Knowing me, Knowing you aha – In praise of Slough

Whilst my life as a keynote speaker, mixing music with business concepts, is considered to be more exciting than the usual speaker fare by some of my colleagues, I often forget to mention that I spend about 50% of my time doing quite ordinary business consultancy without rock music.  Such was the occasion a few weeks ago, when Slough Community Leisure called upon my services to help them rethink their 5-year strategy in the wake of changes in their market, customer and stakeholder base.

If you run a leisure centre, never mind all the HR boll …cks about “People are our greatest asset”.  It really IS all about your people – there’s nothing else to separate you from the rest.  Customer service separates the sheep from the goats in terms of whether you get customers, keep them, or get them to become fans of your product / service and become active referrers.  This requires an emotionally literate workforce.  We only have to look at the comic emotional bankruptcy of Alan Partridge to see the polar opposite of the way Slough Community Leisure operates:

So, what do I like about Slough Community Leisure.   Well, the clue is in the title of this post, otherwise known as Emotional Intelligence.  Thick books have been written about EI by Daniel Goleman and many others, but it comes down to the issue of internal and external mastery, or as Abba put it ‘Knowing me, Knowing you’:

Emotional Intelligence unplugged

In Slough Community Leisure’s case, they think carefully about the customer experience – this includes offering services specifically targeted to particular groups e.g. late night go karting.  It is also modelled down to the last detail in everything they do both face to face and online.  It’s the same critical competence that first direct use to rise above other players in the banking industry.

To finish, let’s see another take on Abba’s genius – The Abba section starts at around 5 minutes 37 although the rest of the video is yet another masterclass in emotional (un) intelligence:

Please share your thoughts on innovation customer excellence here.  A recent interview on the topic with Tom Peters can be found at Innovation Excellence.

Under Pressure – Reinvention Lessons from David Bowie

This article finds me in Athens, contemplating the talk I am to give at the 7th international HR Leadership Conference.  My theme is to be that of reinvention which is extremely apt for the business world in Greece and more widely.  Compared with all the ‘one hit wonders’ in music, David Bowie has reinvented himself several times and taken his audience with him.  The parallel lesson in business is that of changing what you do, keeping your customers and gaining new customers.  What can we learn about business from David Bowie?  This is the second article in the series – to catch up with the story so far check out ‘The Laughing Gnome to Heroes’.  Before we start, let’s look at another Bowie classic – China Girl:

Bowie Business Lesson # 5.  Perpetual change

In 1983, he released ‘Let’s Dance.’ Bowie recruited Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers to produce the album, giving the record a sleek, funky foundation, and hired the unknown Stevie Ray Vaughan as lead guitarist. Let’s Dance became his most successful record.

Bowie Business Lesson # 6. When change is over, change again

Bowie’s next project was less successful. He formed a guitar rock band called Tin Machine. They released an album to poor reviews and supported it with a small tour, which was only moderately successful. Tin Machine released a second album, Tin Machine II, which was ignored. Time to change again …

Bowie Business Lesson # 7. Form innovative partnerships

Bowie teamed up with Brian Eno to produce ‘Outside’ and went on tour, co-headlining with ‘Nine Inch Nails,’ to lure a younger audience, but his strategy failed. In 1996, he recorded ‘Earthling,’ an album heavily influenced by techno and drum’n’bass. Earthling received positive reviews, yet it did not attract a new audience. Many techno purists criticised Bowie for exploiting their subculture. It seemed that his attempt to cross demographic and culture divides was not going to work on this occasion. Since then, Bowie has formed partnerships with a number of artists including Placebo and reinvented himself as a brand for a US online bank

The main learnings from this dramatic series of reinventions include:

1. Make radical changes even when your current strategy is successful.

2. Hire and work with the best people you can find, especially if they are better than you.

3. Read the environment and engage with new movements when they are more than fads.

4. Learn from failure and quickly move on.

What else do you consider that David Bowie can teach us about business?  Share your thoughts here.

