When I was a kid, “Made in Japan” was a synonym for cheap shoddy knock-offs of Western products; but over time “Made in Japan” came to mean “lifetime quality” and “extras included“.  So the sneering changed: “Japanese only copy; they can’t innovate.“  Yet many of today’s smart design and manufacturing processes are modelled on techniques the Japanese developed.  Ah, those ideas already existed before the Japanese adopted them, I hear you say.  In nascent form, maybe;  but every new idea is built on what has gone before.  Anyway, the sustained dominance of Japanese firms in manufactured products from consumer electronics to industrial machinery demonstrates a highly innovative environment, not just in processes and product refinement. Much innovation in cars today comes from technologies pioneered in Japan.

I hear similar dismissive language applied to China now.  There’s even less basis for such myopia. Both nations had strong education systems and huge desire for economic change. China has a much deeper tradition of engineering and manufacturing.  It’s a theme Eric Drexler has touched on in a guest article for McKinsey on innovation:

To become a world-class center of technological innovation, a society must have three basic elements:

• drive—a culture that supports change and hungers for it

• human capital—the personal abilities that make world-class technology possible

• a capacity for mobilization—a society’s ability to pursue ambitious new goals

These basic elements are more fundamental than any current performance metric or economic trend, and they are durable.

China has all these in abundance.  I was particularly struck by Drexler’s comment on China’s mobilization capacity:

Drive and human capital are applied through organization, by both entrepreneurs and corporations, as well as national leaders and governments. India has been outstanding in its incapacity for reform and for interfering with entrepreneurship, though this is changing. China, however, has been outstanding in its capacity for learning from experience, radically transforming government policy, and unleashing a hyperentrepreneurial business culture.

As science and technology grow in importance, it becomes increasingly important for leaders to have a good understanding of these disciplines. Among US legislators, though, a background in science and engineering is exceedingly rare. In France, it is common. In Taiwan, many legislators have doctoral degrees in science or engineering. In China, of the nine members of the standing committee of the Politburo (the ruling body, which includes the president, the vice president, and the premier), one recently appointed member has an education in law. Previously, all nine had been trained as engineers.

… Perhaps the most robust indicator of change in the distribution of innovation potential is a change in the distribution of corporate research laboratories. Companies are opening new labs in China at an astounding rate. In software and electronics, NEC, Hitachi, Sony, IBM, and Microsoft all have established R&D centers in China; in pharmaceuticals, Roche, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Novartis, and Eli Lilly have done so. This list is not exhaustive.

Despite this, many firms (and nations) are myopic about new competition from other countries.  Do you think they’re more realistic about competitors in the same region or city as themselves?  Sadly, no.  Even with familiar competitors, firms kid themselves with smug self-affirming generalisations.

Don’t get freaked out by competitors, local or global; but don’t fool yourself with uninformed complacency.  Otherwise, you’re just making your competitor’s job easier.

Freshjive is a popular US streetwear brand. However, I hear (via The Huffington Post) that owner Rick Klotz has announced he’s going naked from here on, removing the Freshjive name not only from the outside of his products but also from the labels. I foresee this going one of two ways; either the plain black label will itself become the brand symbol, or else the brandless brand will sink into oblivion as it looses visibility, and the Freshjive name will reappear on the product. Gut feel? While the “no label” label looks good and may work for a while, ultimately the latter scenario will prevail as house labels and others knock off the concept.

Unless this idea is just a stunt, it’s a very risky “bet the business” move. Of course, my Vista Group colleagues, with far more expertise than me on branding and fashion, may have a different opinion when I see them next week.

Tom Forenski at ZDNet writes that “the internet devalues everything it touches“. He uses online business applications, outsourced call centres,  and online shopping as examples of how costs have come down for vendors and their customers.  To label that as “devaluation” is a strange way of describing what has happened. While in one economic meaning he may be right, ie. the unit price has come down, the value of a good or service to a customer (ie. its utility or benefits) doesn’t decrease when it is delivered via the internet.  On the contrary, its value may well have increased, through greater convenience, speed, and so on.  Or it may have become more affordable and accessible to new customers.  Likewise for a supplier.  I’ve never met someone in business who thought that increasing efficiency, effectiveness, customer utility or market reach for lower cost doesn’t enhance or at least maintain shareholder value. While unit revenue may come down, competitiveness may have been enhanced.

