Monthly Archives: November 2014

We Apologise for This Momentary Disruption

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

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If I hear the word ‘disruptor‘ again I’m going to scream. If you hear me using it …slap me! I have never been a great fad surfer or believer in the ‘magic bullet’ approach to management. Hell I don’t even like most management speak which I find is techno babble most of the times. I fielded a call at work the other day while having my lunch al desko from a women spruiking a conference to me all about being a disruptor. When I was at school (and I’m showing my age here) the nuns beat the disruption out of you which is why many shy away from anything that directly clashes with the status quo. To do otherwise was to bring down the wrath of Sister Cecily and her thick leather belt tucked inside her burqa (aka habit). Or the modern-day equivalent thereof – a re-programming and re-alignment of your goals with the company’s mission and core values. So I was somewhat shocked to find us at work doing something radically different that has changed/shifted the paradigm perhaps forever in the commercial leasing space.

I’ve been scratching around desperately for a descriptive word for what we are doing and AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!! we are being disruptors. Before you join an orderly queue to whack me around the head a la my earlier invitation I would say in my defence that the word disruption is the most apt (that’s apt kids not app) word for what we are doing. Hence I am re-claiming it, or more accurately jumping on board and using some bang up to date jargon.

By now I can tell I have piqued your interest. What, I can hear you thinking, is so significant that I would bear the wrath of the Sisters of No Mercy to cause such a disruption? The answer is collaborative consumption. It is a true disruptor (there I’m getting quite comfortable with the word now). We’ve been doing it for a while but are taking it up a notch or two with our latest disruption. That, I suspect. is the nature of disruption. If you are annoying in class after a while everyone gets used to you and you need to change tactics.

At CTC, where I work, we created an area where, instead of taking out commercial leasing space to conduct your training (in high risk work licensing competencies such as heights, confined space, scaffolding etc.), you just pay as you use. This means companies are not burdened with the cost of leases or the plant (capital cost) which would lie idle when not being used. Instead they pass the idling risk onto us and we manage that for them. We cherish their brand along the way to ensure that their customers associate their brand with each individual company delivering on each specific day. As far as the customer is concerned that forklift or that elevated work platform belongs to ABC Training Ltd despite the fact that the following day most likely XYZ Ltd is using it. What do ABC care about that. We have created brand recognition for the duration it is needed and that is when the client/customer is interfacing with them. We call it our Big Brand Theory. The area we call Hot Leasing. It’s the commercial leasing equivalent of hot desking. Not very novel you may conjecture…well funnily enough we are the first to do it. We are therefore taking first to market advantage.

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To keep it fresh we are promoting an NYOP for January. NYOB stands for Name Your Own Price. Again not particularly new but in our industry pretty damn special. The idea actually came from the band  Radiohead. They made waves in 2007 when they bypassed traditional distribution channels and offered their In Rainbows album for whatever fans wanted to pay. According to Comscore, In Rainbows was downloaded 1.8 million times, generating $2.26 per album (60% opting for the free download). Without costs of production, inventory, shipping or cuts to the middle-man, Radiohead claims it actually made more money off the “pay what you want” release than any other album. So it wasn’t as good as OK Computer but that’s not the point. It showed that doing things differently, turning the tried and tested way of doing things on its head has value.

So for the month of January to use CTC’s Hot Leasing facility you can name your own price. Let’s hope we get more than $2.26 per use but even if we don’t we will still be ahead. The exposure factor alone in marketing terms will pay us back by a factor of around five we estimate. Sometimes the status quo, or the normal way is not the right way to do things.  Sometimes doing what we always did means getting what we always got. I recall in 2000 being asked to manage a major hospital move from an old site to a new one including most of the medical equipment, the staff, medical records and patients etc. The received wisdom was that you did this gradually over a six to eight week period starting first with the relatively low risk areas like Outpatients Department and ending up with the Emergency Department (A&E, ER) having double run it for around a week or so. A colleague of mine and I threw conventional wisdom to the wind and did it all in two weeks starting at the ‘pointy end’ with the Emergency Department and finishing up with the low risk stuff at the back end. The Emergency Departments in both hospitals remained open for an overlap period of just one minute. The whole approach was a disruptor; a challenge to convention. It was true contrarian thinking that won awards and the rest is history. It is now the de rigueur way of moving hospitals worldwide. And all because we shifted the paradigm.

