Tabla de contenidos para April 2016 en Management Today

Tim Parker was not accompanied by a whiff of sulphur when he entered the room for his MT interview. Neither did his brogues cover cloven feet, as far as I could tell. The ‘Prince of Darkness’ is a fascinating man with a CV as long as your arm and a reminder that businesspeople can be so much more interesting and thoughtful than gormless sports or acting slebs. Parker is a private equity guy, forged in the white heat of the carry and the fixed exit. The job he did on the wheeled basket case that was Samsonite in 2008 has helped make him a very wealthy man with an estimated worth of £185 million. And it is PE in the form of Carlyle that has snapped up one of the…

Do you know a champion? In business, that’s not someone who won their darts league, but a colleague who takes on a specific project or initiative within the organisation and steers it through, overcoming resistance, apathy and inertia along the way. It’s not a bad word for the job. In the 13th century, a ‘champiun’ was a fighter, especially one who fights on behalf of other people or a cause. The ultimate origin of the word is the Latin ‘campus’, meaning arena or field of battle – which business life sometimes resembles. $70bn HOW MUCH WORSE OFF THE WORLD’S 20 RICHEST PEOPLE ARE, SINCE LAST YEAR Source: Forbes…

Under new regulations, businesses employing 250 or more people will have to publish annual information on the difference in pay between male and female employees. The first reporting is due by April 2018, but the requirements are more detailed and onerous than many had expected. ‘Pay’ for these purposes covers basic salary, paid leave, bonuses, maternity and sick pay but not, for example, overtime and benefits in kind. The inclusion of maternity pay – as opposed to the employee’s notional salary – will inevitably increase organisations’ gender pay gaps. Bonuses must be reported on separately, including the difference between the mean bonus payments paid to men and women and the proportion of each gender receiving a bonus. The data is apparently going to be published in a series of league…

We are always being told that winners don’t give up. Tenacity, perseverance, doggedness, grit… Whatever you call it, the idea that success requires above all the capacity to stick at it is pretty well established. But is it true? In some cases tenacity, perseverance, doggedness and even grit can be positively dangerous. Let’s take a look at psychologist Prof Angela Duckworth’s formal concept of ‘Grit’. The founder of the eponymous Duckworth Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, she developed not only the idea of grit but also the questionnaire to measure it. When applied to cadets at West Point military academy, her simple measure of grit turned out to be a better predictor of who would complete the course than the army’s sophisticated tests. (It also has a lot to…

Nobody can define leadership but everyone believes they know it when they see it. Around the world, business schools and corporations attempt to teach leadership (or at least to cash in on its importance). Yet the only serious leadership training in the UK is provided by the military: a full 40 weeks of intensive, on site, experiential training. What commercial business offers an equivalent? It no longer surprises me that the military is ahead of business in this regard. The consequences of leadership failure in combat are immediate, tragic and hard to fudge. Far earlier than most companies, the military realised that obedience – the human tendency to equate doing a job with doing what you’re told – constituted a profound risk. It invests more in simulations to test decision-making…

Pariahs: Hubris, Reputation and Organisational Crises Matt Nixon Libri Publishing, £20 In July 2007, Fred Goodwin offered me a job. As I waited to meet him I was kindly given tea in an office literally bigger than the entire floor I shared with my then team and bosses. ‘Won’t Sir Fred mind me sitting in his office?’ I asked. ‘Oh, this isn’t his office,’ his PA replied, ‘it’s mine. His is much bigger and it overlooks the golf course.’ I didn’t take the job: even then I could see that RBS had succumbed to the red mist, which was a natural corollary of their ruthless determination to make the everyday Scottish bank the largest in the world. Matt Nixon’s book describes similar traits in many organisations. Just like RBS, it’s…

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Harper and Row, 1990 You know those rare moments when you are ‘in the zone’, when you forget yourself, creativity bursts out of you, and time simply flies? Me neither. But apparently there is something like that, which could just be within our reach, and that something is the happy state of ‘flow’. The Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi popularised the idea of flow with his book over 25 years ago. If a task is too easy or too difficult flow will not happen, Csikszentmihalyi says. Flow represents optimal experience: intrinsic motivation carries you on to reach new heights of achievement and fulfilment. When you are in full flow you lose self-consciousness and are clear about your goals. You will be immersed in…