Lean manufacturing created much greater value for customers and shareholders (or at least those whose companies who adopted it).  The lean business processes made possible by the internet do the same.

And I’m sure Forenski knows that.

(Thanks to Paul Quickenden for alerting me to this).

The Age reports that ANZ Bank is in advanced stages of planning a major brand update later this year and that ANZ’s Indonesian subsidiary Panin Bank was the pilot operation for the new look.

According to a briefing paper doing the rounds within ANZ last year, the bank’s brand did not resonate with women. Even the corporate colour of blue was considered “too male” by some respondents to a survey, thus the logic behind the bank’s high-profile sponsorship forays into netball and the Australian Open tennis, and a flower for a logo.

The Age also reports that, surprise surprise, executives are split over the change.  I’ve never seen a branding change with unanimous support.    Everyone’s an expert; arguments always rage over the new look, colours, logo, fonts and the need for a change at all.

… the M&C Saatchi-designed logo is meant to be a “three-petalled lotus” that represents the “trinity” of Australia, New Zealand and Asia, which are ANZ’s core markets.

Update: In the comments, Rob points us to this article and preview - better than I earlier thought it might look.

  I assume the new badge will be something like this (replace Panin with ANZ). Hmmm.

People often think of contractual and business relationships lasting a few days or years, but rarely think about ones that might last decades and beyond.  I’ve seen several organisations bitten by seemingly unimportant or just plain forgotten undertakings given in the dim and distant past.

One  company received a letter from the city council announcing that the city would start charging the company for 10 up-til-now free CBD carparks that the city provided.  No big deal; after all, who expects to get a free CBD carpark these days? But one of the company old-timers remembered that the city had traded the free CBD carparks some 15 years earlier for some company-owned carparks where the city wanted to build a motorway.  Imagine the value of 10 car parks in the CBD close to the motorway exit - in perpetuity. A search of the city’s records (better than the company’s) produced the documentation. After some haggling, the city bought the car parks back - a very nice windfall for the company given CBD property inflation over that time. It was pure luck that someone remembered the original deal. Bad luck for the city; good luck for the company.

It’s not just property deals:

• A letter offering a job to an overseas immigrant which promised repatriation if he was fired or made redundant - which he was, 20 years later.  He had no intention of returning, but it paid for a nice visit home.
• An enduring exclusivity clause in a services contract.  After several years, the work tailed off.  Some years later still, the contractor was invited in by another company - a possible rival  The defunct client invoked the clause to stymie its competitor.
• And so on.

Partly these problems are down to poor negotiating, poor contract drafting and poor record management.  That’s not my point. In these cases, at least one of the parties had forgotten all about the original deal. In each case, someone remembered and was able to take advantage of the situation. It also makes you wonder how many times such deals have been forgotten by all concerned, and whether they won or lost as a result.

So who or where is your institutional memory?

Regular readers will know that I’m an admirer of Toyota, in particular its lean thinking and unity of purpose.  This is not unconditional admiration.  Toyota can be bureaucratic; its brand marketing is usually uninspired me-too (the NZ emotive campaigns in the ’80s and ’90s being rare exceptions); and its designs are worthy rather than exciting.  However, I’m quibbling; that worthiness has helped Toyota climb from humble beginnings to overhaul the once-mighty General Motors as the world’s No. 1 auto-maker.

Toyota is renowned for incredibly flexible and efficient manufacturing, with a ruthless attention to eliminating waste in all its forms (rework, shoddy materials, unnecessary movement, set-up time, inventory, and so on). But, according to a Bloomberg-sourced article appearing in major newspapers, as Toyota started to close on GM over the last decade, Toyota has been more driven by numbers.  It started to build inflexible single-purpose manufacturing plants, not training its people properly, and operating these new plants in a very un-Toyota way.  Toyota recently reported its first operating losses since 1950, and has suspended production in many plants.  Blame can be partly ascribed to the global recession, but that just exaggerated these other problems.

I usually take such journalistic analyses of companies with a large pinch of salt, but this story passes my “gut feel” credibility test. It isn’t a story of a company being stuck in a mindset that no longer works.  That’s the GM problem. No, this is a story, if true, of being blinded by success, of losing sight of what made Toyota great.

