Most people I know plan to finish work tomorrow (Friday), many at lunchtime, which means this year’s Christmas break will start unusually early in those countries where it’s a mainstream holiday. I’m aiming to beat the rush by heading away even sooner, so here’s wishing everyone a safe and happy Christmas, and I’ll be back online in the New Year.

(To any confused northern hemisphere readers, it’s also summer time in the other half of the planet, which makes celebrations of a Christianised mid-winter festival somewhat different).

The holiday season is often a time when people think about taking that giant leap to start a new venture, a new career, a new interest. Whatever that new initiative might be, what should you do to be successful? From that great ideas convention TED, here’s Richard St. John passing on the secrets of success. (To see the 8 minute video clip in full screen mode, click on the fuzzy box icon at the bottom right of the image).

This isn’t meant to sound boastful, but I am inundated in December with invitations to business Christmas functions. Without wishing to sound ungrateful for the well-meant hospitality, I do find this Christmas drinks thing a bit tedious after a while. There are some do’s where I should go, either from a real sense of connection at a personal level with the inviting organisation, or because I have a figurehead role to play (these things are important). Otherwise nowadays, I just don’t accept - politely, of course.

In theory, a lot of these functions are meant to be a way for organisations to connect with their clients and business associates. However, they often fail to do so - not because of a lack of goodwill, but from a lack of spontaneity and originality.

A company would have far more impact with its “stakeholder” functions if (a) they were different from the usual canapes and wine format, and (b) more importantly, they were held at a different time of the year, when I’d be more inclined to attend and to heed any special messages from the organisation.

PS. Let me add that I’m not at all worried about the issue of stakeholders without a close sectarian or historical link to Christianity being offended by a Christian celebration (not that Christmas these days has much to do with Christianity). I’ve been to superb functions in other societies based on their high days and holy celebrations, and enjoyed the cultural experience. Done well, the reverse is true, I’m sure.

“Those who can — do. Those who can’t — teach.”
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

It’s an oft-repeated adage, wrongly attributed to everybody from Confucius to GB Shaw. It’s also nonsense.

In conversation over a beer with the CEO of a moderately well-known IT company, we both acknowledged the start we’d received from our early employers, who had run excellent in-house training and development programs. Admittedly, these were very large companies, but today well-structured and cohesive integrated career development programmes seem to have gone from even those firms, replaced by short-term, needs-driven, just-in-time training - still valuable, but lacking a long-term people-investment focus.The most severe case I’ve seen is the demise of the civil service training programmes, but it applies to most businesses, large and small. Partly, it’s short-term cost-saving now made normal; partly, it’s a consequence of the demise of the old long-term employment relationship (driven more by employees than by employers, I’d argue).

I started my career working for a UK-based IT company called ICL (Fujitsu in most markets today). One of the more amazing facets of their training regime (they had over 200 full-time training staff) was the very clear understanding that, if you wanted high office and rapid promotion, you had to do a stint (usually a year) as a trainer, before you could move up This was particularly true of the management and sales streams. In other words, their trainers were their best managers and sales people. It’s an old idea first developed by the military - your best troops and officers are more valuable training others to be like them, than being expended on the front line.

How many organisations today would take their stars out of the line to train the next generation?

Having already alerted you to the wifi T-shirt, here’s another present option, courtesy of Metia. To quote the product blurb, “We understand that with the lightning fast pace of today’s digimal world, generating the proper Internet truncation can be a difficult process. Everything is moving so quickly and you’re not even sure what they’re even talking about. You thought everyone was talking Portal, and now it’s all pictures of cats. With the power of our iWeb Conversator, you need not fear. Any response you select will be absolutely appropriate in every circumstance.” US$17.99 plus p&p. I should be on commission.

PS. Don’t ask what the acronyms mean - you’ll just confirm you’re a Life 1.0 fuddy-duddy .

Given all the rhetoric in the formal and informal media recently about incumbent telecommunications operators abusing their power, a recent posting by Chris Dillow, where he used the word monopsonist, prompted me to think about the reverse situation. OK, most people won’t be familiar with the word monopsonist. In a nutshell, it means a sole buyer of goods and services, the buy-side equivalent of a monopolist or sole supplier. A small group of powerful buyers are oligopsonists.

Some case-study examples of monopsonist or oligopsonist behaviour I’ve seen are:

• UK retailer Marks & Spencers in its heyday, whose clothing suppliers became trapped by the volumes available. As they became more and more dependent on M&S business, their prices were ground down and down to bare survival level. (Note: this was before the advent of offshore production, which finally killed most of them off).
• NZ supermarkets and small goods manufacturers (bacon, etc), who drove the price of pork down. Pig farmers couldn’t export their meat, and were essentially price takers. Farmers in response introduced TrimPork and other campaigns, and moved into the downstream value chain, which helped balance market power - for a while anyway.
• The ultimate monopsonist is government - and as sole large-scale buyer of certain goods and services, its buying agents can abuse their position. Ask anyone selling to government - e.g. rest home operators.

Economically, the best restraints on powerful buyers are other buyers. Fierce competition amongst those buyers means that the benefits of low buy-side prices translate into lower sell-side prices for their own customers. Supermarkets, DIY chains and apparel retailers all demonstrate this. However, that doesn’t do much for their poor supplier. You have to regain some market power. There are two main options:

• Become a monopoly: Get super-efficient and kill off your competition. And create new markets elsewhere (few monopsonists are transnational).
• Become a must-have brand: Create additional value in your product or service and capture that value through a premium brand, which you promote hard to end-customers. As your brand starts to gain premium status, add more value and brand extensions which attract more end-customer demand. And create new markets elsewhere.

I suggest you do one or the other, not both. The mindsets and modus operandi for cost-leadership and premium value are very different.

Fed up of all the hype about tech businesses? Courtesy of BusinessPundit, here’s something to play to your tech mates, when they’re getting too big for their boots.

When I was in France in early October, I decided that the time had come for me to leave Fronde.

As usual (my blog title means Get Going), once I’d made my decision, I immediately put it into action. I resigned the first day back in the office, but we didn’t announce it so I could help with some important changes. Now that those changes are largely underway, and should produce great long term results next year.

A CEO who hangs around after he’s told his team he’s decided to leave them can be like a bad smell in the room - everybody feels slightly uncomfortable, but is too polite to say something! I put this to the chairman, along the lines that the team has a plan, they know what to do, and I’m only likely to get in their way. So (at my suggestion) I’m on “gardening leave” from here on until the end of my notice, although I’ll still sit on some Fronde subsidiary boards for a while.

I do want to say thank you to the Fronde team for their support and commitment – we’ve achieved some important changes. I’m honoured to have been part of the Fronde team, and I’m privileged to have worked with everyone there. I’m a Fronde shareholder, so I’ll still have a keen interest in Fronde’s future results - I’m expecting great things from them. I’m not leaving because of any doubts about the Fronde team’s talent and potential.

Update: I couldn’t say so at the time - the half year result wasn’t published, but it is now - that, although the result was a huge disappointment and lousy timing, it wasn’t the reason I resigned. It’s just that I have other things I need/want to do. But don’t expect any big project. This is a lifestyle change.