I’ve just reminded myself of that. It all stemmed from being a bit mischievous. So being a disruptor is nothing more than doing things differently; not following the status quo; not complying. Those snotty-nosed kids in the class that were always disrupting things might have something after all. I can just picture Sister Cecily in her hijab taking the white-out to earlier school reports. ‘Johnny is a constant disruption in class – we expect great things from him in the future!’

Loud & Proud

13 Thursday Nov 2014

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Sometimes I watch a movie that is worthy of a blog. I’m no David Stratton though – just keep that in mind. Pride is a movie directed by Matthew Warchus who interestingly directed the run away success West End musical Matilda. The movie covers a lot of ground – gay rights and the 1980s UK miners’ strike. While it is about gay rights and the rights of workers to strike for their rights it is probably mostly about community and tolerance. I migrated to the North of England in the aftermath of the miners’ strike in 1985. The scars of that decision are still very much evident today in the north of England Wales and Scotland. In the end the National Union of Miners was smashed and along with it its leader Arthur Scargill. Thatcher prevailed and pits were shut. Communities were devastated and the world moved on. What Warchus achieves in Pride is getting mostly right the delicate mix between humour and pathos, serious reflection and social commentary.

The juxtaposition of the uncompromising Welsh miners with the flamboyant and confident gay and lesbian activists is what makes the movie work so well. The wry humour works well too. In the wrong hands this could easily have been a dirge. The contrast of the hustle and bustle of London with its gay clubs and 90s dance music and the town of Onllwyn in the Dulais valley in Wales. This is, of course, the country where (with respect to our Southern Hemisphere neighbours) ‘men are men and sheep are nervous’. They’ll be having no poofs there then. And yet they do and the story focuses on how the mining community comes to accept the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) action group. The mid-80s aren’t that long ago and the soundtrack reminds us of that with eponymous music as Bronski Beat and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Hard to believe then that in 1985 the legal age of consent for gay men was 21. Much has changed, or has it?  In Australia some thirty years on we still don’t have equality of marriage for gay people. Perhaps in 30 years time people will look back on this time and have the same sense of bewilderment.

For me, the balance that Warchus achieves with such a laden agenda of issues to explore, is his crowning achievement. The film is not without flaws though and some of the sub-plots, perhaps necessary because it was a true story, don’t add much and could be edited out. But really that is just splitting hairs.

Balance is important in all aspects; be it film-making or business. Last week I dipped into the submission by the Senior Council assisting the Commissioner on the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption and saw a lack of finesse and balance. We run the risk of repeating the sins of our fathers if we don’t bring some reason into our approach to industrial relations. For the economy to work, and for us to prosper, we need to find an accord between both the owners of capital and those whose labour makes capital work. To remove the rights of employees to band together as a bastion against unscrupulous employers is a breach of our fundamental human rights. We cannot rely on employers to do right by their workers all the time. We could not rely on Thatcher to do right by the small Welsh communities. To unshackle them from the fear of collective action being taken against them would, I suspect, bring out not the best but the worst in them. Jeremy Stoljar SC could do worse than take a few hours out of his busy schedule and watch Pride and realise that some things are worth protecting and others worth advocating for change. The trick, the wisdom is knowing which falls into which category.

As a footnote I must give a big plug for my old mate (we used to shop in the same Tesco) Bill Nighy who plays the character Cliff. It is simple understated acting that totally hits the mark and is almost impossible to achieve. If you want a definition of what silences are all about, watch his performance. 

The Addicition Virus

05 Wednesday Nov 2014

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PARENTAL ADVISORY – WARNING: CONTAINS DRUG REFERENCES

We changed our Employee Assistance Provider (EAP) service this week. You know, the companies that you employ so that if your employees are coming apart they can help put them back together again. I noted with interest that they provide a service for dealing with addictions. I never really got the whole addict thing. I’ve heard writers talk about being addicted to exercise for example (#Lucykellaway). I try and exercise and have never felt that endorphin rush that apparently kicks in during a hard work-out that spurs you on such that next minute you find yourself with a perfect 6 pack. I have a wager on the horses from time to time and admit that while it’s nice to see my horse come in I’ve generally put so little on it that either way it doesn’t matter much. I’ve never, for example, shouted out at the top of my voice from the members stand extolling my horse and jockey to do better as they are thrashing up the straight. As far as alcohol goes if I start to imbibe too much a little voice reminds me how I might feel in the morning if I keep going, so I naturally take it easy thereafter.