However, Toyota’s leadership is onto the problem.  After the numbers went wrong, Toyota’s honorary chairman and founding family figurehead, Shoichiro Toyoda gave a stinging rebuke to the company’s top 400 executives. The company has a big job on its hands, although not as big as that facing Bill Ford 10 years ago when he took over the helm at the business founded by his great-grandfather. Unlike Chrysler and GM, Ford’s award-winning product range, operational methods and funding management have enabled it to avoid bankruptcy. That precedent did not go unheeded by Toyota’s board.  New CEO Akio Toyoda, a car nut like Bill Ford, is the grandson of Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Motor Corporation. He is steeped in the Toyota credo. Expect a back-to-basics Toyota in future, although maybe with a little more excitement added to the mix.

Paul Quickenden cautions aspiring entrants to the software-as-a-service industry against trying to match the functionally-rich features of their competitors (which include both on-premise software vendors and established SaaS players).  It’s good advice for any innovator, no matter what industry. So I’m unashamedly stealing it for you.

Classic strategic thinking (originally military, but also applicable to business) says that unless you have overwhelming force, you don’t attack your opponent where he or she is strongest.  Instead you attack where they are weak or not paying enough attention. Or look for an unserved related market or unsolved related problem which the incumbent ignores or is spurned by.

Clayton Christensen wrote a deservedly acclaimed best-selling book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, to explain how weak new entrants overcome much stronger incumbents.  It’s well worth reading.  If you haven’t got the time, here’s Paul Quickenden’s synopsis: 

1. There is an incumbent business model.
2. These incumbents enter into a cycle (arms race even) of continually adding features to their products in an attempt to keep adding value to the clients, and hence maintain their pricing.
3. The cycle continues until you get to a point where the products are over spec’d compared to client NEEDS or even requirements, and accordingly over priced.
4. Then someone finds or offers an alternate product or delivery method, which is much cheaper and actually more suited to the clients  real needs.
5. The incumbents, talk to their clients (who have sunk investments and a political agenda to support their buying decisions) who say they aren’t interested in this new product approach etc. The incumbents completely miss the new trend, because hey…the customer base aren’t asking for it.
6. The disrupter gains a foothold in a niche part of the market, gets scale over time and eventually becomes acceptable to the mainstream. They then enter the arms race cycle (they are the new incumbents), while the old incumbents struggle belatedly to meet the market.

Paul includes this helpful chart to explain.

General Motors has announced its withdrawal from NUMMI, its joint venture with Toyota.  NUMMI was an incredibly generous initiative by Toyota to educate its global rival about modern management and production techniques, while giving Toyota insight into operating in the US.   Although the NUMMI plant was generally seen as a (qualified) success, and GM learnt about efficient plant layout and just-in-time inventory, it (GM) never really absorbed the “lean business” mindset that infuses every aspect of Toyota.

The NUMMI plant is now 25 years old, and probably long overdue for a major overhaul/replacement.  Toyota doesn’t need it, with low demand and its own plants elsewhere in North America making similar models. Politically, Toyota might wait a while to close the only unionised shop in its portfolio, but GM’s reputation is so low, now is probably the least reputation-damaging time for Toyota to do so.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to say this.  A great idea, strategy, mission statement is useless unless you actually do something.  You won’t change your business, brand, culture, quality, conversion rate, whatever, unless you do something. Intentions are worthless, unless you do something (to achieve them). Do things that will achieve your aims.  Do what you said you’d do. Stop doing what you said you’d stop.

… gardens are not made
By singing: “Oh, how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade.

- Rudyard Kipling

I thought the debate about open-plan offices was long over (if you’re going open-plan, you’d have done it by now), but apparently not. Thanks to Bernard Hickey, I read that the CEO of National Australia Bank is advocating it, and suggesting that other banks which have yet to move to open-plan are probably hide-bound in other ways.

I’m a big fan of open-plan, with executives in amongst everyone else.  Obviously you have to get the house rules right, and provide private space for private conversations and thinking, but the increase in information flow, collegiality, unity of purpose and general buzz is very palpable.  When we were planning the radical transformation of Electra from stuffy, hierarchical power board to dynamic, lean, efficient and empowered customer service organisation, we discussed what changes we needed in culture and operating style.  I then went away to the beach for a holiday, only to return and find that the staff had literally torn down all the internal walls one weekend.  It was a spur-of-the-moment unauthorised initiative, and afterwards there was high trepidation concerning my reaction.  There was only one thing I could say when I walked into the building and saw all these worried faces looking at me: “Brilliant! Where do I sit?” Anything else would have destroyed the very changes I wanted to bring about. That wall demolition weekend was the start of a truly amazing transformation.