Finally, let’s catch another Bowie classic.  Under Pressure:

If you enjoy this you will love my new book ‘Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff’. It is available for FREE via the Punk Rock People Management webpage.  A beautiful full colour print version and Kindle version are also available.  David Bowie and the reinvention theme feature strongly in my previous book ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n'Roll‘.

Punk Rock HR - Picture by Lindsay Wakelin www.lindsaywakelinphotography.com

Life on Mars – Reinvention Lessons from David Bowie

Compared with all the ‘one hit wonders’ in music, David Bowie has reinvented himself several times AND taken his audience with him.  The parallel lesson in business is that of changing what you do, keeping your customers AND gaining new ones.  What can we learn about business from David Bowie?  Read on.  Before we start, let’s look at a Bowie classic – Life on Mars:

Bowie Business Lesson # 1.  Find your focus

David Bowie began performing music when he was 13 years old, learning the saxophone while he was at High School and began playing in a number of mod bands.  All these bands released singles, which were generally ignored, yet he continued performing. The following year, he released the music-hall styled ‘Laughing Gnome.’ Upon completing the record, he spent several weeks in a Buddhist monastery. Bloody good idea in my opinion, although I should be so lucky to have written this song in spite of its cheesiness!! Once he left the monastery, he formed a mime company – a non-obvious career move. This was short-lived, and he formed an experimental art group in 1969.

Bowie Business Lesson # 2.  Get the right people

As necessity is the mother of invention, Bowie needed to finance the art group, so he signed a record deal. His first album featured ‘Space Oddity,’ which became a major hit single in the Britain. He began miming at T.REX concerts, eventually touring with Marc Bolan’s, bassist / producer Tony Visconti and guitarist Mick Ronson. The band quickly fell apart, yet Bowie and Ronson continued to work together. The next album, ‘The Man who Sold the World’ did not gain much attention. Following the release of ‘Hunky Dory,’ featuring Ronson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman, Bowie developed his most famous incarnation, ‘Ziggy Stardust’. Bowie quickly followed Ziggy with ‘Aladdin Sane’. Not only did he record a new album that year, but he also produced Lou Reed’s ‘Transformer,’ the Stooge’s ‘Raw Power’ and Mott the Hoople’s ‘All the Young Dudes,’ for which he also wrote the title track.  Lest we forget this great song:

Bowie Business Lesson # 3.  Re-engineer the Business

Bowie unexpectedly announced his retirement from live performances during his final show in 1973. He retreated from the spotlight to work on a musical adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, transforming the work into ‘Diamond Dogs.’ The album was released to generally poor reviews, yet it generated the hit single ‘Rebel Rebel.’ Bowie supported the album with an American tour. As the tour progressed, Bowie became fascinated with soul music. He subsequently refashioned his group into a Philly soul band and revamped his image in sophisticated, stylish fashions. The change took fans by surprise. ‘Young Americans,’ released in 1975, was the culmination of Bowie’s soul obsession, and it became his first major crossover hit, peaking in the American Top Ten and generating his first U.S. number one hit in ‘Fame,’ a song he co-wrote with John Lennon and guitarist Carlos Alomar.

Bowie Business Lesson # 4.  Challenge industry sacred cows

Once in Berlin, Bowie began painting, as well as studying art. He also developed a fascination with German electronic music, which Brian Eno helped him fulfil on their first album together, ‘Low.’ Released early in 1977, Low was a startling mixture of electronics, pop and avant-garde technique. It received mixed reviews, but was one of the most influential albums of the late ’70s, as was its follow-up, ‘Heroes’:

We’ll continue this blog at ‘Beyond Heroes‘ through several other ch, ch, ch, changes in Bowie’s career.

p.s. My new book ‘Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff’ is available for FREE.  Please contact me via the Punk Rock People Management webpage for a free pdf copy.  A beautifully illustrated full colour print copy is available at PUNK PM.  If you are a Kindle book reader, a Kindle version is at KINDLEPUNK - currently ranking at No 1 in the Kindle chart for HR / Business Management books.  Woohoo!

I kissed an HR girl and I liked it ... Click to get one

We will brand you – Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, Unilever and Prince on branding

What can we learn from the crazy world of Rock’n’Roll about branding? One way to think about a brand is a kind of ‘shorthand’ designed to stop consumers from thinking about anything else other than your brand / product. Get branding right and you have customers for life. Get it wrong and you may never take off in business.

