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.

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

KINIGHTSBRIDGE — I had a nice bowl of pasta yesterday with one of the leading lights in our business.  A guy I have known for 5 years or so, and who has distinguished himself by sustaining and growing a global consulting footprint through the years.

And we complained.  Like two old men down at the park.

“Things have changed.”

“There’s not much value in writing magazines or designing intranets for people any more.”

“The business has moved on…”

But, unlike two guys approaching retirement, we were in agreement about the symptoms and the cure.

We are, after all, two guys who run successful consulting businesses.

Our issues are that there are still lots of people trying to write or design their way out of business issues.

We must implement a new ERP system?  Well, maybe a really good feature article will help with that!

The business needs to be more entrepreneurial?  Well, I’ve got a great graphic for that.

And that’s not what our clients need at the moment.  Yes, all communications have their place — even a Social Media Policy is not a waste of time… but it’s not going to transform the business any time soon either.

Your company needs to increase sales and reduce costs.  How are you helping with that?

Seriously.  How?

There are so many great things that communications people and change managers can do.  There are fewer and fewer excuses for doing less.

/df

DISTRICT LINE — What ever happened to ‘new’?  Where is our sense of adventure?  Where are the new faces and voices of the future?

Here we are, 11 months into a new decade and we’re still talking about some of the least interesting characters of the 80s, 90s and Noughties.

George Bush has a book out.  Reviewed today it talks about dog poo and tries to re-cast him as an ordinary guy.  But quite apart from being US President, anyone who knows about W’s upbringing knows that he was never an ordinary guy.  Just very much filled with insecurity and doubt like all the rest of us.  And yet he had so much opportunity and so many advantages in life.

He may be one of the few people for whom being a two-term US President arguably wasn’t really living up to his potential.

Then there’s news of Michael Jackson and his amazingly growing immediate family.  Some parents, brother, sisters, nieces and nephews have profited from his 2009 heart failure, and some have not.  So now their is an unseemly dispute (and additional publicity) over the release of a ‘new’ album.  Tracks are out today.

New?  No.  Posthumous even.  (And it doesn’t even sound like him.)

And finally the Scottish superstar Susan Boyle has patched up her feud with former Velvet Underground front-man Lou Reed.  (Yes, you can rub your eyes, drink some coffee and read that again.) And Lou has directed her in the video for his song ‘Perfect Day’.

Really?

Really??

Surely the Teens (is that what we’re calling this decade?) has every right to have it’s own stars.  Where are the great actors, musicians, authors, politicians and business leaders of the Teens?

It feels like we’ve lost our mojo.  We are too stuck in the past to think about the future.

Where’s the excitement and optimist of a new age?

Anyone?

/df

PICCADILLY CIRCUS — There’s a nicely dressed lady sitting in front of me on the bus – hair done, Dolce glasses.  And she keeps falling asleep.  It’s 7:50 am.  And she’s on her way to work like the rest of us.

I am nervous for her neck, which keeps snapping.  We don’t have the natural dexterity of a Pez dispenser.

I have the bad luck of often getting mini-cab drivers who fall asleep while driving.  I once shared a car across France with a business friend, and his driver fell asleep at the wheel on the autoroute. (We were stopped in traffic.)

But what is it about this modern world that causes people to constantly be exhausted.  Even my 7-year-old wakes up looking like he’s spent a night on the tiles.

There’s got to be a better way to live.

/df

LONDON — There’s a great report out now from my old mates at Towers Watson. It’s called the Global Worksforce Survey. They do it every year, and it has lots of interesting stuff in it.

[Although don't be fooled into trying to order it from here -- you'll get a three year old one.]

The major news headline seems to be that the recession has changed the way we see work. In particular, more than half of us want to work for one company for our whole life.

The irony is not completely lost on me, that the old Towers Perrin is announcing the end of the ‘job for life’, when they made my stay with them abruptly shorter about seven years ago.

They were a very good employer, and one I thought I would stay at for life — when I was doing any thinking.

Max Cauldwell, speaking for Towers Watson, explains that ‘the deal’ is now truly broken. The Deal is the concept that you offer something to the business (your time, intelligence, etc.) and in return, they give you something back (pay, safety, etc.). Towers, Mercer, Aon, and Hewitt, as well as all the other Human Resources consultancies, have been selling consulting on The Deal for about 30 years. So that must be bad news for them.

But truthfully the deal has been broken for a long, long time. Probably almost 30 years.

It’s not that employees don’t go into work every day hoping to be treated well and to have their long-term interests taking into account. It’s just that no one really expects it anymore.

You might argue that it is a sad statement that that has happened. And in places like France, as the state influence breaks down and jobs-for-life become harder to come by, they are seeing social unrest — with boss-napping.

‘Give me my job back, or the boss gets it!’

But it’s true. None of us can reasonably expect to have a job for life. And there’s quite a lot we can do about it:

• Manage our pensions better.
• Choose our companies for the work, the experience and the opportunities — not ‘nice people’.
• Demand more on your end of the deal.
• And so on…

What is most remarkable about the end of the job-for-life is that so few people and businesses have adjusted their style, processes and communications to take it into account.