Getting product engineers to move into  an open plan environment at Deltec proved more tricky, with great protestations about dedicated personal offices for deep thought.  Moving buildings was the catalyst this time, with the engineers going into a new, high-vaulted, attractive and airy space.  There was still the odd gripe about needing personal offices from one or two designers, but inter-team interaction lifted noticeably, and led to some great cross-product innovation.

Conversely, in Fronde’s already existent open-plan environment, it eventually proved necessary for me to move into an office.  I was doing a lot of confidential business, but having an adjacent meeting room would have sufficed for that. However, and more importantly, I wanted to strengthen the position of the local leaders, to be seen to run their business units. That’s possibly more an argument for keeping head office out of a branch location.

Open-plan is a tool of organisational ethos and culture; it may not suit every situation. However, any reason to not go open-plan needs to be very profound to make up for the lost benefits.

I said this three times today:

• Where are you going (what do you want to achieve and why)?
• What will it look like when you get there (your market, your offer, your organisation, etc. and why)?
• How will you get there (what will you do and why)?

Too many so-called strategic plans are full of warm fuzzies and empty of specifics.

I’ve had this conversation several times, including with myself. Most businesses go through a major crisis occasionally. You just don’t hear about most of them unless they prove fatal.  However, in this current environment, many business are financially stretched.  The banks are being very tough on anyone in breach of their bank covenants (key financial targets which have to be met or the bank can call in its loan).

Assuming your business is salvageable, the best way to keep the bank from sending in the receivers is to be tougher than they would be. By that I mean that you should think like a receiver - drastically chopping expenditure, cutting staff, closing branches, taking a large axe to management, killing off non-profitable products and services, and so on.  Not half-hearted measures, but really tough-minded ones. If you’ve got a plan that the bank can easily see is tougher than what they’d do, you’ve got a chance of staying in control - providing you actually do what you said you’d do.  And you’ve got a better chance of preserving some strategic capability for the future (like key designers or young trainees).  Once you do get the bank off your back, you can get on with the job of building your business, even if it is from a smaller base.

Of course, it’s even better if you get tough a lot sooner in the crisis, long before the bank gets heavy-handed. That way there’s a small chance that they’ll leave you alone and not impose all those reporting requirements, penalty interest rates  and outrageous investigation fees which make the job of recovery even harder.  A small chance.

The report’s recommendations needed to be implemented, permanent senior management was needed to replace those in acting roles, the IT system needed an upgrade worth $117 million over four years and the entire process needed to be taken apart and looked at “from top to bottom”.

That snippet is from today’s Dominion Post, commenting on the need for a major overhaul of New Zealand’s Immigration Service. I’ve already heard much about the shambolic state of this government agency, so the need for a root and branch renewal is not surprising.  What caught my eye was the size of the proposed IT upgrade.

I know that government IT projects suffer from very bureaucratic (and often ineffective) environments: unengaged and unempowered users, long-winded decision-making, overly complex legislative and procedural requirements, etc, etc..  Even if that isn’t always so, government IT will still usually be more expensive than commercial IT.  Unique requirements (well, nationally idiosyncratic, anyway) tend to demand bespoke solutions, or at least customised implementations of standard case management and workflow systems.  Allowing for that, $117 million still seems way too much.  After all, this organisation only does a few core tasks:

• receive applications, process them, and issue visas for tourists, students, temporary workers, and permanent residents.
• weed out dodgy applicants (at least that’s the theory).
• provide information on the process to potential applicants and employers.

Let’s look at the IT investment per process worker (a useful metric for process/people-centric operations). Assuming that the NZIS still employs approximately 750 people (the last number I could find) and that 2 out of 3 staff are engaged in the process (as distinct from support functions and executive staff), that’s $234k per person.  That is ridiculously high. What complex business process does this organisation operate that requires such a high IT investment? If I was the Minister of Immigration or the Minister of Finance, I’d be demanding alternative proposals for the business process and supporting systems.

Curiously, that $117 million is a very specific precise number, given that “the entire process needed to be taken apart and looked at ‘from top to bottom’.”   I’m smelling the pungent scent of of desperation - let’s throw lots of money at a big IT project to give the appearance of decisive action.   More cynically, it buys 4 years of plausible excuses while the project is underway, and in 4 years time, everyone senior will have moved onto pastures new.   Sadly, you’ll find similar stories in every government in every country.

