Hopes and Fears 2012

Firstly, may I thank all of you that have been reading the Rock’n'Roll Business Blog through 2011.  We have had a whopping 14 000 views since it started in earnest in June last year.

In terms of 2012, if we are to turn the UK plc round, its going to take every bit of adaptation, learning and innovation.  You may care to reflect on some of the more popular posts of 2011 - Lady Gaga and adaptive strategy, Deep Purple, improvisation and innovation, The Beatles on creativity, Prince on excellence, Britney Spears on becoming a learning society, Hendrix v Clapton on innovation and Personal mastery in business and music – lessons from Jeff Beck, Les Paul and Bill Nelson.

So, what does 2012 hold in store for us?   Well, here’s some views taken in the course of my travels recently, with the themes linked to pop and rock songs of course!

There is power in a union?

2011 was marked by a resurgence of industrial relations unrest in the UK.  However, the recent public sector strikes was marked not by braziers, banners and protest songs, but by the best shopping day in 2011, as retail sales soared.  I saw people leaving local government picket lines to go to Costa Coffee at 10 am.  Is shopping for Ugg boots and flat screen TV’s the hallmark of the new rebellion?

Can we look forward to more industrial unrest?   From talking with people in local government, it seems that there is still plenty of scope for downsizing and it also appears that quite a few people are basically happy with their pension, so it appears that the current industrial unrest may not develop.  When I talk to my self-employed friends, there appears to be little sympathy with the strikes – as one remarked “Pension, what pension?”  One thing is for sure, in an age of unrest we can expect more performances by proto punk protest singer Billy Bragg:

What’s new pussycat?

During 2011 I met Evan Davis of BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills.  During our conversations we touched on the vexed question of what we should do to rebuild Britain.  There are no easy answers here and a debate has since been raging on Linkedin over this issue.  There seems to be broad agreement that the UK plc desperately needs more innovation, especially the type that can be exported and that which builds out of our strengths in ways that are hard to copy or appropriate.  At the same time the service sector needs to shrink, whether this is through a smaller public service component to the economy or in service industries that merely consume wealth at a local level – for example tanning rooms and burger bars.  The change is going to be hard to swallow for some.  Doing more of the same will not do, we need to do things differently.  Musically, it’s more a case of ‘What’s new pussycat’ rather than ‘Do the standing still’.

We’ve got a meeting with the Department of Business Innovation and Skills to explore some of the ramifications of the UK’s innovation needs coming up.   More on innovation coming up in future posts.

What are your hopes and fears for 2012?  Post a comment on this blog.

Guitar Gods: Hendrix vs. Clapton : Innovators vs. adaptors

R U Experienced ? By Craig Swanson © www.perspicuity.com

Jimi Hendrix is still considered to be one of the greatest guitar players in the world, more than 40 years after his premature death at the same age as Amy Winehouse.  Plenty of guitarists have surpassed Hendrix in sheer technical dexterity, but most people point towards Hendrix’s ‘attitude’ towards the instrument as the source of his genius rather than his technical skill per se.  In my own case, my life was never the same after I saved up the money to buy a copy of his hit single ‘Purple Haze’, which I still own.  We even staged a re-enactment of Hendrix’s famous guitar burning stunt at a University in Cambridge with a bunch of MBA students some years back.  Here’s the record and the result of the spontaneous combustion of my Fender guitar:

Purple Haze - original Track label single

IBM burnt my guitar ....

Check out the real deal from Hendrix’s 1967 performance of ‘Wild Thing’ at Monterey:

Jimi Hendrix is an archetype of what psychologist Professor Michael Kirton would call an innovator, someone who fused together musical ideas to come up with something totally novel.  Jimi Hendrix fused the blues with soul, funk, hard rock and psychedelia in a heady cocktail, whereas many musicians stay within a musical genre.   In doing so, it could be said that he lost some of his audience in the process, if you were to take a very critical view of his work.   See also my post on Prince in this respect.

So what about Eric Clapton then?  Let’s take a look at some of Clapton’s classic work in the form of some blues mastery with Buddy Guy:

Generally speaking, Eric Clapton has stayed within the blues genre, (with the exception of a few ballads for the ladies ) sticking closer to this genre and consequentially bringing it to a wider audience.  This is the behaviour of what Professor Kirton calls an adaptor.  In business, adaptors often have greater success than innovators, as they tend to produce ideas that are less challenging and which are recognised by consumers in the marketplace as being a logical build on existing ideas.  It’s the new saying “familiarity breeds repeat purchases”.

Often we need both innovators and adaptors to produce sustainable innovations.  The innovators to produce the hard to copy ideas and the adaptors to help bring the ideas into a practical market focus.

In business, examples of innovators include Sir Clive Sinclair, Sir Trevor Baylis and James Dyson whose innovations have not always been in tune with market desire, for example Dyson’s early attempts to redesign the wheelbarrow:

James Dyson's Ballbarrow

Archetypal adaptors would include Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and possibly Sir Richard Branson, who have succeeded by taking relatively low risks with product and service innovation.

Finally, let’s hear another musical boundary crosser / innovator talking about Hendrix, none other than Jeff Beck:

To read about others who have been greatly influenced by Jimi Hendrix, see my post on my night in a pub with Bernie Torme, lead guitarist extraordinaire for Ozzy Osbourne, Ian Gillan and Twisted Sister.  Also the music genius Bill Nelson, who has innovated continuously for 40 years in music, whilst shunning the music industry circus.

