bit like cereal boxes.  Not the medical school part.  The other bits.

Internal communicators have a privileged position in a business.  They are the only broadly condoned public organ. (Stay focused now.)  You are the one publisher allowed to clog up the airwaves, billboards and brainwaves of the busy occupants of the building.

Internal communications people only have a short time with people.  You can’t expect (nor should you aim) to distract people from their daily grind for more than a few minutes a day.

And that remains a privilege, not a right.  If you mess it up you’ll be banished like Cocopops and Frosties.

The contents of the box needs to be right.

Yesterday I heard for the first time in a long time about an organisation where the entire internal comms function had been shut down.

And why not?

Orange juice anyone?

/df

DULLES – I used to work for IATA.  It was one of my first corporate communications jobs.  And it was a great introduction to a complex industry.

I had grown up in airplanes, so why not see how they’re run?

And what a world it was.

Largely started by former military pilots out of the Second World War, the business was run with a suitable level of machismo and by people who often felt that they belonged to a special club — that few were deemed capable of joining.

Of course that was only partially true.  And things have changed.  Sort of.

In the Continental / United merger in the US a new business is being created that will have $30B in revenues and 83,000 ‘co-workers’.  They have big plans for new planes, new lounges and a new start in customer service.  But all that is pending to see if the merger works.  Or if it’ll just create the worst of both carriers.

Here’s what CEO Jeff Smisek says:

“The base of the culture — that is, how we treat each other as co-workers and how we treat our customers and how we communicate with each other and how we communicate with customers — that isn’t changing.”

And maybe that’s a bit of a hold-over of the old world-view of airlines.  The one that says it’s all about numbers and systems, and then you can let some other people look at things like service and culture.

Mr Smisek suggests that United Continental will look at culture apart from his ambitious plans to:

• Move the HQ to Chicago
• Deal with United’s labour issues
• Combine IT systems
• Bring two giant companies and their fleets together

Which seems like the wrong end of the stick to me.  Having done similar work with some of the biggest mergers and change projects of recent days, we can say with some conviction that ALL of those things are what culture is all about.

If the IT doesn’t work, the planes aren’t ready, the people won’t work and the leadership isn’t engaged and clear about their strategy… then you don’t have a culture at all.

Communications in the airlines business could do with an overhaul.  That’s true.  But communication for communication’s sake doesn’t affect the business hardly at all.

Focus on the business issues.  Make the changes.  Drive results.  And explain what people need to do to get there, and you’ll start to see results.  (And a new culture.)

Up, up and away…

/df

MY HOUSE — I’ve left the Sunday Times’ 100 Best Companies to Work For 2011 by the kitchen table.  Just so it stares at me over breakfast.

Once I used to read it with interest.  I’d look for companies I knew.  I’d see what I could learn from them.

I don’t do that so much anymore.

And I am not in the habit of going out of my way to point out the weaknesses in others.  (My granny said that’s not nice.)

Let me therefore ask a couple of questions about this annual supplement that purports to list the “best companies to work for in the UK”.

1. Who runs the survey and does the work for the supplement? [Hint: the company name is in the title of the survey.]

2. What kind of company is it? [Not-for-profit? Charitable? For profit?]

3. What other services do they offer?

4. How much does it cost to participate?

5. How many companies DO participate?

6. What are the criteria for success? [i.e. What does it take to make you a best company?]

7. Why are there so few repeats from year to year? [And additionally what do you do and how do you respond your company drops or fails to appear twice?]

There are more.  You may even have your own questions.

The issue is that the list of people and businesses offering “employee engagement” advice is long and diverse.  There are even some ‘quick fixes’ you can get.

Don’t always take it as read.  Ask some questions.

/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