So you’ve got all your business and family records on computer, you store all your email online, all your business documents are in a wiki, and your family photos are on Flickr.  You’ll never lose anything again, right? Wrong.

As any archivist will tell you, the half life of information storage is shrinking all the time, and they despair at the increasing pace of information loss. Messages written in stone lasted for millenia, documents written in natural inks on linen papers lasted for many hundreds of years if stored well; synthetic inks and industrial papers last a century, celluloid films several decades. But it’s the move to electronic media that has really sped up the losses.  Not only do these media only last a few years, but also the technology to read them (both electronic and software) rapidly becomes obsolete, unobtainable and unmaintainable. Anyone got any files on floppy discs? Can you do any analysis of your survey records from 20 years ago? Can you even find them, let alone read them? Take optical discs (CDs, DVDs, etc) - the discs get scratched, the surface film (in which the digital pattern is etched) breaks down, the plastic substrate breaks down, and the recording standards change.

For the time being, there is only one working solution - keep your data moving.  If you transfer your data to a new medium from time to time, you keep it accessible. That’s easier to do now cloud computing storage is so cheap. Create a document archive for everything online, copy everything into it, and back it up on a second storage service elsewhere regularly (ideally automatically). And from time to time, move everything to the latest current medium. But if you aren’t there to keep your data moving, who will look after it after you’ve gone, in 10 years time, 100, or 1000? Make sure others know where your information is stored (you probably want to share much of it with them anyway) and how to get to it if you’re run over by a bus.

For the archivists, a long-term solution may be on the horizon.  Wired magazine reports on a nascent carbon nanotube technology with the potential for data to be stored accurately for a billion years “from now until long after the Earth has been overrun by superintelligent, fusion-powered cyborg ants“.

Carbon nanotubes are molecular-scale tubes usually made of a carbon allotrope. For data storage, a small electrical signal is applied across the nanotube causing the iron nanoparticle shuttle to move back and forth. The movement of the nanoparticles from one end to the other of the tube creates the binary ‘1′ or ‘0′ state.

The position of the shuttle can be read out directly, explain the researchers in a paper published in the current issue of the Nano Letters journal. …The technique has significant potential for archival storage, say the researchers, because the nanoparticle-based bits show significant persistence. It’s also possible to store a lot of data in a small space: With information density predicted to be as high as 10¹² bits per square inch, you could store data from nearly 25 DVDs in the space of a postage stamp.

HSBC, one of Britain’s leading banks, has published a special report, “The Future of Business” (executive summary .pdf)“. Commissioned from The Future Laboratory, it is based on TFL’s own desk research, a 10-question survey of 500 business leaders, and interviews with 18 experts on business, economics, technology and youth culture.

The executive summary (the only part of the report that I could find online) gives a simple introduction to what’s hot or at least trendy in British business thinking and social evolution. The main themes:

• The rising importance of major new industries - robotics, cybernetics, nanotech, computer gaming, biotech, stem cell research, nutriceuticals, renewable energy.
• Increasing focus on cities rather than regions, including more intensively clustered industries and the emergence of knowledge-based super-cities.
• New business economics linked to philanthropy, high human interaction and greater attention to emotional needs. Increased incidence of micro-multinationals (NZ readers know all about them), “collaborateering” (a new version of “coopertition”?) and crowd-sourcing.
• Key social trends: multi-jobbing or portfolio careers and the blurring of private and business networks and channels.

Without the main report, it’s hard to see what serious data and analysis lie behind these soundbites.  Some of them are plausible, but I’m sceptical of “pop” surveys. They typically lack scientific rigour, are very prone to “flavour of the month” bias in both design and conclusion, and they frequently assume enthusiasts and elite groups are representative of the whole economy and population (they’re not alone in that). Twee jargon and concepts such as Brighton being a super-city of “the alternative economy” only inflame my prejudices.  The report’s worth a read, it gives you a sense of some of what’s changing in Britain, but I won’t be basing any serious business decisions on it.