PET STATS 12 million households have pets. In the UK there are: 8.5 million dogs 7.5 million cats 1 million rabbits Source: Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association, Annual Report 2015 With younger families, pets have become the substitute for the first child for the first few years of marriage,’ says Dan Smith, Nestlé Purina’s head of R&D, at the company’s Better with Pets European Forum in Brussels. The event brought together around 100 vets and industry experts who discussed the issues affecting pet owners. Its purpose is to help support the company’s core belief that ‘when humans and animals bond, life gets richer’ its CEO in Europe Bernard Meunier tells MT. ‘We [want to form] a kind of movement to make sure society understands the value there is in the bond…

The Bond-villain’s-lair-meets-posh-carshowroom that is McLaren’s HQ outside Woking is not your regular desk-strewn British office space. It’s a pristine white crescent of a building, hushed, spotless and almost cinematically high tech inside. The cleaning bill doesn’t bear thinking about. Conceived by Ron Dennis, McLaren’s famously perfectionist patriarch, and designed by Norman Foster, entrance is gained via a series of subterranean passages and security doors. It even has its own lake. A gleaming line-up of historic McLaren racers completes the look. If it all seems over the top, you can’t accuse the British F1-team-to-supercar builder of not walking its own talk. This is an operation where attention to detail really matters, and it has the workplace to prove it. ‘It’s modern, high tech, clean. It communicates exactly what we want to…

Waterpik Complete Care £110 Do you really have time to floss? It’s a classic first-world dilemma. You’re late for work, but you don’t want to smell like you’re maturing a wheel of camembert in your mouth. Thankfully there’s a quicker and apparently 50% more effective solution. Run the Waterpik around your gums and between your teeth, and let its high-pressure water jets take care of the rest. Handy in the fight against halitosis, but it won’t do much good if you don’t lay off the pickled onions. Cyber Clean Pot Keyboard Cleaner £8.99 ‘It helps me think,’ you tell your colleagues peering over at the piles of papers strewn over your desk. But the dust that accumulates there can cause itchy eyes and runny noses. Your annual spring clean may…

‘It’s a hint that Google is more than yet another Silicon Valley start-up.’ Having noticed that Google had become a verb in April 2003, MT predicted great things for the search engine. ‘Viagra faces stiff competition.’ MT’s investigation into whether Pfizer’s wonder drug would rise to the challenge of new competitors Levitra and Cialis, February 2004. ‘Shit!’ Sir Alan Sugar told MT as he fiddled with his Amstrad emailer in May 2001, long before The Apprentice and his elevation to the nobility. ‘The f***ing phone’s gone bluescreen again! Are you serious? It’s unbelievable! Unbelievable!’ ‘Julius Caesar was an early Succeeder,’ freshly arrived American ‘motivational speaker’ L Vaughan Spencer (pictured below, bearing a striking resemblance to performer Neil Mullarkey) told MT in April 2003. ‘Remember his catchphrase? Veni, vidi, succeedi... I…

Q I’ve just taken over as the CFO of a professional services firm with about 100 partners. The business has got itself stuck on a bonus treadmill, awarding annual payouts to senior people that only ever seem to go up. The costs are now insupportable, but I am apparently the only one who thinks it’s an urgent problem. How do I persuade my fellow turkeys to vote for Christmas? A As a CFO, you’ll know all about due diligence. So I can’t help wondering why you didn’t undertake a little before accepting this job. You presumably take your orders from some subdivision of those 100 partners, all of whom have their snouts in the trough. And you’re the young newcomer who knows nothing of the firm’s rich history and fine…

MONDAY Because Smokehouse is a global organisation, we have an absolute hair trigger when it comes to international risk and opportunity. For example, when the Berlin Wall came down we knew what a huge opportunity that represented and that is why we opened a new office in the Ukraine last year, which we’re now in the process of closing. Naturally, it hasn’t escaped our notice that Britain might be leaving the EU and this has galvanised the board into all sorts of actions. The first of which was to explain to our bewigged CEO Lynton Spivey that Brexit wasn’t a breakfast cereal. He said he was absolutely on top of it but his wig lifted slightly, which is always a telltale sign that he’s been taken completely by surprise. TUESDAY…