Take a look at this ‘basement video’ I made with my colleague Phil Hawthorn to understand the power of brands. We look at Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Nike, Madonna, Pepsi and Prince in this short video.

Unilever is a particularly interesting example of a brand which has managed to preserve the diversity of its many different operating companies, which, in their own words:

“We meet everyday needs for nutrition, hygiene and personal care with brands that help people feel good, look good and get more out of life”

This is exemplified down to the last detail in the logo for Unilever, which sells products from Dove, to Lipton Tea, to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and the logo carries meanings which include freshness, love, beauty, science, farming, freedom and so on – a pretty tall order for any corporation to live up to, but a mighty ambition nonetheless.

The ultimate test of a brand is the extent to which it enables your company to have longevity as Unilever have demonstrated over 120 years. To see what I mean through the power of music, take a look at the 45 year old brand that is Pink Floyd:

And finally, purely for fun, the word branding began simply as a way to tell one person’s cattle from another by means of a hot iron stamp. In a moment of musical madness, my Country and Western Glam Rock band (The Cowpokers) took this lesson literally, in a satirical pastiche of the classic Queen song ‘We Will Brand You’. The audience is initially deluded into thinking that the drum track will be exactly as the original, but later on find out that it is not and the audience develop a form of ‘arrhythmic distress’ ….

We are speaking / performing about brands and customer service at the Customer Service Training Awards on Friday 08 July at Heathrow. Check out our starter menu of corporate event offerings for your next conference at R U EXPERIENCED

David Brent on Creativity

The BBC TV series ‘The Office’ is accurately described as being ‘awfully funny’. It gains its comic strength through its use of real life work situations, suitably distorted in various ways for entertainment purposes. Let’s consider a pet favourite of mine – the teambuilding event and Brent’s cheesy Springsteen parody ‘Free Love on the Freedom Highway’.

The creativity devices used in The Office include techniques like reversal, exaggeration and contrasting metaphorical and literal thinking. These are used throughout The Office to appallingly great comic effect. Consider the contrast of metaphor and literal thinking between David Brent and Gareth in the above sequence:

Brent (metaphor) sings “ … I’ve got some hot love on the hot love highway, ain’t goin’ home cos’ my baby’s gone”

Gareth (literal) joins in and adds “She’s dead”

Brent (literal) corrects Gareth’s exuberance “She’s not dead”

The creativity technique of exaggeration ‘makes the familiar strange’ and is classically used in creative thinking approaches such as Synectics™, Superheroes and wishful thinking. If you have the DVD, check out the sequence where David Brent uses exaggeration to great comic effect, when he offers counselling to his secretary, Dawn. Brent suggests that her personal relationship problems are analogous to a car crash, which she is unable to comprehend when she considers the metaphor literally. It’s therefore very important when you are using metaphor for creative thinking sessions in business to ensure that the metaphor is explored for it’s own value before making an attempt to gain something concrete from it. This point is poorly understood by many practitioners in my long experience of such things.

Reversal is another simple and quick creativity technique that I have used on many occasions during 24 hour new product / strategic innovation sessions for companies such as Pfizer, BT and Johnson and Johnson. The technique works by its ability to explore ideas that are NOT within the current thinking space. This generates wild ideas, many of which are unusable. On further reversal and detailed exploration, ideas which do have a practical value emerge. It’s very important to balance the reversal with critical thinking if you are to harvest ideas that turn into profitable innovations. This is a major reason why some people think that brainstorming sessions are like an out-take from The Office. It’s not that brainstorming / creative thinking is bad per se, it’s just that it is poorly executed in the main.

We will be using sequences from ‘The Office’, to help us deliver a keynote for the British Association for Research in Quality Assurance (BARQA), based on quality communications across cultures. We also offer specialist ‘edutrainment’ workshops that use the BBC TV series ‘The Office’, for which we have a unique licence, as series of upside down lessons on creativity in business and personal excellence.