Every evening when my father came home, the first things he would do were to undress in the kitchen, press his uniform (he was a soldier), hang it up properly, and then clean and polish his boots.  I remember him standing in his boxers and shirt in the kitchen, ironing his trousers, and telling us that a clean and tidy appearance was essential for respect - of oneself and by other people.  It didn’t matter how expensive or cheap your clothes were, if you looked scruffy.  As a manager and as a mentor, I’ve passed on the same advice many times:

1. Keep yourself clean and well-groomed -  no body odour, no bad breath, no dirty nails, no unkempt hair and no rat’s-nest beard.  Use deodorant and breath freshener if you have problems (or been out on the town the night before). Display your designer stubble only on your own time (and even then, only if you have the good looks to carry it off).
2. Keep your clothing clean, repaired and PRESSED. There’s nothing more effective than a pair of shiny, over-used, dirty and unpressed trousers to say “Loser.”
3. Likewise, clean and polish your shoes regularly - and maintain them.  Wearers of down-at-heel, scuffed and cracked shoes - see previous entry.

Changing the explicit or implied dress standard can be a subtle, yet powerful tool in revitalising a moribund organisation.  The first place to start is grooming, and you as the leader set the standard through your own example.

PS As I comment below: I didn’t specify here what the style of dress should be - only the standard of grooming. I’ve moved organisations from suits to smart casual, and grey shoes & cardigans to suits; whatever works for the business change needed. But whatever your personal or organisational style, be clean and tidy if you want to be taken seriously as a leader.

I love working with  a good design team - when they’re on a roll, the buzz spreads out to infect everyone around them.  Their chosen field doesn’t seem to matter; information systems, electronics, automotive, office furniture, graphics - good designers all seem to have this ability to excite.  But how do you assemble a great design team? US designer Michael Roller describes the essential personality traits needed.

• The Evangelist - “… The Evangelist focuses on design at the highest level, developing strategies and processes that push the limits of design and business as a whole. Contextual thinking helps him understand how design fits into a larger business plan… he loves to push the boundaries and question assumptions of the products and categories he leads. The Evangelist … may even lead activities that feel counterproductive to more analytical thinkers…“
• The Conductor - “… The Conductor’s analytical mind helps her to ensure that no detail goes unconsidered. Like directing an orchestra, she brings together all the little details into harmony, making sure everything has been figured out and nothing taken for granted. She probably has the highest standards of any designer in the office and ensures that every project is top quality. Often the team doing the first 95% of the work is exhausted or checked out by the end, and the Conductor plays a key role in making the final push to finish the project right. In more corporate roles, she shepherds projects through to production and defends key design details that might otherwise be lost…”
• The Dreamer - “When analytical minds struggle with paradoxical design constraints, the Dreamer cuts through it all to offer a surprisingly fresh attitude. He avoids the technical boundaries of a project in favor of contextual experimentation. A great design team deploys Dreamers to brainstorms where blue sky thinking is necessary, and keeps them involved when the end product must push category boundaries or create brand new ones. The Dreamer becomes easily frustrated when not allowed to exercise fantasies, so don’t expect him to handle detail-oriented work or anything that is heavily constrained by technical requirements. The wild ideas he contributes won’t always become part of the final product, but the Dreamer is essential in setting the stage for innovation as well as offering an entertainment value to novelty-seeking design managers”.
• The Surgeon - “Whether it comes down to aesthetic or ergonomic excellence, so many great pieces of design rely on details… the Surgeon – an analytical thinker who cuts up and dissects design problems to find the best solutions. By definition, she breaks down a product into its components, considering the pieces of design and then reuniting them into a cohesive whole. The Surgeon isn’t always the best decision maker, because she can end up thinking in circles or frustrated by a project’s lack of clarity. When it comes to making sense of complex design problems, a Surgeon is your best bet to make sure nothing falls through the cracks“.
• The Jack of All Trades (Master of None?) - “… the Jack of All Trades might be the most talented person in your office because he can truly do everything. He leads a range of projects, solves tricky problems, and dreams up big ideas. Recent graduates make great ‘Junior Jacks’, because they can contribute on a variety of levels while they gain experience and become more aware of their greatest strengths. Don’t confuse a real Jack with someone whose strengths are not prevalent or ambiguous. In reality, the rare Jack of All Trades might not be essential to have, but will feel essential to any team that has one“.

Roller’s team profiles might easily apply to any team doing new things.  They remind me of the Myers-Briggs profiling I’ve frequently applied in recruitment and executive team assessments. I use profiling to help me and the other person(s) gain insights into their personality.  Profiling should never give you a reason to hire someone, but, along with tests of numeracy, literacy and reasoning, it may give you a reason to not hire them. (I am an ENTJ, which is just as well, given my chosen career path - or is that the other way round).
PS: Michael Roller’s website is well worth a visit, especially if you’re interested in design.