ANDREW WILEMAN Regular MT contributor Wileman looked at Rebooting India. The authors want to bring tech savvy to a notoriously ill-managed government, but despite the pitfalls Wileman couldn’t find it in himself to be cynical: ‘The book’s energy and enthusiasm overpower one’s scepticism.’ IAN WRIGHT The Food and Drink Federation boss reviews Pariahs, about hubris. Wright finds tyrannical leadership intriguing: ‘Most people know the difference between right and wrong. Usually, if you can’t decide, then it’s the wrong thing to do. The tyrants go ahead and do it anyway.’ MARGARET HEFFERNAN The entrepreneur and author is bullish about those who can’t see the business case for diversity in her What Glass Ceiling? column. ‘Remember millions of women-owned businesses achieve more with less, and keep asking whether alienating talent is a…

For a few months this spring, as our referendum date with destiny approaches, our ‘Euroamis’ are genuinely interested in what is going on in London. Will we, won’t we, will we, won’t we, will we leave the dance? There is not much interest in the contents of the Settlement, as we must now call it, except among banking supervisors, oddly, for whom the consequences could be serious. At a seminar on the future of European banking in the Goethe University, to fend off further questions on the detail I suggested that the audience might have a look at the British Government’s paper The Best of Both Worlds, which sets out the prime minister’s negotiating achievements in persuasive purple prose. A student subsequently told me that if you Google that title…

Rebooting India Nandan Nilekani & Viral Shah Allen Lane, £20 The Tears of the Rajas Ferdinand Mount Simon & Schuster, £25 Rebooting India is one of the most inspiring books I’ve read in years. Given that its subject matter is a government IT project, that might also be one of the most surprising sentences I’ve written in years. In the UK, the phrase ‘government IT projects’ just generates massive grumpy old man rage. Put it into Google and you get a torrent of ‘Why do all government IT projects seem to fail?’ headlines. Take government IT and combine it with another depressing topic, the public sector in India – infamous for horrible corruption, hopeless inefficiency and pointless bureaucracy – and you have Rebooting India. So how can that ghastly combination…

Small Data: The Tiny Clues that Uncover Huge Trends John Murray Learning, £14.99 How can looking at the little picture help to predict the next big trend? Here’s an example. Some years ago, LEGO decided their falling sales were due to today’s kids lacking patience. Their solution was to start selling enormous blocks so kids could build the same castle in no time at all. The result? Sales plummeted. Then we met a German boy who had devoted literally thousands of hours to perfecting his skateboarding skills. Our small data conclusion? Kids are still willing to spend hours on a project, as long as they have ownership of it. LEGO returned to its traditional tiny blocks, packaged many more blocks in every box, and watched its sales skyrocket. Is it…

Consider this illustrious CV for a moment. CEO of Clarks shoes, the AA and Kenwood (the food mixer manufacturer not the stately home in Hampstead). A spell as first deputy mayor of London and at HM Treasury. Board member of Legal & General, Alliance Boots and the Compass Group. Personal owner of the British Pathé film archive. Chairman of Nine Entertainment – the largest media business in Australia – and the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund. Board member of the Audit Commission. Chairman of the Post Office, Samsonite and the National Trust. The final three are all current positions. Phew. You’d have thought the CV’s owner would be a household name up there, if not with Sugar and Branson, then Rose, Leahy or McCall. But when I told people I was…

Who wouldn’t want to be a CEO? It’s a role that comes laden with extras: status, authority, power and money. And for those at the very top, there’s the chauffeur-driven car, and even perhaps a private jet whisking you between Davos and some other gathering of the great and good. Not only does the job provide recognition of one’s special qualities of leadership but it also gives a platform for fashioning an organisation in one’s own image. For some, success breeds recognition leading to bigger roles, public honours and a life of government advisory positions and non-executive posts. It can be a beguiling prospect, providing hero status for the chosen few. It would, of course, be naive to suggest that being a CEO doesn’t also have significant downsides. Even the…

FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE CHAIR OF DOTEVERYONE.ORG.UK AND CO-FOUNDER OF LASTMINUTE.COM There was an overwhelming excitement about the internet during the dotcom bubble. Every business was being valued like it was going to be that one in 100 success story. Now everyone’s excited about Bitcoin or wearable tech or the Internet of Things. That’s good in some ways, but you have to remember not every business will make it. The hardest thing when the bubble burst was keeping people in the company from being dispirited. Lastminute.com was still a robust business. In 2004, I was involved in a serious car accident, so I was in hospital completely high on morphine when my co-founder Brent Hoberman sold the business the next year. He did an amazing job but I felt quite dislocated.…