After all, the job of Queen and Pope are both taken.

/df

DISTRICT LINE — I love the way that the mainstream of public discourse can so easily reject different approaches as silly. I didn’t see the show on John Lewis last Wednesday — Inside John Lewis. A friend of mine did though. And he says they were painted as a bunch of numpties. And a bunch of numpties who don’t know how they’ve got so lucky. Which is ridiculous, obviously.

It is, right!?

You’re not so sure?

One of the great charms of Great Britain is the complexity of its history and the variety of narratives that can emerge. In this century, so far, we are all committed to the Dickens narrative:

• We used to work in coal mines, our bosses were mean and nasty, but the world was worse,
• Then the benevolence of man created commercial enterprise — overseen by faceless gods in expensive shoes — who made everything right.

It’s a capitalist fairy tale that insists that the Corporation is what built Britain (and therefore the world).

But the truth is far less clean and consistent. Companies like JLP and Cadbury and The Co-op did it very differently. Their approach to business was closer to socialist than to our capitalist democracy. And they succeeded.

We read in Fast Company and other coffee-table management magazines that ABC Co offers free dog washing to employees who show up on a Sunday, or all you can drink from the booze cart on a Friday afternoon. But when compared to the approach of a John Lewis Partnership or a Co-op that is as parsimonious and fatuous as could be.

Maybe John Lewis are not numpties. Maybe they’ll still be here when the rest of us have folded up our tents. Maybe we can learn something from them.

/df

FULHAM ROAD — It’s official. For me anyway. I have come to the conclusion that the market has changed. I recognise that it may only be temporary, but it feels longer-term than that.

Where once businesses were interested in concepts and ideas… most now are being far more practical. “I want you to do something that I could do, but I don’t have time,” a friend explained last week.

We talked to one of the world’s biggest diversified businesses last week and they said that they have reinstated pay-rises. They have put even more money into the spot bonus pool… but they have told everyone to reduce spending in Q1. And they’ve set the sales-force higher targets.

And maybe that’s why we’re working more and more with Human Resources. The recession and the re-alignment that has been happening in industry has changed things. Companies are investing in system changes. Not people changes. They are looking at practical, actual, factual changes. The theory — engagement, social media, employee brand, etc. etc. — are all being eclipsed by more tangible things.

HR helped make businesses more efficient in 2009. With some every simple (and often brutal) work. So they now have some of their bigger projects back on the boil. As a result there is more consulting work to be had in changing, fixing and even developing new systems for businesses.

This isn’t about ‘wellness programmes’ or learning accounts, or even total reward statements. It’s about managing people more efficiently: setting better targets, planning for your future workforce, training people to be more efficient faster.

The motto might be right out of Jerry Maguire: Show me the money! But it’s a different goal now: Show me how much we can save by doing this…

Fortunately, we’re still able to do that. But it doesn’t half take a change in mindset.

/df

KITCHEN TABLE — We humans, and the organisations we work in, can be a miserable lot.

According to many people (me included, most days) 2009 was the year of fear. From start to finish we pulled the duvet over our head each morning and said “oh, no”.

But let’s look a little closer.

Copenhagen

We set it up and then we agreed how awful it was. But was it?

The biggest nations of the earth agreed to do something. They of the biggest populations and biggest polluters. It felt like a meeting out of a comic book or a sci-fi movie. “World leaders come together to save planet”. And in the absence of Superman (or Will Smith) they did okay. It’s not over. It’s only just begun.

Swine Flu

Try living with a microbiologist when a pandemic is announced. We all know (now) that pandemics are part of our future. And H1N1 was a dress rehearsal. I was swabbed in Malaysia, hassled in Dubai, scared in Canada, oblivious in the US and generally buffeted by waves of tabloid fear in London.

It’s always better on the night when the dress rehearsal goes badly.

And we learned a LOT this time. Generations that haven’t known global issues got a taste. And we’ll be better for it.

Recession

I am old enough to remember queues at the gas pumps in the 1970s, 20%+ interest rates in the 80s. I come from a country (Canada) where people put more money away for retirement than almost any other nation on earth.

They announced today that Britons started saving move than they ever had this summer. And maybe it’s about time.

I know this recession has been bad. I know that many of the human stories have yet to be told. But we have not seen the images we remember from the late 70s in the UK, let alone the grainy pictures of the Great Depression.

Everyone who stayed awake in the first week of economics course knows that you can’t have constant growth. Some of us forgot that.

Able and How

Readers may be following the fortunes of this consultancy too. And you’ll know that we’re a classic example of how not to start a business. Launched in recession. Blown around by ill winds.

We have persisted. And we have survived. We have worked with 15 of the best organisations around. Companies like GE, Pfizer, Santander, Rio Tinto, BAT and more. And we’ve done what we have always done: put our faith in people.

Employees, employers, clients, colleagues, teachers, investors. They’ve all come through for us.

We’re not going to insist on living 2009 over again. But we haven’t stopped counting our blessings either.

Enjoy your holiday.

We’ll look forward to working with you next year.

/df