So it’s something of a shock to the system to now find myself an addict. At first I was secretly and guiltily pleased. I felt that little frisson one must feel when they are out on the pavement having a sneaky cigarette with some of the other recalcitrants from the work team. Conspirators one and all. No squares here as we look death in the face and cough. But then I realised it was getting bad. It is starting to affect my work life and my home life for that matter.

At an “AA’ meeting I’d be standing and saying. “hello my name is Phil and I’m addicted to Twitter”. Sure I blog and do the social media thing but at times it has a sense of chore about it. Writing a blog in work time doesn’t feel like cheating my employer – more like contributing to raise the company profile in some vaguely connected way. With Twitter though its a whole different ball of wax. I am checking Twitter first thing in the morning and last thing at night and at all stages in between. My flirtation with Twitter has an analogue in the whole downward spiral of drug taking. When I started to tweet I was on a pretty mild form of marijuana. So light was my ‘high’ that I wondered what all the fuss was about. And then the fateful event happened. Up to this point my tweets went purely into the ether untouched and unread by anyone. Sure I thought they were sassy and acerbic but clearly no-one else did. Then I stumbled by mistake onto a bag of free-base cocaine and I haven’t been the same since. I went viral. Not your common or garden viral either. I’m talking your full on bird-flu style viral.

I heard Bono refer to Australia’s dismal response to Ebola as un-Australian. Well that got me because as an Irishman (among my other nationalities) I don’t want my fellow countrymen slagging off another country. Believe me we have enough problems of our own to be dealing with. There’s a few unmarked graves with un-wed mums and babies in them that might need our attention. Anyway I decided to respond into the ether with a mention that our Ebola response in Australia was akin to the moving of a musical publishing house from Ireland offshore to avoid the high rates of tax – which we need right now to solve the parlous state of the Republic’s economy. Having had my momentary rant I put my phone back in my pocket and went about my business. Next thing my phone is pinging like …well like it’s never pinged before.  I didn’t count on the dislike many have of Bono.I apparently had hit a raw nerve..I was mainlining. Now that is a buzz, knowing that your opinion, as facile and truncated as it is, is touching other people to the extent that they want to do something with it. Then my headlong immersion into the twittersphere began.

It’s like a gift that keeps on giving or, perhaps put another way, like a spicy meal repeating on you. After a day it calmed down and then the long slow withdrawal. I figured at this stage that Twitter is less like a drug and more like developing an app. You might get lucky once but you can’t go viral twice. In fact even trying to go viral to me sounds a bit like trying too hard to be popular. You should just let things be and see what happens. I did notice a change in my behaviour though over the next few days. I am an avid news watcher and listener especially world news and have a healthy interest in international geo-politics. So listening to the BBC World Service, or ABC Radio National is not a new thing for me. However I found myself listening to it for little tweet treats that I might be able to send out into the ether again to get my next fix. Last week I heard that the leader of the opposition in Malaysia was awaiting the verdict on alleged trumped up charges that could see him back in prison and effectively blunt the opposition. Given Australia resides in the backyard of Asia this is important. In my tweet I did an @Anwar Ibrahim which meant he would receive a copy of my tweet. Within ten minutes the leader of the opposition in Malaysia had picked my tweet up and re-tweeted to all his followers. Now many days later I am still getting tweets on that subject. In the immediate aftermath of Ibrahim’s re-tweets my phone went into meltdown. That wasn’t cocaine that was pure and simple Heisenberg blue.

So yes I’m hooked. And now I’m like an addict looking for my stash. I even tweeted what I thought was a snappy few lines to and about the Apple CEO. No response. So I did what many addicts do. I went for a cheap fix. I did a breastfeeding tweet. I know what you’re thinking – easy yards. Well apparently not. I’m having to re-think my approach. I need my phone pinging in my pocket. I don’t feel fulfilled without it. I even watched The Chef again to see if that kid could teach me a few tricks.

As things stand I’m on a kind of methadone with a few random tweets and re-tweets keeping me shielded from the worst aspects of withdrawal. Now if only Bono could get himself arrested in Malaysia and I could straight back on the horse.