Formative years Appropriately enough Alphabet was born by blog, announced by then Google CEO Larry Page on the firm’s official web log on 10 August 2015. It’s a holding company for Google’s more out-there activities, the so-called ‘moonshots’ such as driverless cars, AI, ageing and disease and, er, investment. The revenue generating businesses – search, Chrome, Android, plundering our personal data – remain under the Google banner. Google itself, of course, dates back rather further, to 1998 when two Stamford graduate students – Page and co-founder Sergey Brin – scraped together $1m from friends (we should all have such friends) to back their hunch that using page-ranking algorithms was the way to make sense of the internet. Boy, were they right – in the 18 years since, Google has made…

Managers get a raw deal these days – the 21st century is all about being a leader, an entrepreneur, an innovator, a disruptor. No one with an ounce of ambition wants a job title with the ‘M’ word in it any more. Which is a shame because, as the works of Peter Ferdinand Drucker – perhaps the first, certainly one of the most influential management thinkers – show, the discipline may be unfashionable but it still has a great deal to contribute. Drucker – who practically invented management as a subject worthy of academic study – was a kind of organisational ecologist. A pragmatic thinker more interested in people than things, he preferred ‘looking out of the window to see what was visible but not yet seen’ to espousing clever-sounding…

If you like cars – and I do – it is nice to combine pleasure with business. Having recently become chairman of Eagle E-Types, it was a thrill to be at the March launch of the Spyder GT, the latest of Eagle’s ‘reimagined’ editions, which began with the Speedster, a car so gorgeous that even Jeremy Clarkson ran clean out of hyperbole. I enjoy, too, being on the board of Torotrak, which develops mechanical solutions for reducing emissions, and which is radar-locked onto the ramifications of Dieselgate. It seems VW felt they had to cheat because, apart from fitting Heath Robinson urea tanks to trap the crap, they had exhausted economically viable ideas for reducing emissions from what is an inherently (ob)NOx-ious fuel. The contrast with gasoline is stark –…

The Servant Leader James A Autry Three Rivers Press, 2004 Every CEO should own this book. In my career, I have frequently reflected back on my copy; it’s a mustread for anyone in business. It instils the idea that being the leader of an organisation is not a position of privilege – but instead a position of responsibility. As the CEO, it is not your sole job to lead, and it’s definitely not to take. It is your job to serve, making sure you consider the wellbeing of your team in order to motivate them to achieve the best results. The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell Little, Brown and Company, 2000 As the CEO of a fintech business, I’m constantly looking at how to evolve our technology and services in order…

Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel Tom Wainwright Ebury, £14.99 Last month, the Liberal Democrats advocated the legalisation of cannabis – the first major UK political party to do so. OK, the Lib Dems can probably afford to take some risky policy decisions, but an interesting note was struck by a stand-out statistic: that legal pot could generate a £1bn tax take. So, could bringing the British drug trade out of the twilight help the deficit? It’s possible, and no longer necessarily ‘blue-sky’ thinking. For the legalisation of cannabis in a number of US states (including Colorado, Oregon and Washington) has seen a spike in investment as well as regional revenues. Tourism has grown, and some believe the cannabis industry has become a dotcom-type bubble. The sweetest side-effect of…

Feeling friendless isn’t just bad news for the boss personally, it can be equally damaging for the business too. Leaders who live their lives in the ‘CEO bubble’ have been shown to be more likely to take bad decisions and ignore the counsel of experienced colleagues. So how can those who gain – or aspire to – the top job avoid the sense of isolation that can come with it? Find someone to offload on. Sounds easy but it’s not. If your spouse or partner is up for it then you’re in luck, if not it can be a coach or even a therapist. Whoever they are, the necessary qualities are impartiality and being a very good listener. Build your personal network. This is your ‘network within your network’ of…

THINK ONCE REBECCA ALEXANDER Break bad habits We need to talk about habits. Those irritating behaviours that persist despite your best efforts. We all know the ‘break the bad habits’ drill. Choose one to break, list how you’ll do it, replace it with a ‘good’ habit for added potency, keep it going for six weeks, and hey presto – habit killed off. So, how are you doing with that? If you’re like most of us, you may have had some success, but it’s not exactly fail-safe. And so those niggly things you do – procrastinate, compulsively check emails, fail to delegate, forget to give positive feedback to your staff, arrive late – continue uncorrected. Fortunately, bad habits can be jettisoned. Even better, neuroscience is on your side. The brain is…