Naked leadership in Essex

I’m often surprised at the things people are prepared to do in the crazy world of rock’n'roll but just occasionally I am even more surprised when business people take a bold step to help market themselves and stand apart from the crowd. Such was the case recently when the Business Woman’s Network decided to produce a nude calendar of their membership in the style of Calendar Girls. Quite aside from the confidence required by these women to do such a thing, this unique phenomenon has a much more serious reason – that of fundraising for a Hospice. So give these nude business women some of your kudos and more importantly some of your money. I got involved today as their leader Mandie Holgate, asked me if I would be prepared to go naked …. NO.. thank goodness … to deliver a keynote event to launch the naked calendar at their next event on July 7th in Essex. I have agreed to deliver this free on behalf of them and the hospice. We’ll be exploring aspects of ‘nakedness’ aka being your authentic self in the context of leadership, drawing on examples from the world of business and music to help us explore the subject from different perspectives.

So come on down – as I said in the promotional material – you don’t have to take your clothes off to have a good time…

And, contrary to the stereotypes, the evening will definitely NOT be anything like this hilarious mash up from the genius that is Cassette Boy:

Speaking of nudity I must say that, although I rarely watch TV, I was mesmerised by Lady Gaga on Paul O’Grady’s show last night. Gaga is a great example of someone who knows how to present themselves. On the show, she presented herself nude in the folicle department…. take a look at this stunning piece of authentic performance …

If the Nude Business Woman’s Calendar is even half as good as Lady Gaga’s performance last night, they will be rightly proud of themselves. Book yourself in for the launch party – Leadership, Nudity and Rock’n'Roll 7th July – Essex – its nearly FREE!

Postscript:  Here’s a picture from the evening featuring the georgous Julie Binder, who runs her own design consultancy – Check her design work out at Julie Binder Design.  Julie’s clients include Toyota and Nestle.

Getting down and dirty with Julie Binder

Speaking of design, my new book ‘Punk Rock People Management‘ is available for FREE alongside it’s sister volume ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n'Roll‘ by clicking on the picture below:

Buy one get one free

Max Clifford, Sex, and Rock’n’Roll

I attended the Kent 20 20 Business Exhibition yesterday and presented PR Guru Max Clifford with a copy of my book ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll’. I was thoroughly impressed with his integrity and skills. I thought I’d share some of the reasons why here.

Clifford pointed out the complexities of the PR world by putting into sharp relief the differences that have taken place over 50 years in the industry. Clifford started in 1962 as the press officer for ‘a little known band called The Beatles’. He said that, at that time, you probably needed to know 20 people in order to get national coverage for a story. Let’s remind ourselves of what they became under his guidance:

Today’s PR world is a massive industry and the sheer volume of media (print, TV, youtube, blogging, social media and so on) make it much harder to get your message across. He offered us a series of tips on how to make the most of media coverage that were both wise and easy to do, given sufficient time. Many of them align with my own experiences, having just been on BBC Radio 2 three times over the last 3 weeks, although I often think I don’t really know what I am doing, having never been on any sales or marketing training in my life.

But, given Max Clifford’s track record for taking on controversial clients at considerable fees, I was surprised to find that he is guided by a strong set of values. Just the other week, he turned down an approach for an unlimited sum of money by the Gadaffi family, who, in his words ‘currently need some image improvement’. He went on to discuss some of the less public activities that he indulges in, for example working with a charity that provides Hospice care to children. Not quite what I had expected at all.

Mr Clifford’s honesty and integrity surprised me when he pointed out his concerns with the UK media and the legal system. After all, these people are, in a sense, his customers. He was also candid enough to tell his audience that (a) none of them could afford him and (b) there were plenty of good PR people there that could do a good job for small businesses. I admired his ‘Robin Hood’ pricing strategy – charging a high price to those who could afford it, in order to give his time for free to the Hospice etc.

I am left wondering who will end up reading the copy of the book I gave him on his coffee table. Given his love for music, it would be a great thrill if some of his clients were to get to see ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll’. From Max Clifford’s salacious stories of dealing with people from Frank Sinatra and The Beatles to Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole, it seems that many of them will be familiar with the former and the latter part of this trio!