An interesting little battle is brewing (!) between venerable UK beer-maker Adnams and “activist” Kiwi investor GPG.  This developing scenario has several ingredients that appeal to me - Suffolk, real ale, UK, NZ, strategy, governance, ownership and activist investors.

Adnams, based in the small coastal town of Southwold in Suffolk, has one of those quaint share structures whereby the Adnams family’s shares carry double the weight of other shareholders - all well and good, as long as everyone knows that’s the deal.

According to The Times, Adnams’ 2008 operating profit fell by two-thirds,  and GPG (which controls 5% of Adnams but only 2.5% of the votes) has written to all shareholders (.pdf) prior to the upcoming AGM.  GPG describes Adnams’ results as “so poor as to suggest that the substantial expansionary investment projects sanctioned by the board since 2000 have actually weakened rather than strengthened Adnams’s traditional brewing and pub businesses in East Anglia”.  GPG is particularly scathing of the brewer’s launch of Cellar&Kitchen, a chain of shops selling kitchenware and wine. It describes that venture as “far removed from the company’s core competencies as a regional brewer and owner of pubs”.

GPG blames the company’s recent disappointing performance on poor corporate governance and calls for the dismantling of the “anachronistic dual share structure” that gives the Adnams family effective control.  Blake Nixon, GPG’s UK executive director, also led an ultimately successful campaign to dismantle a similar dual share structure at Youngs, another brewing firm.  Adnams’ chairman has, unsurprisingly, rejected GPG’s criticism (pdf).

Adnams makes Broadside ale (a very suppable beverage, I can personally attest) - “brewed to celebrate the Battle of Sole Bay in 1672″, That sea-battle, between the English and the Dutch, ended inconclusively, with both sides claiming victory.  I expect a similar outcome from Monday’s AGM (UK time); although, come to think of it, in the Glorious Revolution some years after the battle, William of Orange became king of England with the support of the English Parliament. Maybe Adnams should hold off brewing another commemorative ale?

People (and organisations) talk a lot about innovation, but often do so in very narrow terms such as product innovation. This is very limiting.  In reality there are many dimensions for innovation, eg:

• Product
• Service
• Market
• Promotion
• Process
• Information
• People
• Business

Most innovative thinking only explores one or two dimensions, while assuming the others are fixed. There are enormous opportunities when you start innovating in multiple dimensions at once.  Unfortunately, responsibility for innovation in these separate dimensions is usually fragmented between functional silos, with little joined-up thinking.  What new opportunities could open up for you, if you brought these dimensions together?

There’s a terrible, yet powerful saying in business: “Kill your babies fast“. Usually applied to new product ideas, it’s also applicable to other areas of business innovation and expansion. As you develop those new ideas, they suck in resources - people, money and the most precious commodity of all, time. While strong determination , persistence and even sheer bloody-mindedness are important characteristics of successful innovators and entrepreneurs, the best also kill projects as soon as it’s clear that they are unlikely to succeed, both in absolute terms and by comparison to other projects in the portfolio.  That means you can concentrate your resources where they’ll have most effect; classic strategic thinking.

Killing projects is hard.  Once started, they seem to get a life independent of you. which gets stronger with every month and milestone passed.  The later the stage of development, the harder it is to cancel them.  “We’ve invested too much to stop now” and “It’s starting to show some promise” are phrases you’ll hear a lot, from the project team, the project sponsors, the CEO or the board.  No-one wants to admit to what others will think of as failure, and so the project continues in the vain hope that it might still pay off, ignoring the benefits of switching resources to more promising opportunities.  You end up with numerous projects on the go, all inadequately resourced, often getting in each other’s way, and probably too late for the market opportunities originally targeted. Or you’ll have made one big bet on Day One, which is even harder to kill.

Sometimes there’s an alternative to infanticide. At the risk of taking the analogy too far, you might consider adoption - selling the project to someone else with a better fit for what the project offers.  It might be another business, or the project team itself.  You might get paid handsomely for the effort to date; you might retain an investment in the new owner.  Indeed, being a “baby factory” is a legitimate business model for some innovators.  But be wary of investing too much time and resources on securing a new parent - that’s as bad as spending them on the project itself.