Got the business blues (again) – Motivation, HR, job design unplugged

A while back, I explored the business blues in a light-hearted fashion.  I was surprised and delighted at the reaction to this in my personal e-mails.  It seems that somehow, I struck a chord (or perhaps three - musical in-joke for the blues players out there !   ).  I was told that a number of major companies have used music in a cathartic way to ‘purge their business demons’, by ‘getting it all out in their blues’.  Take a listen to this clip from BBC Radio 4’s Flagship ‘Today’ Programme.  Even John Humphries succumbed to my post in The Financial Times on the credit crunch blues:

To be more serious for a moment, here are some causes of ‘The Business Blues’ with antidotes.  For more like this, sign up to the blog or contact me via the website and I will send you a FREE copy of the forthcoming book ‘Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff’

1. Badly designed work and jobs – The antidote is simple to say but a little harder to apply.  Basically, design jobs using the wisdom of Herzberg’s work on satisfiers and dissatisfiers.  Take a look at the work of Hackman and Oldham.  This is explored in more depth in Punk Rock People Management.

2. An over-focus on measurement and objectives – What get measured gets done.  The corollary of this is that what is hard to measure may get ignored.  Everyone needs objectives to keep focus, but I would rather have open heart surgery without an anaesthetic than have 7 pages of specific objectives, critical success factors and key deliverables as I have seen on some occasions.  Appraisals and objectives are all about focus, not shopping lists that rival the length of ‘War and Peace’.

3. Poor leadership and management – It’s all too easy to then suggest that the antidote is to plug in some good leadership and management, almost like an I Phone app, yet this is a subject that requires more than a couple of lines to explore.  Plug and play may work with memory sticks but it does not in the world of business leadership and management.  For more on the thorny subject of leadership check my current book Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll out:

Sex, Leadership and Rock'n'Roll - acclaimed by Tom Peters

I’ll leave you with Jimi Hendrix and Prince playing the blues.  These versions of Red House see Hendrix and Prince in rare moments of reflectivity.  The playing is thoughtful and poignant. In my humble opinion, Prince is Hendrix plus much better lighting ! – there is an obvious musical influence but Prince has vastly improved the presentational aspects of his work across 30 or so years.  What do you think these two pieces?  Post your thoughts on the blog comments page.  To read previous posts on the genius of Prince see At The Hop (Farm) and Prince on Improvisation and Ingenuity.  Coming up soon, a post on Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck with respect to innovation style.

Contact me via the ACADEMY OF ROCK WEBSITE to reserve your FREE copy of “Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff”.

Got the business blues

In the words of Rogers, Hammerstein and Captain Sensible, “Happy talk”. Yes, it’s nice to be happy at work, but that’s only half the story. The Smiths’ classic indie anthem “Heaven knows I’m miserable now” is the modern blues mantra for people stuck in jobs that don’t fit their skills, attitudes, inner or outer desires:

“I was looking for a job, and then I found a job
And heaven knows I’m miserable now”

It may not make you popular as a manager to say:

“I’ve got the business blues, cos’ the server is down,
my 360 degree appraisal has come out with a mean rating
of 3.3 out of 4 and quarterly sales forecasts are down.”

Nor will these lines scan into a 12 bar blues musical format! Nevertheless, part of the leader’s skillset is to find out what gets in the way of high performance and do something about it.

So, this light-hearted blog focuses on some frivolous (and, later on, some not so frivolous) lessons that you can learn from the artform that is the blues.

Most blues begin: “Woke up this morning …” “I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, “I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town.” You can’t have a blues that begins: “I got a good manager, who sets meaningful performance goals and critical success factors.” It’s a cathartic artform.

The blues ain’t about systematic creative problem solving, blue ocean strategy brainstorming sessions, option formulation or scenario planning: You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch – ain’t no way out. Sometimes you gotta deal with people at work who believe there ain’t no way out…

Blues can take place in New York City, but not in Rochester or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Canterbury is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the blues, not York, Bath or Slough. You cannot have the blues in any place that don’t get rain, nor in a high tech R&D centre.

If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it’s a blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another blues way to die. So are the electric chair and substance abuse. You can’t have a blues death if you expire during a strategy meeting, a team building day, on an overnight stay at the Holiday Inn, or while receiving liposuction.

People with names like Michelle, Amber, Jade, Les and Heather can’t sing the blues no matter how many men they shoot in the ‘twin blues towns’ of Memphis, Milton Keynes or Milan.

As far as corporate life is concerned, it’s easy to find examples of customer service that give you the blues. Just try establishing human contact with the average ISP or mobile phone company and you will see what I mean. Yet, some other companies stand out in terms of the excellence of their service. In the banking sector, my favourite is First Direct, who, hire people that are fond of talking and doing things about OTHER people’s problems. A refreshing change and especially so, when one considers that the words banking and service rarely fit into the same sentence.

And finally, the blues need not a negative musical genre as some people may think. It can be a cathartic release for the performers and the audience alike. Here’s “The Credit Crunch Blues”, written and performed by a Housing company as part of their annual conference on high performance. They certainly gave their heart and soul to this performance, even though all the staff were amateurs and none had given a performance on a stage in their lives:

I’ll be appearing at the Customer Service Training Network Awards on July 8th, delivering a cameo performance and keynote entitled “The Customer Service Blues”.